Neighborhood assemblies: the possibility of direct democracy

What can we do to have a real voice in political issues?

                  Neighborhood assemblies:

Lessons from People’s Assemblies in Jackson, MS

and Cuba’s Municipal Assemblies

 with Steve Martinot, neighborhood activist and Berkeley Planning Commissioner

Why do important issues never seem to get resolved?

�      Affordable housing
�      An end to rent increases and rent-gouging displacement
�      Shelter if not housing for the homeless
�      Policing that serves people rather than impose social control
�      An end to industrial and infrastructure pollution

These issues become endless issues because we give them to people who are not effected by them – the elite we elect too speak for us, but are not us.

What would give us a voice in our own affairs?

�      Local assemblies in which to discuss among ourselves what to do.
�      Neighborhood assemblies in which to make our own autonomous decisions
�      Community Councils that would bring together the decisions of neighborhood assemblies

Where do we see this kind of system working? In Jackson, Mississippi, and in Cuba, in its system of Municipal Assemblies. Cuba’s local assemblies are legislative for neighborhoods and cities. Composed of people elected from neighborhoods, they are composed of delegates representing 100 to 200 people. These local assemblies make policy on real issues: city maintenance, land use, housing, labor disputes, and sports facilities.

Their meetings are open and permit dialogue between people and delegates. People are not limited to “comments,” as in Berkeley. The delegates live in the neighborhoods and environments about which they pass measures.

Please join us on January 27, West Berkeley Library, to learn about neighborhood assemblies, Cuba’s Municipal Assemblies, and the possibility for “direct democracy.”

Steve Martinot has been a union and community organizer, lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs at SFSU, and written extensively on the structure of racism and white supremacy in the US, as well as on corporate economics and culture.