THREE DAY CONVOCATION

San Francisco, California, June 24 - 26, 2005

The June 2004 San Francisco Conference "Toward a Democratic United Nations for the 21st Century" resolved to participate in the June 26, 2005 UN 60th Charter anniversary. The host Citizens for a United Nations People's Assembly (formerly San Francisco Peoples Assembly - SFPA) also committed to develop and present then in 2005 "a detailed UN revitalization program and action plan with an international media campaign for UN Reform."

The UN 60th commemorations can inform the US public about the good the UN does for the world community and the need for and benefits of UN Reform. The San Francisco meeting could serve as a catalyst to engage activists and organizations to join with the complementary Ubuntu and other UN Reform projects in promoting a potentiated movement. The challenge now is to agree on which opportunities we want to pursue.

We also need to locate an ongoing organization to house the campaign Secretariat and provide core staff at least part time. Rob Wheeler describes one key to the success of the May 2000 We the Peoples Millennium Forum. To handle the extensive business the Forum entailed, its Chair, Techeste Ahderom, enlisted shared use of several office personnel at the Bahai Community headquarters in New York where he worked.

The assumption to date has been that the SFPA would serve a similar function for the Campaign to Empower the United Nations, which it decided to encourage, in June 2004, over the following year.

THE SFPA AND THE CAMPAIGN TO EMPOWER THE UN

The campaign, as described herein, is in any case a more ambitious plan than was originally conceived of by the Citizens for a United Nations People's Assembly (formerly San Francisco Peoples Assembly). The US based activities could thus function somewhat independently from the SFPA both before and after the June 2005 San Francisco event. However, the crew already on board at the SFPA may be interested in filling some of the positions that the campaign requires. Thus the lineup of salaried monthly positions already commissioned, plus those not yet in place, could function like this: Director (Bill McCarthy), Organizational Consultant & International Representative (Rob Wheeler), Operations Manager (David Pleasants), Strategic Consultant (David Lionel), plus an Office Assistant, Web Researcher, PR Firm, and Ad Agency.

One way to proceed in the near term could be for SFPA to choose to allocate a challenge grant to the Campaign to Empower the United Nations: $20,000 to fund operations through Porto Alegre, January 30, 2005. This donation might synchronize with pledges for cash and services forthcoming from other groups in Padua and Porto Alegre.

Sharing the responsibilities and staging of the UN 60th Charter Day activities could substantially improve the quality of the events and give the world community the opportunity to focus on the ongoing need for UN reform at the very place where the UN Charter was drafted and signed sixty years ago.

The Citizens for a United Nations People's Assembly (formerly San Francisco Peoples Assembly) and its endowment are dedicated to supporting direct work toward a Peoples Assembly, defined as an elected second house at the UN in consultative status to the General Assembly, established through Article 22 of the UN Charter.

However, a Campaign to Empower the United Nations necessarily involves many other options. Rob Wheeler's participation in Padua and Porto Alegre is only part of the financial and person power commitment this project requires. It needs follow through with each successive event. Hence the suggestion that the SFPA for now just provide seed money to substantiate the campaign. It will thus ensure itself an important position going forward while also welcoming the support and participation of other players.

The international seminar in Padua offers a platform designed to springboard a comprehensive UN Reform campaign. Then those dedicated world citizens who show up on Track 11 in Porto Alegre at the World Social Forum will be able to legitimate it, flesh it out, and give it energy.

There is still time to create any size and level of event that San Francisco wants in June 2005. Yet it may be that the Bay Area is not the right venue to hold any or all of these proposed happenings. They could perhaps be held in New York in September or further down the calendar in 2006.

The following event description presumes that SFPA and Ubuntu can align their efforts with other co-sponsors in Padua and Porto Alegre. The resultant overarching Campaign to Empower the United Nations could then stage a significant three day convocation in San Francisco concurrent with UN Charter celebrations.

UN 60 CHARTER FULFILLMENT DAYS

The UN 60th commemoration provides an excellent occasion to announce in the US a unified Campaign to Empower the United Nations. San Francisco could put itself forward as the next stop between the Montreal and Helsinki Conferences in the 2005 Calendar of Events.

