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A protest against the killing of Renee Good last Wednesday, only hours after it happened. The 2010s saw more people take part in political protests than any decade before. The 2020s are shaping up to be bigger still — on the day I write this, the US is facing another big wave of protests over…
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When confronted with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, John F. Kennedy had on his mind a book that he had recently read. It was The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s newly-published and now-classic account of how the European powers blundered into the First World War. Kennedy was impressed by the book and encouraged many…
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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…
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Frome, a mid-sized town in the English county of Somerset A few of us have predicted that radical assembly-based parties could be The Next Big Thing in politics. But how would one actually work? Assemblies What do we mean by assembly-based? This would partly mean that the party would use the incredible potential of randomly-selected…
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Why am I so prone to bending covers? As the former CEO of Oxfam, the venerable charity for global poverty relief, Danny Sriskandarajah has met with many well-known figures. Among them was Prince Philip: As I began to reply that I had been drawn to an association built on shared values like democracy, Prince Philip…
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In April 2012, Bill Shorten, a minister in the Australian government, gave an interview that drew unusually wide attention, and has occasionally been circulated since. The topic was about Peter Slipper, the parliamentary speaker who had temporarily left his post in light of allegations of sexual abuse. Shorten was asked whether Slipper should return to…
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Roger Hallam is not known for optimism. The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil is quite the fire-and-brimstone preacher when it comes to climate change. But when I heard him a few weeks ago on a call with Assemble and like-minded activists, he sounded genuinely hopeful about the assemblies that they were about…
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(A view of Penzance. No sign of any pirates.) I’ve discussed in an earlier post about the problem that citizens’ assemblies cost so much money to run, and possible solutions. This is why I was intrigued to find articles about a citizens’ assembly in the southwestern corner of England. It was run for only £1,500.…
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And now for something a little different, a bit of satire that builds on a point I made in an earlier post. Anne, the new treasurer, is presenting her first budget to the club board. “…For too long, Sandford Tennis Club has been let down by a leaky roof. During their long rule, the Tennis…
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This is a follow-up post to my recent one on the House of the People project, a national citizens’ assembly run by Assemble. From what I’ve heard, it went very well, with a facilitator I’m in touch with saying it was “a truly uplifting experience”. Assemble issued a press release in which a participant described…
Assembly Project 