An opportunity for Civil Conversation

[Avner Haramati]

An open space party sounds promising Alex.
Actually I am invited to a kick off of a new political party in Israel next
month, in open space. I am keeping your message and others when they come
for implementation.

Avner Haramati
Jerusalem

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexander Kjerulf" <alexander at KJERULF.COM>
To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 12:04 AM
Subject: Re: An opportunity for Civil Conversation


> 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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