Assembly Project

Just over a month ago, I helped out at a people’s assembly in Brixton, a neighbourhood of the inner south London at the end of an Underground line, to act as the facilitator of a group discussion. I have been late posting on this, as this post stalled as I struggled to figure out several points.

The local area is acting as a testing ground for Assemble’s Community Assembly Project, which they hope can spread to many more neighbourhoods. It was just as well. Around 130 residents were joined, so the organisers needed all the help they could get. It was an enjoyable experience and was covered with an excellent article in the local alternative media outlet, the Brixton Buzz.

What was fantastic was how many people had come. Though it skewed older, whiter and more middle class than Brixton as whole, many different social groups were nonetheless present. They also included a few local MPs and councillors. Whatever the organisers of the project had done, which included some smaller, preliminary assemblies, it was a case study in solving the challenge of bringing people to an assembly.

My second stab at facilitation was easier than the first. I was more prepared to deal with the challenge of making sure everyone got a chance to speak, even as some would be more talkative than others. It was still a challenge to balance allowing everyone a chance to say what they wanted while making sure that shy participants had a chance to speak as well as the chatty ones.

I have discovered a few things that help. One is hand signals like those used by the Occupy movement, to indicate things like:

• Hand up: Wanting to speak
• Thumbs up or waving hands: Agreement
• Making circle with two hands: Wrap up (The participant should wrap up what they’re saying, but they don’t have to stop straight away.)

It is also helpful to have a phone stopwatch out, to make sure that everyone gets a broadly equal time to speak.

I sat with about six people of different ages who’d lived in Brixton for different lengths of time. It was clear they cared much for their neighbourhood and were being thoughtful and open-minded about how to improve it.

Uncharted waters

The earlier assemblies had identified the issues that mattered to Brixton residents, including homelessness, mental health and drug problems. This was the first assembly was held to discuss what action we could organise. We were sailing into uncharted waters.

At one key moment, it became apparent that participants were disagreeing with things that weren’t expecting to be controversial. It turned out that the residents favoured a longer campaign with different ways of measuring its success. We ended up debating those points instead. We also faced dilemmas such as whether to give councillors and community a chance to address the assembly.

All in all, credit to Chris, the lead organiser, for responding well to the surprises and keeping things on course. Hopefully, future Brixton assemblies will be able to iron out the details and get a successful campaign going that genuinely improves peoples lives.

Here are a few

• Discuss ideas beforehand with local residents as well as organisers.
• If the topic is too long for large assemblies, consider the panels used by Independents for Frome. A smaller group of participants form a panel (or working group), who study an issue in detail and then reports back to a large assembly. This allows large assemblies to be reserved for discussing the fundaments rather than the fiddly details.
• Choose one table at random to be the “steering table“, who are given an extra responsibility to oversee the lead organiser. While it wouldn’t be practical for this table to run the assembly, the lead organiser would have to consult with them regularly. For example, they might consult with the steering table to decide whether to change the topic for discussion.

Outsiders

At one point, an older woman kept interrupting to ask what the organisers were doing if they weren’t from the neighbourhood. These remarks didn’t seem to resonate widely, but I wished that one organisers who actually did come from the area had spoken out.

I could not help but be reminded of Martin Luther King Jr. writing the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, partly to address a complaint that he and other civil rights campaigners were “outsiders” disrupting the city. He famously argued in return that it was their duty to oppose injustice in Birmingham, because “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Of course, we do not face anything nearly as unjust as the racial segregation and police brutality that his movement faced. But perhaps in future, people will look back on our current political system as an injustice of its own, for denying fundamental rights of citizens to have a greater say.

Even if many of us were indeed outsiders to the neighbourhood, it should be no problem for us to come and run a project for its benefit. That’s a favour to the residents, right? And even if we don’t accept that argument, we should consider how most of us also came from the same city, the same country and the same world. A successful assembly in Brixton could be the launchpad for a wider movement.

Nevertheless, a project like this should ultimately aim to belong to the local community, even if it takes outsiders as well as locals to kick-start it.

Two perspectives

A few standout moments came when a few community figures had a chance to address the assembly. As he admitted afterwards in the New Statesman, Roger Hallam was dismayed that councillors and community leaders were given impromptu chances to address the assembly. He saw it as preferential treatment, against the original rules that had been laid down. Yet their power is real and their perspectives are often valuable.

Cllr. David Bridson, a local councillor, argued that the borough council was doing its best to help the local homeless. I’m sure he was right. Most councillors are decent folk who sincerely want to improve their communities, and they can score wins. But part of the problem, as Cllr. Bridson admitted, is that residents are often unaware of the council is doing. Another is that local government in the UK is powerless. Councils are socially distant from the high number of people they govern, their elections are meaningless since they’re decided by national politics rather than local affairs, and the national government limits their ability to raise money and try new initiatives.

His speech was followed by an exchange between him and Michelle from the Safer Neighbourhoods Team, as she challenged him over why the council were not more active in the community. As Brixton Buzz noted, “It was an exchange that personified the night.”