The Athens Assembly
The Week in Italy will be back, as usual, next Thursday
Dear readers, just a short note this week, I’m afraid. I’m out of the country right now, helping launch the Democratic Odyssey: a crowdsourced campaign developing a concept and strategy to institutionalise a permanent peoples’ assembly in the EU. I’ve been working with the team for two years now, preparing the ground for the first in-person meeting which will take place over the weekend in Athens, bringing together 200 citizens from all across the continent to discuss what Europe can do to better confront future crises. We’ve got three days of talks, debates, music and art ahead of us, so that’s filling-up 110% of my time right now. From next week on, it’s back to freelance life.
If you’re interested in what the Democratic Odyssey is up to, you can check out our website, social media and brand new digital platform for citizen participation. To follow the Assembly online, across the weekend, you can livestream the sessions on YouTube here.
If citizen participation stuff isn’t your thing, don’t worry: the Week in Italy will be back as normal next Thursday with your regular dose of news, politics, art, culture and travel.
Thanks for understanding, and more from me very soon!
Jamie
I’m Jamie Mackay, a UK-born, Italy-based writer, working at the interfaces of journalism, criticism, poetry, fiction, philosophy, travelogue and cultural-history. I set up ‘The Week in Italy’ to make a space to share a regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds, to explore politics, current affairs, books, arts and food. If you’re a regular reader, and you enjoy these updates, I hope you’ll consider becoming a supporter for EUR 5.00 per month. I like to think of it as a weekly catch-up chat over an espresso. Alternatively, if you’d like to send a one-off something, you can do so via PayPal using this link. Grazie!