TOWNS TURN TO CHARETTES TO INCREASE PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

The following article from a Connecticut paper highlights another possible vehicle for expanding participatory democracy within local communities, that of the 'charrette.' - Editor

Towns Turn To 19th-Century Tradition Of Charrettes

By REGINE LABOSSIERE Courant Staff Writer
April 28, 2008

Source: http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-charrette0428.artapr28,0,6552639.story

As "big box" stores and large developments build up in suburbia, local groups in the Farmington Valley are fed up with a land-use approval process that involves the public mostly in the final stages.

So, in a nod to a 19th-century tradition, residents increasingly are raising the idea of holding charrettes — open workshops involving all local stakeholders — to bring development discussions into the public arena much earlier in the process and taking control of the future of their communities.

The idea is gaining more appeal as area towns struggle with the need to decrease property taxes by bringing in economic development without inviting commercial sprawl. The issue was evident in Simsbury this month, when hundreds of residents expressed their opposition to a mixed-use zoning proposal that would have allowed a big-box store. Their outrage helped defeat the proposal.

"[A charrette is] more by the will of the people rather than something that is imposed by the government," said Justin Falango, a town planner with the Florida urban design firm Dover, Kohl & Partners. The firm conducts charrettes all over the world and has been consulting with Simsbury since last year.

The other appeal, Falango said, is the collaboration.

"Everyone gets to voice their concerns at the same time, and everything is worked through all at once," he said.

Falango, who has worked in Simsbury with Victor Dover, a partner in the Florida firm, said Simsbury is untouched by commercial sprawl development. He warns that if any zoning regulation allows a development in town that doesn't fit in with the character of Simsbury, then residents and town officials could see similar developments constructed.

"By having a charrette, it would affirm what they want the character to be and how they want the character to stay and it would help development," he said.

The word, which means "cart" in French, comes from the 1800s, when proctors at a Parisian art school circulated a cart to collect final drawings while students finished up their work, according to the National Charrette Institute in Portland, Ore. Nowadays, a charrette is an intense series of workshops where all stakeholders in a community — residents, business owners, developers, town officials — come together for at least several days and work with urban design planners and architects to discuss, research and produce a master plan detailing how a section of a municipality or the entire municipality should be developed. A set of drawings is produced each day of the charrette to convey the overall desire of the group.

Charrettes can cost between $75,000 and $500,000, depending on the size and location of what is being reviewed. The cost includes preparation, implementation and fees for the design firms involved and can be paid for by municipalities, grants and developers. Falango said many charrettes lead to zoning regulations or municipal ordinances that enforce the vision created.

Simsbury conducted what First Selectwoman Mary Glassman calls a mini-charrette 10 years ago that led to the town buying land in the town center and developing a performing arts center, bike paths and soccer fields. Now, Glassman said, Simsbury needs to conduct a full charrette that would lead to zoning regulations. Glassman said she knows the idea has support in town based on the turnout at a recent public hearing about the proposed mixed-used zoning regulation that eventually was voted down by the zoning commission.

"The fact that you had more than 500 people come out to a public hearing and comment on a land-use application is a strong message that the residents of Simsbury want to be involved in a public process to plan the development of Simsbury's future," she said.

Both developers and town officials in Connecticut and the rest of the country say that charrettes have helped their economic development strategy. Stephen Soler, president of Georgetown Land Development Co., sponsored a charrette in Redding that led to a zoning regulation change in the Georgetown neighborhood and paved the way for his redevelopment project, which will break ground this summer. He said the charrette was helpful in guiding his plans and navigating through the town's land use boards.

Hamden held a charrette in October that reviewed the city's three major corridors, State Street and Whitney and Dixwell avenues. Town Planner Leslie Creane said the charrette succeeded in getting ideas to improve those areas, and she expects new zoning regulations in Hamden in less than a year.

Mansfield is in the midst of developing a new downtown near the UConn campus. The town had a charrette and lots of public workshops in the past eight years that led to changes in its zoning regulations to allow for mixed-use development for the downtown project, which should break ground next year.

One North Carolina town believes in the public process so much that it has written into its zoning regulations that there must be a charrette for almost every development application submitted. Davidson, N.C., Planning Director Kris Krider said the process is necessary because Davidson is a small town of 9,100 and is issuing 250 building permits a year with an average of 2.5 occupants per unit.

"The growth rate is really high here, and it's about managing that and making the most of opportunity that development brings, and the charrette identifies what those opportunities are. It's usually a much better plan than the developer's," Krider said.

In Connecticut, Farmington Valley residents interested in having a charrette in their towns aren't looking for that extreme of a process, but they want the chance to help shape their town. "In Canton, we really have no vision for what we want the town to look like 20, 25 years from now, and I think the best way to see that vision is to have a charrette," said Tom Sevigny, president of the resident group Canton Advocates for Responsible Expansion. "It's a direct democracy, people getting together and saying what they want the town to look like."

Several groups, including the local economic development agency, have met with Sevigny's group to promote the idea to town officials. Some boards and commissions see the idea as a good one, but one that is not now feasible.Canton First Selectman Dick Barlow said the town will have to redo its plan of conservation and development in the next two years, possibly with the help of state grants. He said a charrette could be included in that process.

Simsbury residents have said they'd like to see a charrette done in the northern and southern gateways, two areas where developments have been proposed, and the town center. But the board of selectmen recently said the project would be too expensive.

"As a compromise, we're certainly open to looking at doing [the town center], which is significantly less money, and using that process to help us develop mixed-use regulation for the other two sites," Glassman said.

"It's the only process, I'm convinced, that will get this town to move forward."

Contact Régine Labossière at rlabossiere@courant.com.

