The typical theory of a people's assembly is that it give everyone a chance at participation and input, augmented with measures like a progressive stack to help elevate marginalized voices. While these measures can help and the model has its uses, there are some core issues which we have sought to address while modelling our assembly.
As decisionmaking bodies, the need for consensus and long deliberation is inefficient. Despite alleviating measures, they also tend to favor certain types of participants. Of course this means white men still usually have an outsized influence, but also it tends to favor seasoned activists and organizers who are most used to such situations and are likely familiar with whatever regulatory procedure is managing the proceedings. Likewise the need for addressing a large crowd could discourage those who are unsure of their ideas, not confident, or otherwise not inclined to public speaking.
Due to the above issues, I call our model a people's convention. It is a variant of the people's assembly meant as a body to hear from a group of ordinary locals to design a program which is broadly popular and agreed upon. It will not be a decisionmaking body and instead hold this programmatic function, in this case assembly a list of demands of local government.
Due to the issues with group speaking, and to accessible to as many people as possible, the bulk of the event will be conducted in smaller groups of 5-15. Those people will go around each having a chance to share their concerns, and then will agree on someone to send those concerns forward. Those delegates will all meet, combine demands, and then present the concerns of their groups to the crowd at-large. The mic will then be opened briefly to anyone who has additional concerns or has some other item they would like considered. From there, a list of demands will be synthesized. This small group model should make the process faster, help people speak who otherwise would not be comfortable doing so, and eliminate the need for the complex procedure require by large crowd deliberation. A suggestion brought by the organizers will be put through same process as any other.
I would call this a populist answer to vanguardism, a pars populi. A party of the people, which is to approach the whole of the body politic as its own party, which can be motivated by the needs of the working-class and poor who make up its majority. While the masses may have different views, all of us at the bottom generally have a shared material interest which can serve as a point of programmatic unity. The people's convention, as a platform-making and programming body, can create the foundation of this concept as an event of mass action and radically democratic organization.
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