What is it ? | FAQ | Who is involved ? français . english . español

Asia Europe Oceania Southern Cone Mediterranean Sahel Saharan Mali

Topics

 Relation between assemblies and facilitators’ dialogue

» Assemblies’ methods and challenges

 Assemblies’ history and social construction

Preliminary words from Gustavo Marin at the Citizens’ Assembly coordinators’ meeting in Paris on May 11-12, 2010.

Two years ago, in June 2008, at the very same room of the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation, we said to ourselves: «Let’s get this idea of citizens’ assemblies going in different  regions of the world» (see meeting report). In the meantime, if we look at how the world has evolved since 2008, the least we can say is that the world has changed rapidly and profoundly. We could already see the crisis – and the crises – coming. However, the economic and financial crisis actually broke out in September, 2008. In countries such as India, or even other southern countries in which social shock absorbers are more consistent, this crisis was not felt as strongly as in the so-called advanced countries: Europe, the USA, Japan, which are suffering from an economic and financial crisis like never before in the history of capitalism. Some claim this crisis is as strong as the one from the 1930s and 1940s. It has hit everyone, especially the poorest sectors. It is estimated that 100 million new poor people have appeared in the most vulnerable countries of the planet.

At that time, as we talked about the current situation and the citizens’ assemblies fundamentals, we were already in a crisis. Even before that, prior to September 2008, we were already in a crisis. Some historians and geo-politicians think of this as one element of a wider, underlying crisis. Actually, deep changes are taking place in men-women relationships, in humans-biosphere relations, and - above all - in the relations between the very societies. Some say that this complex crisis interweaving is, deep down, symptomatic of a civilization crisis, and that this does not have to do exclusively with a capitalism crisis. It is clear that we are not in the face of purely economic or political changes. Ethical changes, alterations in the relationships between human beings and systemic changes are key issues in today’s debate.

Some speak of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as a point of historical bifurcation. Others evoke the end of the Apartheid with Mandela’s presidential election in South Africa in 1994. For Americans, it is the attacks in New York in 2001 that left their mark on society. For the Chileans, the date that changed our lives and, in a way, the lives of a whole population, was September 11, 1973. Further back, Antonio Gramsci, prisoner in the Italian Fascist regime in between wars, wrote in his notebooks: "The old world is dying. The new is taking too long to come out, and it is in that chiaroscuro that monsters emerge." We could pick up on the very same idea today. We are going through a zone of turbulence and rapid change, within a long period of transitions and deep mutations, which will last several decades.

Are we, then, aboard the Titanic? If so, the issue posed is knowing whether we have already hit the iceberg or we are inexorably approaching it. Regardless of the image, what is key here is seeing that citizens assemblies have a wider ambition. In these long transition processes we find ourselves, we must invent a new economy, a new political system and a new way to co-inhabit all at the same time. This horizon coincides that of the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation, whose main objective is to imagine, search for and contribute to generate the building conditions for a global community. Within this perspective of a building architecture, citizens ascertain that today’s foundations will give in. The architecture built three centuries ago is, at the very least, unable to adapt to the challenges of today’s world. The tripod formed by Nation-State, the relations between States and the United Nations is impotent. It is quite shocking to see that the UN Secretary is absent in the face of the current economic and financial crisis. Both the States and the parties’ political systems are impotent, but they are still impressive and important. Those States have tried to re-organize, moving from G7 to G8, and then from G8 to G20, but not even the G20 has managed to face the changes. Therefore, we can clearly see that we must redesign the architecture of power and governance on the national, regional and global scale.

We have lived, for about twenty years, in this transition period. Certain analysts mention the 1999 Seattle demonstrations. Others, the Zapatist call in 1994, or even the world social forums launched in 2001, the birth of networks, organizations, citizens’ alliances trying to take back the power over the challenges and their collective destiny. However, even when the initiatives and the social movements are still powerful, still they are dispersed and scattered, creating events which are specific and strong, but not continuous or consistent enough. It was precisely this context which allowed for the idea of a citizen assembly.

Its birth goes back to the years 1992 and 1993, when the platform for a supportive and responsible world was launched from the preliminary meetings in Santiago de Chile, Montreal, Athens, Ouagadougou, Shekou – a Chinese city growing rapidly and located across Hong-Kong, where Deng Xiaoping put forward the slogan: «Chinese, some must get rich first... No matter whether it is a white cat or a black cat, as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat». Then in 1995, during the Social Summit in Copenhagen, we organized meetings in Peking, Rio, Paris and Cape Town, South Africa. It was here that a world Alliance against social apartheid was born. In 1997, seven continental meetings were organized: in Bangalore, Algiers, Barcelona, Kigali, Beirut and, to top it all, a great meeting in Sao Pablo, Brazil, in December 1997. Two of the organizers of the World Social Forum, Candido Grysbowski and Chico Whitaker, organized workshops as well. Finally, later, in June 2001, we put together four continental meetings in Rumania, Lebanon, Bangalore and Quito, prior to the world citizens’ assembly at Lille in December, 2001. The organization of regional citizens’ assemblies was proposed at this assembly’s closure. This call went together with that to create citizens’ alliances, socio-professional networks, and society-to-society dialog processes as well as the international promotion of a charter for human responsibilities.

It was only a few years later that we could pick up this call to organize citizens’ assemblies again. The assemblies were born as a result of the process that is taking place in various regions of the world. They are non-ephemeral, consistent and solid meetings of citizens, rooted in territories which are beyond country borders, built around essential regional themes and with a mainly multi-professional approach, that is to say, with a great diversity of actors (peasants, military men, researchers, businesses, trade unions, women, young people, NGOs, etc.). They constitute attempts to root the construction of a new global governance architecture on new foundations, allowing for citizens, networks and concepts for a new global governance to meet. We can undoubtedly discuss the name it has been given: citizens’ assembly, popular assembly or social grouping… Little does this matter. Yet something is certain: we must invent and create - as from now - new, solid, consistent spaces where citizens can find their strength.

This idea of citizens’ assemblies has been set for two years now. It is not exclusive at all, though. Whoever wants to mobilize people based on the same model is taking the wrong way. Even the organizers of the World Social Forum admit that the social forum is nothing but one of the ways that the new social dynamics is expressed. There is and there will be a social dynamics diversity according to variable geometries and rhythms. It is important that these be produced. Then: how far are we going to go with the citizens’ assemblies? Precisely, it is essential to continue making the way... knowing that the future will different from how we imagine it today. The future is unpredictable, but our adventure makes sense. At this time when we have to live and survive, we have no certainty as to when the current world power structure will come to an end, and what happens afterwards will most likely be different from how we imagine it today. However, those of us who continue to pave the way in search of a humanist globalization, take on the responsibility to build – from now on – another world: a fairer, more responsible, plural and united world.

 

 

Top