Comments on: Ideas for Popular Assemblies http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2007/03/01/1044/ Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:22:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Andrew Basham http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2007/03/01/1044/#comment-222975 Andrew Basham Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:57:37 +0000 http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2007/03/01/1044/#comment-222975 <p>An interesting article. Reminds me of my interest in "citizens' assemblies", which are randomly selected citizens from the permanent voters list (or the most inclusive list possible). These people could be given specific powers from the government (i.e. taking them outside the bureaucracy and into the everyday world of people who may be affected by the decisions).</p> <p>This is not the same as the idea pointed to in Gindin's article, which seem to be only composed of the nebulous "Left", and which itself constitutes a division of society as I'm sure many people do not identify with "The Left", but who may actually support many of "its" ideas. I am reminded of a colleague who sees uniting the Left (or Right) as uniting a division: Why not simply aim to unite all of humanity? We are after all one species, with much variation to be respected, much more than the simplistic right/left dichotomy could ever explain, let alone represent politically. That is one thing the random selection, with some criteria - based on the diversity of the population, does well the better it is designed. This is how I prefer to look at democracy - as a science. We need to figure out the most democratic ways to conduct ourselves and our society, and act to restructure it accordingly. Many proposals need to be shared. I think this article is very interesting in this regard. I recommend looking at the following section of the Green Party of Manitoba's platform for more on citizens' assemblies: http://greenparty.mb.ca/abo-pol34b.html</p> <p>Yours truly, Andrew Basham</p> An interesting article. Reminds me of my interest in “citizens’ assemblies”, which are randomly selected citizens from the permanent voters list (or the most inclusive list possible). These people could be given specific powers from the government (i.e. taking them outside the bureaucracy and into the everyday world of people who may be affected by the decisions).

This is not the same as the idea pointed to in Gindin’s article, which seem to be only composed of the nebulous “Left”, and which itself constitutes a division of society as I’m sure many people do not identify with “The Left”, but who may actually support many of “its” ideas. I am reminded of a colleague who sees uniting the Left (or Right) as uniting a division: Why not simply aim to unite all of humanity? We are after all one species, with much variation to be respected, much more than the simplistic right/left dichotomy could ever explain, let alone represent politically. That is one thing the random selection, with some criteria - based on the diversity of the population, does well the better it is designed. This is how I prefer to look at democracy - as a science. We need to figure out the most democratic ways to conduct ourselves and our society, and act to restructure it accordingly. Many proposals need to be shared. I think this article is very interesting in this regard. I recommend looking at the following section of the Green Party of Manitoba’s platform for more on citizens’ assemblies: http://greenparty.mb.ca/abo-pol34b.html

Yours truly,
Andrew Basham

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