Climate Action News from Copenhagen!

Proposals that came out of both the Climate Justice Action and Climate Justice Network's final evaluations at Copenhagen: organise Peoples' Assemblies locally and regionally everywhere, for a simultaneous decentralised Assembly in the summer of 2010 and for a global day of action in the autumn, on Climate Justice principles. And of course, mobilisations during COP16 in Mexico in December. A great spark of hope and a decisive year ahead.



The Peoples' Assembly at Copenhagen


GENERAL ELECTION

Maybe it's also time to fix our sights on this year’s General Election? Over the course of 2010, it is our hope that the many groups believing another world is possible, and who know this lies in an independent, and genuinely democratic organisation in each local township, will find the way to push the shared vision irreversibly into the world..!

A rainbow coalition can come together in 2010, mobilising effectively to show the mainstream real political leadership. It is time for this great movement that is genuinely of, by and for the people to show the way; a new world which is being built, community by community, throughout the UK, EU and throughout the planet, from the ground up. But this can only happen if all the many groups and determined individuals can stand up, together in a creative, well-organised and uncompromising fashion, in a manner impossible for the rest of society to ignore. So, calling all campaigners: on UK election day let us show the rest of the world what democracy really looks like!

This video was done for August 15th 2009, but the spirit of it applies to each and every picnic.

NEWS UPDATE JANUARY 2010

A Real Third Way Manifesto, based on the CRD ideal of a new, decentralised, alternative and local community based society being given the space, and therefore by extension people everywhere a democratic choice of how to live, beyond the oppressive hegemony of state and capital is expected to appear at New Sovereignty during the course of 2010.

Information about Feb 20th Event on the Real Third Way

The event on February 20th is convened by The Campaign for Real Democracy and the Community Sector Coalition. Here is some background, or click here for the flier and for info on how to register.

As the first decade of the 21st Century draws to a close, the voluntary and community sector, as with the global justice movement and society as a whole, faces a crucial, potentially historic choice. For, at the same time that society faces multiple crises (of economic meltdown, climate change, restrictions on civil liberties and global war) there is also a fundamental breakdown in trust between politicians and people.

The political elite have failed us, there is a notable lack of a uniting, popular vision, and so it is up to ordinary folk to converge around an agenda in which no-one will be left behind. Many, many aspects of the old political economy are shown to have failed, leaving people from all walks of life and in many places around the world marginalized and excluded. New ways of thinking and acting must be called into being.

For us, what this comes down to is a question of vision and leadership. The potential for most voluntary, and especially the more local community groups to deliver radical change has yet to be understood. For at heart, the third or civil society sector operates in a different world to that of the state or the market place. But still, many people in the third sector continue to play by the state’s rules, and thereby fail to see the enormous opportunity that exists, if they – and, by extension people generally - were able to organize themselves as an independent, democratic force.

The potential to do this is huge. By most estimates there are over one million civil society organizations in the country, and by far the majority of these are small unincorporated community groups. Up to 90% of the sector is not registered as a charity or an organization of any kind; nor does it get any kind of state funding. And yet the gap between the rich and the poor wings of the sector has grown ever wider, as the benefits of third sector modernization failed to trickle to local community groups.

It is time for far greater equity within the sector, specifically about how resources are brokered and where they end up. But for this to occur, we will need to campaign effectively in order to secure the political will necessary to achieve it.

Our view is that it is time to actively pursue a tripartite model that sees the sector as an independent realm on a par with the state and the market. For too long progressive debate runs up and down the tramlines of government and private sector reform, without reference to the collective action of local people through those one million civil society organizations.

Historically, change has occurred at times when civil society has made demands and the state has compromised and there is no reason to believe that this time is any different. In a time of crisis, it is appropriate to think practically, ambitiously and strategically. In an era of environmental, economic and political crisis, real change articulated as real democracy, and performed simultaneously on the streets, in our neighbourhoods and local spaces, will be a genuinely civilizing act.

Naomi Klein (2001) described the anti-globalization movement as being stuck in the spectacle. For her the ‘most powerful resistance movements are always deeply rooted in community – and are accountable to those communities… something is gravely wrong when the protests still seem deracinated, cut off from daily concerns. It means that the spectacle of displaying a movement is getting confused with the less glamorous business of building one’.

The Community Sector Coalition and the Campaign for Real Democracy see the truth in this, and seek to do something about it. Our February event will be an opportunity to discuss and put forward suggestions together about the democratic choices we face and make stronger links with the environmental movement. Our hope is that this will facilitate a range of different groups to form a campaigning network with shared aims, while allowing each to preserve their distinct character and independence.

We hope you and your colleagues will be able to attend. Registration is essential.

The People in Common website was recently archived by the British Museum. People in Common started off as a Housing Co-op and then later got resurrrected as regular democracy picnic in Parliament Square before morphing into a democracy and constitution campaign site. Please send any meeting or event details you’d like featured in the calendar to crdlondon@gmail.com.

One future plan is to initiate militant picnics at Town Halls around London on General Election Day so watch this space!

The Right to Self-Determination
“All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights