By Learning to Search YouTube Well You Can Do Much to Educate Yourself
What citizens ought to be allowed to know about their own Government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paGTB2kiyqk
You can govern yourself. You can govern with others. You can learn about political planks and political platforms, how to do governance, and about political organization. It's about active citizenship, civics, a more perfect union, and we the people. It's about participation. So, the focus of these many posts is on democracy, justice, citizenship, governance, co-operation, and democracy.
Circle of Power Groups a draft read and rewrite where it seems useful
An Early Draft
Circle of power groups are far form the only way for citizens to organize for their wellbeing.
Citizen assemblies can be another effective way to organize. In such assemblies there is no need to do what an authority or anyone else says we should do. In our assemblies we can learn to trust each other more appropriately. We can listen to one another more carefully and carefully come up with that which we truly and deeply want in our governance.
We can also learn to better use that which we have. We can learn to better inspire, inform, and support our elected representatives and others inside of government. It is okay too to act as we decide best to act "inside" our system of governance. Continuing to continue to act in civil society seems also important.
So, the idea is to use our assembly to be better, more effective, active citizens. An perhaps act to act gently and persistently to re- assemble our republic. And we could even allow the more radical among us to consider the true nature of democracy. Still it is well remember that many of us are in this together and that we have a lot to learn and that we do not always speak exactly the same language. So, to learn to act together we need to practice listening to one another carefully.
People who have thought much about citizen assemblies use and interesting word, '''commision.' In dealing with a working government, even one which is working far from perfectly, we learn that there is a vocabulary they often use which we do not often use and I hope that we seldom do use. We could usefully get ''commissioned" to support and inform parts of government. This is one way to get listened to on the inside. It can be powerfully useful, but it is not necessary. Will want to get powerful people in government to listen to us more carefully and that may be an ongoing goal, but "there is more than one way to skin a cat." Please do not practice on our cats.
Our governance is a public thing and each assembly has the power of being a mini-public.
Our assemblies can become a kind of corporate entities and by so doing gain outside monies from philanthropies and other interested parties to support our ability to do. However, the tendency to do that is the reason why I like our little circles of power to be our principle organization. Still,when has the time and energy it seems fine to be a member of more than one organization. Our very citizenship makes us a member of an organization. My maternal grandmother was a member of about a dozen clubes, her union, and a political party. I found her to a good citizen, a good person, and a good grandmother. I imagine that all her clubs found her to be a member in good standing.
The special power is produced physically. Goodwill is important. It is well done in a neutral, semi private, and quiet place. It is done by sitting in a circle facing inward. It is best when the chairs are the same or similar. There is no other furniture except perhaps a small table at the center of the circle. Using the circle their may be from 3 to 33 approximately.
The idea is to give each participant a short period of time to speak at each session for a limited time as the other participants practice listening with care. To learn more about this energizing practice go to the associated site Dialogue With RCS.
Toward Real Democracy
When we don't use our governance methods we do not have them. We have declared republicanism and democracy as important ways of our governance. Let's begin to consider republicanism and democracy and how they can be used.
This is a quick and sketchy essay at beginning that consideration. So, this piece aims at beginning to clarify our meaning of republicanism and of democracy. Then to consider how they are used and how they are worked to our benefit.
Participatory democracy is a phrase being used these days. I feel uncomfortable saying that real democracy is participatory democracy because all democracy must be participatory. That is the word democracy itself means people themselves doing their governance. Once a greater percentage of americans were clear about that. Now in real life there is rarely either this or that, but more often a combination of a lot.
Republicanism began much as a rejection of the present rule. The rule of the time was rule by monarchy and oligarchy. That was rule by king, nobility, and perhaps a growing merchant class. Than the question was about who should rule. Then as the word republican suggests, the answer was the people. That turned out to be a bit of a problem for those we have called our founding fathers. Perhaps there was a subconscious feeling around that it might be good to be ruled by our fathers.
This piece is directed to Americans and is about them doing more of their own governance. However, those of you who are not U.S. citizens may find something of interest here, perhaps even something useful. Many of the forbearers of present Americans believed that they could take care of themselves together and by doing so could be the governors of themselves. Now numerous present day Americans are beginning to believe that they can revive that belief and forgotten knowledge. It is late for doing that, but I am sure that it is possible.
When the United States was founded, mostly by Europeans, the concept of a republic had considerable popularity among them. Rule by a king and a hereditary nobility was no longer working well for them/The spread of reading and writing and the actual state of affairs had effected them. A significant portion of educated Europeans knew rather a lot about ancient Greek democratic governance and many thought it was a fine way for a populous to take care of itself.
A great many of those who began to immigrate to what would become the United States and also to the rest of the Americas were not ready to be ruled to by kings and nobles. They had found that every king had behaved royally and not every noble behaved nobley.