CITIZENS OF INDIANA SAW PRIMARY ELECTION AS OPPORTUNITY FOR PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

The following comments from an Indiana voter just before the recent historic primary election there illustrate how eager most americans are to participate actively in the democratic process provided that they are confident that their vote and their voice wields real power. However, the current power structure of our representative government strives at every opportunity to squelch the voice of the voters, thereby leaving them with the perception that they are impotent within their own (so called) democracy. This in turn generates the apathy among the populus that serves to perpetuate that undemocratic power structure. This 2008 election is inspiring in that it has seemingly broken that cycle more than any election in recent memory. Voters have a sense that their vote does matter this time, and can make a real difference. They are voting in record numbers, most notably on the Democratic side, and thanks in great part to the inspiration that the Obama campaign has generated. This momentum and increased democratic participation must not be squandered and forgotten on election day in November, but must instead be nourished and increased further by the next administration in Washington. The people's voice in government must be amplified, and real power to legislate and decide policy put in the hands of the populus. If we have any hope of achieving true democracy in this country, and of wrestling our future from the corrupt forces that have usurped our democracy for their own financial gain and pursuit of personal power, it will be through direct democracy allowing a government "of, for and by the people" to flourish. - Editor

Making Waves and Ripples

Source: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080506/OPINION12/805060327/1002/OPINION

Posted: May 6, 2008
By Sandy Sasso

There is a palpable excitement across Indiana on this Election Day. Finally, Hoosiers have been saying with evident pride, "We count! It's not just about New York and California. It is about us!"

While the Democratic Party may have wished for a less contentious contest, for an earlier resolution, Indiana residents are pleased to have been given, for once, a decisive voice. For the first time most of us can remember, our votes matter in a presidential primary. Candidates are listening, paying attention to local concerns from Gary to Evansville, Richmond to Terre Haute. And truth be told, it feels good. Polls indicate that more Hoosiers will be voting in this primary than in any other. As a consequence, state and local contests will benefit as well.

It is a sense of enfranchisement that makes for an involved citizenry. This year's renewed excitement in the democratic process speaks volumes for a revision of the primary system. Allowing for a less protracted and more equitable primary season would cost less money and engage more people. It might even reduce acrimony by requiring candidates to focus primarily on political, social and economic concerns and not on negative personal recriminations. Such an electoral process should allow for all states to feel equally empowered in each party's selection of its presidential nominee. The question on all of our minds is: Will the candidates still be attentive to Indiana's concerns tomorrow?

But perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from this year's political enthusiasm is the belief that our voices do matter, that individual citizens can make a difference, that democracy works best when we take seriously our responsibility to effect change, help to shape and influence the quality of our communities.

In the end, the substance and tone of a campaign are determined by our involvement and our indifference, by what we are willing to tolerate or what we are not, by our questions and our expectations. The quality of a campaign is shaped not only by what the candidates bring to the table, but what the electorate demands. In the end, good government isn't just about the decisions of leaders, but about an involved citizenry that holds officials accountable.

We are told that we are to think globally and to act locally. Even as we advocate for governmental action on global warming, let us be attentive to our own habits of wasteful consumerism and exploitation of natural resources. Even as we lobby for fair and just immigration legislation, let us treat our neighbors and the strangers in our midst with dignity and respect. Even as we call for health-care reform, let us promote healthy behaviors and wellness. Even as we require social and educational policies that are attentive to the most vulnerable among us, let us join in partnership with others who seek to raise the quality of life for all our neighborhoods.

In a participatory democracy government and communities, organizations and individuals work hand in hand. Private interest cannot be indifferent to the public good.

The key expectation for the new administration is for a sea of change, for sweeping waves of new directions. But real renewal is not only about making waves but about creating ripples. Each of us has a contribution to make. When one person throws a single pebble into a serene lake, it makes ripples that extend in all directions, far beyond the point of entry. As we move from May to November, may our new sense of enfranchisement in the democratic process move us to make both waves and ripples.

Sasso is senior rabbi at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis.

REFERENDUM AT THE VILLAGE LEVEL IN NY: DIRECT DEMOCRACY FOR LOCAL ISSUES

This article from a small town paper in New York illustrates how the use of initiative and referendum puts the power of decision making and legislation in the hands of the people themselves and out of the hands of elected representatives who may have other motivations, such as those alleged by the union in this case. If the use initiative and referendum were more widespread at all levels of government, the resulting transfer of legislative power to the people themselves would create a much more democratic system, and sidestep the corruption and power politics than inevitably undermine sytems based on representative government. New York State does not currently have initiative and referendum a the state level. Although measures to introduce it have twice been passed in the State Senate in recent years and gone to the Assembly, it has as of yet failed to become law and be enacted. Hopefully it will soon be approved by the Assembly as well and then New York will join the many other states that enjoy this exercise of direct democracy in state governance. Initiative and referendum are however currently used at the village and town level in many municipalities in the state. - Editor



Greenwood Lakers Ready to Petition to Save DPW
Village Retaliating, Union Says

By Matt King
Times Herald-Record
April 15, 2008

Source: http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080415/NEWS/804150322

“My fellow DPW employees want to push for a villagewide referendum,” said Brian Moeller about the fate of Greenwood Lake DPW workers like Bobby Lewis, Brian Pral and Supervisor Bill Roe.

GREENWOOD LAKE — Employees angered over the plan to scrap the village's department of public works hope an exercise in direct democracy will stop it.

As soon as the proposed deal to hand over DPW duties to the Town of Warwick becomes official, employees will circulate a petition in the hopes voters will reject it at the ballot box.

"My fellow DPW employees want to push for a villagewide referendum," said mechanic Brian Moeller. "Let the people decide if this is the best thing to do."

The village is close to a deal with Warwick that Mayor Barbara Moore said is good for residents because it'll save about $200,000 a year and the town has more and better equipment.

"This is a very efficient move for village residents," Moore said, comparing it to Greenwood Lake's water department, which is run by a private company. "If I could get a rate I thought was sensible to privatize DPW, it would be the smart thing to do."

Warwick Supervisor Michael Sweeton has said each of the seven department employees will get an interview with the town, but not a promise of a job.

Meanwhile, more than 200 residents have signed a petition urging Moore to reconsider. It's being circulated by Donna Garley, a village employee, though not of the public works department.

"A few dollars a week per household is not worth five guys losing their jobs," Garley said. "You can't even buy a gallon of milk with that and you're going to put men out of work?"

