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00670: Proposal for an umbrella group for the Global Democracy Movement

From: <WDDM webmaster>
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 15:57:42 -0600
Subject: Proposal for an umbrella group for the Global Democracy Movement

Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 02:20:33 -0500
From: Josep <wdtaskforce(at)googlegroups.com>



PROPOSAL FOR AN UMBRELLA GROUP FOR THE GLOBAL DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT

Dear Colleagues in the movement for democratic global governance:

A small group of us, whose names you will see below, are in the process
of putting together a proposal for establishing a coalition of all those
working to promote world democracy and the rule of international law. We
plan to present the full proposal to you once it is a bit further
developed. In the meantime, we are writing to tell you about it so that
you can consider it and can let us know whether you support it and/or
have any comments or concerns about it.

We are currently working on the formalities required for incorporating a
legal entity which will probably be based in the Netherlands. Its final
name has not yet been chosen and it will probably be registered under a
stopgap pending full agreement as to its final name. In this letter we
will call the new alliance “NewOrg.”

NewOrg’s proposed function will be to act as an enabler and service
centre for all of the divergent global democracy organizations and
individuals currently working to strengthen and democratise our systems
of global governance. These are some of the functions envisaged for NewOrg:

*

Publicize and promote the ideas of world citizenship and
democratic global governance and act as an information clearing
house for all mundialist and world democracy organizations. It
will publish its own e-zine;

*

Help evolve a strategy and take cooperative action to actually
achieve the establishment of a more democratic and effective means
of global governance;

*

Coordinate and operate a database of all individual mundialists
worldwide;

*

Operate a mundialist website, which will present a unified
mundialist front to the world focused on promoting world democracy
and establishing the international rule of law. At the same time,
the website will act as a single exhibition space for all the
divergent movements we represent and from which visitors can
select the individual organizations to which they would wish to
give their support;

*

When needs arise, be positioned to act as a spokesperson for the
movement as a whole;

*

Offer training in campaigning and political activism and offer
other support facilities such as legal advice, conference
organising, etc.;

*

Be set up with sufficient professionalism to enable it to attract
funds from donors and to develop its own membership and funding base;

*

Be constituted so that it can succeed in its initial aims and be
able to grow with consensus, to achieve more ambitious aims when
they come within reach.

To achieve the above, NewOrg has to be structured to win the support of
the mundialist organizations, which are to provide its grassroots.

Clearly, NewOrg has to operate in a fully democratic fashion. To this
end we are proposing that all voting within the organization will be on
the basis of individual members: one head, one vote. It will be up to
mundialist organizations, which are all eligible to be non-voting
members of NewOrg, to encourage their members to join NewOrg if they
wish to influence NewOrg’s vote-counts. In this way, an organization
with a thousand members will, quite rightly, be able to have a greater
say than one with just ten.

Similarly, those serving on the board or on other committees within
NewOrg would do so in their personal capacity. However, we anticipate
that leaders from the main mundialist organizations will be included
within the coalition’s leadership and that their concerns and
contributions will thus be well represented.

It is not our wish to take members away from the grassroots
organizations, where the hard slog has to be done and whose best
interests NewOrg is designed to serve. To this end and at this stage,
our proposal is that only members who are also members of one or more
grassroots mundialist organizations should have full voting rights
within NewOrg. Individuals, who come to NewOrg independently, will be
strongly encouraged to join one or more of NewOrg’s component mundialist
movements.

We believe that once NewOrg can demonstrate that the mundialist movement
is, in essence, a single unified force in the world, it will move
mundialism from the fringes, into the mainstream of political thought.
Membership of mundialist organizations will greatly increase and our
message will become sufficiently coherent to enable the movement as a
whole to attract funding from governmental and international agencies as
well as from high-net-worth individuals.

The timescale that we are working to is as follows.

