Locked out of politics? Let's build alternative power via assemblies

If you feel locked out of politics, you’re not alone. It’s a widespread feeling in Britain thanks to our awful electoral system. But is there an antidote? Assemble spokesperson Yaz Ashmawi thinks that bringing people together in citizens’ assemblies is an excellent way to help them realise how powerful they actually are. And that in turn can contribute to the building of an alternative system of power to challenge the establishment political system that has failed us so badly.

The Canary recently attended the launch event of Assemble’s House of the People, which the group hopes will become a national forum for representatives of local assemblies to come together to create solutions to the problems we face. And after the event, we caught up with Ashmawi for a chat outside the venue.

‘What is really hard is to convince people that they have power’

The ongoing genocide in Gaza was high on the priority list at the House of the People. And that was partly because many attendees are sick of a current political system where the establishment parties have been essentially supporting the genocide, to differing extents. Speaking about why Gaza featured so prominently at the launch event, Ashmawi said:

The people who resonated most with this campaign and this vision are those who are locked out of politics, who see no avenues in our current democratic system, who know that political parties won’t listen to them, who know that – for decades – this political elite has scapegoated certain groups of individuals, who are living in the real world, who see our public services completely collapsed, and who are just searching for something that can really bring about a change.

Regarding the challenges that assemblies face, meanwhile, he insisted that:

People are overwhelmingly agreeing with the problems – you know, the fact that our politicians don’t tell the truth and that they don’t deliver and so on and so forth. But what is really hard is to convince them that they have power and that they can believe in an alternative.

Sick of the current system? Join the building of assemblies.

Ashmawi added that:

The problem in our society is that we have no space to talk about the biggest problems that we’re experiencing, to talk about the stuff that’s happening in Westminster, on our TV screens, in our news. We have nowhere to reconcile the fact that we just voted in an election which was already written before it started of who was going to win. And despite the fact that the country overwhelmingly voted for alternatives to the two parties, that wasn’t the story that was picked up, and it’s not like you would know.

So we have to create these spaces ourselves. And then, when people come into them, they have this amazing experience because, for once, they get to say what they think about the country and what’s wrong with it. And once they do that, they have all this space to listen to everyone else on their table, and everyone else in the room.

And he emphasised his belief that assemblies are key to activating the immense power that citizens have:

They just need to realise their power. To realise their power, they need to realise their collective voice. And that’s what these assemblies bring together.

The media isn’t as powerful as we think. Our actions matter much more.

Speaking about a piece of research in the wake of the 2019 actions over the climate crisis, Ashmawi stressed that:

The only thing that affects people’s perceptions of how urgent the climate emergency is… is actually non-violent direct action. It’s sustained mass protest. It’s people turning up on the street.

In short, he asserted:

The news follows the people. So if we want the news to pay attention, to change how it’s talking about this problem, to change its perception of what’s possible, we need to build a movement completely independently of that, a social movement that becomes visible and forces the media to take notice.

So we need to get active. As he insisted:

You need to build alternative power, build alternative networks, alternative systems of communication, and then the big whales will have to take note. … We just need to trigger enough defections in society to cause a cascade.

Watch the full interview below: