english article about Parklarbizim initiatives
dg.
* * *
Assemblies emerging in Turkey: a lesson in democracy
http://roarmag.org/2013/06/assemblies-emerging-in-turkey-a-lesson-in-democracy/
by Jerome Roos on June 19, 2013
The protesters are starting to counter-pose their own direct democracy to
the sham of a democracy proposed by Erdogans authoritarian neoliberal
state.
Something quite amazing is happening in Istanbul. In addition to the
silent standing man actions around the country, peoples assemblies are
slowly starting to emerge in different neighborhoods across the city. As
in Spain, Greece and the Occupy encampments before, the protesters in
Turkey are starting to counter-pose their own form of direct democracy to
the sham of a democracy proposed by Erdogans authoritarian neoliberal
state. If there was ever any doubt, this shows how deeply intertwined the
global struggles truly are.
As the state launches its merciless witch hunt on protesters, activists
and Tweeters, thousands of people are starting to gather in dignity in
various public spaces. As Oscar ten Houten reports from on the ground in
Istanbul, the Beşiktaş Assembly in Abbasaga park, which has been
going on for days, tripled its number of participants on Tuesday night,
with a total of ten popular assemblies taking place in Istanbul alone and
at least one more in Izmir. As Oscar writes on his great blog (which he
started at the occupation of Puerta del Sol in Madrid in 2011):
These meetings have nothing to do with Taksim Solidarity any more.
They are spontaneous initiatives by local people who are fed up with
Erdogans disregard for the Turkish citizens, their rights and
freedoms, their history, beliefs and traditions.
We arrive in
Kadıköy, and truly, I couldnt believe this was happening. Well
over two thousand people were gathered on the green, to express their
anger with the governments eviction of Gezi, and to share their hope
for a better Turkey. Like anywhere else, it was a cross section of the
population, which included all races and creeds.
Interestingly, the members of the popular assemblies in Turkey use the
same hand-signs as the indignados, indicating that some of the methods
were directly inspired by the real democracy protests in Spain. This, in
turn, seems to confirm the idea we raised very early on in the Turkish
uprising, and a claim that many Turkish activists have been making from
the very start: namely that this movement is not just a local or national
protest, but part of a global struggle against the subverted nature of
representative capitalist democracy and for real democracy and total
liberation.
What, then, is real democracy? Obviously its difficult to have a
straightforward answer to such a complex question, seeing that different
people will interpret the idea (and the ideal) differently. It is quite
easy, however, to identify what it is not. Democracy stands for the rule
of the people. As a result, when corporate interests and religious
delusions begin to dominate government, that is not democracy. In fact,
when a small elite of elected politicians is delegated to speak on behalf
of the rest, that is not the rule of the people but their representation.
The worldwide experiments with direct democracy in the form of
horizontal self-organization through popular assemblies, decentralized
mutual aid networks, thematic working groups, and so on provide a
glimpse of what another world could look like. Of course, none of this is
to say that the protesters have a blueprint in hand for the ideal
revolutionary society; but they are actively testing and trying out
different models to see how large groups of people can effectively
organize themselves without hierarchical and centralized leadership.
Last year, when shooting our first ROAR documentary Utopia on the
Horizon in Athens, we interviewed Manolis Glezos, the 90-year-old Greek
WWII resistance hero who is currently an MP for the coalition of the
radical left. Glezos experimented with direct democracy when he was the
mayor of a village on the island of Naxos. Even though Glezos still
believes that a parliament controlled by popular forces can help activists
on the ground, he insists that the citizens revolution as such cannot
proceed if the people do not organize themselves from below.
So what about the popular assemblies in Syntagma Square, Puerta del Sol
and Zuccotti Park? Was that real democracy? When we asked Glezos, he
looked at us with an amused smile on his face, and to our great surprise
just said: No. This is not democracy. How can a few thousand people
assembled in a square claim to speak on behalf of the millions that live
in the region? This is not democracy its a lesson in democracy. If this
movement wants to survive, its direct democratic models will need to
spread to the neighborhoods and to the working places. Only then will we
start seeing the emergence of a genuinely democratic society.
What Glezos is saying, in other words, is that for direct democracy to
work, the assemblies need to be radicalized and extended into the working
places in the form of workers self-management, as in the inspiring case
of the Vio.Me factory in Greece. Obviously, none of this will be enough to
overthrow the capitalist state as such; but it is a starting point to help
engage people in different forms of decision-making, different forms of
production, and different ways of being, thinking and interacting. In a
word, it is about building the social foundations of self-organization
that will allow us to replace the oppressive institutions of the
capitalist state when the time comes.
But there is something more. The direct democracy of the squares is also
about saying that we cannot wait for some distant revolution to overthrow
the capitalist system. We are currently facing a global humanitarian
tragedy, an ecological disaster and a profound social and political
crisis. We have to act now. We cannot rely on corporate elites to do this
for us. We cannot trust in political representatives to take the process
ahead. The only ones we can trust are ourselves. We, the people, will have
to carry this revolution forward. Starting now.
