[Campaignforrealdemocracy] From Copenhagen to G20 : Building the People's Assembly in Toronto

[Mark Barrett]

Cheers for this from Brett on the CJA list ~
If anyone else at CJA is blogging about, or would like to blog about
Assemblies and the pursuit of the common political alternative anywhere in
the world please get in touch and we can give you publishing keys at
www.peoplesassemblies.org and please feel free to comment on this post at
the blogs too
In Solidarity

Mark

>From Copenhagen to G20: Building the People’s Assembly in
Toronto<http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/2011/04/from-copenhagen-to-g20-building-the-peoples-assembly-in-toronto/>
04.03.2011 · Posted in
International<http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/category/international/>
  <http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=430&action=edit>

*The People’s Assembly on Climate Justice*

The Toronto People’s Assembly on Climate Justice (PACJ) first came together
as part of the community mobilization against the G20. Taking elements from
the Reclaim Power Assembly and Cochabamba , the Toronto manifestation of the
PACJ has held two successful Assemblies, one immediately before the G20
summit, and another on the December 4th 2010 Worldwide Day of Climate
Action. The first focused on defining the meaning of Climate Justice from an
urban context, while the second focused on the collective work of building a
stronger movement for Climate Justice in Toronto. For both Assemblies the
starting point was the ‘Framing Question’, a direct importation from the
Reclaim Power Assembly. The framing question is simply a general suggestion
for direction, a starting point from which participants can begin to
generate ideas.

The main innovation introduced in Toronto was an additional round of
breakouts, which allowed more space for the Assembly’s horizontal process to
both generate ideas and to orient itself for action. Beginning with the
second Assembly, Toronto activists took the working group model that emerged
from Cochabamba and re-framed it as a series of permanent action-oriented
bodies known as People’s Councils. During the December 4th Toronto Assembly,
People’s Councils were created on Movement Building, Outreach & Education,
Group Coordination, Building Alternatives Spaces, Mass Action & Political
Pressure, and Personal Development.. Both assemblies generated more than 200
participants, and over 40 endorsements from community groups in Toronto.

*Radical Horizontality – Inside the People’s Assembly*

The movement inside the Assembly is an open collective dialogue which
organizers have termed *radical horizontality. *Within the Assembly, radical
horizontality is a two-pronged process which allows participants, through
two rounds of break-outs and intermittent plenaries, to first generate
ideas, and then to develop and form them together in order to establish
mandates for the People’s Councils.* *This concept of radical horizontality
also extends to everyday life, beyond the Assembly, and seeks to establish
shared responsibility and accountability in the entire community, in order
to make local resistance and organizing more sustainable.

>From the beginning the Assembly stressed the need for a point of convergence
inclusive to a wide range of organizations, from women’s groups and
anti-poverty, to environmental justice and food security, cyclists, migrant
justice, co-operatives, collectives, etc. To effectively transform
communities, the Assembly posited a lack of separation between activism and
everyday life. Raul Zibechi, a Uruguayan socio-political theorist, explains
how “in the new pattern of action… mobilization starts in the spaces of
everyday life and survival, putting in movement an increasing number of
social networks or, that is to say, societies in movement, self-articulated
from within.” The People’s Councils were modeled on the hope of facilitating
the establishment of this sort of organizing on a permanent basis, to make
the leap from simply activism to organized communities.

 The post-G20 realities of community organizing in Canada presented us with
a challenge, and a new dynamic that calls for activists to develop, out of
necessity, new methods of organizing. This requires ingenuity,
responsibility, and a long-term willingness to sculpt a new grassroots
paradigm. Small beginnings of creative examples were observed in Canada
during the following months.

Various action camps took place throughout the country during the summer of
2010 themed around climate justice, indigenous solidarity, non-violent
direct action, and Tar Sands/pipeline resistance. Organizers worked to build
links between cities and to strengthen regional networks. Simultaneous
people’s assemblies were held in December throughout the country, organizers
in Montreal began to develop the idea of a climate justice co-op, and the
climate justice community in Toronto started establishing the People’s
Assembly on a permanent basis. Climate Justice organizers have used the
momentum coming out of the G20 to create their own grassroots
infrastructure, without waiting for existing support or external funding.

*Towards a New Model of Organizing *

‘The People’s Assembly in Toronto emerged on the tide of a paradigm shift
towards popular assemblies as an alternative to the complete failure of
international institutions and nation-states to address the urgent global
threat presented by the climate crisis. At the same time, a global Climate
justice movement has grown organically; determining its own shape through
horizontal structures and differentiating itself from mainstream
environmental voices through a deeply rooted anti-capitalist analysis.

By eschewing traditional hierarchical forms, the open and inclusive process
of the Assembly is an invitation for community members and organizers to
come together in an effort to build solidarity, share skills, and develop
increased coordination. The aim of the People’s Assembly in Toronto is for
the climate justice community and its allies to utilize it as a vehicle or a
space through which it can operate *as a movement*, a self-articulated space
that will allow it to *remain* a movement.

More info:

http://torontopeoplesassembly.wordpress.com/
Apathy is Dead
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarider/5254770064/#/photos/solarider/5254770064/lightbox/
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