*

Within the next two months, we will start the initial phase of the
project. We plan to invite a selection of mundialist and world
democracy organizations that have expressed interest in
participating in this trial, to join us in field-testing and
finalising the systems, by-laws and procedures. This process could
take up to six months. As the by-laws and operating procedures are
developed, we will ask, from time to time, for everyone’s input
and suggestions.

*

We would then hope to be able to make a general call for
registrations of interest in NewOrg. A virtual, online, would be
called of those interested. At this meeting, NewOrg’s temporary
and self-appointed governing board will post proposed by-laws on
rules of membership, conduct of meetings, election of board, which
can be altered by those attending the virtual meeting as they see
fit.

*

After this meeting has adjourned, the new rules will be put in
place and a voting membership will be recruited.

*

A final virtual meeting will then be held. NewOrg’s self-elected
temporary board will resign en bloc, in favour of a new board,
elected according to the democratic rules of the organization.

All in all, we believe that a realistic time frame for the final launch
of NewOrg will be within six to twelve months from the date of this letter.

Members of NewOrg will be asked to pay a small affordable membership fee
to cover NewOrg’s administrative and other costs. This fee will be
waived on individual request. This would be in addition to any fees paid
to their own organizations. However, we also hope to offset the
requirement for membership fees by raising funds from institutional and
individual donations and by the professional merchandising of NewOrg’s
logo and name.

Seeing that we have taken on the initiative of making the proposal, we
are also taking on the responsibility of raising whatever funds are
needed until the point when NewOrg becomes fully operational and is
taken off our hands.

We look forward to NewOrg’s effective deployment on behalf of our
various mundialist movements. In the meantime, we would welcome any
expressions of support, comments or suggestions from recipients of this
letter. Please send such comments to wdtaskforce(at)googlegroups.com. We
would ask, however, that everyone avoid or refrain from detailed
discussion at this point. That time will come later, when the interim
working group is in a position to make a full presentation.

This effort grew out of discussions on the Community of World Citizens
list serve. You can find out more about the movement's activities by
visiting the website at www.worldunitydays.net.

You can also tell other people about our project and direct them to the
form at http://worldcitizenship.net/NewOrg/?p=subscribe&id=2 that they
can use to join our distribution list.

We look forward to future collaboration.

Sincerely,

Kenneth Kostyo: US & World Citizen, international corporate lawyer
living in Amsterdam, currently working fulltime to raise funding for a
variety of global democracy oriented projects.

Josep Ll. Ortega: Spanish & World Citizen, living in Andorra, registered
world citizen, founder of the Community of World Citizens, member of
Europe United, World United Nation Party, World Citizen Network, World
Party, the Global Partnership for World Democracy, Democratic World
Federalists, Sapiens, Community Earth, Vote World Government, World
Beyond Borders, e-Parliament, World Wide Direct Democracy
Movement, adopter of SIMPOL, supporter of the Committee for a Democratic
UN and the Provisional Peoples’ Assembly, endorser of Earth Charter and
the Manifesto for Word Citizenship and Democratic Global Governance.

Raj Shekhar Chandola: Indian & World Citizen, Head, World Unity & Peace
Education Department (WUPED), City Montessori School (CMS), Lucknow
(India); Member, Vote World Government, World Government of World
Citizens, World Constitution and Parliamentary Association, Institute on
World Problems and Global Partnership for World Democracy.

Hugh Steadman: New Zealand & World Citizen, member of The Sapiens
Movement, Simpol-NZ and Vote World Government.

Lucy Law Webster: US & World Citizen, officer of the World Federalist
Movement, and Citizens for Global Solutions, and the World Democracy
Movement—USA, and Economists for Peace and Security, and Executive
Director of the Center for War/Peace Studies.

Rob Wheeler: US & World Citizen; UN Representative, Association of World
Citizens & Global Ecovillage Network; Organizer, Global Partnership for
World Democracy; Organizing Committee, World Democracy Movement—USA;
Representative, One World Now; and Deputy Secretary & Candidate, the
People's Congress.

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