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Democracy is born in the squares

Democracy is born in the squares

by Christos Gionanopoulos

There may be no better proof of the rupture that is brought about by the “movement of the squares” other than its open, participatory, directly democratic way of organising and functioning. Within a single week it has given birth to a political culture of a different type, one that literally overcomes all known models of organising and struggle to date.

Even if the issue of its procedures is incomplete, it comes up again and again and comprises the most important legacy already left to the political and social life of the country. This does not mean there are no issues with disorganisation, inefficiency, delays. Taking into account however the explosive rhythm of its development, the lack of previous experience on the side of those who created it, along with the need to compile, step by step, heterogeneous and different opinions of all participants through open procedures, all this is to be expected. Even if time-consuming, its procedures are flexible and are altered by the day; they are self-criticised, adjusted according to mistakes, comments and suggestions deriving from them being tested in practice.
The open, egalitarian and participatory character of the procedures and ways of organising derives from the will to find such procedures that can unite all who are affected by the crisis and dissatisfied with the current political system. The pacifist and non-party character of the original call-out was the condition that shaped a common public sphere where everyone would meet without any badges to co-decide by discussing at the same level.

The refusal to assign or elect representatives does not only cause unease to the forces of the state who do not know how to deal with this, as it overturns their tactic of manoeuvring, of libelling and destroying popular expressions of rage. More than that, this “facelessness” as Pretenderis would have it [a well-know reactionary TV journalist — trans], is the best way for the movement to safeguard transparency in its organising, as well as the will for whatever is created to express everyone — not just its most so-called “vanguard” or “politicised” part.

And so, the matter of procedures is not simply a matter of organising but a key issue regarding its political essence. An issue of safeguarding the conditions of unity, involvement, free participation to the right of speech and in the decision making process of the people’s assemblies; working groups, thematic assemblies and their immediate review and control. This understanding that rejects any kind of representation or mediation, is safeguarded by the constant circulation of revocable positions and runs through all structures and functions born by this movement.

In this spirit, the stance of the movement toward Mass Media is also differentiated, with the refusal to engage with them, not even by way of issuing press releases. With the screening of what part of its procedures and organising is photographed or taped, and most importantly, with the creation of the movement’s own channels of communication — with its main website www.real-democracy.gr, being the only medium-voice of its decisions.

The people’s assembly

The daily people’s assembly of Syntagma square (at 9 pm), like the corresponding ones in other cities, is the only one that holds the right to decision-making. The topics in each popular assembly are defined according to discussion, the demands and the proposals submitted in previous assemblies.

These are recorded in minutes that are published on-line. Suggestions are also collected, both on-line and physically in person and these are all grouped together in the corresponding topical groups and return in the form of specific proposals to the popular assembly for its consultation and approval.

The final resolutions are shaped during the assembly according to the comments of the speakers and are put up for approval, always before midnight, in order not to exclude those who work and those who have to use public transportation to return to their neighbourhoods.

Everyone has a right to speak and in the beginning of each assembly, after reading out and approving its topics, tickets are distributed to everyone who wishes to do so; speakers are selected by draw during the assembly. Usually speakers range between 80 and 100 in their number, while more than 2000 people take part in the assembly on a daily basis. Despite this element of chance, experience so far has proven this to be the best way to avoid any phenomena of imposition of specific agendas or the influencing of the assembly’s decisions by organised interventions.

After midnight, which is the moment until when the assembly must make its decisions, the assembly continues as an open speaking forum.

The working groups

At the moment, there are more than 15 working groups and 12 thematic ones. The working groups comprise the cornerstone of life at the square and their contribution so far has been priceless. Not only because they offer practical solutions and because so far they have responded, despite many problems and delays, to the ever-increasing needs for the shaping, the functionality and the procedures at the square, but most importantly because these groups themselves comprise the spirit of contribution of the people, their will to take life into their own hands and the capacities of their self-organising, without experts and capital, based on their own capacities. Thousands have joined up the group lists and this availability is the driving force of the movement even though it has not been utilised in the most effective of ways so far, partly due to the movement’s swift growing.

It is indicative that despite the substantial financial needs and despite peoples’ offer to contribute financially in response, the idea of setting up a fund has been rejected. Not only because of the looming dangers in the management of the money but also in order to prove that there are other ways to get things done. And so, the practice is to propose instead for contributions in anything ranging from writing materials to food, PA equipment or film projectors. And the contribution of the people has exceeded all expectations.

Until now, functioning groups include those of technical support, material supply, artists, cleaning, administrative support, canteen-nutrition, translation, respect (patrol), communication/multimedia, legal support, neighbourhood outreach, health, time bank and service exchange, composure and messengers. Each groups has been divided into subgroups according to each specialist work section. The groups meet in open assemblies every day at 6 pm and the messenger group makes sure that their needs and suggestions are known to all groups in order to safeguard the smooth cooperation and solving of any problems that may arise.

The thematic assemblies

The functioning of the thematic assemblies was born from the need and demand of the people, as expressed through the open channels of the assembly and the websites (real-democracy, facebook etc.) to have processes that will shape positions on the burning issues, on all those reasons that brought people to the streets and to the squares. They also serve the need for the shaping of appropriate conditions for a more extensive discussion of particular issues before their approval—something that the central popular assembly cannot, as a procedure, cater for. And so thematic groups have been formed for the crisis, for employment and the unemployed, education and students, health and insurance, environment, technology, solidarity, people with special needs, justice and legal issues, consultation of the debt. These assemblies meet daily between 7 and 9 pm and hundreds of people participate in some. Making their functioning substantial will largely aid and feed the discussion and topics covered in the main popular assembly, along with the attempt to articulate some concrete discourse for the overturning of the current system and the country’s escape from the crisis according to the will of the people.

