Direct, face-to-face democratic institutions where residents of a local area (a
neighborhood, block, or housing complex) gather to make binding decisions on matters affecting their immediate community. A
Neighborhood Assembly is the general deliberative body—the town hall for local issues. A
Neighborhood Commune is the more radical form where this assembly assumes direct political and economic control, managing shared resources (gardens, tools, childcare), security, and dispute resolution, often operating on principles of consensus and mutual aid. They are laboratories of hyper-local self-governance, bypassing traditional municipal bureaucracy.
Example: After the city repeatedly fails to repair a dangerous intersection, residents of the Oak Street block form a
Neighborhood Assembly. They meet monthly in a garage. They vote to install a community-funded traffic calming plan. This evolves into a
Neighborhood Commune: they pool money to buy tools for a communal garden in a vacant lot, organize a rotating schedule for elderly care, and run a local security patrol. They've created a micro-polity based on direct
participation, making the city government largely irrelevant for their daily lives. Neighborhood Assemblies and Neighborhood Communes.