A separate petition is required to place a referendum on the ballot. It can't be circulated until after the deal is official and must be signed by registered voters equal to at least 10 percent of the people who voted for governor in 2006, or roughly 100 signatures.

Scrapping the department has been discussed for years, but the timing of the deal — just two weeks after village employees signed cards saying they want representation from Teamsters Local 445 — inspired charges of retaliation by union officials.

Teamsters head Adrian Huff said the union has filed a complaint with New York Public Employment Relations Board, though computer problems kept the board from confirming the complaint yesterday.

The union alleges the deal is a punitive measure and the village is shirking its duty to recognize the union.

"They still have the right to representation, even as they're being laid off," Huff said.

mking@th-record.com

PARTIES, MOVEMENTS AND RADICAL CHANGE

This article from Red Pepper in the U.K. discusses several ways in which the radical left in the U.K could better direct and coordinate their efforts by promoting participatory democratic practices such as participatory budgeting, and by broadening their coalition to include people that have traditionally felt excluded or alienated by their movements. The arguments are equally relevant to the movement here in the U.S. and provide food for thought in the struggle to create an effective progressive coalition here that will achieve permanent and significant change. - Editor

Parties, movements and radical change

Davy Jones, a leading advocate of participatory budgeting, says the left needs to recognise and seize opportunities when and where they arise

Source: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article1082.html

I am constantly struck by the failure of the radical left to explicitly seize the moral high ground. The right (especially the evangelical right) are not averse to doing so when it suits them, yet socialism, internationalism, ecological sustainability, feminism, anti-imperialism all have very strong ethical foundations. Appealing broadly on key issues to a very basic humanity and compassion potentially connects us to audiences that for some years have been removed from radical left politics- the many people in various religious and moral camps.

This may cause some on the left to question long-held beliefs, such as on the use of violence, but that’s no bad thing. The enormous success of the London Citizens movement in bringing together trade unions and religious groups should be a lesson to us all. We tend to focus too much on detail and not enough on the big ethical issues underlying our politics. For example, half the world’s GDP is routed through tax havens which means half the potential tax revenues are lost. This is so grotesquely unfair to people who pay their taxes that it allows us to explain to them that there is enough money in the world- it’s just who’s got it and the tax systems set up to protect them that’s the problem.

Identify the issues

We need to identify the issues where there is real possibility of a broad anti-capitalist, anti-establishment consensus emerging in the UK (and internationally) and focus on these.

It is possible to change mass consciousness on certain issues in a relatively short space of time. They key then is to turn this into a permanent (or near to permanent as possible) step forward, ideally framed in law as well as in the popular consciousness. It’s been noted in other contexts how social attitudes to drinking and driving changed dramatically in a generation to one of outright hostility to such selfish and dangerous behaviour. The same is now happening on global warming and living within environmentally sustainable limits. Radical left activists must build the broadest possible unity around such issues and be at the heart of arguing for such transformations, using them to explain the links to other social, economic and political issues.

Respond rapidly and create permanent resources

Insufficient time and effort goes into translating successes into permanent acquisitions, not just ideologically but also physically and virtually. To be able to respond rapidly and effectively, the radical left needs embedded resources and infrastructure. This will take many forms such as resource centres, websites, socio-political networks and funding sources. Rather than forming another party or newspaper a shrewder investment may be to create and sustain permanent resources for the range of needs the radical left needs for its activities.

Remove the barriers

There are some structural issues that are critical barriers to progress for radical left politics. The most obvious is the electoral system. Proportional representation is no panacea but crucial if radical left politics is to enter the mainstream electoral and political arena. Another barrier is the party system and elections. The party system, especially in local elections, is a major barrier to making radical breakthroughs at a local level. The radical left needs to develop proposals and campaign to make it much easier for independent candidates and small parties to stand in local, national and European elections.

Recognise opportunities

As Hilary Wainwright hints in her article it is also crucial to seize any opportunities to create and sustain forms of local democratic debate and accountability as ongoing spaces. For example, for its own reasons this government has decided to promote participatory budgeting but is it just a panacea? No, current developments in Porto Alegre show this.

To incorporate local processes of structured debate and discussion about what needs to be done and how money should be spent locally would represent a huge step forward for the UK. Potentially it could raise debate about the need for structured discussion of the national budget and priorities, weaken the power of the traditional local parties to have exclusive access to this discussion and help reawaken interest in politics.

The crucial thing is for the radical left to recognise such opportunities when they arise and to seize them rather than sneer from the sidelines at the government’s motives.

PARTICIPATORY ECONOMY AS ALTERNATIVE TO CENTRALIZED OR MARKET ECONOMIES

This book review of Moving Forward reveals Michael Albert's ideas about participatory democracy in the workplace. Jonathan Sterne points out that Albert is providing an answer to the call for a new soci0-economic structure that would be more beneficial to all than the current capitalist system. Albert calls for workers' participation in democratic processes within the workplace and teases out social and economic consequences that would be superior to the hierarchical formation of capitalist societies based on wealth. Other consequences faced by the environment and race relations require further examination since they are not covered in the book. Albert's ideas are worthwhile study for envisioning the reality of a more egalitarian and participatory future. - Editor

Moving Forward: Program for a Participatory Economy

Source: http://bad.eserver.org/reviews/2001/2001-11-15-11.51AM.html

Any left movement worth its name needs to present a compelling alternative to existing ways of life. If we have a sense of what's wrong with our society, it is incumbent upon us to try and come up with a better alternative. Though this position seems commonsensical, it has been immensely difficult for leftists to agree on a concrete agenda...

Michael Albert

Reviewed by Jonathan Sterne

Thursday, November 15 2001, 11:51 AM

---

Any left movement worth its name needs to present a compelling alternative to existing ways of life. If we have a sense of what's wrong with our society, it is incumbent upon us to try and come up with a better alternative. Though this position seems commonsensical, it has been immensely difficult for leftists to agree on a concrete agenda for change or a vision of the good society. Many have given up: in the academic circles where I run, one often hears preemptive objections to "utopian," "totalizing," or other forms of programmatic thinking on the basis that these enterprises are inherently vanguardist, or worse, oppressive -- since in imagining alternatives, social visions inevitably exclude other possibilities.

So it is no surprise that Michael Albert's Moving Forward begins with a defense of programmatic thinking, since the book is meant as a blueprint for a more just economy. For over ten years, Michael Albert and his sometime collaborator Robin Hahnel have been working to refine a vision of participatory economics -- or "parecon" -- a series of books, interviews, and articles. Albert's Moving Forward is the latest print contribution to this project. In this very accessible book, Albert outlines the basic principles of parecon, anticipates and answers basic questions about his model, and argues for its necessity.

Albert's project should be applauded by all leftists, whatever their particular orientation. Though I will take issue with some of the specifics of his platform below, I strongly recommend this book and the parecon project as food for thought. They represent a needed alternative to the ongoing myopia of left thinking -- in the U.S. and elsewhere. Early in the book, Albert anticipates a variety of objections to his kind of programmatic thinking. He argues that while we cannot have a blueprint for social change, we need some sense of what we want so that we can go after it. More to the point, "values support and inform vision, but they are not its entirety" (p. 11). Rather than nebulous goals like "equality," Albert actually tries to reason out what equality in the economy might look like.

Moving Forward is structured around Albert's platform: seeking just rewards for effort, self-management, dignified work, and participatory allocation. Each section of the book offers an outline of his position, and then anticipates objections and responds to them in a question-and-answer-style format. The book avoids specialized and technical discussions, aiming instead to offer the broad outlines of the position. Readers interested in a more technical discussion of parecon in terms of economic theory would be wise to turn to Albert and Hahnel's The Political Economy of Participatory Economics. The book ends with discussions of economics and "the rest of life," practical questions around platforms, and a discussion of the reform vs. revolution dyad that's plagued left thought for some time.

Albert's goals are relatively simple and straightforward, though they would ultimately require a total transformation of the capitalist economy. I will briefly sketch each of them:

Albert argues that renumeration should be made according to effort, sacrifice, and need -- and not according to actual contribution to the economy. This is an important departure from traditional left economic thinking. Albert persuasively argues that renumeration according to actual contribution rewards the accumulation of wealth or other forms of fixed capital. If two people expend the same effort cutting sugar cane, but one has better tools, that person will make a larger contribution.

Albert's conception of effort and sacrifice is relatively simplistic �� rather quickly reproduces the mental-manual labor distinction (I'll return to that below) and tends to suggest that manual labor in most events requires more effort and sacrifice than mental labor. His examples of manual labor are rote working class jobs like coal mining and cane cutting while his examples of mental labor are largely professional managerial class jobs (though he does mention secretarial work on more than one occasion). Still, this is not a tremendous weakness in his argument, since rather than assigning a fixed calculus for effort or sacrifice, he argues that workers should rate one another on this scale. Though the logistics of this would need to be more fully worked out at each site, workers would rate one another on some kind of scale, either a 0-100% with fine gradations, or they could assume everyone performs an "average" job only deviate from that rating in special cases. Next, compensation would need to be regulated among workplaces by rating productivity against expectations and resources. As Albert points out, these are just proposals ��e logics themselves would be negotiable. The point is simply to replace wage labor with a more egalitarian and participatory model.

This brings us to the second part of his platform: self-management. He argues that the default for parecon should be democratic self-management, while acknowledging that there will be times when it is most appropriate for the good of a society to delegate decision making to a particular group that may have some kind of expertise. He does not argue for a consensus model of decision making (a good thing, since consensus models of decision making can be paralyzing), acknowledging that even in an ideal society, well-intentioned people will have differences of opinion.

To read the rest of the review, click here.

IS PAID SIGNATURE GATHERING CORRUPTING BALLOT INITIATIVES?

The following article from a Nevada paper probes the question of whether the use of paid companies to collect signatures for ballot initiatives is having an adverse effect on the process. - Editor

BALLOT INITIATIVES: Paying for Petitions

Critics Say Company has used Underhanded Tactics in Past


By MOLLY BALL

REVIEW-JOURNAL

A smiling person with a clipboard approaches you as you enter the DMV. Will you sign a petition to put a question on the November ballot?

Opponents of certain ballot initiatives being circulated say you should think twice. A company that's being paid big money to collect the more than 58,000 required signatures, they say, has a history of shady dealings in other states.

The three initiatives in question are backed by Las Vegas Sands Corp.
Two of the initiatives, the Education Enhancement Act and the Funding Nevada's Priorities Act, would shift money from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority into education and transportation. A third, the Taxpayers Protection Act, would require a two-thirds vote in favor of a ballot initiative that seeks to raise taxes.

Signatures for the three initiatives are being collected by National Voter Outreach, a Carson City based company that has worked in Nevada and all over the country for more than a decade.

The company's president last year was indicted in Oklahoma and charged, along with two others, with conspiracy to defraud voters.

The company defends its reputation, saying it has a long track record in the business of collecting signatures for petitions. The company says the legal proceedings in Oklahoma, which are still pending, are unfair, and that charges of misconduct elsewhere are baseless.

But a watchdog group calls the company one of the top "fraud merchants" in the country and "a leader in cultivating deceptive signature gathering practices."

The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center points to signature gathering campaigns conducted by the company in Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New York and Washington where tactics used to collect signatures have been questioned and sometimes have led to initiatives being thrown off ballots.

The watchdog's executive director, Kristina Wilfore, acknowledges that the center has a liberal agenda of its own and opposes the initiatives in question. But she says the allegations of fraud in the gathering of signatures for conservative ballot measures should give voters in Nevada pause.

"Nevadans should be aware that there's been wrongdoing that has led to them being kicked off the ballot in some cases," she said. "They're known to employ some of the worst circulators. Their primary objective is to make money and to get these on the ballot through whatever means possible."

National Voter Outreach's CEO, Rick Arnold, says the company has no political ax to grind and has ample checks and balances to safeguard against fraud.

"I've been doing this for 30 years," he said. "No one can stay in business for 30 years if they're acting illegally. We do not break the law. We're very careful. We do have people who are circulators for us who attempt to do things they shouldn't do, and part of our quality control is to catch that."

