Anthony Barnett (London, OK): We are finally getting the OurKingdom articles section into shape. Just published in it today is a fine essay by Katrina Forrester, pictured above. As you can see Brown's boys are still using the old technology.
She helped with the Camp for Climate Action that brought attention to the foolish proposals to create yet a third runway at the ill-sited Heathrow. She discusses how the Climate Camp worked and the way its creators sought to develop their own form of democracy. The Prime Minister talks about consensus, they lived and slept with it. She writes,
The people who believe in working by consensus are those who believe in a different kind of government. They criticize representative government in the name of a more participatory direct democracy. They reject hierarchy for collective responsibility. My point is not, however, that the Climate Camp embodies the possibility of a golden goal to which we must all aspire. Rather, the Camp shows that there is a new generation of activists, with a demographic much broader than the previous generation’s, who are coming into the world of politics with a clearer understanding of what it means to work together. They know what it is to feel included in a process by which agreement is achieved. The new environmentalism is not about ‘us versus them’; it is about ‘us’.
Already, the doves are fluttering in the comment section where Tony Curzon Price, openDemocracy's Editor-in-Chief, brings in Rousseau's friend, the theory of the General Will, and OK's own Jon Bright wonders about the coercive aspects of the twinkling hands consensus building techniques Katrina describes. The article has a great ending, which I won't spoil for you, except to say that the police put down their shields - and Tony makes a neat point about this too. Read it here.
