07061 The Precinct Community Assembly
The only way ... for our community to be a better place to live is for the people of the community to understand and accept their personal responsibility for what happens. — Davis Merritt, Jr.
In the United States, the smallest level of political organization in most states is a “precinct” or “election district”. They usually do not have their own government organization, but are subunits of larger governments like cities or counties. According to Wikipedia, the average number of voters in a precinct ranges from a low of 437 in Kansas to a high of 2,704 in the District of Columbia. The average voters per precinct is 1,100. In 2004, the nation had about 174,000 precincts in the states and territories of the United States.
Political parties often have organized representation at the precinct level. In some states, political parties hold meetings in precincts that elect delegates to county conventions.
A Precinct Community Assembly is a meeting of people who live in an election precinct. It's a "town meeting" of the people who live in a particular geographic area. Most areas outside of New England do not have an organized system of town meetings rooted in place.
No one needs any authority from anyone to start a Precinct Community Assembly. All you need is —
- a place to meet,
- a map or description of the boundaries of the precinct,
- a way to get the word out that a meeting of the residents of a the precinct will held at a certain time and place.
This makes it an excellent strategy to use to build grassroots support for sustainability initiatives and direct democracy. Such meetings could talk about issues important to that neighborhood and about other issues affecting the larger community.
It could evolve over time into a regular meeting, the equivalent of your own Town Hall Meeting. You could work with other Precinct Assemblies in your area.
A quarterly schedule would work well in the beginning, as you get things going, but this could evolve over time into a monthly event. The group could start committees and task forces and debate and pass resolutions to be forwarded to the government representatives responsible for the area.
Use the Precinct Community Assembly technique to build a grassroots organization that will become a building block in a movement that will eventually create governments that care for people, care for the planet, and have a care for the common good.
It is one of the early steps towards overturning the system of political criminality which makes all our other problems so much worse.
In other words, the Revolution starts at your own doorstep.
If you get something going, email me at pca@ipermie.net and register your Precinct Community Assembly. As this catches on, there will be some networking opportunities and resource directories made available.