The overall program for the occasion would have three principal emphases:

- Funding and implementing the Millennium Development Goals
- Promoting the recommendations of the Secretary-General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change
- Planning for a UN Charter Review Conference under Article 109 of the UN Charter

The Campaign to Empower the United Nations will publicize concrete and actionable proposals for UN enhancement. The June assemblage can help organize energetic drives to carry out effective education and advocacy for each area of reform:

- Alternatives to War
- Establishing Economic and Social Justice with Sustainable Development
- Protecting Human Rights and Taking Collective Responsibility
- Strengthening the International Rule of Law
- Funding and Democratizing the United Nations

We envision highly promoted broadcasts showing the UN 60 happenings in San Francisco, to air in major cities in the US and potentially globally. These compelling and entertaining television programs should inspire and inform the general public. They would feature past and present UN officials, government leaders, celebrities, performers, experts on UN Reform, civil society activists, and youth.

Friday, June 24: Campaign to Empower the United Nations US Debut

The main theme is to actualize mechanisms that strengthen and democratize the UN. We will publicize the Top 20 Empowerments. The idea is to achieve each of these aims within the next five years. An interactive screening of the 42:00 Action Agenda for the Earth Summary video will ground the discussions and bring all participants up to speed on the issues.

This program presents an audio-visual equivalent of the authoritative Declaration and Agenda for Action promulgated on the invitation of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the United Nations in May 2000 by the We the Peoples Millennium Forum. The document backs all the changes now being proposed.

The event we envision in San Francisco will have a specific operational focus, putting plans and players in place to institutionalize over time a list of specified UN structural reforms with designated funding mechanisms. We can invite the endorsement of leading associations, organizers, and initiatives active in each focus area. Many will send representatives to San Francisco to participate in strategy sessions on building the ongoing global campaign and maximizing the impact of its self-promotion, especially in the US.

The Global Progressive Forum would likely bring a delegation to and help fund a gathering with a strong impetus for UN Reform. Their inclusion could enable us to engage members of the progressive community in the United States who are informed about global affairs.

Among possible reform options, the event could feature an operational plan for establishing at the UN a Parliamentary Assembly of sitting national legislators, a permanent Global Civil Society Forum, and an elected Peoples Assembly,

SFPA and other local grass roots Peoples Assemblies can feed into these bodies, instituted to liaison with the mass of humanity. They would be specifically responsible for processing popular input to make it usable by governments. Any recommendation needs to identify: Who What When How Wherewithal? Namely:

Which agencies or partnership will carry out work on the ground?
What are their defined tasks, targets, and goals?
By what dates are they expected to show which concrete results?
What is the mechanism, the institutional mode, to accomplish the stated aims?
What funding sources will stream sustained support because it is
in their self-interest as well as for the common good?

We can also work to democratize under certifiably fair electoral conditions the selection of delegates to these two globally representative institutions.

Member of the European Parliament Joe Leinen told us he would bring a delegation of parliamentarians to San Francisco for UN 60, if we include a session centered on establishing a Parliamentary Assembly at the UN.

Saturday, June 25: Article 109 Working Meeting with Major Groups

A special one day Institute, sponsored by Benton Musslewhite of One World Now, will draw together advocates, through Article 109 of the UN Charter, of a Charter Review conference, planned to take place within the next five years. Attendees should indicate in advance their support for the Article 109 process, as the entire point of the day would be to get what could be similar to a world constitutional convention to in fact happen in the near future.

Many groups are working on parts of a UN Reform agenda. For instance, the Earth Charter has evolved a set of useful global values and principles. In addition, the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural, and United World is putting forward a Charter of Human Responsibilities which could serve as a Third Pillar (along with the Declaration of Human Responsibilities and a renewed UN Charter) under which the UN Member States would be required to act more responsibly. However, there has been little concrete action to date in implementing most of these promising propositions.

