The focus of April 3rd has to be on the People's Assembly, as we have called people to come and join us on that basis. So, it seems sensible to have a business meeting (including ESF Athens) at 6.30 - 7.30 pm and main item: People's Assembly from 7.30 -9 pm. We still have to get our act together for ESF Athens, which I guess will have to be done largely on this list.

As to the question of process for the holding of a People's Assembly. Reading the notes from the Democracy sub-group I have a sense of deja vu, as the same debate took place in the 15 months prior to the holding of last October's event. In collaboration with three others, I produced a paper about "reaching out" with the aim of significantly extending our base. But most of these networking ideas proved beyond our capacity, and after a year of treading water and to be frank going nowhere we finally set a date for the assembly and simply invited EVERYONE on all our many contact lists.

It is obvious that some grouping of people has to act as "organiser and host" for the People's Assembly or it is not going to happen. So if the feeling is that LSF should not play these organisational roles, then I would like to propose on April 3rd that London Civic Forum be the host. London Civic Forum has passed a resolution to support a People's Assembly and has advocated Porto Alegre methods of participatory democracy. What is more, London Civic Forum is constituted on the basis of Londoners from all walks of life (it has trade union, public, private, voluntary and faith sectors) and it embraces people with differing ideologies. Perfect!! Of course there is a liitle bit of teasing here but hopefully some will see my point.

Note posted by Richard Lee
"Richard Lee" <Richard@lee1984.fsnet.co.uk>
14th March 2006

Additional Note

The main business of the meeting will be to discuss the form of the "Peoples Assembly" that has been proposed by the London Social Forum and supported in principle by the London Civic Forum. The starting point for this development has been the problematic nature of the GLA and City Hall as bastions of London democracy. Members of the LSF are separately planning to carry out a democratic audit of City Hall.

The last two months of the LSF have been marked by a good deal of practical activity as well as by the development of working groups looking both at the London Plan and its "consultation process"; and also at models of participatory and direct democracy as an extension of and in opposition to dominant models of representative democracy that do not appear to meet people's needs in the economy and state we live under.

As a result of this practical activity we have needed to engage in reflection on our process, and much of the March meeting was given up to this, hence no minutes.

The meeting did receive a report back on the previous evening's leafletting of the Hackney Empire, and the Question and Answer session held by the Mayor of London and members of the Greater London Assembly there. We also discussed other forthcoming events that we could leaflet through March and set times for further meetings of the democracy working group, the last of which took place yesterday, to set the framework for our discussion of the People's Assembly next week.

I hope that someone can update this report on the website and forward to contacts.

Many thanks

Frank Jacobs