The Localist Manifesto
section 7
working groups, direct democracy, and free enterprise
A localist revolution will require an institutional structure consistent with its preferred means and ends. After the election when Robin 99’s vote totals rise to the point that we begin to think practically about taking possession of our homes, we will need to take steps to implement a workable system of direct democratic governance. Fortunately, there are working models aplenty, from the town meetings of New England and tribal councils of native peoples to the General Assembly convened by the Wall Street occupiers. Supporters of the Robin 99 movement can just create a local assembly for every neighborhood and then use those entities to govern the territory bounded by the borders of that neighborhood. Local activists will secure a place to meet and encourage other neighborhood residents to participate. The first order of business will be the border issue – determining where one neighborhood ends and the next one begins. A working group can be formed to get out the maps, solicit opinions in the streets and the fields, examine arguments already in the public domain about the optimal size for a group that intends to govern itself democratically, and then report back with some options. These options will be quite different for urban, suburban, and rural areas. All of them can be discussed at General Assembly and, once a consensus is reached, the work of carving out the units of local self-governance can begin.
The local assemblies will build on the work of the campaign festivals, giving the ideas and relationships forged there a more secure footing in the neighborhoods. The residents who attend and participate will take on the job of furthering, mutually and equitably, the prosperity of small enterprise and the vitality of local culture. Our success here will determine in large measure our readiness for Occupy the Hearth Day and its aftermath. If the right to shelter is to be a lasting achievement, we must make headway in securing other basic necessities locally and by our own efforts. The relationships formed during the festivals between small farmers and other residents will be precious in this regard. The more local food that can be made available at a low price, the more effectively we will be able to defend and sustain our neighborhoods. For that to happen, more land – our own properties, however much public and absentee-owned acreage we are strong enough to occupy and defend – must be converted to agricultural use. We will also need firm, active ties of common interest and mutual aid between town/city dwellers and existing non-corporate farmers. The impulse to reconnect somehow with the land is being felt with increasing intensity by people from many walks of life for all kinds of reasons. Robin 99 wants to give that impulse free rein. The reinvigoration of farming on a scale where massive inputs of chemical pesticides and fertilizers are not necessary – and at a pace where the countryside might become a seedbed of cultural renewal – is central to the new way of life we hope to bring into being. The agricultural is political.
Whatever tasks cannot be handled by the local assembly can be delegated to working groups. As problems arise and demand attention, interested citizens can assemble and figure out how they want to tackle them. These groups, as Occupy Wall Street demonstrated, are the workhorses of direct democracy. Some will undertake local projects, some will cooperate with other neighborhood groups on projects that cannot be realized locally. All will be ad hoc and accountable to the assemblies. Each will have to get good at balancing the need for knowledge and enthusiasm – for reliable technical information and ongoing grassroots participation. Particularly ambitious working groups could develop into hands-on training grounds for geologists, botanists, engineers, or architects, creating thereby a readily accessible alternative to what is now only available, at an exorbitant price, in the universities. Poets and philosophers currently serving as decoration in universities run by corporate shills and numbers crunchers might find in these same environs the encouragement to pursue loftier purposes and livelier audiences. In such a setting the pursuit of knowledge could be pried loose from the pursuit of profit and connected to the needs – practical and existential – of a people engaged in the work of resettlement.
Working groups provide a means of freeing ourselves from the blind imperatives of the profit motive without abandoning the principles of free enterprise. They give us a chance to see what we are doing, trace the likely consequences of our various transactions down the road, and make informed decisions based on a wide range of considerations – monetary, ecological, political, cultural. The resignation we exhibit now in the face of ever-worsening environmental conditions and ever-growing inequalities arises from the necessity, built into any system of absentee landholding or globe-spanning capitalism, to subordinate every decision to the iron logic of profitability. Increasingly, what makes sense by that logic makes no other kind of sense at all, yet we are bound to it by the lack of a ready alternative. Working groups, when considered in light of their potential as instruments of local self-determination, provide such an alternative. They are a kind of subsidy, but one that is gathered and administered locally rather than bestowed (and just as readily withdrawn or corrupted) by a central government. Whether by raising funds or lining up voluntary expertise and effort, they allow us to tap the overall resources of the community to underwrite small businesses and small farms while keeping decision-making in local hands. People in all ranks of the 99% routinely donate money to distant charities and causes or spend it on luxuries – a bit of technological wizardry, a lavish vacation – that they hope will bring them some measure of personal satisfaction. Surely these individuals could see the wisdom of using some of that money to fund undertakings designed to bring enrichment of a more trustworthy and lasting sort to their own community, particularly since these projects would take shape right in front of them and, if they wish, with their direct participation.
To speak of steadfastness and durability is to affirm that a localist revolution can only proceed in a climate of responsibility. We propose to make far-reaching changes – no half measures implemented in fits and starts will fix the problems we now face. But we also intend to take responsibility for everything that follows in the wake of those changes. The death of real estate will be disruptive, but the abolition of rent and mortgages that comes with it liberates resources for overcoming that disruption. A well-functioning system of small market agriculture, a free (or nearly so) primary health care clinic, local restaurants and repair shops and taverns committed to neighborhood solidarity and thus ready to lend a hand to anyone who needs one, working groups poised to address lingering problems and a local assembly ready to mediate disputes – if these are more or less in place on Occupy the Hearth Day, then any hardship that ensues can be equitably managed and quickly ended. Friends, loved ones, and locally-embedded entrepreneurs working together in self-governing, self-reliant neighborhoods – that is the politics of occupation after the idea of occupation quits the realm of symbolic protest and finds its calling as a strategy for re-inhabiting the land. That is how we get along after we free ourselves to do what comes naturally to nearly every living being most of the time.
Occupy the Hearth 