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Title: Introduction to Neighborhood Assemblies Author: Usufruct Collective Date: March 2017 Language: en Topics: anarcho-communism, communalism, organization Source: https://usufructcollective.wordpress.com/2020/08/19/introduction-to-neighborhood-assemblies/
Neighborhood Assemblies are ways for people to get together to talk
about political and economic issues and solve common problems and meet
common needs without being ruled over by representative politicians,
bosses, and other kinds of power over people. They can do everything
from pooling skills, tools, resources, needs, and ideas together, to
direct action, to mutual aid, to popular education, to infrastructure
building. Neighborhood assemblies build people power at the expense of
hierarchical power.
People delegate a facilitator who is rotated and recallable, make an
agenda of what to talk about, and people talk about things relevant to
how the community is organized. People bring up relevant action items,
projects to start, etc and then make collective decisions that are
implemented by those who agree to do so. Committees can get formed and
committees that get formed report back to the general assembly.
At decision making meetings, people deliberate and bring up proposals,
amendments, objections, critiques, alternatives, and make decisions
together that affect the entire group. It is directly democratic and
aimed towards inclusivity and organizing on an equal footing (making
sure that the content of decisions maintains egalitarianism). Various
committees are formed that carry out decisions, but policy itself
remains in the hands of people directly. All committees and delegates
are mandated from below and recallable and make policy with people not
over people. The decisions should be rooted in non-hierarchical practice
and towards non-hierarchical ends.
Neighborhood assemblies organize from the bottom upwards, from the
neighborhood, to city level, to intercity level. Directly democratic
community assemblies can organize together to manage the commons at
various scales to create more resilience throughout communities. At such
meetings of multiple communities, delegates are sent to discuss things,
and bring back information to the people directly who make the
decisions. Further, bylaws should be created that keep the basic form of
horizontality, direct democracy, and participation for all. When such
structures are formal and open, people can be held accountable to them
(and such structures can be accountable to people).
These assemblies can do everything from building community gardens, to
childcare collectives, to neighborhood self defense, to forming direct
action collectives, to police abolition collectives, to creating tool
libraries, to forming community co-operatives, to making sure that
everyone has enough food, to fighting high rents/wage
theft/exploitation, to providing alternative education, as well as
working on various local and regional issues by linking up with other
assemblies and collectives.
A good “points of unity” for shared practice is important to make it so
that assemblies can be truly free. There are many variations of good
points of unity but one example is:
equal footing to make decisions with rules without rulers. Hierarchical
decision making destroys communal self management, is psychologically
harmful to society, as well as constantly in need of decisions that
maximize the power of ruling classes over the public (in part through
maximizing their ability to use violence through hierarchical security
forces).
directly democratically and in a self managed way by communities and
people directly. Political freedom without economic freedom would still
lead to an un-free society.
public property should be made by the public directly instead of by
bureaucrats, representative politicians, and economic elites who buy the
city.
decommodification of the economy
replacement of fossil fuels with alternative energy.
transphobia, to ableism etc.
about our backyard we want freedom throughout the globe.
Isn’t workplace organizing sufficient?
Affinity groups, small clusters of people that organize based on shared
ideals and practices, are necessary but not sufficient. For one, they
are privatized and cliquish and do not reach out and are not designed to
do so. Various anti authoritarians, since the First International and
beyond, advocated for a public face to organizing to build people power.
Building infrastructure that is managed without hierarchy requires going
beyond affinity groups and into dialogue with neighbors and workers, to
build affinity throughout one’s community and beyond.
Workplace organizing is important, and is not done enough. However,
there are people who are neither worker nor employer (such as the
unemployed, the unemployable, reproductive laborers, students, some
artisans, professionals, people discriminated against in the economy
etc.). Community assemblies bring everyone within a community together
on an equal footing, and build organizations that are community based
and not just workplaece based. The management of the city (politics) is
different than just the production and distribution of goods and
services.
Neighborhood organizing, workplace organizing, and affinity groups,
aimed towards similar goals of a good society, can work in tandem to
achieve shared goals.