Loomio
Wed 31 Dec 2014 12:03PM

Occupy Democracy Provisional Demands

JT Julie T Public Seen by 139

Occupy Democracy has developed a series of provisional demands and is seeking to develop these.

At the final general assembly of our 9-day occupation of Parliament Square in October, we agreed a set of provisional demands under three headings – People Before Profit, Environment Before Profit and Democracy Before Profit. These provisional demands have been developed at the subsequent November , December & January occupations with additional demands agreed on the Environment, Right to Recall MPs, Housing, the arms trade, debt and money creation.

They will be subject to an ongoing, open and democratic process of refinement and improvement. This is where Loomio comes in.

What do you think of our Demands? How could they be improved? What additional Demands do you recommend ( some popular proposals from social media are below) ?

AGREED DEMANDS :

People Before Profit

  • No Privatisation of the NHS

  • Close down Tax Havens

  • No TTIP CETA & TISA trade deals

  • Abolish Tuition Fees

  • Living Wage for All

  • Universal Basic Income

  • No to privatisation of all public services, including but not limited to schools, police, public transport and public spaces

  • Reverse Privatisation of Public Spaces

  • Programme of Green Social Housing

  • Reintroduce rent controls.

  • Use the one and a half million empty buildings in the UK for homes and projects to solve the housing crisis.

  • Amend the LASPO Act 2012 to decriminalise the squatting of unused residential buildings.

  • Stop subsidising and promoting the arms trade (currently £700m/year) including shutting DSO

  • Don’t waste £100 billion on renewing Trident

  • Cancel unjust debt to free countries from debt slavery

  • Take the power of money creation out of private hands

Environment Before Profit

  • Invest in renewable energy and ban the production and import of all unsustainable, dangerous & extreme energy including Fracking, Coal Bed Methane, Tar Sands , Arctic Oil extraction and Industrial Biomass.

  • A global decarbonisation programme for fossil fuels and an emergency  transition to a truly sustainable energy system in line with the increasingly  urgent climate science.

  • New Green Deal including One Million Climate Jobs

  • Support the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth [http://pwccc.wordpress.com/programa/]

Democracy Before Profit

  • Reform of Party funding & lobbying and ensure full transparency

  • Reform and Democratise the City of London Corporation and end the role of Rembrancer

  • Introduce Proportional Representation

  • MPs not to have second jobs

  • Close the “revolving door” [between government and corporations]

  • Oppose corporate secondment

  • On entering the Houses of Parliament members must divest themselves of all financial interests and this must be subject to credible oversight

  • Major democratic reform of the media in order to break the stranglehold of the media by vested interests

  • Right of Recall of MPs

  • Hold a citizen-led Constitutional Convention for real democracy which must recognise that a Constitution is a living document.

POPULAR DEMANDS PROPOSED ON SOCIAL MEDIA :

Introduce a right to direct and participatory democracy, and devolve power to the lowest level possible - e.g Right for a large enough number of people to to call a referendum and veto legislation and Community Bill of Rights at Local Government.

Monetary reform (along the lines of Positive Money)

End the Monarchy as Head of State.

D

David Fri 2 Jan 2015 10:10PM

'Close down the tax havens' is a good general tag for a load of stuff on tax evasion/avoidance/corporate governmental capture & regulatory arbitrage but I think it needs to be unpacked more - the fiddles aren't just through offshore islands.
Relatedly we need to reduce inequality by effective more progressive income & wealth taxes (LVT being just one type) and as Thomas Piketty says they need to be internationally harmonised between the 99%s around the world, otherwise big capital will always play off the weakening nations against one another.
This is all explicit or implicit in the Economics Statement & the Corporations one.
Is anyone willing to go through all the affirmations for change passed at GAs to reflect a wider involvement from OL participants?

D

David Sat 3 Jan 2015 10:53AM

On democratic systems isn't Alternative vote obviously better at adjusting to a climate of change than first past the post?

