Blog by Hollie Russon Gilman: “The shocking assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a university campus last week has jolted the nation into confronting the fragility of public discourse—and the limits of free speech when threats of violence loom over political life. In the shadow of this tragedy, we need to invest and support new institutions that support civic voice and protect democratic engagement. Citizen assemblies, a model for engaging residents through civic lottery, are one such vital institution: a way of dignifying speech and reweaving trust in our democracy.
Unlike the adversarial debates that dominate our media and campuses, citizen assemblies bring together randomly selected, demographically representative residents in small groups to deliberate with experts and produce policy recommendations. In this way, they are a living extension of the First Amendment—they don’t just protect the right to speak, they structure more generative spaces for voices to emerge, be heard, and be acted upon. Especially now, when rhetoric risks becoming the dangerous fuel for violence, assemblies offer a path for communities to reclaim ownership over public life.
Globally and domestically, civic assemblies have already addressed climate policy, electoral reform, and land use. Here in the US, assemblies have been used to tackle long-standing local issues. For example, citizen assemblies in Colorado and California convened to determine the future of specific public land sites. Similarly, civic assemblies, a method which does not necessarily involve lottery based sortition, in Washington State have also played a significant role in setting policy agendas around climate issues. In this example, Washington State provided public dollars around climate resilience, which key civil society and grassroots groups were able to leverage to organize a people’s assembly. This includes intentionally over-sampling for traditionally underrepresented and marginalized communities. In the U.S., they have anchored local processes for redesigning public land or shaping resilience plans. These cases underscore how—for those often relegated to the margins—assemblies provide direct access to democracy…(More)”.
