new municipal agenda
14 page pdf.. consists of excerpts from From Urbanization to Cities (1987) by murray bookchin
reading because of this:
If we can agree that societies don’t need to be hierarchical, capitalist, and nature-crushing, what forms of social and political organization would get us to that better place? That’s the subject of (this new edition of) From Urbanization to Cities. Join us and let’s discuss! https://t.co/S7pegsvShR
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/debbiebookchin/status/1484620742104948737
need: means to undo our hierarchical listening .. to self/others/nature
Register here: https://t.co/xr5OGZdFre
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/debbiebookchin/status/1484647456612794376
(from site linked): where politics becomes an everyday act in which ordinary people and local communities take the power of decision making into their own hands
need: everyday life via curiosities over decision making.. listening deep enough for a legit ecology of freedom
notes/quotes from 14 pg pdf:
Libertarian Municipalism: The New Municipal Agenda
Any agenda that tries to restore and amplify the classical meaning of politics and citizenship must clearly indicate what they are not..Politics is not statecraft, and citizens are not “constituents” or “taxpayers.” Statecraft consists of operations that engage the state: the exercise of its monopoly of violence, its control of the entire regulative apparatus of society in the form of legal and ordinance making bodies, and its governance of society by means of professional legislators, armies, police forces, and bureaucracies. Statecraft takes on a political patina when so-called “political parties” attempt, in various power plays, to occupy the offices that make state policy and execute it. This kind of “politics” has an almost tedious typicality. A “political party” is normally a structured hierarchy, fleshed out by a membership that functions in a top-down manner. It is a miniature state, and in some countries, such as the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, a party actually constituted the state itself.
..every party has its roots in the state, not in the citizenry. .it is meant precisely to contain the body politic, to control it and to manipulate it, not to express its will–or even permit it to develop a will. In no sense is a conventional “political” party derivative of the body politic or constituted by it. .. They are formed to mobilize, to command, to acquire power, and to rule. Thus they are as inorganic as the state itself– an excrescence of society that has no real roots in it, no responsiveness to it beyond the needs of faction, power, and mobilization.
Politics, by contrast, is an organic phenomenon. It is organic in the very real sense that it is the activity of a public body–a community, if you will–just as the process of flowering is an organic activity of a plant. Politics, conceived as an activity, involves rational discourse, public empowerment, the exercise of practical reason, and its realization in a shared, indeed participatory, activity. It is the sphere of societal life beyond the family and the personal needs of the individual that still retains the intimacy, involvement, and sense of responsibility enjoyed in private arenas of life.
problem is.. we’ve been living in sea world for so long (aka: all the time) .. we don’t know – can’t hear – legit needs/desires.. need a means to undo our hierarchical listening before we can just get out of sea world..
By contrast, political movements, in their authentic sense, emerge out of the body politic itself, and although their programs are formulated by theorists, they also emerge from the lived experiences and traditions of the public itself..articulated deeply felt, albeit often unconscious, public desires and needs.
lived experience in sea world.. so non legit needs..
The immediate goal of a libertarian municipalist agenda is ..to reopen a public sphere in flat opposition to statism, one that allows for maximum democracy in the literal sense of the term, and to create in
embryonic form the institutions that can give power to a people generally.
even any form of democratic admin is keeping us from us.. keeping us from getting out of sea world..
2
..Parties that do not intertwine with these grassroots forms of popular organization are not political in the classical sense of the term. In fact, they are bureaucratic and antithetical to the
development of a participatory politics and participating citizens.
citizen ness is B.. we need to org around legit needs
The authentic unit of political life, in effect, is the municipality, whether as a whole, if it is humanly scaled, or in its various subdivisions, notably the neighborhood. . . .
gillis on small scale et al
imagine if we just focused on listening to the itch-in-8b-souls.. first thing.. everyday.. and used that data to augment our interconnectedness.. we might just get to a more antifragile, healthy, thriving world.. the ecosystem we keep longing for..
what the world needs most is the energy of 8b alive people
A new political agenda can be a municipal agenda only if we are to take our commitments to democracy seriously.
again to the oi ness of any form of democratic admin..
chomsky serious things law (though deeper than he’s suggested)
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh
The living cell that forms the basic unit of political life is the municipality, from which everything–such as citizenship, interdependence, confederation, and freedom–emerges.
if the cell is legit living.. it’s already free.. we just need to get it (all of us) out of sea world
There is no way to piece together any politics unless we begin with its most elementary forms: the villages, towns, neighborhoods, and cities in which people live on the most intimate level of political interdependence beyond private life.
rather.. more elementary: maté basic needs.. there’s a nother way
It is on this level that they can begin to gain a familiarity with the political process, a process that involves a good deal more than voting and information.
we need a much deeper level.. one that is not more than voting/info.. one that is sans voting/info.. all the red flags
3
The real difficulty is largely administrative: how to provide for the material amenities of city life, support complex logistical and traffic burdens, or maintain a sanitary environment.
not if we org around legit needs
6
Every means would be provided, whether aesthetic or institutional, to foster participation in full as an educative and ethical process that turns the citizen’s latent competence into an actual reality. Social and political life would be consciously orchestrated to foster a profound sensitivity, indeed an active sense of concern for the adjudication of differences without denying the need for vigorous dispute when it is needed. Public service would be seen as a uniquely human attribute, not a “gift” that a citizen confers on the community or an onerous task that he or she must fulfill. Cooperation and civic responsibility would become expressions of acts of sociability and philia, not ordinances that the citizen is expected to honor in the breach and evade where he or she can do so.
i think this is whalespeak.. i think we have this all backwards (or whatever wards).. we need to let go.. enough.. to see the dance.. not try to orchestrate it
9
workers and econ
need to let go of the supposed to’s of school/work
oikos (the economy our souls crave).. ‘i should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.’ – gaston bachelard, the poetics of space
need to let go of any form of m\a\p
As for the technological bases for decentralized communities, we are now witnessing a revolution that would have seemed hopelessly utopian only a few decades ago.
need tech as it could be – to undo our hierarchical listening
11
A serious political movement that seeks to advance a libertarian municipalist agenda, in turn, must be patient–just as the Russian populists of the last century (one of whom is cited in the dedication to this book) wer
rather.. humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
12
What is of immense practical importance is that prestatist institutions, traditions, and sentiments remain alive in varying degrees throughout most of the world.
same song.. let go.. we need a legit re\set
1\ undisturbed ecosystem (common\ing) can happen
2\ if we create a way to ground the chaos of 8b legit free people
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m of care – jan 20 – p2 – from dawn of everything (book) ch 8 – imaginary cities
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be you. 