Dear Tonini,
You are right that "Charter coming from the top does not serve the purpose of establishing DD".
That is why "the people" of a community or group must establish the Charter for their community or group.
That is why WDDM has always encouraged everyone to meet locally and advocate that some form of I&BR be established to begin whatever form of DD the local people choose.
WDDM, which is a community, must establish methods for WDDM to function. We need to discuss how we can implement our goal of education and initiation of Direct Democracy throughout the world. So this WDDM community must have it's own WDDM Charter which provides a way for WDDM to make decisions, only about WDDM and for WDDM. The people of WDDM are the members and are referred to as the "bottom" of WDDM and the people making decisions are the "Top". In order for the members to have input, a fair method must be created to discuss, initiate petitions, and finally decide on the matter [for WDDM]. This function is missing in WDDM and since no decision is taken, endless bickering continues.
This may be a bit of a lesson, without established accepted procedure no community could unite in a decision or function. The first step in a meeting is to call to order and decide how to function. Usually the group appoints one to function as chairperson who recognises who will speak so all dont speak at once. Often a person keeps notes. These are basic but necessary "rules" established by the group to function. This is what a WDDM Charter is, and we have no functioning WDDM Charter. We do not want to make a Charter for the world, or for your government. We simply want to establish a method for WDDM to function.
Unfortunately Antonio has never grasped this concept and continues to think we are trying to make a Charter for the world which is a bit grandiose in the least.
I hope this clarifys a bit. The world is one big argument. If we want to make resolution to these arguments, we need "rules of engagement" [discussion] and procedures to make decisions, [Initiative and referendum].
Please visit the WDDM website. The FORUM provides a proper platform for discussion, initiative and decision. Unfortunately it is not utilized enough. As young people join I hope it will be used more.
http://www.world-wide-democracy.net/Thank you for joining us and contributing to our discussion.
Bruce
Bruce Eggum
Gresham Wisconsin, USA
http://www.doinggovernment.com/
Check out my Blog too
http://bruceeggum.blogster.com/http://usinitiative.com vote
On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 2:57 PM, <
tobuz> wrote:
Hi everybody,
let me say first of all that I am surprised in reading some offending words in this discussion.
Direct Democracy is based on the respect for all opinions.
Coming to the matter uner discussion :
I believe Antonio is right if he thinks that a Charter coming from the top does not serve the purpose of establishing DD.
The power of political parties and their masters (stock exchange financiers) will never permit this to happen.
Thus, in my opinion, DD can be established only proceeding from the bottom up.
In my opinion a Charter can serve in having DD managed after being accepted as the ruling procedure.
To me the magic word is education, in the first instance from political movements ( DD movements ) explaining the concept of DD to the citizens and convincing them to make a change in the procedure to rule the nation.
When this is done, all the rest will follow.
We at Democrazia Federale are doing just this, opening up DD groups all over our country and spreading the idea.
Have a good night
Federico Tonini
---------- Initial Header -----------
From : Antonio Rossin
To : wddm@world-wide-democracy.net
Cc :
Date : Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:34:05 +0200
Subject : Re: [WDDM] WDDM Charter and up-coming meeting
Subsequently, these simpletons present the problem of
the worldwide lack of Direct Democracy as if it were a lack of a fitter DD charter exclusively.
Even worse, by doing so they do deviate the people's
attention from what the people themselves could do directly and responsibly by their own, to what the leaders like to point out to them as a charter to follow.
......
Another good example of DD at work, IMHO, it is the Homeschooling initiative mostly in the U.S.
.....
To summarize, the success of Democracy -- and of every similar problem involving people as a whole -- foresees two intervention levels:
Level One:
interventions on the offering of Democracy, like DD charters,
DD laws, DD models etc. Let's call this, in short, "top-down"
Level Two:
interventions to increase the people's overall demand of a
democratic social arrangement.
Plainly, this kind of demand is a matter of basic education
family education) growing it from bottom up.
***************
Well now, to stick to te point: Direct Democracy, in everybody's experience, is unlikely to succeed if we were unable to make these two intervention levels match together.
.......
"The officer's terms were due for new election and discussion about a definition of Direct Democracy caused much confusion in the WDDM group meeting the last couple years."
........
I couldn't resist.
The confusion in the WDDM group was due to those guys (with Bruce as their champion) who managed to fix the "lack of Democracy" problem by being active at 'Level One' exclusively -- i.e., by managing to exclude the 'Level Two' issues away from the WDDM debate up to now.
Jim Powell wrote:
Hi All,
I have to respond to Antonio
Bruce has put much effort into the new charter.
I believe that this is a model that can be used as a reference for communities to develop DD.
It is obvious Antonio, that this is developed in WDDM.