The company has collected signatures on petitions with both a liberal and a conservative bent, he said, including a 2004 Nevada initiative backed by the teachers union. That initiative made it onto the ballot but didn't pass.

Its successful initiatives in Nevada go back to now-Gov. Jim Gibbons' tax restraint initiative, added to the state constitution in 1994, which implemented the requirement that two-thirds of the Legislature approve any tax increase. The company also worked for Gibbons' 2006 Education First initiative, which requires the Legislature to pass the education budget before any other budgets, and 2004's Keep Our Doctors In Nevada, a tort-reform measure.

Arnold said the company is a victim of attempts to politicize its mission, which is simply to make a profit by getting initiatives on the ballot. "We would like to be nonpartisan, and we pretty much are, but this group has blackballed us and is telling progressive groups not to use us," Arnold said.

National Voter Outreach purchases signatures from independent contractors who do the actual circulation of the petitions. Response to job ads has been high lately because of economic conditions, especially in Clark County, Arnold said.

The company pays by the signature and pays only for signatures that include all the required information, are in ink and are notarized correctly. The company then does its own checks of names and addresses against the voter rolls, to make sure each one is from a Nevada registered voter, he said.

Restrictions on the initiative process, such as a law passed by the 2007 Legislature requiring signatures from all 17 Nevada counties, make it difficult for a purely grass-roots effort to get on the ballot and give companies such as Arnold's a growing niche nationwide. Almost all the initiatives to reach the Nevada statewide ballot in recent years have employed paid signature gatherers.

Establishment politicians tend not to like initiatives because they put control back in the hands of the people, but initiatives keep coming because the people support them, Arnold said.

The signature gatherers are trained, he said, to "emphasize, 'Here's an issue we think is important. You're not making a final decision, just saying it's something the people should get to vote on.' Frankly, most people like that empowerment. The people like the process. The people support the process."

Arnold called the Oklahoma indictment frivolous. Before circulation began on a measure that would limit government spending and taxes in the state, the company, he said, sought clarification from Oklahoma elections officials about a requirement that circulators be residents of the state.

After the petitions were submitted, Arnold claims, the courts invented a new standard for state residency after the fact. The initiative was thrown off the ballot because of allegations that the signatures were ill-gotten.

The case is still pending. Wilfore said there is ample evidence of bad intentions on the part of the circulators.

"It's offensive that the people who were indicted are trying to say this is an attack on democracy," she said. "They got 15 fake state driver's licenses for people to prove residency. That's not just not knowing the rules."

In Nevada, signature gatherers are not required to be state residents, and Arnold said many of those working for the current initiatives are from out of state.

It's also legal to pay gatherers for signatures on a per-signature basis, which critics say creates an incentive for fraud. (It is not legal to pay people for their signatures.)

The 58,628 required signatures, which must be checked by county clerks and registrars before being accepted by the secretary of state, are due on May 20. The Sands-backed initiatives and others are being challenged in court.

Matt Griffin, elections deputy in the secretary of state's office, said enforcement of the signature requirements is vital to the integrity of the initiative process.

"There has to be strict oversight to ensure the initiative process is fair," he said.

Nevadans for Nevada, a group backed by the state AFL-CIO, which opposes the Sands Corp. initiatives, is still deciding what actions to take against them, said Danny Thompson, the union's secretary-treasurer.

National Voter Outreach's involvement is one troubling aspect of the campaigns, Thompson said.

"We know their history. We know what they've done in Oklahoma. Everyone they approach should be concerned about what their motives are."

Sands is committed to operating the campaigns in an aboveboard manner, said Robert Uithoven, a political consultant to the company.

"Our signature gathering is being done legally," he said. "We support these initiative campaigns in 100 percent full compliance with Nevada law. We believe the message of finding alternatives to massive tax increases is resonating statewide."

Uithoven said the signature-gathering efforts are ahead of schedule and that if the court battle doesn't derail them, the initiatives will meet the requirements for certification by the secretary of state.

Wilfore said she believes underhanded tactics have been common in signature gathering but have begun to come to light only in recent years.

"We're just starting to expose the underbelly of paid signature gathering. Whether an initiative is conservative or progressive, if you have fraudulent signature gathering going on, people being lied to, all these abuses, this pattern we're seeing -- it's a threat to anyone who cares about direct democracy."

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball @reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.

NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS IN LOS ANGELES: A MIDTERM STATUS REPORT

The following report is an evaluation of the progress of the Neighborhood Councils established in the city of Los Angeles beginning in 1999 in order to alow more citizen participation in municipal government and planning. Click on the link below to read the full report, and visit the D.O.N.E. (Department of Nieghborhood Empowerment) website for more information. - Editor

NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS IN LOS ANGELES: A MIDTERM STATUS REPORT

Urban Initiative Policy Brief

By Juliet Musso, Christopher Weare, Terry L. Cooper

Source: http://urban.usc.edu/main_doc/downloads/nc_midterm.pdf

Reporting on a study supported by the James Irvine Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, and the USC Urban Initiative

In June 1999, Los Angeles voters enacted charter provisions creating a citywide system of Neighborhood Councils (NCs). The charter states that the broad goal of the reform is “to promote more citizen participation in government and make government more responsive to local needs.” Three years have passed since the City Council approved a plan for charter implementation, and the 2006 charter-mandated review of the Neighborhood Council system is approaching.

Other cities required many years to implement fully a Neighborhood Council system, suggesting that the Los Angeles system is still in a formative stage. This briefing considers whether midstream corrections are in order, and suggests benchmarks against which to evaluate outcomes over time.2 The criteria applied in this evaluation include democratic legitimacy, the extent to which NCs provide meaningful input on city decisions (relevance), and the extent to which NCs appear to have the potential to influence City policies and develop relationships that bring together diverse groups within and across communities.

