Why not start direct democracy cities?

[True Blue Door]

23. They're a start, certainly.

But they're a very loose, impersonal kind of thing. You can't form a community around a referendum process. People just vote absentee and don't necessarily pay much attention to the issues they're voting on. If the initiative process were suspended in favor of just ordinary elected representation, how many people would give a damn or even notice? It's a very tenuous practice, and isn't socially enshrined.

That's why I saw a lot of value in the Assembly concept that Occupy was exploring. People physically coming together to moot ideas and make decisions. The details of their methods were kind of kooky, but the underlying concept has a lot of merit. If people were accustomed to meeting every weekend or so in their local area to moot ideas, that could be part of the social fabric of the community, and people would very much notice if authorities tried to shut down such an institution.

I think preventing that from happening was part of the authoritarian agenda's determination to shut down Occupy, even if Occupy itself failed to realize the importance of those Assemblies.