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 the Citizens' Assembly in the Southern Cone
Announcement 2010 for the first Regional Citizens Assembly in the South Cone
”In times of crisis imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein
We are getting together, and we would like to invite all citizens of the Southern Cone to our First “Regional Citizens’ Assembly of the Southern Cone, at Iquique, Chile, in 2010”
The Assembly
A new year has begun, once again with a war and in the midst of widespread crises (financial, environmental, political and ethical), and we - the citizens of Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile – persistently follow our resistant, responsible and united way... more passionately and more lovingly than ever, just how we dreamed it, talked about it and built it, along two years of group and multinational meetings, work and reflections through which we have left the mark of our process in our alternative means of communication. We have also joined the other processes of Citizens’ Assemblies which will take place in 2010 as well, in Sahel-Sahara, in the Mediterranean, in India (for the Asian group) and in Samoa (for the peoples from Oceania). We are getting together, and we would like to invite all citizens of the Southern Cone to our first “Regional Citizens’ Assembly of the Southern Cone, at Iquique, Chile, in November 2010”
Three hundred men and women will get together at the very Escuela Santa María where two hundred years ago saltpeter workers from the Southern Cone and their families were massacred, destroying lives, dreams and efforts. We will take part in workshops, discuss and reflect; we will visit the saltpeter refineries; and we will go into the sea together - Bolivians, Peruvians, Chileans and Argentinians, and whoever may be with us -, in our joyful struggle for justice and freedom which we will never give up. Iquique 2010 is just the beginning. We will draft there a Citizens’ Charter of Principles. Through growth and consolidation, and many people’s conscientious and patient work , the Assembly will be the birth of an itinerary, of an agenda.
The process
We are part of a people whose way of thinking and living democracy and culture are in fact changing. We are embryos in the building of a new citizenship – first, a South American, then a Latin American, and finally a universal one - based on a growing multi-identity, since current frontiers are neither useful nor do they represent us. We carry new realities and demands, and defeat obstacles and misunderstandings, in order to integrate our peoples, good government and happiness within Nature and the Cosmos’ sacred harmony. We are a conscious part of the great debate which searches for the change taking place in the world and which, in our region, needs to find a solution for the hundred-year-old contradiction consisting of the State’s attempt to build a nation (from foreign and rather inadequate paradigms) and the opposite attempt to have the actual Nations generate a State for everyone, which is adequate for their own reality. This search and construction spreads, comes and goes from local to regional to global, drawing a new geometry of ethics, ideas and power.
The commitment
We have become responsible because responsibility has become a must: urgent, crucial and vital for subsistence, dignity and happiness. We have become supportive, alert and conscious of the construction of a common value, in harmony and while complementing our differences. In order to achieve our goals, to set priorities and strategies in common, and to be fair, honorable and happy. Therefore, this invitation to our Assembly in Iquique 2010 is an invitation to integrate NOW into the process leading towards it.
It is an invitation to become a protagonist in our activities during 2009, and to actively work to define, schedule and organize them.
- It is an invitation to the “Environment and Popular Movements Meeting” in en Santiago de Chile on January 10,
- to the “Meeting towards military integration” in Santiago de Chile April 3 and 4, to the “Meeting on Lautaro Lodges and the independences in South America” in Santiago de Chile in May,
- to the “Integration, Religiosity and Spirituality Meeting” in Bolivia in May,
- to the “Meeting of indigenous peoples on Human Responsibilities” in Bolivia,
- to the “Youth Meeting” in Córdoba, to the “Women’s Meeting” in Santiago de Chile,
- to the “Local power and Governance Meeting”.
- It is also an invitation to be part of the plans of the “Indigenous and South American Integration Courses”, beginning with a meeting of five universities currently associated to these courses: San Marcos de Lima, Peru; San Simón de Cochabamba, Bolivia; Villa María de Córdoba, Argentina; and Arcis and Los Lagos, Chile.
- It is an invitation to the “Traveling Schools” and to the creation of “Cultural brokers” of human responsibilities
- as well as to the agenda for a New Governance, to our publications (Pensamiento Propio magazine, Coursebooks, etc.), and to our alternative means of communication.
General Coordination of the Citizens’ Assembly of the Southern Cone
www.asamblea-conosur.net
www.asamblearegionalciudadana.blogspot.com
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