Ever heard of the phenomenon “Citizens Assembly”?
It may well be a COUNTER to what comes to us via the Social Media.
So, let me explain the basics of “Citizens Assembly” (CA) and it is
best done with a real life example:
Ireland is predominantly Roman Catholic and several years ago
its government took it upon itself to address the Abortion issue.
For that, government decided to “invite” public input.
So all representatives went to their respective county/district and
assembled a representative sample of the district’s population in
a conference hall and the subject was presented, discussed and
argued. The folks there were asked to present their opinion and
“defend” such. At the conclusion of the assembly, the citizens vote
was taken and with its conclusion the District Rep. went back to
Halls of Government and the results were tallied and to everyone’s
surprise the end result of all was that now there is allowance for
abortion, which seemed very unlikely in this R.K-country.
WE too need to listen to the voice of the public, our Citizens!
The real voices! Not the electronic ones!
Do we, in the U.S. have such system somewhere?
Surprise: Yes, we do!
Our judicial system has “Jury Duty”, where members of the public
listen, debate and judge cases. The judge is the arbiter and reads
the final judgement = a form of Citizens Assembly.
An expert on C.A. is a man by the name of David van Reybrouck,
who can be found debating this subject (in Ireland) on the internet.
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