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Forum Post: The People's Virtual Forum

Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 20, 2011, 4:49 p.m. EST by bubbawadd (3)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

At some time the Occupy Wall Street movement must do something besides occupy space. The big assemblies conducted in NYC seem to have been effective, but most of the country exists outside of NYC. If the movement is to shape the nation, we need procedures to get a consensus from all the people.

The regime of Louis XIV gave us the outline for a plan we could use to develop a national consensus. Prior to the French Revolution, the government wanted to avoid financial collapse. The crisis forced the King to summon an Estates-General. This body represented each of the three Estates of French Society. The government invited each of the three classes to draw up a statement of complaints and grievances. Within each class, the delegates summarized the district statement to form the provincial statement. They then presented a summary of the whole to Louis.

Formation of the statements for the Third Estate (peasants) began with local assemblies. Village churches hosted many of the meetings. Each of these initial meetings included about one hundred voters. This is where the people formed new ideas and sharpened their understanding of what they wanted for their nation.

We also need to form new ideas and sharpen our understanding of what we want for our nation. We could do this by forming a People’s Virtual Assembly (PVA). But instead of forming a temporary structure to produce one statement, we need to form a permanent structure to guide the movement. (No beheadings please.) The PVA should be designed to accommodate collaboration among all the people who want to collaborate.

Consider my suggestions as a preliminary design, and remember, of course, the devil is always in the details. I will describe a possible path for a proposal that would become a national resolution.

A proposal must begin from within a local group. The local group can organize themselves to meet periodically face-to-face, meet through Facebook or whatever method they may choose. All proposals must be labeled as targeted for local, municipal, district, state, or national levels.

Suppose a local group issues a national proposal. That proposal would then be considered at the Congressional District level. If there were an actual physical district assembly, the assembly would probably use Robert’s Rules of Order to consider proposals, with delegates voting on the proposal and possible amendments.

A virtual assembly must also use a set of rules to dispose of proposals: accept or reject. Robert Rules could be used for the virtual assembly, but some modifications could make the process more efficient. For example, more than one independent motion could be considered at a time. Several years ago, I developed a set of rules that could be used where business is conducted using emails. These rules could be modified for our own use and are posted at:

http://facultyfp.salisbury.edu/capp/rules_for_cyberland.htm

I doubt that Facebook could be effectively used for a virtual assembly. In my opinion, a specially designed website should be used. The link above lists some of the requirements for a PVA website. Nothing high tech would be required. It could probably be created rather quickly. All transactions would have to be public and thoroughly transparent.

Each local group would vote on each motion being considered at the Congressal District level. There are several possible variations on making this vote.

  1. The group could elect a contact person (virtual delegate) to make the vote. The delegate’s vote would be weighted by the number of people registered with the group.
  2. The group could make the decision (yea or nay) using a group debate and subsequent vote. The vote would be weighted by the number of group registrants.
  3. The group would debate and individual votes (yea or nay) would be passed to the Congressional District level.

If the national proposal is passed by the Congressional District, then the proposal would be submitted to the National Virtual Assembly. Deliberations here would be conducted in a fashion corresponding to deliberations at the Congressional District levels. If the proposal were approved at the national level, then it would become a national resolution.

Using the PVA, we could develop policies and positions on issues at the municipal, state, and national levels. By a simple extension we could realize the dream of a global people’s assembly, although lack of technology would hold back parts of the world.

At the national level the PVA could operate as a shadow government. At some time after we have perfected the system and clarified our positions, we could call for an Article V convention. Article V of our Constitution authorizes calling a national convention for changing the Constitution. This convention could be used to establish the PVA as an integral part of our government. After ratification of the changes, we could then take off our training wheels.

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