We find that:

• Democratic legitimacy requires policy reforms to ensure that Council elections are fair and inclusive:


• Policy relevance necessitates development of avenues for systematic participation in City governance;


• While it is too early to evaluate their long-term input, we suggest several benchmarks, including the quality of NC activities and impacts, the development of social and political relationships, and the impact of the system on political efficacy and attitudes toward City government.

To Read the full report click HERE...

See also the D.O.N.E. website:

http://www.lacityneighborhoods.com/page2.cfm?doc=home

US CITIES TAKE-ON PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

The book review below gives the synopsis of The Rebirth of Urban Democracy, a title that seems imperative for all activists to read. Follow up with the link below to get direct quotes from the book. It may entice you to pick it up and figure out how to get involved in your own neighborhood. Reports like this book are an excellent way to spread the word about participatory democracy in our neighborhoods and replicate the successes around the country. As well as explaining some of the obstacles faced by neighborhoods where local government refused to share power with the people, hopefully some solutions to these obstacles will be provided within this book. Although this editor has yet to get a copy to read it in full, after reading this review it is high on the must read list. -Editor

Review: “THE REBIRTH OF URBAN DEMOCRACY”

Source: http://www.citywatchla.com/images/miscellaneous/cw6-28rebirth.pdf

'BookWatchBy Jeffrey M. Berry, Kent E. Portney, and Ken Thomson, 1993.Washington D.C., The Brookings InstitutionMore than any other body of research, “Rebirth” provided a guide for the design of our citywide neighborhood council system. It is a study of face-to-face democracy in five cities – Birmingham, Dayton, Portland (Oregon), St. Paul, and San Antonio by researchers from Tufts University. The book teaches us that in order to avoid the failures of the past to blend participatory democracy into the governmental system, there needs to be a fundamental reform of the political system.The keys to success in the “model” cities were: strong political motivation for success; small neighborhoods (2,000 to 16,000 people) with natural boundaries; a citywide system in which everyone has a stake; political innovations with respect to outreach and communication; avoiding partisan politics; the ability of the public to affect city budget priorities; the power to allocate some local resources; the ability to define the city’s decision-making process; having paid staff; and a flexible system that embraces the belief that one size does not fit all.

Perhaps the most important key to long-term success, the researchers believe, was the willingness of city officials to share power. The research found that there were more community activities in the subject cities than in cities without such systems. However, it found that the least participation was in areas with the lowest-income residents.In noting that participatory democracy “remains an unattractive way to spend an evening for the vast majority of the people,” the authors found that in the most successful examples only about 10% of population participated regularly in some kind of a neighborhood organization (i.e., civic club, homeowners’ association, business group, etc.) To learn more, click here to view three pages of excerpts from this remarkable book. It should be required reading for anyone who is trying to understand what this grand experiment is all about.

Reviewed for CityWatch by Greg Nelson___CityWatchVol 6 Issue 28Published: April 4, 2008

Follow-up link with direct quotes from The Rebirth of Urban Democracy:

http://www.citywatchla.com/images/miscellaneous/cw6-28rebirth.pdf

PEER TO PEER POLITICS

Michel Bauwens - P2P Politics, the State, and the Renewal of the Emancipatory Traditions


Source: http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=133

Michel Bauwens explores the possibilities opened up by P2P projects for progressive politics, arguing that they could present an alternative to neoliberal privatization, and to the Blairite introduction of private logics in the public sphere.

Peer governance and democracy

As peer to peer technical and social infrastructures such as sociable media and self-directed teams are emerging to become an important if not dominant format for the changes induced by cognitive capitalism, the peer to peer relational dynamic will increasingly have political effects.

As a reminder, the p2p relational dynamic arises wherever there are distributed networks, i.e. networks where agents are free to undertake actions and relationships, and where there is an absence of overt coercion so that governance modes are emerging from the bottom-up. It creates processes such as peer production, the common production of value; peer governance, i.e. the self-governance of such projects; and peer property, the auto-immune system which prevents the private appropriation of the common.

It is important to distinguish the peer governance of a multitude of small but coordinated global groups, which choose non-representational processes in which participants co-decide on the projects, from representative democracy. The latter is a decentralized form of power-sharing based on elections and representatives. Since society is not a peer group with an a priori consensus, but rather a decentralized structure of competing groups, representative democracy cannot be replaced by peer governance.

However, both modes will influence and accommodate to each other. Peer projects which evolve beyond a certain scale and start facing issues of decisions about scarce resources, will probably adapt some representational mechanisms. Representative and bureaucratic decision-making can and will in some places be replaced by global governance networks which may be self-governed to a large extent, but in any case, it will and should incorporate more and more multistakeholder models, which strives to include as participants in decision-making, all groups that could be affected by such actions. This group-based partnership model is different, but related in spirit, to the individual-based peer governance, because they share an ethos of participation.

But the fundamental change is the following. In the modern view, individuals were seen as atomized. They were believed to be in need of a social contract that delegated authority to a sovereign in order to create society, and in need of socialization by institutions that addressed them as an indifferentiated mass. In the new view however, individuals are always-already connected with their peers, and looking at institutions in such a peer-informed way. Institutions therefore, will have to evolve to become support ecologies, devising ways to create infrastructures of support.

The politicians become interpreters and experts, which can guide the issues emerging out of civil society based networks into the institutional realm.

The state becomes a at least neutral (or better yet: commons-favorable) arbiter, i.e. the meta-regulator of the 3 realms, and retreats from the binary state/privatisation dilemma to the triarchical choice for an optimal mix between government regulation, private market freedom, and autonomous civil society projects. In particular, it can evolve to do the following activities. Recognizing the direct value creation of the social field, it can find ways to support such activities.
An example I recently encountered was the work of the municipality of Brest, in French Brittany. There, the “Local Democracy” section of the city makes available online infrastructures, training modules, and physical infrastructure for sharing (cameras, sound equipment, etc…), so that local individuals and groups, can create cultural and social projects on their own. For example, the Territoires Sonores project allows for the creation by the public of audio and video files to enrich custom trails, which is therefore neither produced by a private company, nor by the city itself.

The peer to peer dynamic, and the thinking and experimentation it inspires, does not just present a third form for the production of social value, it also produces also new forms of institutionalization and regulation, which could be fruitfully explored and/or applied.

