The Assembly is dead. It rests on an ableist appeal to mobilization. It celebrates human representation when even the most basic ecological processes of regeneration are jeopardized by humanity’s mode of reproduction. Assemblies expose protesters to state violence, surveillance and fascist counter-attack. That is, if the assembly is not itself already populated by fascists, as many of the recent Corona-demonstrations were. Good assemblies might be elating, but their spirit often evaporates devoid of effects.
And yet. If, as Véronica Gago reminds us, assemblies also are kitchens of strikes, spaces for taking root and thinking together, then we cannot altogether dispense of them. Assemblies might be a dead end, but they all the same constitute a pure means (Walter Benjamin). What would it mean to actually assemble all the living? It cannot mean to include plants and animals in our tired convention. It must mean to align ourselves with myriad regenerative tides in a planetary canteen of care. Long live the assembly.