The People’s Parliamentary Charter (Continued)
With a better understanding of what the People’s Parliament is, let’s take a look at what we should do with such organizations.
What It Is & What It Does
The People’s Parliament is a chamber that represents the body of voters within its purview. The purview can be any area that contains a voting body that votes on issues that affect their area. This area could be anything from a local community to the nation, as a whole. In its simplest expression, parliament is a meeting of all voters within its purview. It represents a context in which voters can both learn about and debate on political issues, in an effort to build an engaged democratic community.
The parliamentary initiative is about democracy and freedom. If you are a part of a parliament, then you don’t have to vote in solidarity with a parliamentary position. Members always have the right to maintain positions as individual, conscientious objectors, refuse to either participate in any activity or vote with the bloc, and remain as members of parliament. Parliamentary members responsible for recording members’ decisions will take note of all votes and articulated stances and may continue on with approved parliamentary activity, excluding dissenting members. However, parliament is most powerful when members both find a way to compromise on a common stance and support said stance in solidarity.
Holding Government Representatives Accountable
As of the initial drafting of this charter, private investment into campaign finance is used to influence elected officials. Until the People’s Parliament can enact campaign finance reform, another method is required to ensure that elected officials will legislate with respect to the demands of the people.
Parliament can leverage an exact number of votes when providing feedback to a representative that is not voting in a legislative body in a manner that is acceptable to the people. Instead of being concerned about being primaried by a rich lobbyist, the politician should be more concerned about directly losing votes. Remember, lobbyists threaten with primarying because they will spend money into a campaign to influence voters. This option shortcuts the money by directly leveraging votes, thereby displaying the superior power of the people. Further, this galvanizing method can be used to give assurance of a retained seat for those representatives who appropriately carry the will of the people to the elected, governmental seat.
The political phenomenon of coercion of politicians is another reason to ensure that each parliament both attracts and maintains maximum membership within the area under its purview. In this way, each parliament can negotiate with members of government by leveraging the votes required to either allow an elected official to remain in the seat or replace that official with a representative that will respect the demands of the people. Parliaments may find increasing effectiveness in this endeavor by utilizing the bloc voting strategy that is outlined below.
It is important to note that this could result in private interests targeting parliaments in any number of ways. Business owners could lean on their employees, making their participation difficult. Bribes could be offered to members. However, this subterfuge should be more difficult to hide since these parties will have a decreased ability to conduct deals completely outside of the public purview. As always, each parliament will have to determine how best to monitor these threats. Remember that we are stronger together. As such, parliaments should caucus with one another and share notes and strategies regarding how to manage incursions by private interests.
Additionally, we should provide feedback regarding our assessment of the representative’s current performance, our views on what the representative should change, what we desire, and how we want the representative to vote on issues. When attending town halls or set meetings with our representatives, we should conduct these as we would if we were giving a performance review of an employee. That is what our representative is. We collectively elected this person to represent both us and our interests within the structure of the government, representing the hiring process. Further, a portion of our taxes pays for both the salary and the seat that our representative enjoys, representing payment for services rendered. Remember, the representative is only a proxy for us and our power. They should vote as we desire.
Draft and Present Legislation
Our parliaments should engage in drafting legislation. Members will determine local needs, research solutions, debate the best answer, and write legislation to achieve the desired goal. This legislation should be presented to the requisite representative, and our members should engage in active dialogue with the representative about the promotion of the legislation. Our parliaments will determine the best method of contact when working with the requisite representative.
Review and Provide Legislative Feedback
Our parliaments should review any legislation that is up for a vote. Members should research, understand and debate the legislation in order to have a solid understanding of all active and proposed laws and policies. Requisite parliamentary representatives should provide feedback to the government official for our relative parliament, the terminally tiered parliament with respect to the voting item (e.g. Congressional District parliaments would interact with that district’s U.S. House of Representatives member). Each parliament should determine the best method of feedback with respect to the specific government representative that they will interface with. These methods could include, but not be limited to, town halls or other in-person meetings, text messages, phone calls, web calls, social media messaging, emails and physical mail. Parliamentary representatives should keep a record of these interactions and report this information to their associated parliaments.
When meeting with our representative government officials, we should have set stances on legislation and policy, as both debated and resolved in parliament. As parliamentary members, we can then use this information when we approach the review of our representatives. We should be prepared with directives on how the representative should vote on proposed legislation. We must also provide drafts of our own proposed legislation and policy that our representative should present to either the legislative or administrative body in which they serve. Again, by leveraging votes that are dedicated to our proposed legislation and policy, we can influence the representative who knows that their political seat could be threatened if they refuse to comply with the demands of their constituents.
Provide Bloc Voting Options
This is probably the most powerful, direct political tool that can be provided by the People’s Parliament.
Why? Because this one tool maximizes both the strength and focus of the people’s power.
How? All of the members of the parliament vote in a bloc, meaning they cast the same ballot, within parliament, on an issue. Our parliament will conduct a vote on either a candidate, a piece of legislation, or a policy. The position that gets the largest number of votes is the official position of the parliament. Each parliament member will cast their voting ballot on the issue as aligned with the parliamentary position. This is a powerful tool that can be deployed to apply leverage in voting strategy.