A general Charter Review conference may offer great help in achieving comprehensive reforms, alongside piecemeal approaches. We need to promote an outline of proposed UN transformations. One of the most salient involves introducing a system of weighted voting into the Security Council. Professor Joseph Schwartzberg has shown how to do to this: agglomerating eighteen voting units from regional sets of nations.

The event Benton envisions brings attention to such specific ways to democratize and empower the UN. He would like to see us start organizing the Article 109 process, raise the additional necessary funds, arouse the grass roots, build momentum and political will, plus work with the European Parliament and the Global Progressive Forum to lobby national governments to achieve the requisite 2/3 vote of the General Assembly and any 9 members of the Security Council to call the conference.

We need to represent in the UN the whole of earth's population, yet protect ourselves from the tyranny of the majority. The global organization could emerge from this reconstruction process with the funding, mandate, and power to make the world work for all.

Early in the day, we should interactively screen the edited 58:00 video: Article 109: Chartering a Democratic and Empowered United Nations. It features short excerpts from five videos interspersing a structured conversation between recognized American experts on the imperatives toward and advantages of such a Charter Review conference. We will also distribute to participants in advance and on site Benton Musslewhite's Article 109 booklet of the same name now in draft form.

After two full days working out all the procedural and structural details required to realize a system of global governance, we could relax into imagining where our visions are leading us. The idea is a Saturday night entertainment ­ a midsummer night's dream ­ telling a fable of the future establishment of "The World Parliament - How the People Found Their Voice." On the order of Peace Child, young performers would describe in song, dance, and story the look of the world from the other side of Charter Review.

Sunday, June 26: UN 60 Charter Fulfillment Day Telecast

We hope to telecast the content of our event and the UN 60 celebrations to a mass audience. For effective public outreach, rather than depend on the initiative of commercial media, we recommend securing co-sponsors to pay to stage, promote, and air our own broadcasts, in cooperation with local outlets providing program time.

The overarching theme of the proposed shows is the UN Past and Future. One suggestion is for the June telecast to consist of two ninety minute programs produced live on tape and aired during and after the event. We would transmit this self-generated, self-financing programming locally, by satellite, and by broadband, primarily for educational and public TV stations both nationally and globally.

Independently producing and funding these presentations will enable us to control the content and frame the issues, in close cooperation with the UN and the UN Foundation. The project will need principal sponsors and a professional producer. A highly visible Bay Area screening would require promotion and advertising as well.

The first show highlights all the services the UN has performed over the past 60 years and does today. Nonetheless, we would acknowledge those functions that the UN has not been able to fulfill because of its structure and how it has to operate. The world body faces a crisis of relevance and widespread doubt of its ability to meet its most solemn commitments. This perspective prepares viewers for the second TV program, which will feature the reforms needed to empower the United Nations to help bring about a planet of peace and plenty for all.

David Lionel with Edits by Rob Wheeler
11/12/04

DAVID LIONEL is a veteran video producer and editor. He has run his own production company since 1977, specializing in socially aware programming. He operates a studio plus post-production and distribution facility in Los Angeles with an office in New York, and works with civil society organizations to telecast their major events. Lionel's non-profit Earth Television Foundation facilitates interactive participational screenings of his World Citizen transformational videobooks.

David Lionel
Earth Television Public Education Foundation
1247 Lincoln Blvd. Suite 70 • Santa Monica, CA 90401
TEL: 310 795-4910
Fax: 212 - 666 - 4392
lioneltv@aol.com
www.earthtelevision.org

ROB WHEELER is a UN Representative for the Association of World Citizens and the Global Ecovillage Network. He serves on the International Steering Committee for the UN's new initiative on Access to Basic Services for All.

Rob is the North American Representative on the Steering Committee for the World Civil Society Forum and served on the Executive Committee for the UN Millennium NGO Forum. He is currently the Coordinator of the Coalition for a World Parliament and Global Democracy. He is also the US Coordinator/Facilitator for the global Charter of Human Responsibilities, focusing in the US on Peace & Disarmament and Sustainable Development.

Rob Wheeler
robineagle@worldcitizen.org