We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Solidify Occupy: A Suggestion for What’s Next

Click here to access article by Charles Imboden from Better Worlds, Brighter Futures. 

After a review of the brief, but exciting history of the Occupy movement, the author offers some suggestions for developing its future. 
...a two-fold strategy is suggested: on the one hand, defense of the commons through the defense and extension of the general assembly, as well as an extremely local, grassroots, horizontal, directly democratic alternative political movement known as libertarian municipalism; on the other, expansion of the commons through the transformation of neighborhood spaces and creation of elements of the egalitarian and ecological community known as prefiguration.