Over 1,000 people took part in a Claiming Our Future civil society gathering in the RDS, Dublin on 30th October. People from all over the country engaged in serious debate in a form of consensus deliberation.
The highlights of each session were:
Values that Claiming Our Future should promote at this moment:
Equality
Environmental Sustainability
Accountability
Participation
Solidarity
Making the Economy work for the People – Economy and environment:
Change the current development model and define and measure progress in a balanced way that stresses economic security and social and environmental sustainability.
Regulate banking to change the culture from one of speculative banking to one where currently state-owned banks and new local banking models focus on guaranteeing credit to local enterprises and communities.
Making the Economy work for the People – Income, Wealth and Work:
Achieve greater income equality and reduce poverty through wage, tax and income policies that support maximum and minimum income thresholds.
Prioritise high levels of decent employment with a stimulus package to maximise job creation in a green/social economy.
Reforming our State to work for the People – Governance:
Reform representative political institutions to enhance accountability, equality, capacity, and efficiency of national and local decision makers.
Develop participatory/deliberative forms of citizens’ engagement in public governance and enhance democratic participation by fostering the advocacy role of civil society organisations, civics/ethics education in all school levels and a diverse media.
Reforming our State to work for the People – Access to Services and Public Sector Renewal:
Provide universal access to quality healthcare, childcare and services for older people.
Invest in equality in access to and participation in all levels of education (pre-school to university).
Many thanks to Tony Weekes of Eco Quakers for sending us this report, which outlines his impressions of the day:
Claiming our Future is an initiative of a coalition of civil society organisations: Is féidir linn, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Environmental Pillar of the Social Partnership, the Community Platform, Social Justice Ireland, and TASC. But it is much more than these organisations. It is the start of a citizens’ movement, the first meeting of which took place at the RDS on 30 October.
Around 1000 people were present, from many parts of Ireland and representing all ages, personal backgrounds and aspects of civil society. On arrival, each of us was allocated to a table in the meeting hall, and each table had eight or nine people around it, together with a facilitator and a networked computer terminal.
The programme for the day assigned tasks to us. The first was to consider how we interpreted words which describe the values of a civilised society: equality, environmental sustainability, participation, justice and several others. It was a good ‘ice breaker’. We found ourselves debating meaning and thereby sharing our insights and experiences. We were asked to rank these. Our facilitator keyed our agreed ranking into the terminal and these were aggregated across all the tables to produce a consensual view from the gathering as a whole. Equality, followed by environmental sustainability, came out top.
We were then asked to consider propositions which might best describe the qualities of the society we want. These were grouped under four headings: economy and the environment; income, wealth and work; governance; public sector renewal. Once more we debated. We teased out meanings; we disagreed with the propositions and with each other. But we also found ways to respect differences and, where necessary, we yielded to others and came up with a ranking of importance.
Finally we were asked what we could do to work together. By this time, we were energised but a little overwhelmed by what we had experienced. Ideas flowed, but on my table we felt we needed time to reflect a little. We exchanged e-mail addresses, and we will keep in touch and support each other to clarify our thoughts, identify other matters for discussion, and call our politicians and decision-makers to account.
We parted with a wish to deepen the new friendships we had found, and with a renewed sense of empowerment. We had been reminded that we are citizens, not pawns in some political game.
Our faith calls us to action (James 2: vv.14-26). We need new political, social and economic institutions and ways of thinking and acting; we need to shape and press for a social environment to support what we ourselves can do. Claiming our Future can help us: by providing a forum for discussion and the means constructively to challenge the orthodoxy; by providing a channel of communication with those who need to be held to account.
In turn, we can help this movement: by sharpening our understanding of our social teaching and its relevance to this work; by sharing our concerns with those of other worshipping traditions, and by making Claiming our Future better known.
There is more on the website: www.claimingourfuture.ie. I am also willing to offer more of my personal impressions by e-mail: [email protected]. Please just ask!
Tony Weekes
South Belfast Friends Meeting