Indeed, from civil society emerges a new institutionalization, the commons, which is a distinct new form of regulation and property. Unlike private property, which is exclusionary, and unlike state property, in which the collective ‘expropriates’ the individual; by contrast in the form of the commons, the individual retains his sovereignity, but has voluntarily shared it. The difference between the ethos of the Creative Commons and the General Public Licence is, that in the former, the individual is primary and the commons a derivative of individual interests, while in the GPL, the construction of the common is primordial (even though it may be out of individual interest that one collaborates, the resulting work is clearly a full part of the commons, something that is unclear in many versions of the CC-licence), but both share the voluntary aspect of the sharing of one’s work.

In terms of the institutionalization of these new forms of common property, Peter Barnes, in his important book Capitalism 3.0, explains how national parks and environmental commons (such as a proposed Skytrust), could be run by trusts, who have the obligation to retain all (natural) capital intact, and through a one man/one vote/one they would be in charge of preserving common natural resources. This could become an accepted alternative to both nationalization and deregulation/privatization.

Towards a commons orientation for a renewed progressive policy

What does it mean for the emancipatory traditions that emerged from the industrial era? I believe it could have 2 positive effects:

1) a dissociation of the automatic link with bureaucratic government modalities (which does not mean that it is not appropriate in certain circumstances); proposals can be formulated which directly support the development of the Commons

2) a dissocation from its alternative: deregulation/privatization; support for the Commons and peer production means that there is an alternative from both neoliberal privatization, and the Blairite introduction of private logics in the public sphere.

The progressive movements can thereby become informational rather than a modality of industrial society. Instead of defending the industrial status quo, it becomes again an offensive force (say: striving for an equity-based information society), more closely allied with the open/free, participatory, commons-oriented forces and movements. These three social movements have arisen because of the need for an efficient social reproduction of peer production and the common.
Open and free movements want to insure that there is raw material for free cultural production and appropriation, and fight against the monopoly rents accorded to capital, as it now restricts innovation. They work on the input side of the equation. Participatory movements want to ensure that anybody can use his specific combination of skills to contribute to common projects, and work on lowering the technical, social and political thresholds; finally, the Commons movement works on preserving the common from private appropriation, so that its social reproduction is insured, and the circulation of the common can go on unimpeded, as it is the Commons which in turn creates new layers of open and free raw material.

There is also a connection with the environmental movement. While the culturally-oriented movements fight against the artificial scarcities induced by the restrictive regimes of copyright law and patent law, the environmental movement fights against the artificial abundance created by unrestricted market logics. The removal of pseudo-abundance and pseudo-scarcity are exactly what needs to happen to make our human civilization sustainable at this stage. As has been stressed by Richard Stallman [1] and others, the copyright and patent regimes are explicitely intended to inhibit the free cooperation and cultural flow between creative humans, and are just as pernicious to the further development of humanity as the biospheric destruction.

There is therefore a huge potential for such a renewed movement for human emancipation to become aligned with the values of a new generation of youth, and achieve the long-term advantage that the Republicans had achieved since the 80s.

What needs to be done?

A priority is the creation of legal and regulatory frameworks that

1) diminish artificial scarcities in the informational field so that immense social value can be created, and immaterial conviviality can replace the deadly logic of material accumulation\

2) introduce true costing in the material field so that the market no longer creates negative exernalities in the natural environment.

3) create more distributed access to the means of production (peer-based financing, distributed energy production, etc…) so that the peer to peer dynamic can be introduced in the sphere of material production as well.

——————————————————————————–

[1] Richard Stallman opposes the use of the concept of intellectual property on the following grounds: ‘It is an error to say “intellectual property regime’ here, because only some, not all, of the various ‘intellectual property’ laws cause scarcity of something of inherent value. For instance, trademark law does not cause scarcity of anything of real value. Using a term which includes trademark law is an unnecessary error’.
(personal email, February 25, 2007)

Further links:

Foundation for P2P alternatives
P2P political concepts

ACTIVIST GROUP RECOGNIZED FOR CITY COUNCIL POLICY REFORM

It is great that the people of Berkley are so active in their City Council and it seems that participation has helped them work through the "hot button" issues that have been up for debate. This article also points out some of the challenges facing those who want to participate, such as finding and using an adequate meeting space. It must be one that is accessible to all people and able to fit all the people that wish to take part.

Language is another question of participation that is not addressed in the following article. When people who speak and understand languages other than English wish to participate, it is necessary to provide interpretation. This is not as daunting a task as it seems because many people are bilingual or multilingual and for their own experience or desire to participate, they would be willing to help out. At grassroots conferences around the country this is evident, so it can surely carry on to the City Council level. Breaking down language barriers provides better understanding of other individuals and groups and is key to making successful participatory democracy. - Editor

Activist Group Recognized for City Council Policy Reform

By Matthew Peters

Contributing WriterThursday, April 3, 2008

Source:http://www.dailycal.org/article/101130/activist_group_recognized_for_city_council_policy

The Berkeley City Council has acquired a nationwide reputation for addressing hot-button issues, but some Berkeley residents say that until recently, they were restricted from speaking out during City Council meetings.

Last Friday, a local activist group was awarded for its role in improving the level of public participation during City Council meetings.

SuperBOLD, or Super Berkeleyans Organizing for Library Defense-a Berkeley citizens' rights advocate group, received the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for its role in promoting public participation during City Council meetings.
The award "recognize(s) Bay Area organizations and individuals who have made significant contributions to the advancement of freedom of expression," according to its Web site.

Two years ago, SuperBOLD met with attorneys from the First Amendment Project, a non-profit law firm, to file letters against the City Council, threatening a lawsuit unless they changed their public speaking procedures during council meetings.

Before the City Council's reforms, ten members of the public were chosen by lottery to speak during council meetings. Those who lost the lottery were not allowed to speak, said Councilmember Kriss Worthington.

Worthington said that the letters prompted the council to spend several months reforming the system. The current reforms were enacted earlier this year.

