Living democracy

Let's see democracy as journey, not destination; let's stop worrying about where we end up, and start thinking about where we begin. I think that at Climate Camp we have a very strong sense that the project of revivifying democracy does not begin with a constitutional convention; it does not begin with electoral reform; it does not begin with citizen's juries, or people's peers, or independent MPs, or any of the other ideas you get coming out of the political and media elite. It begins with ordinary people, like you and me, taking action on something we believe in, and transforming society by first transforming ourselves. Because democracy is not something which is given, it is not something which is created from above - it is something which is won.

- Liam Taylor of the Camp for Climate Action at a session on "Radical democracy and imagination" hosted by Real Change at the Compass conference last Saturday, and online at Our Kingdom