meeting announcement

What can we do 
to have a real voice in political issues?

 Neighborhood assemblies:

the possibility of direct democracy

Lessons from People’s Assemblies in Jackson, MS

and Cuba’s Municipal Assemblies 

 with Steve Martinot, neighborhood activist and Berkeley Planning Commissioner

Saturday, January 27, 2:00 pm

West Berkeley Library, 1125 University Ave.

Why do important issues never seem to get resolved?

·        Affordable housing

·        An end to rent increases and rent-gouging displacement

·        Shelter if not housing for the homeless

·        Policing that serves people rather than impose social control

·        An end to industrial and infrastructure pollution

These issues become endless issues because we give them to people who are not effected by them – the elite we elect to speak for us, but are not us.

What would give us a voice in our own affairs?

·     Local assemblies in which to discuss among ourselves what to do.

·     Neighborhood assemblies in which to make our own autonomous decisions

·     Community Councils that would bring together the decisions of neighborhood assemblies

Where do we see this kind of system working? In Jackson, Mississippi, and in Cuba, in its system of Municipal Assemblies. Cuba's assemblies are legislative for neighborhoods and cities. Composed of people elected from neighborhoods, Cuba’s assemblies are composed of delegates representing 100 to 200 people. These local assemblies make policy on real issues: city maintenance, land use, housing, labor disputes, and sports facilities.

Their meetings are open and permit dialogue between people and delegates. People are not limited to "comments," as in Berkeley. The delegates live in the neighborhoods and environments about which they pass measures.

Please join us tonight to learn about neighborhood assemblies, Cuba’s Municipal Assemblies, and the possibility for “direct democracy.”

Steve Martinot has been a union and community organizer, lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs at SFSU, and written extensively on the structure of racism and white supremacy in the US, as well as on corporate economics and culture.

                                          

Sponsered by West Berkeley Neighbors                 westberkeleyneighbors.blogspot.com                     
wberkneighbors@gmail.com

(This event not sponsered by the Berkeley Public Library)

Our Organizational Vision

A Vision of  Neighborhood Democratic Autonomy

This webpage is established by a group of residents of West Berkeley as a center for organizing its neighborhoods for defense against the dissolution of our communities by impending high income development along the San Pablo Ave. corridor.

The threats we face are rising rent levels, an increase in the cost of living, the closure of stores and restaurants that we depend on in this neighborhood, and glutted traffic patterns. The ultimate effect of all this, called "gentrification," will lead to massive dislocation of neighborhood families and members.

If we do not form an autonomous political force of the community to demand participation at the planning tables in everything that the city and developers are doing, which will replace our economy with one designed for the rich, the new high income people, our communities will dissolve. 

We request visitors to this site to sign up with an email address, so that we can put people into contact with others, for the purpose of residents organizing their own associations and assemblies to be their political voice. 

Our primary principle is dialogue. We wish to replace the system of monologue that characterizes city politics (at hearings, commission meetings, council meetings, where we get to speak for a minute and sit down), with a true meeting of minds in local assemblies. We need to be the ones making policy for our neighborhoods, and inviting city officials to come and listen to us.

To defend our neighborhoods, we need to organize, organize, and organize.