They got to the new land and found that kings were weak in sway and far away. Many felt that they could take care of themselves and often called that responsibility freedom. The question of how they would do that care taking and freedom, when raised, was seldom well answered. In the back of many minds the thought may have been that someone would take care of that. And they were not wrong. Someone always had, but that someone had not always been careful of everyone. A great many people had little knowledge of many of the factors of self rule and less practice. They had little idea of how to rule themselves together. They did know quite a bit about cooperation in a variety of situations and did have some notion that practice can perfect.
A few f them had begun to consider self governance in their present circumstances. They knew about cooperation, and somethings of the workings of the Roman Republic and democracy of ancient Greeks. They knew that few of immigrants had experience with government at state level.
Naturally the idea of not being ruled by someone else led to the Idea of self rule. The concept of self rule led to some consideration of self-rule together. Thoughts of this sort began to circulate a bit among the general population on both sides of the Atlantic. These thoughts were current among those who would be called the founding fathers of the U.S. Why fathers? Why not patriots or men or just say founders. Is this a hint that many wanted to be taken care of?
The idea that rule by others was a problem was a very republican concept and many early Americans. Rule by us became a popular idea, but the nature of who "us" include was, was not always clear. Many said us was all of us, but few included the Chinese in that us at that time. How was this rule was to be done was not clear. It was to be popular rule and we just knew who was popular. I imagine that in early Greece early Greeks were popular. Among early colonial Spanish people it was to gente reason and not every every Spaniard and certainly not some ignorant Frenchman. French said ''us'' was to include every citizen. They knew that a born and bred Turk was not a likely French citizen. For the early greeks democratic rule was not easy, but who was to rule were Greek citizens and the nature of a Greek citizen was agreed on by nearly all Greeks.
So, this governance deal was not easy to workout. You and I may come pretty close to agreeing who is an American citizen, but just how those should rule you and I or even with you and I could be a problem.
Among our active ancestors, just before 1776 were some pretty thoughtful guys. Women were not yet consider as strong contenders for citizenship. Anyway some male contenders began to talk things over. Many of them held stronger than usual egalitarian ideas! And their idea of who could be a citizen and man who could speak, read, and write English and not a criminal was certainly a contender. They agreed that not every man who was a citizen was a good person to hold position of power in a new government. Still they thought it best that every citizen be able to participate. So they came to an idea which has been called representative democracy. It is probably not really close to the best idea, but it is still a good one.
Every citizen could speak for laws, positions, and policies of government and vote for them. Positions in government were to be for limited time and the important and powerful positions were to be held by election by citizens. Good ideas for that time and place. But could every citizen come to any public office and the son or daughter come to any public office? It seems possible.
So, a few men began to consider how to institute such governance in their time and place and the nature of potential citizens. They had the idea of "representative democracy" in mind. They wanted the will of the people to be well represented. Their reasons for that are important and you can check them out elsewhere or we can review them here later if you so wish. Right now this piece has begun to feel too long for me to manage.
Back to our theme. States were already being formed so there would be states in this new nation.There could be a senate with men to represent those states. Those men would be elected by the citizens of each state. The people would elect their representatives to express their will and the representatives would write up that will and enact it as the law of the land. A national president would be elected to administer those laws to see that they were followed as the peoples' representatives ordered.
They began to create a written constitution of this organization of governance. That Constitution was put in effect and today it is still in effect with few modifications. It is still relatively short, but contains many important factors. Among those factors were those put in place to insure that to much power be accumulated in one sector. They wanted national power to be well shared so that the people were well represented and well served.
Plans worked out pretty well.We had a written constitution which we could use to see how we were doing with our rules in our land. We began to teach our children about republican governance, democracy and our Constitution. Then after a time we began to quickly develop militarily and economically and were pleased, but not very vigilante. Then we began to move into a kind of imperialism which proved to be a poor partner for republicanism. Our population grew quickly, much of that growth was by immigration.
As a people we began to forget about our responsibility for taking care of one another politically and for working our Constitution. We began to teach our children, or have them taught, more about making money in certain ways and less about how to govern ourselves together. We mostly had ''good'' ideas for doing what we were doing, but we were losing control of our lives. Our doing did not help us work our republic or us our democracy.Then so of us got so nervous about our republic that we began to call it a democracy and that seemed to lead us to forget the nature of democracy and how to use democracy! I seems that we may be left with a dying Empire if we do not begin to practice appropriate governance. We know that governance has little to do with marching and demonstrating, and not much more with voting. For us it seems to be working the constitution of our republic in a democratic way together.