If the voters who maintain a contrarian position still have reasonable concerns about the parliamentary position, then debate can be proposed as a means to compromise the stance so that it is acceptable to all members. Whether this approach is used, or not, is dependent upon the determination of each individual parliament and its members. Again, the idea is to ensure each voter has a voice and that they retain autonomy. Bloc voting must only entail those members who agree to vote using this strategy. Remember, a core goal of parliament is to both enable and empower each individual voter’s voice. Therefore, members should not be either forced or pressured into bloc voting. Parliamentary procedure should be to engage in persuasive debate that makes clear the value of bloc voting on any particular issue. Compromise is recommended to ensure that all members receive a politically advantageous outcome from a parliamentary decision that is focused on the good of the people. Parliamentary officers, representatives and members all assume the responsibility of maintaining this core vision and mission of parliament.
Threaten political seats
With regard to “Holding Government Representatives Accountable” (from the section above), we can supercharge this effort when we present a united front by voting as a bloc. When holding a representative accountable, we can ensure the representative that there is no room to coerce members that may dissent from the parliamentary position because there is no opposing view. Once we have debated on an issue in parliament, compromised on the needed legislation, candidacy, or policy, and decided to move as one force on the issue, then no power can deny us.
Voting and Feedback on Legislation and Policy
When there are issues that need to be voted upon, having a significant bloc of votes that are directed in the same political direction means that there is a stronger chance of both implementing legislation that we agree upon and rejecting bills that do not meet our societal needs.
Bloc Voting Recap
Bloc voting means that all members agree to vote and act in unison. Our power is undeniable when we are united. We can absolutely modify the political landscape to our liking with this strategy. This impactful approach requires that we trust each other, trust the process, and provide continual feedback to our parliament if our ideas and concerns are not being addressed. Specifically, I am saying that all of our parliaments should be working to make sure that all members’ ideas are being considered. Officers in each parliament are responsible for this, and they should be held accountable to the member body in order to ensure all voices are heeded. We are all responsible for maintaining, wielding and protecting our power.
Organize and
Direct Public Action
Our parliaments should organize and direct boycotts, marches, protests, sit-ins, strikes and any other acts of civil disobedience for the purpose of opposing rogue actions by either our government representatives or private interests.
Additionally, parliaments should conduct political candidate research and debate events in order to inform the public of the pros and cons associated with each candidate and how this affects the parliament’s community needs and desires. In this way, each parliament can help to ensure that the appropriate candidates are chosen to serve the community represented in each parliament’s purview.
Organizing Boycotts
If our parliament decides to boycott any organization, through majority vote, then we can easily quantify the economic damage that we can do to any institution. This information can be used to negotiate with said company. Also, our parliament can work together to provide solutions to work around the inability to patronize a given business. This can be made more powerful by coordinating the boycott with other parliaments. The larger the number of voters, the more impact we can have. Parliaments should support each other as much as possible. We’re in this together.
Organizing Marches and Protests
If our parliament decides to engage in either a march or a protest, then we can organize for sustained protest by rotating members in groups in order to protest more consistently while resisting that which we find inappropriate. This can also apply to sit-ins, etc.
Organizing Strikes
Strikes are a method of galvanizing public power against private interests. The targeted private interests may be willing to listen to our complaints, change their behavior, and ally with our cause. Our parliaments could become involved in either targeted or general strikes. In either case, communities will have to band together and share resources in order to get through the campaign. Parliaments should assist in both gathering and distributing resources, directing members to help each other with housing concerns, and plan for ways to acquire additional resources, as needed.
Volunteering
Additionally, our chambers should also engage in volunteer work. This includes instructing and teaching the general public about the legislative process and people power and recruiting more of the electorate to engage with the parliament. Each parliament should determine other volunteer opportunities that can help its community.
Alternative Political Conventions
Our parliaments should actively engage in both creating and promoting third-party political conventions and foster competition for both the Democratic and Republican parties. This should allow for the exploration of political caucuses that have a focus on issues beyond what traditional conventions have routinely targeted. Additionally, our parliamentary members should consider running for office when our government representatives refuse to govern per our stated desires. In this way, we can source government representatives from our own ranks, and we can send those that we know and trust from our own parliamentary communities to represent us. Parliamentary representatives that take office will do so not as an affiliate of a political party, but as a representative of the people via their parliament. Such representatives should take their governmental seat based on a contractual obligation to hold the seat in proxy for the constituents of the seat, acting as a direct extension of their parliament. As such, this approach means that the people have elected to directly control the political seat as an electorate.
Further, and more importantly, given a nationwide proliferation of coordinating state parliaments that send representatives to a national parliament, this gives us the leverage to clear out the entire federal government and place those of our choosing into both Congress and the White House and transform the government in any way that we so choose. This method can be instituted at both the local and state levels, as well. This is true power. And it does not require millions of dollars in campaigning because we can easily campaign both within our own parliamentary districts and across state parliaments, via inter-parliamentary debate and communication, in order to set up strategic placement of our own government representatives. This will be a great opportunity to officially start a political convention of the people that governs on behalf of the people and not with respect to generous campaign contributions and gifts from lobbyists, donors, and other private interests. This can also open the door to placing people into office, not as a member of a political party, but as direct representatives of their parliaments and communities.
To Be Continued
We’ve covered further concepts relating to what the People’s Parliament is and what it should be used for. In the next article, we will cover how the organizations are constructed and conclude the charter.
What are your thoughts about the People’s Parliament, so far? Share your thoughts below.