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<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)">Mike Marqusee</div>
<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)">Insisting on an alternative: meeting the challenge of the cuts</div>
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<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)"><em><font color="#222222"> </font></em> </div>
<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)">Our campaign against the cuts has first and last to contest their “necessity”. This involves a challenge to the dictatorship of “the markets”, which we need to identify as a modern form of despotism. We have to strip the mask from the financial elite, whose self-interest is dressed up as the public interest, who disguise self-serving policies as mere obedience to impersonal economic “laws”. In this consumer society we are offered “choice” in everything but what matters most: the determination of our common priorities and the disposition of our common resources. When it comes to taxing and spending, we are told there is no choice. So the struggle against the cuts is also a struggle for democracy and should be framed that way.</div>
<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)"><br><span><a href="http://www.tni.org/article/insisting-alternative-meeting-challenge-cuts" target="_blank"><a href="http://www.tni.org/article/insisting-alternative-meeting-challenge-cuts" target="_blank"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">http://www.tni.org/article/insisting-alternative-meeting-challenge-cuts</font></a></a></span></div>
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<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)"><span><font color="#000000">New A World to Win Communique:</font></span></div>
<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)"><span><a href="http://aworldtowin.net/frontline/BuildPeoplesAssemblies.html">http://aworldtowin.net/frontline/BuildPeoplesAssemblies.html</a></span></div>
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<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)"><font face="Arial" color="#000000" size="5">Building People’s Assemblies</font></div>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">Communities whose services and living standards are under unprecedented assault by the Con-Lib coalition government should establish their independence from the state through building People’s Assemblies and move beyond resistance.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">Delegates to the Assemblies will represent ordinary people’s interests, whether they are young or old, in work or unemployed, in the public or private sectors, trade unionists, women, students, minorities and community groups.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">Assemblies will bring together anti-cuts campaigns and all organisations resisting the Coalition’s attack on jobs, services, pensions and standard of living. </font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">A network of People’s Assemblies will have the capacity to facilitate a transition to a democratic society based on co-operation and self-determination instead of profit and corporate power. </font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">They will challenge the lie that there is no alternative to the capitalist system, which has plunged into a global crisis and is the source of the Coalition’s attacks.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">People’s Assemblies can:</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">* Defend communities against closures, evictions, and job losses </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">* Fight for democracy and rights</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">* Campaign for action on climate change</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">* Oppose war and the secret state</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">* Struggle against racism and attacks on minority communities </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">* Build links with movements internationally</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">* Create a new democratic society through a transfer of economic and political power.</font></p>
<h3 style="MARGIN: 12pt 0cm 3pt"><font face="Arial" color="#000000">FAQs</font></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><b><font size="2"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana">Q: How will Assemblies come into being?</font></font></font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">A: Through local initiatives of people and communities who want to resist cuts, job losses, repossessions and go beyond protest to build a real democracy.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><b><font size="2"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana">Q. What is A World to Win’s role in setting up Assemblies?</font></font></font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">A: AWTW is joining with others to take the idea forward. We advocate the policy of setting up People’s Assemblies wherever cuts, closures or strikes are happening, where young people gather, where people are at risk of benefit cuts, and home repossessions or evictions are threatened.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><b><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">Q: What will Assemblies do to show they are the legitimate representatives of the people?</font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">A: They will have a strong defensive role, as the government launches its attacks. They can learn lessons from others about how to defend communities and individuals. For example, from the movements in the US against evictions, where communities are getting together to stop people being thrown out when they can’t pay their mortgage. </font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">The experiences of Transition Towns who have been encouraging communities to do things for themselves, exploring new ways of living, can provide a source of inspiration.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">Assemblies can learn from history – from the Paris Commune, early Soviets or Workers Councils in Russia, from the Councils of Action; the movement that brought down the Berlin Wall to the struggles in Venezuela and Bolivia today.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><b><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">Q: How will this be different from the old politics?</font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">The Assemblies will involve and mobilise the whole community, including young people, people from minority ethnic communities, small businesses and self-employed people as well as workers from every sector.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">They will show by their own actions that there is another way of living, and another way of “being political” that isn’t about money-grubbing and getting expenses. They will work for education, for culture and a decent life for all. </font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">There will be opportunities for everyone to share their skills and talents, and for young people to work creatively and learn. A wide range of people will gravitate towards them. They will embrace different points of view, not only those on the left.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font size="2"><font color="#000000"><font face="Verdana"><b>Q: What will AWTW’s role in the Assemblies be?</b> </font></font></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">A: Our Manifesto says: “The Assemblies will also look beyond a failed economic system towards building a true democracy in place of the sham one we live under now.” That is the revolutionary policy we will campaign for in the Assemblies.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">The Coalition government is taking the actions it is because the system it serves – the capitalist system – is terminally unstable. It must be replaced.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">The existing parliamentary system is a façade that increasingly undermines and devalues the right to vote that was won in bitter struggle against the ruling classes. We have to extend and expand democracy to give expression to what the term actually means – the power and rule of the people.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="2">We will work within the Assemblies to win people to the idea that they should not be talking shops, or just organise protests or social support, but start to see themselves as the legitimate representatives of the people, with the right to replace the existing undemocratic structures of both local and national government. This includes revolutionising the Welsh and Scottish assemblies, which in their present form have dashed the hopes raised by devolution.</font></p>
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<div style="COLOR: rgb(51,154,151)"> </div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></span><span></span><br><span> </span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br><br clear="all"> </div><br> </div>