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https://www.positive.news/opinion/galvanising-communities-to-confront-the-crises-of-our-age-the-potent-power-of-peoples-assemblies/>
"A wave of local democracy is sweeping across Europe, positioning humankind’s
basic goodness and common sense as the antidote to collapse. My own trust in
humanity, recently underlined by a unanimous jury acquittal, is now vindicated
daily on the streets of Hull, where democracy is coming to life through
people’s assemblies.
Assemblies are public meetings where local people get together to discuss and
decide on a specific issue, without political interference or hidden agendas. A
simple tool with immeasurable potential, these assemblies can help us
fundamentally rethink how we make decisions in our society, and create strong,
active communities in the process. To survive ecological breakdown and the
collapse of our failing economy, we need both, urgently.
Cooperation Hull is holding Neighbourhood Assemblies across the city, and in
each one we are learning what happens when a room full of strangers upend
social norms to break bread, hold hands (an ice-breaker) and voice their honest
opinions on the most important questions of our time.
People all over Hull have pondered our responsibilities as citizens, named the
biggest challenges facing Britain and exchanged ideas on how to overcome them.
Earlier this year, we gathered around fold-out tables, spicy soup and coleslaw
to discuss how society makes us behave either selfishly or cooperatively. We
identified the power of divisive media, political polarisation and wealth
inequality before brainstorming some steps we could take to even the odds in
favour of cooperation: coherent community organising, media literacy and
education, and more conversations like this.
In places like Hull, deprived by austerity and neoliberalism for generations,
the culture war has gained a lot of ground and the consequences are clear from
the riots earlier this month. Overcoming these divisions is one of our biggest,
most pressing challenges, and one way to do it is to create opportunities to
take action together. Through assemblies, it’s possible to form self-organising
communities where we lift each other out of the conditions that these
ideologies prey on.
Where we are forced to work alongside people we disagree with or even dislike,
and organise positive initiatives that feed us, lower our energy bills, give us
purpose and contribute to a stronger community spirit. Our assembly ground
rules ask us to look for what we have in common, and there is a wealth of
agreement to be found if you care to look for it. We all want healthy families,
somewhere we can be proud to call home and a safe future to look forward to,
and none of us are convinced that anything coming from Westminster is going to
get us there.
In the run-up to the general election, we asked hundreds of people who is more
useful to them: Sunak, Starmer or a potato and the potato won every time. So,
our basic premise is this: what if all those people got in a room together,
worked out our differences face to face, and decided to disrupt this system and
replace it with something better?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
