A discussion-starter from the active membership of the Pirate Party of NZ
Danyl Strype
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He mihi nui ki te rōpu Internet Party
We, the active membership of the Pirate Party of NZ (www.pirateparty.org.nz), the local affiliate of Pirate Parties International, send our warm regards to our fellow geek activists in the active membership of the Internet Party of NZ.
Firstly, we seek political cooperation with your party. We feel that the memberships of both parties can make more progress in campaigns on policies we agree on, if we communicate, collaborate, and see if we can move in the same direction, at the same time.
Secondly, further to this proposal to actively work together, we would like to open formal discussions about the possibility of merging our two parties. We believe that in a small country like ours, working together to build one socially progressive, digital-liberty party would be more effective than having two competing with each other. From your experience with the Mana Movement, it seems clear that any political alliance is much more likely to work if developed slowly, and thoughtfully, with full consensus and engagement of both memberships, and well before election year.
Both parties seem to us to have a lot in common. Both support the socially progressive use of technology. In line with this, both have engaged in exciting experiments in deep democracy, using our Loomio groups to engage any interested member in party decision-making.
Both prioritize the protection of human rights, civil liberties, and personal privacy, both online and offline. In line with this, we have both shown a willingness to stand up for rational but controversial policies, similar discussions and outcomes regarding drug law reform and UBI can be seen as examples. This opens up potential to work with the active membership of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and the New Economics Party.
One of the traditional divisions between libertarians is whether we ally ourselves with economically with the "left" or the "right". Just as the Greens transcend this false dichotomy with their own economic approaches, we can formulate economic approaches based on open source collaboration ("co-production", "peer-to-peer production", "social production", "collaborative consumption", "crowdsourcing"). This opens up even more potential to work with the active membership of the New Economics Party.
If there is interest from the Internet Party membership in entering into negotiations on the possibility of merging, our bottom lines can be summed up by the following criteria:
The resulting organisation will:
- be committed to a bottom-up organisational architecture,
- be committed to the core values that have been emphasised by the PPNZ community (human rights, civil liberties, free culture, personal privacy, transparent governance, net neutrality),
- be committed to a Code of Conduct that ensures a friendly environment for a diverse community, both in online channels, and in-person gatherings,
- not have any constitutional guarantees for named persons to have control over particular offices without being elected into their role.
We strongly advocate that the resulting organisation would use the name "Pirate Party", in solidarity with Pirate Parties around the world who share our values, and in order to benefit from the international recognition of this name, and what it stands for. However, we are open to other suggestions. Due to a recent rule change in PPI, any resulting organisation could continue as the official NZ affiliate of PPI, even without the word Pirate in the name.
EDIT: Just to clarify, as there has been some confusion on these points:
* we are open to working under any party name, so we would be willing to merge with the Internet Party under your name, or a new name, if the criteria listed above are met
* we are not insisting on the resulting party being a member of PPI, just noting that its a possibility, with or without the merged party using the Pirate name
Danyl Strype Fri 10 Jul 2015 4:36AM
Very creative @williamasiata but let's not get ahead of ourselves :) So far 7 Internet Party members have commented on this discussion, all favouring working together on campaigns around shared policy, and some cautiously supportive of a possible merger. I'd like to hear more opinions from other active members before we start talking details.
Fred Look Mon 20 Jul 2015 2:29AM
@strypey I am interested to understand how it is working out not having an exec (if i understand correctly) do you have a party secretary? what works? dosn't work. are there lessons that could be useful to IP in this?
Danyl Strype Tue 21 Jul 2015 6:00PM
In answer to @fredlook, the decision to dissolve the Board - or to put it another way to replace an elected executive with our Loomio group - has only recently gained broad support among active Pirates. We are still working out the nuts and bots of running a political party as a horizontal network, rather than a hierarchical power pyramid, and how such a structure will interface with the requirements of the Electoral Commission.
The basic concept is to replace the Board with a network of WG (Working Groups eg communications, infrastructure, policy etc). One way to envision it is a set of subcommittees without a committee. Each WG will have a subgroup on our Loomio, and will be visible (and thereby accountable) to the rest of the membership. Any complex decisions which affect more than one WG, or disputes between WG, will be resolved in a discussion in our main Loomio group. All party communications will be governed by a Code of Conduct (still in draft but nearly at 1.0), which boils down to "be excellent to each other".
Anyone interested in following our progress can read most of the discussions in our Loomio group without being a member (although we welcome IP members as Pirates members). Also, I am putting together some documentation to guide our transition process here:
http://piratepad.net/OezvwsyBUl
Dan van Wylich Tue 21 Jul 2015 10:59PM
Just a 'silly question'. If the general consensus in the Internet Party, the Pirate Party and the Legalise Cannabis Party is individual sovereignty and social awareness.... why are we different parties???
Danyl Strype Tue 21 Jul 2015 11:12PM
@danvanwylich the simple answer to that question is that we have different histories, and different (if somewhat overlapping) memberships. The discussion is about exploring how IP members feel about a possible merger with the Pirates. AFAIK the Cannabis Party leadership are keen on the idea of working with other parties, even as part of an electoral coalition, as long as that coalition has drug law reform policies they can support.
Grant Keinzley Wed 22 Jul 2015 2:51AM
Basically what you are talking about Strypey is the original concept
for democracy as developed by the Greeks
However in modern day the board (when it is working properly) should
have members representing particular groups not privy to all but
speaking for
The is what govt is supposed to be
Backward engineering modern infrastructure for the original is not
entirely a bad idea, but my question is; will it be any better?
modern infrastructure exists because we have ironed out many of the
faults
GrantK
Colin England Thu 23 Jul 2015 12:47AM
@grantkeinzley
modern infrastructure exists because we have ironed out many of the faults
And got many more with them. The we have to consider that one of the main reasons why we got representative democracy was to actually prevent democracy (History of Democracy, B. Roper).
In order to do this, the Patriot leaders of the Revolution used ‘a language inspiring to all classes, specific enough in its listing of grievances to charge people with anger against the British, vague enough to avoid class conflict among the rebels, and stirring enough to build a patriotic feeling for the resistance movement’ (1999: 68). But this was a difficult game for the Patriot leaders to play because it required a balancing act, maintaining broadly popular support for the War of Independence and Revolution by appealing to universal notions of liberty and democracy, on one hand, while simultaneously defending the sanctity of property and the rule of a rich capitalist minority, on the other.
The rich really didn't want the poor having any power which is why the US (and NZ IMO) is now an oligarchy/plutocracy.
One of the points we seem to have decided upon is to fix the system because it's broken and one of those things that needs fixing is the return of democracy to the people.
Danyl Strype Thu 23 Jul 2015 1:24AM
Instead of flooding this channel with the essay that would be required to fully respond to the comments by @grantkeinzley , I'll just recommend the book 'The Democracy Project', by anthropologist David Graeber.
TL;DR democratic practice is as old as humanity, the Greeks only invented the word democracy, and were pretty crap at it in practice (excluding women, keeping slaves etc). Representative government is not a form of democracy at all, but a poor substitute for it, designed (as @colinengland points out) to confound calls for a return to actual democracy ("but we already live in a democracy").
Grant Keinzley Thu 23 Jul 2015 1:41AM
hahaha good point
but the end goal of this party is to fix it, improve it, then
develop it.
what other solutions are there? communist driven socialism?
which in China actually works better than nz's version of democracy
:)
GrantK
William Asiata · Thu 9 Jul 2015 8:44PM
A name for the merger that combines the branding and presence of both interest groups:
"Internet Pirate Party" - IPP