'Across the city’s working-class districts, women and men established vigilance committees and joined (or re-joined) the National Guard to help defend the revolution. They formed political clubs, expressing their concerns and demands, and associations to reform or revolutionise education, women’s labour, the arts. Uncertain of what lay ahead, these emergent Communards began creating the world they wanted. The popular clubs and associations enacted direct democracy: a third power centre.'

https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-make-a-revolution-the-1871-paris-commune