community decision-making Quotes

Hence as a private man has a right to say what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their substance for the Administration of public affairs.

Well, I would say that we've got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it's getting other people to do things for us that we progress.

I guess I'm interested in people and society and what we do collectively in the realm of decisions that shape our world. You know, at least on a human level.

We do not understand democracy in its bourgeois meaning--of babbling, lack of discipline, anarchy. We understand democracy as the active participation of the citizens in formulating and implementing the Party's policy.

Trust the people -- that is the crucial lesson of history.

I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watching what's happening, and goes, 'This is something that's not our place to decide.' The public needs to decide whether these programs or policies are right or wrong.

The consequences of these institutions (The towns or districts, the congregations, the schools,and the militia.) have been, that the inhabitants, having acquired from their infancy the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs, it was in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place, and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes and the war with Great Britain.

Those communal areas have got elected municipalities, which have got to do their work as, as fully, democratically elected municipal councils.

The idea here is for communities to decide how they meet these criteria for becoming sustainable economically, ecologically and socially.Through a community decision-making process. And exactly how that would be configured, you know, remains to be established. The process of community budgeting, participatory budgeting, is one model that's been suggested.

I still support the right of local communities to make up their own minds about whether or not they want to permit fracking.

Popular congresses are the only means to achieve popular democracy. Any system of government other than popular congresses is undemocratic.

Small unit democracy, I found early on, didn't work for me.

Where is democratic process or popular sovereignty for the endangered population? It cannot be "given" or "allocated" by some other power without that same power claiming the right to withdraw what it gives.

What you need to do is protect the structures and dynamics that are helping the people choose. The only thing that we can do is to respect the will of the people when it comes to majority processes. It is not for us to impose a model, it is not for us to impose answers to some critical questions.