Democracy Ateneo Announcement 11-16-13

Compañer@s,

We will convene the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo, Saturday, November 16, from 2 - 5 p.m. at Casa de Vicky (792 E. Julian St., San Jose <http://www.casavicky.com/>) to resume our regularly scheduled reflection and action space and to explore some of the questions and struggles mentioned below.

Recently the assembly has increasingly come into political focus as a convivial tool. Probably the group most responsible for drawing attention to the political possibilities of assembly have been the Zapatistas. While the Zapatistas' creative re-claiming of the encuentro has been critical to its spread, the assembly has been refined in the series of convergences associated with the Alterglobalization movement, the encampments of the indignados of Spain, and the occupations of the Occupied Movement. The long-fetch of its history, multiple sites, and different uses of assembly suggest that there are many kinds of assemblies and an equal number of innovations and challenges. What exactly constitutes an assembly and when or how does it become a consistent space of political action and community regeneration?

Assembly in the Zapatista's hands has resulted from two parallel processes. The Zapatistas have reclaimed the assembly common to the political structure of their communities. While they have fortified the assembly alongside the practice of tequios and cargos in their communities, they have also made the assembly process available to increasing numbers of political groups through the encuentro. (See, Callahan, "Why Not Share a Dream" <https://app.box.com/s/hljstsj2zu7ial1mjszd>) Beginning with the Democratic National Convention in 1994 and continuing through the Continental and Intercontinental Encuentros of 1996 followed by a series of encuentros with a number of groups such as health workers, teachers, and women, the Zapatistas have invited us to think about the political uses of the encounter in opposition to neoliberalism and the Party-State. Some, like Thomas Nail, claim that the Zs have been at the center of reinventing "revolution" by creatively refusing its traditional forms: "the capture of the state, the political representation of the party, the centrality of the proletariat, or the leadership of the vanguard." (See, Nail, "Introduction" in Returning to Revolution <https://app.box.com/s/s2rh04hhioorklhv61ot>) The Zapatista encuentro has also animated other types of political formations such that the EZLN's strategic use of consultas and marchas could easily be viewed as on-going, open encounters. Thus, the March of the People of the Color of the Earth in 2001 could convene great numbers of people as communities hosted the Zapatista comandantes en route to the Federal District and end in a massive gathering when they finally marched into the nation's capital. More recently, Zapatista encounters such as the Escuelita have brought into focus political projects as explicitly learning spaces. But, the question remains, how to make use of encuentro: as a category of analysis that assists us in identifying political spaces of gathering; as a political objective where we seek out the encounter; as a political praxis where we struggle to manage difference; and as a system of information that produces new knowledge as a space of insurgent learning.

There can be little doubt that the assembly is always a place of insurgent learning. Marianne Maeckelbergh has recently argued that the 15M movement of Spain illustrates the skills shared between communities of struggle. (See, Maeckelbergh, "Horizontal Democracy Now" <https://app.box.com/s/oeud2idcsh2gu9kkqc4m>) Not only were the hand signals for decision making increasingly common in the encampments of Spain's indignados, but encampments have become sites to share specific wisdoms, some very local and others transplanted. Encampments are noted not only for the aid stations and people's libraries but also for the skills that are transfered through the additional gatherings that erupt in occupied spaces. Spain also revealed, according to Mackelbergh, the challenge of constructing a large space of encounter through the very public, central encampment of the main plaza while also attempting to coordinate with the smaller satellite assemblies of the surrounding neighborhoods. But, large encounters fed by smaller neighborhood gatherings beg the question about how to establish these "institutions" as consistent, locally-rooted sites of collective decision-making and community regeneration.

Not surprisingly, a number of groups have attempted to use the encounter strategically, as a political tool to raise awareness, build networks, re-establish relations, and institutionalize spaces of situated, collective decision-making. One of the sexiest uses of encounter has been the escrache recently made most visible by H.I.J.O.S and others committed to alternative forms of justice in Argentina. (See, Colectivo Situaciones, Genocide in the Neighborhood, <https://app.box.com/s/gsc70jn9z92i20r872n4>)The escrache in Argentina continues in the long-line of political uses of the festival, such as Reclaim the Streets and Critical Mass, creating festive spaces that inform as much as they celebrate. The escrache has also become a site of alternative justice, a practice of adjudicating the crimes associated with Argentina's dictatorship without relying on the state by creating the context for the opprobrium of a community that has a clear sense of who belongs and who does not. The escrache has been politically useful in a number of instances such as how it has been used locally in the People's Investigation for Kayla Moore. In an effort to uncover information about the in-custody death of a member of our community, Berkeley Copwatch along with others organized an escrache on what would have been Moore's birthday to gather people to generate more information about the police violence that led to her death and to find new community-oriented strategies to minimize police involvement in responding to health crises while also sanctioning police excess. (See, "People's Investigation: Kayla Moore" <https://app.box.com/s/swr6ap2nnjs77mutk0pp>)