E

Em Sun 4 Jan 2015 12:23PM

David, I think I have a list of consensus decisions made by OL (or at least all those that were minuted and made it onto either the LSX or OL websites). Is this what you're after?

D

David Sun 4 Jan 2015 12:57PM

Yes, absolutely - would be great to see.

Best,

Dave

E

Em Sun 4 Jan 2015 1:14PM

Ok, it's too big to post here but I'll post it to the OL and OD email lists so everyone who wants to can refer to it.
Cheers,
Em

PD

Peter Dombi Fri 9 Jan 2015 10:28AM

  1. I agree with Dave that the Tax Havens demands needs tightening up. It's also impossible in its current form as most Tax Havens are foreign countries over which we have no control anyway. Better to word it as something like 'introduce legislation to stop businesses and the wealthy avoiding tax by the use of Tax Havens.'

  2. I'm afraid I'm fundamentally opposed to Basic Income, both on idealogical grounds, but also because I think it's political suicide given current public opinion about excesses in the benefits system.

  3. I think we need to do a lot of thinking about what we mean by 'monetary reform'. Positive money have a very extreme viewpoint which I think will be quite hard to sell, and there are many intermediate reforms which I think would make more sense as part of our initial demands.

  4. I think we should be very careful about doing anything about the Monarchy. It's pointless coming up with demands if they are completely against public opinion and so destroy us. We are not a republican movement and to set ourselves up as such would be to end all hope of success.

I agree with everything else.

Dave also mentions going for Alternative Vote as a democratic system. However the previous referendum shows it is too much of a half-way house and so easily undermined by those opposed to change. Full PR is the way to go.

Peter

E

Em Fri 9 Jan 2015 10:45AM

I pretty much agree with Peter (definitely agree on monarchy and PR), except I would include some form of Basic Income, which I think is absolutely the way to resolve benefits debacles - though the devil's in the detail. As the Green Party supports this and is working on the detail, I'd suggest we don't reinvent the wheel but have a close look at and probably adopt their version.

Em

D

David Fri 9 Jan 2015 12:27PM

Yes to some points Peter (3&4), no or only partial agreement elsewhere. But I'm loathe to eat more time unpacking things when it is so easy to be misunderstood on emails & exhaustive answers are unlikely to be read by any.

  • wondering how much our discussion here will be taken account of anyway. Is anyone else bothering with Loomio?

All the best,

Dave

GB

Gail Bradbrook Fri 9 Jan 2015 2:32PM

Hi Everyone,
it seems to me, having read the thread so far, its good to agree a principle now before coming up with further demands. Are we going for what we feel is needed in the world (tbd) or for what we feel will be more widely adopted. Naomi Klein said something like "the size of the movement defines the ambition of the demands". An argument at this stage for playing it safe. Though reading her more recent book I would imagine she would say we have to ask for what is needed and inspire and build the movement as part of holding out a vision of a really different way. I would go with that viewpoint myself and say that by talking about a really different and credible way we are also educating people on alternatives.

GB

Gail Bradbrook Fri 9 Jan 2015 2:39PM

And some other stuff- I work for tax Justice Network (as a volunteer) and know in some detail about the sub demands of that movement which are Automatic information exchange, Unitary taxation and so forth.

I prefer to use the language of "what we are calling for" rather than demands (a small point)- because if we are big enough we will cease asking and start actively resisting and taking.

I have written a draft manifesto for economic justice - half way down here:
http://streetschooleconomics.wordpress.com/future/
I might be useful in terms of creating some headings to group under (my tidy mind likes that!)

and this is how I try and tell the story of what the issues are - using and ABCD model and a bit of systems thinking:
its a prezi:
https://prezi.com/73u6zxxqmhnt/sse/

or as a you tube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rUk-r0G1eQ

I'm not expecting everyone to trawl through that stuff- just if of interest,
best
gail x

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