LAUNCHING THE GLOBAL PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY
WHAT IS THE GLOBAL PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY?
Imagine there’s no countries
And the world will be as one *
Human beings are the natural custodians of the planet. Every human being is a sovereign entity and now the call is out for all sovereign entities, with sovereign rights to accept individual and collective responsibility for preserving the life of the planet.
How Can We Do That?
Each one of us looking inside of ourselves discovers an actualizing being, someone learning more and more about who we are and what is the Creator’s intention for us.
First the integrity of the individual self.
Secondly, the recognition that the world is full of other human beings like ourselves, all moving out from their immediate family, the place where we were born – our own immediate society not just in terms of a country but in terms of what spot on the planet.
What is a citizen? An inhabitant of not just a country but of the planet or a citizen of the world.
In this way, we move to a global society.
What is a Global Civil Society?
Let us turn to Larry Diamond’s Toward Democratic Consolidation.
‘Civil Society is distinct from ‘society’ in general in that it involves citizens acting collectively in a public sphere to express their interests, passions, and ideas, exchange information, achieve mutual goals, make demands on the state, and hold state officials accountable.
Civil society is an intermediary entity, standing between the private sphere and the state. Thus, it excludes individual and family life, inward-looking group activity, for-profit making enterprise or individual business firms, and political efforts to take control of the state.
The terms ‘civil society organization’ refers to one of the many individual organizations that operate within civil society and is often used interchangeably with the term ‘non-governmental organization’ (NGO)’
How can you act collectively in a public sphere?
In the past, assemblies have occurred in various places around the globe, and they were attended only by those people who could get there.
Now, however, in the 21st century, we have the INTERNET. The internet is swiftly becoming accessible to even the most far-flung places or spots on the planet. We can have a Global Peoples Assembly within a WEBSITE. Everyone who registers on the website will have access to all others.
After that comes the organization of the sites.
Let us consider this concrete proposal where people around the globe identify themselves to others in terms of their own passions, the things they are interested in, the things they want to do to better our life on this planet, a place where they can find kindred spirits regardless of place or spot of birth, where people can bond together and eventually move all human beings on the planet to a place where they are in harmony with the Creator’s intent.
* John Lennon
The Global People’s Assembly will be launching the first week of May.
Rev. Mary A. Mann, Ph.D., was born in Australia and is descended from early Queensland pioneers. Her father was an original ANZAC, a member of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps who fought on the Gallipoli Peninsular in 1915. Mary is a graduate of the University of Sydney, the University of California in Berkeley and the University of Southern California where she secured her Ph.D. in Communications and Theatre.
Her working career was in accounting where she became a Qualified Accountant in Australia and was the first Controller of the Pacifica Foundation in the 1970s.
Her academic career centered around her passion for finding out ‘why war’. Her first book on this topic, Anzac to Understanding included her father’s war letters and a social commentary on the global situation from the beginning of the First World War through the 20th century and it included the epic play ANZAC. The philosophy culminated in the book There Are No Enemies, a practical philosophy of life, which includes The Right of the Womb. Her theatre studies culminated in The Construction of Tragedy, Aristotle today in the theatre and she edited two editions of The Los Angeles Theatre Book, 1978 and 1984.
Mary has been a member of Unity- and- Diversity since 1989 where she is now the Board Chair and co-edited the book Science and Spirituality with the founder of that organization. Rev. Leland Stewart.
She joined the Synthaxis Theatre Company in 1979. Her creative work includes Poems of Woman, editor of Mentoring Poems, four centuries of selected poetry, Tortoise Shell, taken from a journal of her great-grandfather documenting life in the early days of the State of Queensland, Australia, and under the aegis of Synthaxis, plays for youth and family audiences, Maria and the Comet and The Round Table, published as TWO FAMILY PLAYSand ThuGun and Natasha, a drama with rap, moving beyond guns and violence .
In North Hollywood, she is the co-host of Unbuckled No-Ho Poetry, a monthly poetry reading series since 2010, which you can view here:youtube.com/unbucklednohopoetry
Mary has been presented with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who’s Who