In San Jose we have imagined the assembly as a convivial tool. In an effort to expand the political participation of Occupied San Jose’s General Assembly (GA), a number of representatives from San Jose’s ethnic Mexican community inspired by the Oaxaca commune introduced the asamblea popular to the South Bay. (See Esteva, “The Oaxaca Commune and Mexico’s Coming Insurrection” <https://app.box.com/s/io734oef9f4hrc0fy1d2>) After presenting a somewhat modified facilitation strategy intended to address issues specific to the dynamics of OSJ, the guest facilitation team initiated the day’s proceedings by inviting local Native American elders to inaugurate the gathering with a brief ceremony to acknowledge prior claims to the land being used for the GA, celebrate ancestors, and honor the present gathering. Many of the most prominent and active members of the GA, as it was then constituted, voiced their outrage denouncing the proceedings and shouting they did not want a “Hispanic revolution!” (See, Callahan, "In Defense of Conviviality" <https://app.box.com/s/px951dpere5qbryjzghc>) The obstacles made visible in Occupied San Jose led to the formation of the South Bay Unity Group (SBUG), a political alliance that began to imagine a proliferation of assemblies –a number of consistent gatherings for collective decision-making across the South Bay. As a way to activate these spaces the SBUG joined with the May 1 Coalition to promote an assembly after San Jose’s May Day march in 2012. (See, SBUG San Jose Assembly Summary <https://app.box.com/s/hlsoygwyhbs5mwnz2etv>) The success of that assembly raised more questions about how to use assembly after political events such as the gathering that was convened immediately following the Chican@ Moratorium this past September.

Ivan Illich reminded us sometime ago that when people gather they invent new tools to help maintain their shared purpose. The assembly is such a tool. But, how do we reclaim this tool or invent it anew when so many of us have lost the habits of assembly? We have become increasingly aware of the "new enclosures" and the persistence of primitive accumulation as processes that deny our collective impulses and practices. (See, Midnight Notes Collective, "The New Enclosures" <https://app.box.com/s/pdypmsb60yvo7j9yg7tt>) Recently, Massimo De Angelis warned us of capital's need for "a commons fix" --capital's ability to both appropriate (enclosure) our collective energy and domesticate (co-optation) our communal impulses. (See, De Angelis, "Does Capital Need a Commons Fix?"<https://app.box.com/s/dcjitk2udnh14mqrbuqc>) "The assumption" according to Silvia Federici, "that human emancipation or liberation has to pass through a dictatorship of the proletariat is not part of the politics of the commons." More importantly, "the idea of the commons is the idea of reclaiming the capacity to control our life, to control the means of our (re)production, to share them in an egalitarian way and to 'manage' them collectively." (See, Federici, "Permanent Reproductive Crisis," <https://app.box.com/s/pzo7et50iog01kprukra>) Developing creative strategies beyond traditional political practices demand what the Commission for Group Dynamics in Assemblies calls collective thinking --a commitment to bring different ideas together "to build something new." (See, "Quick Guide on Group Dynamics in People's Assemblies" <http://takethesquare.net/2011/07/31/quick-guide-on-group-dynamics-in-peoples-assemblies/>) There can be little doubt that the assembly fully embodies the prefigurative politics that mark this conjuncture. It has become a critical marker of the self-valorization that disrupts capitalism's imposition of command and capture.  (See, Cleaver, "The Inversion of Class Perspective in Marxian Theory: From Valorisation to Self-Valorisation" <https://app.box.com/s/q3d56e3r35xpqzhaesra>) But, what is the relationship between commons and assembly; when does the assembly become an "institution of the commons"?

We will take up these and other questions at our next ateneo. Please join us.

South Bay Crew

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