The End of the General Assembly

Occupy Philly. The GA served its purpose. It's dead because, by no stretch of the imagination, does it approximate more than a parody of direct democracy.Not because direct democracy failed, but because the decisions made there NO LONGER HAVE A CONSTITUENCY.

Everything in this movement that matters, happens now outside the GA. That wasn't always the case. What's left is a 'branding tool,' and a dysfunctional set-up to handle money. Direct democracy is not defined by this or that PROCESS, or sets of rules... these are always, and must be, defined by the situation and circumstances of participants in relation to shifting problems that confront them. The Occupy Movement has moved on. It exists in new forms--which prove the vitality of direct democracy.

For most of human history--until the neolithic agricultural revolution and the rise of city states--direct democracy in some form or other, was the norm. And continued to be in many cultures. And it's because it's STILL working that the GA is no longer relevant--all the working groups, doing great stuff... are governed by some form of direct democracy.

Let us not be dragged backward by nostalgia and our misplaced wish to meet institutionalized tyranny with our own institutionalized reactions--which can only recreate the very thing we want to change--the self-replicating monster kingdom of money & death!