The New Collective - Await the Phoenix

Democracy. I believe what this word means, or perhaps the spirit behind this word is that all participants in a particular environment, a society or organisation, shall have an equal voice. Representative democracy, how western governments run due to the large scale of their jurisdiction, is where participants of an area elect someone to represent their collective voice in a forum like the Dail. I believe, however, that this system is quite ineffective. I believe that the individual areas are well able to manage themselves, in fact the individual participants ought to have full autonomy in choosing how they live their lives. Its just that, personally, I would prefer to live in a communal environment, where people may be free to follow whatever they wish but each and everyone also keep in mind their fellow beings and help to support one another for I feel that work shared is work halved thus creating surplus efforts to be shared amongst all, rather than collected and stored by an exploitative agent.

With this in mind I am establishing yet another open committee, free for all to join. However the guidelines that follow cannot be changed without discussion leading to conclusion in unanimous agreement. If people don't like the guidelines, would it not be logical to set up one's own community?

In saying this I don't feel that such communities could hinder already established friendship. However, I do believe that if certain similar guidelines are not followed, certain friendships will fade away due, not to the exclusiveness of communities, but to the outside pressures that neo-liberalism places upon the individual to survive.

So, the open committee, open to all yet please question your motives for joining. A forum will be held between this committee when it suites, the frequency may be flexible depending on size and necessity etc. The forum will discuss the overall issues of the collective or possibly separate forums can be established, depending on size etc. Participants of the forum must all sit facing one another and a random person must begin. As one speaks the others must take note of what is being said, so when it is their turn they may express their opinion on every matter that has been raised, without forgetting or feeling the need to talk above others. The momentary privilege is then passed to the left and that person can comment on the previous issues and/ or raise their own.

I believe a central fund is still effective in such communities. Donations and profits will be pooled into this one fund and only drawn from after discussion leading to conclusion in unanimous agreement. I also feel that if participants work elsewhere that it may be necessary to pool some of their monetary effort into the collective, depending, of course, on necessity, availability (on their part) and personal will of effort and obligation.

I believe that alternative lifestyles are possible within the system and anything can be achieved if one puts all their effort into what they believe. If we attempted to become independent of the empire we would either die or survive. The more people the easier the chances are to survive, the more ideas the collective can come up with and the more work that could be put into it. These ideas are escapist I admit but effort will also be placed into combating the empire itself, rather than selfishly avoiding it.

We in the developed world have forgotten exactly what it has that has been stolen from us. We must strive to remember! Freedom, love and common property are all our natural rights and belong to us. Common property has been abolished as everything is privatised and sold to people with the money to buy it. This is how the rich are so powerful. They own our land, they own our medicine, they own our food, they will soon own our genetic patterns (pretty scary!). All this has serious implications on our freedom as we are pressured to compete with one another to have more money to have our own little bit of private land to live on, our own individual cells. And this has serious implications on our ability to love and to understand each other, on an international level, where we are told that certain nations only wish to destroy us where actually they are just fighting off the empire, and on a national level where we have so little time due to maintaining our cells that we don't get time to know those who live in the opposite cells or indeed those who live in other cell clusters. If we are in constant fear of other nations, of loosing our cells, of crime on our streets how are we expected to have room for love. If we cant work together where we get to know one another, instead of competing against one another in the job market, how can we expect to understand one another?

This is why communal living appeals to me. These are what I believe are my rights as a living being on planet 'Earth'. It makes sense to me to have these communities living and working together, instead of having individual cells with a head of state off trampling other's individual cells for money and power. It's a fucking scary world at the moment and I don't see the sense in any of it. This is why I am willing to become an active member in the resistance and why I am beginning this collective to unify and strengthen others who believe the same or similar things.

The Zapatistas have already succeeded in many of these goals and when the rest of the world asked what they could do in solidarity they told them to do the same, to create their own revolutions relative to their own lives.

It is time to leave our individual cells and come together and cry 'Ya Basta!' (Enough!) and to reclaim the rights you believe belong to you.

-- Johanna Dali, December 2003

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