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Tuesday, December 3, 2013

[IntDPD Debate] "A political party of the area of "direct and participatory" democracy is a left/progressive or a right/conservative party?" (Answer 1/10) Joám Evans Pim (Partido da Terra) http://www.partidodaterra.net (Galiza)


"(...) Advocacy for direct democracy is neither left/progressive or a right/conservative. Those empowered through direct democracy to make decisions will adopt positions that they consider appropriate regarding the problem that is being discussed.
(...)
Or abolishing the State as an anti-democratic institution (i.e., libertarian municipalism)"
(...)"I think it is important to discourage any paternalistic approach of teaching the masses. I'm not sure what is the case of Romania, but most rural societies (at least in Europe) keep traces of their past assembly (direct democracy) form of community government. In our case in Galiza (which is also applicable to most of Northern Iberia and Portugal), our work is directed mainly at helping people connect the old form of community assembly government with politics, i.e.: we are all "politicians" (not just those elected), there should be no such thing as "professional politicians", and no issue is beyond the capabilities of discussion, deliberation and decision by a sovereign community assembly.

This is very much in line, as Evan pointed out, with the community councils and Good Governance Regional Juntas of the Zapatistas or the ideas of Libertarian Municipalism, even though we are not emulating any model here in Galiza but creating our own from our past experience and current communal ways of organization. If you can read Portuguese or use an online translator, here is an example of an attempt to introduce assembly direct democracy at the municipal level using the breaches of current State law: http://concelho.titanpad.com/1 Even though we do try to run in all elections to make use of the free media space to send the message out (and discredit professional politics and representative parliamentarism by all means), we feel there are only options (in our case) of making political change at this moment at the municipal level."

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