Citizens Assembly

  From Occupy Movement to a Permanent Political Force

“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try

and change the problematic model.

You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller

We well know that our systems of governance are problematic to put it mildly and if we follow Fuller’s advice then we ought to create another model to make our existing system obsolete.

I am not sure how much more Fuller had to say about the matter or what he was referring to specifically when he said or wrote that statement. But in this article I will apply it in relation our plight with a thoroughly corrupt political system.

The Occupy Movement is still a minority movement, despite its growing popularity. Though it seems to be composed of people who are thinking and dreaming big. Occupy participants are brimming with hope in action and they have placed that hope not in some man or woman, but in themselves as a collective with a just and common cause.

They seem determined to change not only their own broken institutions, but they are also looking to band with Occupy Movements from other countries in the hope of creating a better world for all concerned.

But how do we go about changing our monolithic and seemingly all powerful institutions? They have mountains of money, they make the laws to suit their aims and they command military-police forces.  We are learning that we, the 99 percent, are still much bigger and even more powerful than the Establishment.

But to achieve our goals we need more than greater numbers and raw power—-we need organization. Every complex agency has an organizational system that enables it to accomplish its goals. The Occupy Movement will need to evolve from rag tag protest movement to a permanent political force in order to achieve its goals. The Occupy Movement could very well be the seedling of the exo-establishment structure (Citizens Assembly) we need to replace our pathetic government. Let us please come together to make it so. Any bright future for all concerned will depend on it. Make no mistake about it our generation will decide either the legacy or the tragedy of humankind.

Indeed our future lies with the principles embodied by the emerging good will organizations.

They hold the vision of a just and equitable society striving to maintain an ecological balance between its own members and between those it shares the planet with–the plants and animals.

These organizations represent the hope of humanity and it is also where the rubber meets the road—principles in motion.

Collective action is the key which will unlock the creative life-affirming and progressive potential inherent in the human spirit.

The lock is a system of inherited political-commercial powers structures that are unwilling to change despite the undeniable evidence that the dominant economic-political model is a dead end street.It is up to us to oblige The System to reform. The System is bound by design to perpetuate itself. Its democratic gestures big-fish-scary are illusions. Its strategy is to pacify its subjects while it goes about business as usual.

The collective action I speak of must be greater than the forces that keep emerging cultural movements at bay, locked down and largely ineffectual.

Deforestation, resources depletion, pollution, social decay, human rights abuse and militarism are still running rampant despite the fact that the social and environmental justice movements are now over 40 years old.

It could be a case of too little and too late.

Please bear in mind that the political power structures we are dealing with have honed their conquer and domination skills over the last 5000 years.

The ideas of egalitarianism and ecology as socio-cultural ordering principles are by comparison embryonic and therefore easily contained and suppressed by the 5000 year old prevailing culture of brute force.

They have well fortified positions and all the power one can dream of. We, however, outnumber them by at least 100,000 to one and we are armed with the principles of justice and 21st century communication technologies.

Big-fish-scary-no-more.. The Pen and now the keyboard are mightier than the sword. The various political uprisings around the world are testament to a new wave of effective political dissent and reform tactics.

We have the rightful cause, we have the willingness and we finally have the tools with which to course correct from the perilous path the world is currently being led down.

What we lack is the organizational superstructure to sufficiently amplify the will of the people through the multitude of existing organizations.

In other words, in order to achieve the kinds of reforms now demanded by the socio-ecological condition of the planet we need to pool our resources together.

The many good will movements of the world are by themselves insufficient to oblige governments to make the necessary reforms.

But a collective of movements would carry the necessary clout to get the attention of governments.  It is not difficult to imagine a collaborative effort between the many good will organizations of the world.

emergent-culture

What Did You Do?

Crisis of Governance

 We need to state loudly and clearly that this crisis with all its different facets—climate, environmental, financial, food, values—that is affecting the whole world also has another component: a crisis of governance. This aspect can be seen, on the one hand, in the lack of a structure for world power with more legitimacy than the current version. Multi-lateralism is running out of steam and proving powerless in the face of the permanent threat of armed imperialism and its power of veto. In addition, its scope comes into conflict with states and their ageing national sovereignties. It is important to add to this summary assessment that today’s globalized economy and the health of state public finances depend on the enormous power of the huge economic-financial corporations, which subject the world to their pursuit for profits. Our world governance is led by corporations rather than states.

On the other hand, the governance crisis is also part of the total lack of vision and will to change displayed by political leaders as well as the parliaments that support them, regardless of how limited and contradictory is the political margin they retain in the face of the so-called power of the markets. Even if it seems impossible, the great projects in the history of humankind have always been started off by dreaming and thinking up ideas, then creating the conditions to make them possible. In the light of the prospect presented by today’s world and the pathetic Rio+20 conference, we can see that there is something missing on the world scene: politicians with significant political and ethical reach, generous and committed, who listen to the voices of the nascent global citizenry and pick up on their demand for immediate change, politicians who would promote the definition of strategies and democratic agreements aimed at setting up processes for change, here and now.

 world-governance

The Rio de Janeiro experience has left us with a planet-sized headache. It brought together tens of thousands of people and almost a hundred heads of state to adopt a 50-page, take it or leave it, declaration that repeats commitments made long ago and not kept, taking care to include all the buzz words of a liturgy now emptied of all meaning: the role of women and civil society, rights, the importance of democracy and popular participation, not to mention indigenous people, some of whom were present in feathered attire. In all the senses of the term, it would seem that the die has been cast.

But careful now! Acknowledging our interdependencies is out of the question! One state does not have the right to scrutinize another! A man is master in his own home! The commitments are voluntary and only binding to those who believe in them. Civil society participation? Even the stakeholder forum, meant to represent the different actors but absorbed into UN bureaucracy, publically criticized the masquerade after a month spent striving unsuccessfully to insert its proposals into a programme designed from the outset to exclude any ideas of real significance.