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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
An interesting rundown of some of the fascinating on-the-ground changes happening in Venezuela at the moment.
The creation of communal councils, legally recognised in April 2006, served to bring together these different sectoral organisations around discussing and acting upon a local development plan.
The idea behind the councils is that it be the communities themselves that diagnose the local problems, democratically decide on the tasks to be solved and, with funding from the national, regional and municipal budgets, begin to tackle these basic problems.
According to Farias, there are currently 36,000 communal councils.
I'd love to see a documentary about these budding institutions. While Obama merely talks about "from the bottom up," average Venezuelans are actually living it.
EDIT: Wikipedia actually has a great systematic look at the structure/function of communal councils. Sweet! Participatory democracy = awesome.
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A lot of the details are fuzzy because not much about it is in English yet.
But generally one would have a much greater say in the decision-making process at a communal council than at the city council level, let alone the national legislature. So between the three, it's much more likely you'd be able to convince your neighbors than scores of elected officials.
Link
That's a pretty systematic look at the structure and function of the communal councils. :)
Tell me; have you read "Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak ?
What is the difference between Stalin's "Party" and this "new party" ?