[Campaignforrealdemocracy] update - CRD and community action

[James Holland]

since last autumn i've been critically evaluating the CRD project and i've
come up with a few thoughts that have informed me on where to put my
efforts.

'real democracy' is a long term goal, and so i tried to work out what some
intermediate goals might be

i think the idea of people from a local community coming together,
organising horizonally / non hierachically and taking (direct) action to
improve their lives and community is a crucial first step. There is already
a thriving movement of groups and networks taking this kind of 'community
action' - one of the most well known is haringey solidarity group
http://www.haringey.org.uk<http://www.haringey.org.uk/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54:billboard-bombardment&catid=35:consumersociety&Itemid=54>
 but
there are loads of others. (see below for a draft definition i've been
working with)

So, the project i'm focussing on is building, developing, publicising and
supporting the idea and practice of 'community action'. The first thing i
want to do is to get people who are activists currently working on big,
national or global issues to see how this is relevant to where they live and
get involved in community action, to that end i've submitted a proposal to
to the climate camp.

I'm keen to get involved and link this with any other CRD strands that any
one else is working on, please get in touch

     *'community action' proposal to climate camp (submitted 02.01.10)*
We start a national 'community action' working group to encourage climate
campers to get involved in (or help start) local groups/networks where they
live that use a similar ethos and tactics to the climate camp to support
action based campaigns on all issues that are relevant to local people (not
just climate) and by doing this start the process of moving their community
towards being more empowered, sustainable and consensually organised.


   *(Draft) definition of community action i'm using*

Community action could mean any number of things, but here is a definition
of the type of action I am refferring to:

*Any open and horizontally organised grassroots action involving members of
a localised community which directly benefits that community and/or helps a
local community to be more empowered or organised.*

The first seems an obvious definition, but the second part might not be the
kind of thing that comes to mind when we think of what community action is.
It means that even actions that are not specifically designed to help people
of a community but in which people get involved in and, perhaps even as a
by-product, help them to be more organised, skilled or empowered also count
as community action.

A good example of this is the community work done by climate camp in
gillingham – they opened a info shop called 'tipping point' as part of their
campaign to stop kingsnorth, this campaign wasn't aimed at helping the local
peope directly but film showings, skill sharing and information distribution
meant that many local people benefitted from tipping point. This kind of
community action can (and perhaps should) be added into almost any other
campaigning activity

This definition of CA brings together classic charitable volunteering, the
activity of more general groupings such as residents associations, stuff
that might well be seen as classic 'activist' stuff on 'big issues' in a
local area, stuff that might be seen as local NIMBY activism (campaigning
against a new supermaket) and also individual casework (as practiced by
LCAP) all organised in a comletely open and horizontal way.

-- 




James Holland
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