If we're searching for a politics that can capture the mutual spirit unleashed by coronavirus, we should try neighborocracy
What would “neighborocracy” look like? We have been investigating the power of localism/localisation, and democratic innovation, since the start of A/UK. As we observe the flourishing of mutualism during the Covid pandemic, our interest seems ever more relevant.
One of our participants in our The Elephant Meets… sessions, Nathanial Whitestone, recently conducted a video interview (embedded above) with the practitioners of “neighbourhood democracy” in India (it’s the context for the Indian children’s parliaments we blogged about a few years ago).
The participants in the video (and the times of their appearance) are:-
Host: Nathaniel Whitestone
01.32 Indra Adnan (from A/UK)
10.59 Joseph Ratinam - expert in Neighborocracy
19.40 Swarnalakshmi Ravi - convenor of Global Youth Council, former National Child Prime Minister of India
27.52 General discussion till end (1:19.09)
We asked Nathaniel to write us a general introduction to the crossover between the neighbourhood parliament movement and the sociocratic method they practice:
Let me tell you about a bottom-up revolution that will secure our democracies and fulfil the promise on which they were founded - a sustainable community movement.
I joined this movement in 1996 as a co-founder of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas (ecovillage.org) and I’ve been serving it in one way or another ever since.
Right now I want to focus on what I think may be one of its most important initiatives: the Neighbourhood Parliament movement - which is connected to the “children’s parliament” phenomenon in India [reported on previously in A/UK.]
Neighbourhood Parliaments originated in India, where over the last thirty years they have developed 400,000 local mutual aid groups under the Neighbourhood Parliament banner (see a recent example here).
Approximately half of those groups are now using Sociocracy, a form of consent-based governance developed in the Netherlands in the 1970s which has since spread around the world as a global standard for governance in which every participant has a real voice.
[For more on how this works, see this collection of presentation materials from Indian Catholic priest Father Edwin John, a leader in this movement. Also a November 2019 report on Fr. John, taken from Badische Zeitung, made during his European tour supported by the European Commission - ed].
In sociocratic Neighbourhood Parliaments, every household in a neighbourhood of 20 - 30 homes contributes a representative. Every representative has a ministerial role in their Neighbourhood Parliament, and together they work on the projects they decide are most important for their neighbourhood, using the organising focus of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
These Neighbourhood Parliaments then connect to one another, forming village, district, and state parliaments made up of representatives elected upward.
Where Neighbourhood Parliaments are widespread, local politics transform, with a majority of women elected to office and a reduction of corruption. In times of disaster, relief aid is distributed more equitably, because people in the villages have a say and food or construction materials cannot easily be diverted for private profit.
In times of calm, the Parliaments build bridges and fight child marriage and plant trees, pursuing local priorities.
This movement - the Neighborocracy movement - is now spreading around the world, to Africa and Latin America and Europe. You can find the links here. Other global networks, the Ecovillage networks and Transition Town networks for example, are connecting up - a project between them is being launched, to develop manuals and training materials for a European version of neighbourhood parliaments.
Finally, our revolution doesn’t need to overthrow democratic states. We are saving our democracies.
Systems of corporate kleptocracy (the Trump regime a great example) have often stood in the way of taking effective climate action. Scientists are being muzzled, public officials bought over, anti-climate-change propaganda intensified, while our global reliance on fossil fuels increases. This is despite the reliable reports of the oil companies’ own researchers – delivered during the sixties, seventies and eighties - that climate change would be the result.
We are overthrowing that system. With the global pandemic, and everyone’s increasing awareness of the need for mutual aid, this is our moment. We can win.
Contact Nathaniel at his website, A Fairer Society