Chapter 12b
Imagining a Provisional Government
A thousand miles.....step by step


In our consideration the most crucial element of this ‘provisional government’ will be its provisional Judicial Branch. It will be upon this Judicial Branch that the responsibility will fall to guard the inalienable democratic rights of citizen-members. To guarantee the most basic of democratic rights, freedom of speech itself, the provisional Judicial Boards will need to be in place and fully functional, with trained Moderators fully prepared and available to staff Local Groups as they form, at the time the first citizen-member is subscribed to the organization’s rolls. As Local Groups are formed, they must be required to approve and authorize Moderators as their first item of business.

We imagine that the provisional National Congress, though not yet a representative body, can serve to ground the organization’s authority in a diverse group whose members can easily be replaced by elected representatives when the organization matures to the point at which national elections are practical. We are thinking in a time frame of perhaps six months, or hopefully a maximum of one year. If it can be accomplished in three months, all the better, but this does not strike us as a realistic time frame. A realistic assessment of the difficult roll out process, imagining the pace at which time passes in the course of such an effort, would suggest that one year might be a reasonable goal to set, (though likely one that would be difficult to attain).

Or perhaps, rather than rushing to try to conduct national elections, newly elected representatives might join the National Congress in a natural and organically progressive manner, as individual Local Groups are formed and consolidate into State and District Congresses.

The provisional National Congress, which presumably would be selected from among the people who convene and work to build and organize the group, and hopefully also from people of special skill, experience, or social standing who might be recruited to serve in it, should be made up from people from as broad a geographical base as possible. The National Congress will elect the organization’s first President to form and head up the provisional Executive Branch.

The President’s first task will be to recruit and nominate people to serve on the provisional National Judicial Board, who must then be approved by the National Congress. The President will select an Executive Staff to assist in her or his duties, and with their help will recruit and nominate State Coordinators, who will also be subject to approval by the National Congress.

The State Coordinators will in turn recruit and form up State Advisory Councils, with the selection of these people subject to approval by the President. The State Coordinators will organize a State Office, and will generally supervise the development of the organization in her or his State. The President will work closely with the State Coordinators and State Advisory Councils to recruit people to serve on the State Judicial Boards.

Most of these people will by necessity be people who are motivated by civic and moral purpose to volunteer to bear the burdens of these duties, recognizing that at the outset, a dues-supported organization that has no members yet will have little or no money.

Ideally, we would have enough seed funds on hand to staff a physical office in key target States for at least several months to a year, until the organization is operational and dues revenue is available. Unless we have a very deep source of seed funds, however, we will likely need to depend on volunteers to take responsibility for development in many less populous States.

The provisional State Judicial Boards can work closely in conjunction with the State Advisory Councils to undertake the responsibility of recruiting and training capable Moderators, who in turn can be responsible for initiating, and/or supervising the initiation of Local Groups. The State Judicial Boards and Advisory Councils can select from among the Moderators they recruit and train to organize provisional District Judicial Boards as Local Groups form and are ready to coalesce into a District level of administration. State Coordinators will organize provisional District Councils as these District level administrations take shape.

The role of Moderators will be crucial to the successful formation of new Local Groups, for it will be up to them to manage Groups whose members are not yet attuned to the disciplines of Democracy. (See chapter 9f for our ideas concerning a system of democratic moderation). The Moderators will have to apply and enforce an objective democratic culture of civility and restraint, while providing even handed protections for people’s freedom of speech.

Once such a culture is established, it will be much easier to maintain than it was to create, but at the outset people will be coming from a pervasive social culture that often seems to encourage personal contentiousness much more than a spirit of democratic cooperation. The learning curve may very well be somewhat difficult, and the Moderators will be the organization’s front line representatives.

The proper recruitment and training of these Moderators will therefore be absolutely crucial to our success. We cannot simply recruit volunteers and assume that anyone who raises her or his hand will be suitable to the job. People who volunteer must be required to undergo an orientation/training regimen during which they must demonstrate their suitability to this difficult and crucially important job.

Though these various Branches of governance will not yet be 'democratic' in the sense of being elected by The People, they will be mandated in the Provisional Government Charter, (provided for in the organization’s constitution), with the task of overseeing the development of, and timely and orderly transition to, a fully democratic system, with elections to form a bona fide democratic government to be scheduled at the earliest practical opportunity.

The organizational structure may very likely develop unevenly, with some States and Districts maturing well before others get past early formative stages. It will therefore likely not be suitable for plans for transition to a fully democratic representational system to be universally applied at a given date or time. Plans will likely need to be designed to take effect in States and Districts as they begin to form up and mature into functionality. Thus some States might elect representatives to participate fully in the administration of the organization, while others are still being managed as they are organizing. The overarching goal will be to transition to a fully functioning True Democracy in which every citizen-member is equally represented, and power flows properly from the bottom up, as soon as this is prudently possible in each geographical area where the organization takes root.

During this temporary formative period in which the organization is managed from the top down, a legal body must exist to oversee the provisional government, to ensure that the temptations of power do not lead it to seek to entrench itself in control of the organization longer than necessary. A transitional Board of Trustees can be formed, which will have defined legal rights by charter to pursue legal remedies should any person or faction within the provisional government, during its temporary period in power, pursue any action that appears to this Board of Trustees to be detrimental to the ethos, purpose, and general democratic spirit of the organization.


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