[Campaignforrealdemocracy] Fwd: London PA Network Meeting Report / Fwd: Assemblies and the Common Alternative

[Mark Barrett]

Below is a report on PA Network meeting held last Saturday. Any comments ?

Cheers

Mark

http://www.aworldtowin.net/blog/assemblies-taking-off.html
*Assemblies taking off *

The People’s Assembly Network (PAN) event held in London at the weekend took
place against a dramatic background of mass actions against existing
authorities from Wisconsin USA, to Tahrir Square in Cairo.

In Cairo two demonstrators were killed by the military police and many more
injured, while in Madison, Wisconsin, trade unionists and their supporters
met in a people’s assembly. On a smaller scale, protesters
camped<http://www.facebook.com/occupytraf>out overnight in Trafalgar
Square demanding the right to peaceful protest.

As a powerful greeting<http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/2011/04/message-to-the-wisconsin-people%e2%80%99s-assembly/>to
the London meeting from the Wisconsin
Wave People’s Assembly <http://wisconsinwave.org/> said clearly:

Like all of you, we understand the just cause and moral imperative of
defending our democratic traditions, our people, and our principles against
a coordinated attack by corporate elites and the politicians they own. And,
like all of you, we know that we have to do much more than fight back. We
also have to advance a genuine people’s movement that values every human
being and insists on essential public services and human rights.

This year, the message noted, opened with the toppling of dictatorships in
Tunisia and Egypt, which inspired the mass resistance in Wisconsin to the
attacks on public sector workers and their union rights.

PAN co-convenor Mark Barrett, said that:

assemblies were not unions, not parties or pressure groups but an inclusive
organisational strategy – the means to build permanent, democratic,
city-wide and rural structures in various communities around the world,
which can have a multiplicity of functions. They can unite for a common
alternative around the world – permanent institutions of the ‘common’.

A researcher on social movements said it was important to see assemblies not
only as “reacting” to the existing authorities but as a way to the assertion
of a new form of power.

Others, including members of the Project for a Participatory Society
UK<http://www.ppsuk.org.uk/>,
saw Assemblies as platforms for encouraging social participation and as a
way of developing alternatives to the capitalist system of production.

One A World to Win member said that the role of assemblies was to express
the self-determination of people, to be a voice for the voiceless and to
develop mass forms of leadership. “They are not a left thing or a right
thing, but a democratic thing in the light of mass popular dissatisfaction
with state structures and the absence of a democratic voice.”

London activist, Navid, said that assemblies could be structures for
combining the ideologies of the left and forums for debating ideas about
social transformation. Tony Dines from Worthing Solidarity Network and
Transition Town Worthing suggested that assemblies could draw in all people
who are victims of the crisis of capitalism, including workers and small
businessmen. They could be parallel organisations to local government up to
a national level which aimed to replace the existing state institutions. The
aim should be common ownership, not state ownership, he stressed.

The meeting was encouraged by a message from the Glasgow People’s Assemblies
which has already held three meetings at the Free Hetherington building
which has been occupied by students since the beginning of 2011. A People’s
Assembly/Convention is scheduled to be held in Lambeth, south London on May
21.

PAN participants will reconvene on Saturday May 7 at the Passing Clouds
music and arts centre in east London. Meanwhile the
website<http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/>working group will
contribute articles, blogs, news, photos and comments to
the website and a new group was formed to develop connections
internationally.

With the Coalition government in increasing disarray and the Parliamentary
system offering no way forward, PAN’s boost for the campaign of building
people’s assemblies is timely.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
11 April 2011

PS in addition to London and USA info, international Climate Justice Action
( youth and environment focused) colleagues in West Africa are now looking
to organise assemblies in solidarity - in Togo as well as in other countries
with linked local groups including Benin, Dr Congo, Cameroon, Burkina Faso,
Guinea, Cote d'ivoire. Our key point of contact is ONG Jeunes Volontaires
pour l'Environnement www.ong-jve.org  - more on this soon..
-- 
Apathy is Dead
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarider/5254770064/#/photos/solarider/5254770064/lightbox/
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