Request:

The time has come for neighborhoods to begin to develop their own autonomous modes of making decisions about the future of their community.

If we wait for City Council to do it, we will end up with more market rate housing, and more people displaced by arbitrary and often illegal rent increases.

Come to our meeting on Jan 27, at the West Berkeley Library, 2 pm, to learn about how neighborhood assemblies can produce neighborhood democratic power.

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)
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