Still, on a more humble level yet perhaps the most important of all we
should be careful not to fetishize direct democracy. At the end of the
day, the assembly is a very simple phenomenon: it is about ordinary people
craving to be heard and to have a say in their lives. Assemblies are a way
to allow those who have been shut up for years to finally stand up in
dignity and to speak their voice and be heard. It is about recovering
our collective sense of humanity from the rapacious claws and
unrepresentive institutions of the capitalist state.
As such, the assemblies are a beautiful and crucial form of social
engagement and political participation. In the future, they may well be
expanded to cover more and more segments of the population. But even in
these moments of elation, when we see the people taking matters into their
own hands and enacting real democracy in the places where they live and
work, we should stay realistic: this is only just the beginning. The
capitalist state survives, and creating our own parallel society is not
enough. We must self-organize, and then push our quest for autonomy
outwards to eventually encapsulate all of society.
Luckily, there is hope that such radical aspirations may not just be a
pipe dream. In a sign that this leaderless movement is already
deregulating the violent flow of authority unleashed by the Turkish state,
the increasingly desperate government is doubling down on the repression,
arresting random people who were sighted at the protests or who sent out
provocative Tweets, and even threatening to send in the army. As Oscar
puts it, the authorities still dont understand whats happening. They
look for leaders, people to corrupt or to eliminate. But there are none.
We are not an organisation, we are a world wide web. We are the people on
the threshold of changing times.
---------------------------- Message original ----------------------------
Objet: Re: [2011movements-fsm discussion] Parklarbizim Forum
De: marknbarrett@...
Date: Mer 19 juin 2013 17:09
À: 2011movements-fsm-wsf-discussion@...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gracias y abrazos :)
Sent from phone
-----Original Message-----
From: Mikifus <mikifus@...>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:51:06
To: lista global square<2011movements-fsm-wsf-discussion@...>
Reply-To: 2011movements-fsm-wsf-discussion@...
Subject: Re: [2011movements-fsm discussion] Parklarbizim Forum
Yo can find documents translated to Spanish in here:
https://www.facebook.com/CentrodeMediosIndependientesdeAsturias/notes
http://occupy-gezi-info.blogspot.com/
2013/6/19 <marknbarrett@...>
> **
> Salaams All
>
> Are there any English language statements or links to what the park
> assemblies decided or discussed?
>
> Best wishes
>
> Mark
> Sent from phone
> ------------------------------
> *From: * Serkan Bayraktaro?lu <serkanb8@...>
> *Date: *Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:32:28 +0300
> *To: *2011movements-fsm-wsf-discussion@...<
> 2011movements-fsm-wsf-discussion@...>
> *ReplyTo: * 2011movements-fsm-wsf-discussion@...
> *Subject: *[2011movements-fsm discussion] Parklarbizim Forum
>
> dear friends
>
> thank you all for this great resources. after two days of park assemblies
> much more solid ideas have started to emerge. i guess these kind of
> materials will be very helpful.
>
> best
>
> Serkan
>
>
> 19 Haziran 2013 Çar?amba tarihinde Dr. TR. Rojas-D <ternuros@...>
> adl? kullan?c? ?öyle yazd?:
> > OH!
> > I almost forgot these 2 that are really important:
> > Occupy The Economy Organizer Handbook
> >
> http://www.occupylv.org/sites/default/files/Occupy%20The%20Economy%20Organizer%20Handbook%20-%20occupytheeconomy.pdf
> > and Attitudes that should be avoided within our movement, at assemblies
> and work Groups
> >
> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7rG_OtNW-8pdHY3M2ZEZlZha0k/edit?usp=sharing
> > Now for mumble meetigs using Open Space format: open space in mumble |
> Etherpad Lite
> > Cheers,
> > T
> > On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 3:10 PM, Dr. TR. Rojas-D <ternuros@...>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello
> >> I am also hoping ot have closer contact with them, some have joined the
> Occuoy Eurpe FB group
> https://www.facebook.com/groups/287229027955686/?fref=ts
> >> Here we have more resources:
> >> NYC GENERAL ASSEMBLY leaflet with HAND GESTURES
> http://peopleslibrary.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/occupy.pdf
> >> BTW look what I found!!
> http://occupywallst.org/media/OccupyWallSt-Orientation-Guide.pdf I am
> about to cry tears of nostalgia and also joy
> >> Occupy Denver General Assembly Facilitation Booklet
> >> 2012
> http://occupydenver.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Facilitation-Workshop.pdf
> >> Tutorial for Effective Occupy General Assemblies
> >>
> http://occupyu.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/effective-meetings.pdf
> >> Regarding future organization of local assemblies:
> >> Twelve Principles [suggested only] of the Occupation
> >> Movement, either as a whole or for each group, derived
> >> from the twelve traditions of Alcoholic Anonymous
> >> NOWDC Social Forum April 3, 2012 very useful
> http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4827451/Twelve%20Principles.pdf
> >> I believe we are following this last one (those transparent an
> horizontal assemblies at least), even though we did know!!
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
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> >
> >
> >
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