XR Talk – What is a Citizens' Assembly

Citizens' Assembly (CA) Talk

18h – 19h30 (please arrive on time)

Extinction Rebellion's third demand is that Government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly (CA) on climate and ecological justice.

What is a citizens' assembly and why do we want one on the climate and ecological emergency? Why does Extinction Rebellion believe that it's our only hope to create the radical change needed to deal with this emergency?

Come find out about this form of deliberative democracy with Joe Mac, a qualified XR UK Citizens' Assembly speaker.

[PowerPoint presentation and talk in English. Programme and expert talks are regularly updated here.]

People's Assembly (PA) workshop: expert talk and group discussion

18h40 – 19h30 (Participants can come directly to the PA expert talk at 18h40 if they have already seen the CA talk)

A People's Assembly (PA) will be run in the second part of the talk for those interested. Attendees will discuss one of the proposed topics related to climate and ecological crisis within small discussion groups (deliberation) and the main outcomes/recommendations will be presented to the assembly. All PA outcomes (people's wishes in terms of necessary changes to society/economy/behaviour etc.) will be registered in a document and may be regularly posted on the website above. Many topics will be preceded by an expert talk who will present science/statistical information before deliberation.

The People's Assembly is a group deliberation process, as is the Citizens' Assemby, but smaller with a shorter duration, more informal, and members self-select themselves to participate. It is a way of seeing democracy in motion
 on the streets, where people can begin to reclaim power and address what global politics and the system that drives it is failing to do. The People's Assembly is often used as a democratic decision making tool by XR, and is or has been used by other grass roots movements such as the Occupy movement, the Mouvement des gilets jaunes, the US Civil rights movement, the Arab Spring etc.