My New Year’s Resolution has been to start a people’s assembly in my local area, and I’ve started this blog to document how the project fares. The idea is simple: residents are invited to gather to debate an issue that matters to them, in a way that encourages them to find common ground, like a jury building to a verdict.
The hallmarks of a people’s assembly are:
- All residents in a local area are invited. It can be vague as to whether that includes children and non-citizens, but assemblies don’t tend to be rigidly restricted.
- Attendees debate a single topic. They are encouraged to explore it in detail, usually for over an hour.
- The focus on building bridges and ultimately consensus. There does not need to be a threshold for it, but attendees are encouraged to work for consensus, and to be willing to change their minds. A proposal that attracts 81% support is better than one that attracts 51%, and the latter is no real improvement on one that attracts 49%.
Small groups discussion is crucial to a successful assembly. A group with scores of people is very easily dominated by its most boisterous personalities and distracted by the most polarising ideas. If you discuss in groups of 6-8 first, it helps allow even shy people to have a chance to voice their opinions and encourages people to come up with ideas that have a wide appeal. - The assembly should organise itself. Even if it takes some organisers to kickstart it, it should ultimately be able to run and sustain itself and decide what issues it debates, whether local or national.
- The assembly should be inclusive: And I mean that in the most literal way. Assemblies should be open to a range of people and views, and each should be able to have their day in court. Those who have shy personalities, come from a discriminated group or have unpopular opinions may notice things that no-one else does. While there is a case for offering advice on how to debate respectfully (e.g. Don’t make generalised statements about social groups), the only limit is that participants should not prevents others from being able to participate in the assembly.
And in turn, they have four aims:
- To encourage the formation of local groups for volunteering and campaigning
- To offer recommendations to local councils and organisations
- To be a beneficial experience for those involved
- To promote citizens’ assemblies to the public
Compared with citizens’ assemblies
A people’s assembly (as I use it) is much like the idea of a citizens’ assembly, famously used by Ireland to break years of political deadlock over abortion. The difference is that a citizens’ assembly means one chosen by random selection. There’s no reason why it should be that way. That is simply an accident of linguistic history that the phrase citizens’ assembly has come to imply random selection.
The phrase people’s assembly is less standardised, and alternative words for the concept are a popular assembly, community assembly, or neighbourhood assembly. In an academic context, popular assembly sounds better, with popular here meaning “of the people” rather than the more common meaning of “widely liked”. When promoting them to the wider public, I prefer to call them a people’s assembly.
Though one is randomly selected and the other isn’t, much of the guidance for running a citizens’ assembly could apply to a people’s assembly. If managed properly, both assemblies can hold constructive debates that lead to creative, popular solutions — much better than any elected one.
People’s assemblies work best at a neighbourhood level. One reason is it costs money to run a random selection process; another is the challenge of persuading people to come. Most people you invite won’t come — it’s hard enough to find people who will be free for that time slot. The experience in other towns suggests that persuading 0.5% of the adult population to come would be a very good start. So it makes little sense to further restrict who comes with a random selection process. Finally, if an assembly movement spreads more widely, it ensures that everyone can take part in one.
Random selection makes more sense when you start going above a neighbourhood level. At a town or district level, an open event will risk being unwieldly and also unrepresentative, such as skewing towards residents in the neighbourhoods nearest to the venue.
Compared with traditional local meetings
People’s assemblies also differ from more traditional types of local meetings, such as parish meetings in England or the town meetings of New England. These meetings tend to discuss multiple items on an agenda set by the local councillors. Attendees don’t have the time to study and explore these issues in detail, so often have little to base their opinions on apart from partisan sympathies or gut feeling. Attendees at people’s (and citizens’) assemblies usually discuss one subject per session, allowing a deeper exploration.
One other difference is that people’s assemblies are free to discuss issues outside of the powers of local government. They may discuss national issues but can also discuss local affairs outside of the council. The experience in other towns so far is that people’s assemblies can be a springboard for launching local voluntary and campaign groups.
Finally, traditional local meetings often have official powers over the local council. People’s assemblies created at a grassroots level don’t. Whether they should is a matter of debate — it would be better to first see what they can do without official powers first.
Compared with activist assemblies
The other type this needs to be compared with is the type of assemblies operated by protest movements. An example is the ones that were run by the 2011 Occupy movement, which they called general assemblies. The Occupy movement created or popularised several key concepts that have appeared in more recent people’s assemblies, especially the use of hand signals to give instant feedback to speakers on whether others agreed with what they said, as well as the emphasis on consensus-building.
The difference is that a people’s assembly aims to gain a full cross-section of the public, not just those who are motivated to take part in a protest movement. In addition, Occupy assemblies often rigidly insisted on seeking consensus, whereas a people’s assembly may prefer consensus but accept a simple majority as a back-up option.
Types of approaches
People’s assemblies can be created by governments or by outside organisers. A growing number of cities around the world have run participatory budgeting projects, inspired by the original example of Porto Alegre in Brazil. This typically means that people’s assemblies are held to discuss how the local council should spend money, which then leads to votes or juries to present a final recommendation to the council.
However, a few local organisers have come to view people’s assemblies as an end in their own right, and have founded them without support from governments. They remain below the radar for the time being. In the UK, a few projects like this have been run in places such as Hastings, Hull and Sheffield, as well as by groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Assemble and the Humanity Project.
It is a challenge to do this without the backing of a government. To get people to come along, they need to hear about it, and it is unlikely that a poster on the local noticeboard will be enough. A leafleting campaign is better, but door-knocking is the best way to attract people. In my next posts, I will talk about why I think it would be worth it. [Edit: Now added as part 1 and part 2.]
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