From terror to democracy: an open letter

Dear Reader,

I want your help to see if we can defeat terrorism. I know this sounds a bit surprising, but that’s the point. If everyone leaves it to someone else – and that includes our leaders – it will never happen.

Around the world, from New York to Bali to Baghdad, innocent people are the victims of terrorism. A year ago in Madrid, on 11 March 2004, ten bombs exploded on commuter trains in the rush hour and killed 191 people. As I write this, news comes in that over 100 have died when a car bomb exploded in the Iraqi town of Hilla.

What can we do about it? Well, if one of the motives of terrorism is to provoke rage that feeds the cycle of violence that terrorism lives off, another is to make us feel helpless.

Next week in Madrid, on the anniversary of the train bombings, senior politicians and respected scholars from around the world, supported by the former world leaders who make up the Club de Madrid, will be gathering in a unique summit of over 500 people. They want to draw up an “agenda” of principles and policies for debate. Their question: how to safeguard democracy and overcome terrorism. I’ll be there, representing openDemocracy.

For more about the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism, and Security in Madrid, click here

As Mary Robinson, who was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and will be at Madrid, says:

“This is a summit we have been waiting for and all need. After 9/11 there was a real sense of togetherness. Now, internationally, people are confused and distressed”.

I agree with her – but I think I know what we can do about this.

If we are to protect the inheritance of liberal democracy – such as fair and free elections, the rule of law, freedom of speech and association – we need open democracy.

That’s to say, we need to root this inheritance in a more direct and open politics than that provided by political parties as we know them and the global media as it currently works.

Let’s make a start. You know the famous saying: every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I’m asking you to take a step. Just one. No more than one. That’s all.

But I want to emphasise its importance as well as its modesty.

We have been working with the summit organisers to hold an online debate over the past few months; now, on and around 11 March 2005, we want thousands of people around the world to take some time to think about the victims of terrorism, and to reflect on how it could be different.

We want to show the world leaders gathering in Madrid that there can be a politics based on dialogue and engagement rather than focus groups and spin control.

Will you help us by calling together a few friends and colleagues, perhaps over a drink (whether alcoholic or not) or some food, to express your solidarity with all the innocent victims of terrorism and discuss what you think? It need only take an hour, with five or six people, but it will matter. And if you tell us that you’re doing it, by going to http://meetings.safe-democracy.org/meet/ and signing up, then it will help us make the impact that is needed. There are some obvious questions to share: what concerns you the most about the current conflict between, as the headlines have it, “democracy and terrorism”? What is the first thing that should be done? And what should not be done?

In advance of the Madrid Summit, openDemocracy writers debate how best democratic states and citizens can respond to terrorism

These are very general, simple questions, you may find you don’t agree when you come to talk about them, and you may have others of your own that you prefer.

What on earth is the point? The answer is that we must move on from protests, however great or small, and opinion polls, however accurate, to a thinking public which knows it can deliberate and is not prone to panic or manipulation.

Please show your support for the victims of terrorism on 11 March by meeting with some friends and colleagues and starting a new kind of conversation.

You will begin something those who live by power and violence most fear: the creation of a confident, international public.

What Now?

Visit the meeting website at http://meetings.safe-democracy.org/

Read our Guide to Holding a Meeting (available in several languages)

Register on the site and tell us where and when you’ll be holding your meeting – this information is private unless you tell us otherwise, and we won’t publicise your meeting or your participation in any way without your permission.

After your meeting, come back to the site and tell us what you discussed – we’ll make sure that the leaders listen.

And that’s it. A small start, but an important one. I hope you can join us.

Thank you,

Anthony

Anthony Barnett
Editor
www.openDemocracy.net