#A28 - Texans Unite Against the War on Women / #OccupyAustin #OccupyUT

All across the country, through legislative proposals, government regulations, and political rhetoric, war is being waged upon women, their bodies, their private interests, and their right to self-determination. This is occurring without, and in spite of, the participation of the same women being affected by these actions, and whose futures, and those of their families, are being unilaterally determined.

In this modern era of limits, people in power are in a race to divide the spoils of power, and the means being used are becoming more and more shortsighted. Saturn has devoured his son, and now looks to his daughters.

Our organization is determined to see that this race to the bottom does not claim the rights and liberties of over one half of the populace. We will not suffer the burdens of those whose ambitions would be fulfilled by the destruction of the human worth of the mothers, sisters and daughters of this great nation.

Enough is enough.

While the logic of the disaffection of the majority of the electorate is impossible to understand, we cannot afford to wait and see how this all works out. This war on women must be resisted, and won, before the toxic effects of the current national conversation become irrevocable reality. We have been denied a seat at the table, but will not be denied our humanity.

Please join us in changing the dialogue and refocusing attention toward the very serious issues this nation faces, and away from the disingenuous and perversely pornographic focus upon the sexual organs of our mothers, sisters and daughters, and their relationship with their physicians and their own bodies.

The issues include:

Reproductive rights
Woman’s health issues
Crimes against women and children
Workplace equality

There is a very real and growing non-partisan concern that women are being sacrificed upon the altar of ambition, and we are determined to deny Saturn his second course.

Thank for your help and support. Your mother, and your mother’s mother, and all women everywhere would be proud.

Why does Barter feel so Good?

austinroyal:

Part 1 : Why does Barter feel so Good?

By Hannah Davenport and Mason Dixon, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Why does Barter feel so good? In the moment of exchange, Barter feels refreshing in a way that nothing on Main Street ever does. The experience of bartered exchange provides something currency-based exchange does not, and cannot. And yet, Barter could not replace Money on a large scale. Barter can, at best, be a temporary supplement for Money, a perversion of our more civilized system.

The exchange of goods and services pervades our experience of the world, and Money currently mediates that process. Currency sets the stage of exchange, impersonally and invisibly. When we give someone currency for a product or service, our thoughts collect solely on the thing we receive and the value it has. Barter, however, causes us to also think about the thing given, and its value to the other person involved in the exchange. The mechanics of Barter place value on a localized scale, the scale of individuals, rather than the “value by mass consensus” that Money supposes. (Even if Barter were expanded to a larger system, it would fall prey to the same shortfalls that Money now has, and more. It would not feel good.)

Money is not sinister, far from it. Currency reduced haggling. It made the exchange process simpler, faster, transitive, by creating an agreed-upon independent measurement, by translating value into a common metric. Money scaled exchange value to the global scale by symbolizing a statistical distribution of value among all exchanges, a composite of all the price-setters and manipulators, yet the assessment of value is not static.

Within the experience of an individual exchange, buyers and sellers operate under the assumption that when they give $3 to the Butcher, that it is still worth $3 when the Butcher gives it to the Rancher. But, this sense of consistent value, and thus the sense of equal purchasing power, are continuously undermined by the economic system itself, by capitalism. The profit motive requires that sellers collude and buyers influence.

Money represents itself as an accurate measure, as stable as the milimeter or pi, and yet is not. The currency in your pocket has no more intrinsic value than a wave would have form, separated from the kinetic energy of the ocean. Investment, dividends, derivatives, accumulation, interest, inflation, arbitrage, supply and demand, are all statistically distributed across the economic system, altering even how the same product is valued by the same vendor week to week. Clearance sales and discount malls, are not the indicators of value correcting themselves, but rather indicators of their fluctuations.

Money gives the impression that its position is steady, its relation to value unchanging, and Barter does not. Barter never claimed consistency or equality. Barter in some way is more honest with its participants by making the exchange independent and temporary. Barter assumes space within the value-exchange proposition for things outside of the currency, such as brutality or social class.

And why should Money’s relativity be so troubling? Desire production leads contemporary capitalism; consumerism drives our identities towards exchange. Money in American culture is more than the language of exchange, it is part and parcel with the language of identity, with who we are as individuals. The distribution of wealth described by Money became the distribution of value we have as individuals. It’s description of us defines who we can make ourselves into. While Social Mobility has increased over the last 100 years, it has come at a cost, the cost of embedding desire into every aspect of our lives (the exchanges) from scrubbing bubbles to baseball. Money’s lie, that it describes a consistent value, lets us forget that it mediates our exchanges. It lets us forget that other forces are at work. The pervasiveness of exchange then enables Money to tax our identities.

if you have a Family, here are the things you buy…
if you are German-American here are the things you buy…
if you like to drive fast, here are the things you buy…
if you are a Foodie here are the things you buy…

Perhaps, this is why barter feels so refreshing. Barter opens a freedom for the individual within exchange, freedom to assign the world with the value we believe it should have. Even when it is inefficient, people will Barter to feel good; people will barter to feel free. Barter makes the exchange itself personally valuable, independent of the value of the things being exchanged. Barter replaces the function of money in the exchange process by negotiating and mapping the territory of exchange, not to the scale of investment or accumulation of wealth, but it is not necessary for Barter to do these things. Barter feels good in the experience of it, and that value-in-exchange is something we can inhabit, something we can identify with.

Barter resituates the power relationship of value-exchange from the currency-backer, to the micro-community of a particular exchange. For once, the individuals involved determine what is valuable. Barter mimics the relations we have with friends and family. Can helping someone move, giving a back-rub, or writing a poem translate to value between acquaintances or even strangers? Is it possible to expand this ability to share our values, skills and specialities, without needing to take it to scale of a federally-mandated currency?