An opportunity for Civil Conversation

[Alexander Kjerulf]

At 11:16 11-12-2003 -0500, Harrison Owen wrote:

>
>> Folks Up for a little radical Democracy???
>
Oh, yeah! I've been toying for a while with the idea of "the open space
political party". The idea alone sounds kinda interesting, huh?

The way I see it, the organization of the party would be as grass-roots,
bottom-up and ad-hoc as possible. And this would apply not only to the
campaign phase but also for all relevant governing and policy-setting
issues, once we're in power :o)

This party would not have a catalogue of fixed opinions set by the top
brass, saying we're for this, against that and for the other. Instead
the party would have regularly scheduled open space meetings, and
whenever the need arose to form an opinion on a topic (and this happens
faster than any traditional political structure can handle these days),
the party would put that topic on the agenda to clarify the members'
thinking on that issue. These gatherings should probably be
geographically local, so it's easy for people to participate, and should
include a method of consolidating the regional dialogues (any good ideas
how to do this?). Based on this, the party can in a reasonably short
time examine any issue that may crop up.

This would mean that any issue would be examined in all it's complexity.
That all arguments for and against would be talked about by a large
group of spirited people before a concensus is found. This is in sharp
contrast to todays political process, where a party's opinions are set
by the top leaders, often informed more by polls than by dialogue.

This would also mean, that membership of such a party would not be based
on how many of the party's opinions you agree with, since many of these
may not be formulated yet. Instead, when you join as a member, you sign
up for two things:
1: A set of values that unifies the members of this party
2: The process. Grass-roots, bottom-up and ad-hoc

And finally, a party such as this would be a hotbed of creativity,
energy, disagreement, chaos, responsibility and fun. Just imagine how
many novel and interesting solutions a group of people working to
improve their nation could come up with in such a setting.

I've looked at the political structure here in Denmark, and I'm
convinced that this development probably will never come from  any of
the established parties (and we have enough to choose from in Denmark
som 12-14 at the last count). The only way to bring this about is to
create a new party.

I have a deep conviction that it could work, and that this could be one
way for us to take back some of the responsibility that we've left to
the current political system.

How does that sound?

Cheers

Alex

--
Alexander Kjerulf
www.kjerulf.com
alexander at kjerulf.com
Tagensvej 126, lejl. 613
2200 København N.
+45 2688 2373

Trænger du til noget arbejdsglæde? Kender du nogen som gør?
www.projektarbejdsglaede.dk

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