Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Not to be confused with people’s assemblies (a more informal gathering, often of existing activists) citizens’ assemblies are a way of exploring public views on a particular topic and coming up with concrete solutions.
There’s no better way to understand the place you live than to simply get outside and walk its streets. You see how your neighbors go about their needs, how they interact with each other, and where they face difficulties in negotiating the environment.
Would it be ridiculous to believe that not only the third runway will never get built but that one day our children will be able to hear a nightingale in Harmondsworth again because we had learnt to fall in love with the world, in love with life rather than money.
In a city like Charleston, with deep cultural roots and more historic buildings than you can count, the effects of development on neighborhood preservation and the growing impacts of climate change demand a new approach that can address both issues simultaneously.
On Wednesday, the House of Commons became the first parliament in the world to declare a climate emergency. The resolution came on the heels of the recent Extinction Rebellion mass uprising that shut down Central London last month in a series of direct actions.
The mercurial Mr. Trump’s violation of the US Constitution is more basic than bucks. His transgression hits at the heart of the body politic—the separation of powers.
At the very least, critical pedagogy proposes that education is a form of political intervention in the world and that it is capable of creating the possibilities for social transformation.
By their very nature, the success of citizens’ assemblies can also provide an alternative vision of how decisions can be made – and in so doing shame political parties and parliaments into improving their decision-making practices.
No textbook for the new foundation course exists – which is probably just as well. The course is better thought of as a journey, than as a body of knowledge.
My experience with the Pentagon Papers showed that an act of truth-telling, of exposing the realities about which the public had been misled, can indeed help end an unnecessary, deadly conflict. This example is a lesson applicable to both the nuclear and climate crises we face.
I briefly mentioned the Extinction Rebellion climate change protest in my last post. In this one I want to describe what some of my misgivings about it were and how I’ve now laid them aside and embraced the movement, thanks to a few dark nights of the soul and a little helping hand over the line from former British Home Secretary, David Blunkett.
But let’s not win that way. Let’s operate on the assumption that human beings are not grossly defective. That we’re capable of acting together to do remarkable things.
