[Campaignforrealdemocracy] what's the best way to start the process?

[James Holland]

i can see it developing a bit like this

at the meeting a few of the people there with really good local links say
that there's a number of individuals and organisations in their local area
that might be interested in becoming a democratic community.

we decide to try and help these become 'exemplar communities' and start
doing direct communication in those areas to explore, explain and find out
if even more people are interested, with the aim of getting enough people
together to get it started

because it's been initiated by local people, members of the group that are
not from the area can still help out without looking like they're
'parachuting'. i'm happy to do this outside of the area i live in because i
beleive that establishing the principle in areas that are already active and
have a strong local community will strengthen the idea and make it more
attractive to other places.

the whole group will also be on the lookout for other ways in which we could
progress the project (either by trying to find people in other areas for
other new or something else)

i think it would be good if we could get 3 or 4 diverse areas in different
parts of town?


On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 8:59 AM, james holland <james at dogmanet.org> wrote:

> let's say that democratic communities are 100-150 people and that that they
> could possibly federate together through a 'spokes' system of 50-100.
>
> what's the best way to start the process?
>
> i think one good approach is to split up into areas of about 15,000
> (borough wards are about this size)  and find a group of people who are
> interested in starting out, then over time try to find people in each of the
> 100 or so communities and gradually build the capacity of what will
> eventually make these the sovereign communities. This approach gives a
> context for activists and residents that may live close by, but not live in
> the same street or block to make a start, they will be able to engage people
> from the whole community and then help to build core communities when
> numbers start to grow.
>
> maybe we should aim to start by identifying and supporting a small group of
> ward size areas with a good concentration of interested people / campaigns /
> resources?
>
> obviously this is all for discussion at the first meeting, but these are
> just a few thoughts
>
>
> --
>
>
>
>
> James Holland
>
> http://risingclevel.blogspot.com/
>



-- 




James Holland
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