Democracy/Meeting/07 01 2017

Pad

http://piratepad.be/p/DemocracySquad_Meeting_07-01-2017

Summary

See pad below for more details. And feel free to edit this summary!

Who, When, Where, What

• Who: 15 people, from various crews, both old timers and new comers ; see pad for names
• When: Saturday January 7th, 2 pm
• Where: Cafe Expression, Mechelen
• What: "The first elections in 2018 are on the communal/city level. Let us provide the tools for everyone to open the path to more direct democracy!"
• Chair: Josse

Discussed as a whole group

• Round table : who is here and why?

• Reaction on Thomas Goorden citizen list and the article about it:

Thomas, an ex-pirate, is setting a citizen list in Antwerp and he mentioned pirates would not be accepted in it. Should we react and how? Discussion... We should rather not enter political games. Instead we have to make clear what we will stand for for the local elections. Need to write an article about this on our website.

• Proposal of Rupert: democracy as the main and only point of the pirate party programme?

Rupert asked what we think about making democracy the only theme of our programme. Because it is essential today and we should not leave it to populists, as it is now going on. People in the room agreed that democracy is a central theme but there was no consensus on skipping the other themes, at least not for the other elections. Some expressed that the other themes (UBI, copyright reform, transparency, ...) are also essential, and that anyway democracy requires a deep reform of society that includes these other themes.

• Proposal of workshop topics for today
  • our communication outside about elections and democracy, and how we go to them
  • tools: documentation on the wiki, we need to assemble resources together on the wikipad of the squad, like about flatpack democracy (Josse)
  • what we do we do on the non-local level? issue of loosing the pirate branding during local elections
  • what about our own internal democracy? ("walk the talk")
  • how do we implement a more direct democracy at local level (after the elections, what will the "citizen list" do?).
  • virtual Identity - liquid democracy (with proxy voting) but taking into account our vritual identity on the internet as an alias (? not sure I got it)

Workshops

Direct democracy: how can we implement it after the elections?

Participants here shared their thoughts so far for their city. Keep in touch regularly via real-life meetings (labs?) and a page on loomio. We need to share our thoughts and resources.

• Common view that debate - with nuances - is a key and that we need to set it forward locally, to build up communities again. Need both "soft/social" and "action-targeted" meetings to get a dialogue between citizens. Need to push for giving people venues (in schools for instance ?) where they can meet. Strong importance of being inclusive. For this, the topic with which we come to the people is essential, and it is also essential that they know their opinion will matter.
• Experts: how to select them, how to keep their role transparent?
• Need to split decision making according to both topics and levels.
• Need to develop skills to keep constructive debating (Albert Einstein Institution and beautiful trouble ?). Build up on present experience in our cities (Gent city has already a good experience with their "advies" workshops involving citizens from various backgrounds).