"Under the new system, even if you have one person waiting to speak, if they're patient, they'll have a chance to speak," he said.

According to SuperBOLD committee member Gene Bernardi, the award will help the group attain public awareness and support.

"It's giving us a lot more attention to the issue, and I think that will hopefully bring more people into the fold to help," she said.

Although she said she believes public participation has improved, Bernardi said that more help is needed to improve the City Council. She said that the city must increase the size of its council chambers to adequately involve the public during well-attended council meetings.

"Some people were standing in the cold and in the mud," she said. "It's not participatory democracy if you can't hear what's going on."

Worthington says the council chambers can hold roughly 100 people, and over 1,000 have attended council meetings before.

"I think (Bernardi) has a legitimate complaint," he said. "Most people can't sit in the audience and watch (the council meetings). I think council meetings should be moved to a wheelchair accessible space and a larger space, so that more people can be there and watch."

Worthington added that SuperBOLD is expected to attend a council meeting on April 22 to propose the "Sunshine Ordinance," which aims to make city information more easily accessible to the public.

SPEAKING OF DEMOCRACY

Speaking of Democracy

Published on Tuesday, August 1, 2006 by CommonDreams.org


Source:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0801-20.htm

by Maud Schaafsma and Charlie Cray

In the popular American imagination democracy is primarily a system of government that enables the people to vote every few years for their elected representatives. President Bush and the Congress reaffirmed this core concept of representative government this month when they moved to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for 25 more years. In important ways, however, it was little more than a hollow gesture.

Back when President Johnson first signed the landmark civil rights legislation into law, he committed the nation to eliminating race-based voting discrimination. The Act gave the Department of Justice the authority to oversee election practices in nine states where such discrimination was rampant, and often acutely violent.

Yet the commitment that Johnson and Congress pledged the country to was effectively reversed in 2000, when state and federal officials allowed the disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters in Florida, where Bush supporters stripped them from registration roles, ensuring his election. Instead of the brutal beatings that haunted Americans on the nightly news back in the 1960s, the disenfranchisement of minority voters has shifted to more obscure means, including technology- and data-based fraud.

Thus, forty years after enacting a comprehensive Voting Rights Act, we have been unable to secure a fundamental right to vote for all Americans and we cannot ensure fair and inclusive elections for our highest political offices. We all know that there is something fundamentally flawed and impoverished in the state of American democracy, something that cannot simply be attributed to the imperial personalities of Bush and Cheney. The renewal of the Voting Rights Act should force us to take stock, to perform a much deeper reassessment of the state of American democracy, now weakened on so many fronts.

Take the June decision in Randall v. Sorrell, in which the Supreme Court struck down Vermont’s cap on state electoral campaign expenditures. The Vermont laws were enacted to ensure that ordinary Vermonters could run for elective office and participate in meaningful debates on public issues in state elections without being required to have enormous personal wealth or corporate support. The active participation by a greater part of the citizenry in election campaigns is as fundamental to the integrity of democratic institutions as securing everyone’s right to vote. Those who don’t vote often say they don’t see any reason to bother voting since there aren’t any candidates who even remotely represent their interests. Beating up on a few swing-district incumbents over the war in Iraq or the rising cost of gas may be important to this year’s close congressional race, but in the long run it could just be another chapter in the annals of popular apathy.

When there are few candidates willing to represent the “will of the people” on key issues like Iraq, it suggests that something must be done to open up the process to the people themselves. But when campaign finance reform laws that level the playing field are struck down by the federal courts, democracy is just as weakened as it is when significant numbers of voters are disenfranchised because of the color of their skin.

The right to vote is unquestionably at the heart of democracy. But beyond securing this fundamental right, we need to restore our appetite for taking our concerns to the broader community.

Key to limiting the influence of corporate money in politics is our ability to challenge corporate speech and corporate squashing of independent speech. Campaign finance reform is just one facet of a concern that we can ill afford to leave to the lawyers to settle. There are many key places in the public sphere where corporate speech rights have been used to constrict and even dumb down the political discourse, undermining the cultural basis of our political democracy. A few examples:

Cable companies have been aggressive in using state laws to challenge community wi-fi zones in cities and towns across the country;

The FCC’s proposal to allow further media consolidation a few years ago was framed around the First Amendment rights of corporate broadcasters;

Conservatives and liberals have joined together in challenging the pervasive spread of commercial “speech” (advertising) – especially in places like schools, where parents say the message conveyed by Channel One programs is about selfish consumption rather than civic engagement and other core American, community, and family values.

The movements fighting on these and other fronts may each start from a different place, but at some point all confront the corporations’ illegitimate claims to speech rights. That’s why policy advocates, community organizers, parents, and ordinary people without any particular political aspirations must begin to understand and resist the extension of illegitimate rights to corporations, especially when they are being used to undermine our own rights. We have to become just as conscious of how corporate speech rights have been used to fundamentally disenfranchise us all – as a community – as we are scrambling to respond to the insidious and impenetrable means used to disenfranchise voters in the 2000 and 2004 elections.
Every once in a while popular opposition to the threat of corporate speech erupts into mainstream political debates, but without a strong contextual analysis, the issue fades into the background as a lost opportunity. A few years ago, when corporate telemarketers were poised to launch a new marketing blitz over the phones, 50 million people signed up for the Do-Not-Call Registry. When the telemarketers threatened to sue using their First Amendment rights, i.e. go to the courts and argue that their right to “speak” is more important than our right to privacy, Congressional leaders who are normally at the beck and call of corporations responded by passing a law that preempted the telemarketers and enforced the people’s will.

As activists and concerned citizens, we need to begin to use opportune conflicts like this as wedges into a broader set of questions that will only be resolved through long-term struggle, while developing strategies where we are strongest – at the local level. A good precedent was recently established in Humboldt County, California where a majority of voters chose to prohibit non-local corporations from contributing money to Humboldt County elections, asserting at the same time that they will not recognize any suggestion that corporations have a “right” to overturn the popular will. Local efforts like this are potential flashpoints in the new democratic populist backlash against corporate rule.

Out of threads of community-based activism like thi