We still have an idea that democracy is a good idea, as is republicanism. They are good ideas, but they are unless unless they are worked. They must be used to be useful. They must be used and they ought to be taught. There is much we can do now to take care of ourselves. We can make decisions about taking care of ourselves together. To do that it is best to be among those whom we trust and realize that there are groups worthy of trust. Communication is a key to doing that. Face to face talk is the most powerful communication for us. We can learn to better do that kind of communication. We can communicate with each other and dialogue among ourselves about what we have the will to do together. We can nurture that will in healthy ways.
In our present government it is now easy to arrange to keep fairly good track of our own representatives collective and individual doings and also much of the doings of the rest of our government. We do need some organization as well as some modern technologies. We can learn and act together. There is too much for any one to do alone, but so what? There are enough of us to easily that which needs doing together. We are many. We can cooperate. We already know about co-operation and learn to practice more. Little by little we can learn to appropriately organize our doings.
We already have that which we need, take care of the business of taking care of ourselves. We can promptly know what our representatives are doing and to promptly give them instructions as what to do and not to do for us. With the modern technology at our disposal and our appropriate we can easily maintain close communication. Of course representatives will want to know that they are getting our support. They may also know that we are getting close to being able to represent ourselves. Also they know that they have a contract for only a couple of years at a time and may want to get back to their regular job.
Still, for now, we need to arrange to give our representative abundant and appropriate support along with appropriate oversight. We are getting to know that there so many of us that no one person ever need to feel that they have too much to do. We will find ourselves learning by doing and by practicing our organization; and by becoming more aware of governance in our lives. We will need to practice communication skills and so maintain appropriate trust of fellow citizens. We will probably need to practice our co-operation skills and understanding of the organization close to us. Do not let me discourage you. There is virtually nothing which you really have to do, but much which you can do. Your governance activity is much like being empowered. Also you are the only one who can be you and you are an irreplaceable part of our taking care of ourselves just by being you. Better the best of you than the worst.
Citizen Assemblies are a good little example of doing much of what I am writing about. They are a real life demonstration of citizens co-operating to do some of their own governance. Citizen Assemblies are already one movement of effective citizen participation in their own governance. They once in a while seem much like an example of direct democracy. It is evident that these assemblies demonstrate how we can move toward active citizenship and toward the living conditions we desire. We can, as Daniel Stid has written, and I interpret here, bring true citizen perspectives to bear on policy making. We can refine our opinies through informed deliberations and judgements. Deliberations can be a kind of talking together which is much like thinking together.
These assemblies are demonstrating in a relatively short time ordinary citizens are capable of learning to help their elected representative to help them. Relatively soon they can collectively learn to effectively remind their representatives of citizen needs and encourage them, daily if necessary, to address those needs. They can with some ease and persistence, improve their governance and directly help their representatives to do well. All there is to it is to do it together.
Ordinary citizens are learning together to help their representatives to do that which they have been elected to do and to see it done or to know the reason why it is not done. Doing it together is the key. They learn to better work their government and we can too. They learn that it is their right and ability to make some changes or additions to the laws of the land. They learn that there are few laws against governance of the people, by the people, and for the people nor in their learning more of good governance and improved citizen activity as they practice their participation in governance of their nation, state, or county.
Citizen Assemblies have worked out ways to move governments to actions congenial to their citizens. If Public Assemblies and citizen participation interests you or attracts you, you can check out their ways of working.You can check out much online. You can share that which you learn here when the urge strikes you.
A Citizen Assembly is not the only way for us to work our governance and it is probably not the best way to do so. But, it is an excellent example of a way of doing so. You can find your own way to co-operative governance. Still, right now these Assemblies are worth looking into and learn something of how they work. Citizen Assemblies may be found in your country and online. They can be found in growing numbers in countries calling themselves republics.
I tend to like co-operating with people who do their best work in clearly inclusive and democratic ways. However, even at my age, I can make some adaptations.
I believe that this Citizen Assembly idea got started in England, spread to Ireland, then to France and beyond. Mr Stid, and important interpreter of the concept has written that "Ireland has set the pace" in the use of the Assemblies. Not all of the Assemblies are being used at the federal level yet. In the U.S., for example, they have been used at the state level, but mostly in an ad hoc sort of way. I this case I would like to see the organizations have some continuity, but that is not necessary for good work to be done.
Well, that's about it for me for now. When you find info action related to improved citizen participation in governance, especially cooperative, democratic participation, please feel free to tell us about it. The Assembly way is not the only way. But it does seem that we may have matured enough to govern ourselves, to take care of ourselves together. It does seem time to begin the practice. When you tell me it is OK to publish that which you tell us about doings related to citizen participation we discuss ways of doings. Ways for citizens to democratically co-operate in governance are golden.
Thank you for reading.
Richard Sheehan
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