WHAT ARE CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES?
Citizens’ Assemblies (“CAs”) are groups of randomly selected residents, similar to the process for jury duty, tasked with making a decision on a key public issue. Members are continuously chosen at random to reflect the city’s demographics, ensuring a true cross-section of New Yorkers, not just those with money, time, or political connections.
The citizens selected hear from subject-matter experts, stakeholders, and community voices on the topic at hand, then deliberate together before voting on recommendations or binding policies. Assemblies are structured, facilitated, and bound to policy and legal frameworks. The process replaces political theatre with informed, collaborative decision-making, and shifts us from ideological- or team-based decisions to policy-focused decisions: getting to the heart of effective governance.
Why new york city needs them?
Our current system is locked in gridlock:
Money in politics drowns out solutions.
Binary and tribal party politics turns every issue into a reactionary team sport.
Low voter information engagement means people often vote on personality or team, not actual policy.
Fragmented agencies and boards delay important initiatives like housing development and infrastructure projects, whereas CAs consolidates these into a cohesive and efficient process.
Ever-expanding salaries and positions eat into budgets while adding bureaucracy, whereas CAs reallocates from the existing budget in the short-term and saves in costs in the long-term.
Citizens’ Assemblies cut through these barriers. They create decisions grounded in evidence and public values, not campaign donations or political ambition.
HOW DO CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES ACTUALLY WORK AND HOW DO WE ENVISION THEY WOULD WORK?
Random Selection: Names are randomly drawn from the voter roll (what’s called sortition) and other civic databases, ensuring diversity by age, borough, background, and experience. The result would be an honest sample of the population. NYC could guarantee paid time off for Citizens’ Assembly service by passing a City Charter amendment or local law that treats it like jury duty to protect jobs, benefits, and wages, with possible city reimbursement for small businesses.
Briefing: Members learn about the issue from a wide range of perspectives: experts, advocates, affected communities, and industry voices sharing their perspectives before deliberation, again, much like a jury does for a case.
Deliberation: In moderated discussions, members weigh trade-offs, question presenters, and explore solutions. Voters become truly informed on the individual policy and its implications in which they are voting on. The shift from ideology to policy is paramount.
Decision: The assembly votes on recommendations or binding decisions, depending on the charter.
Rotation: Members serve short terms, rotating like juries, keeping power distributed.
Protecting democracy in AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
We’re looking ahead and as AI continues to evolve and shapes more of our culture and society, and with the backdrop of an unengaged political body, we risk drifting into technocracy, where algorithms and experts, rather than citizens, set policy. Embedding Citizens’ Assemblies into our governance now ensures that human values, equal representation, and democracy remain at the center of decision-making and a safeguarding structure is in place for the fast-changing future.
HOW CITIZENS ASSEMBLIES END POLITICAL GRIDLOCK AND CORRUPTION
When a small pool of career politicians and lobbyists hold power, decisions get stalled, diluted, or traded for favors. Citizens’ Assemblies replace this bottleneck with a diverse group of everyday New Yorkers who are randomly selected and independent of campaign donations. They rotate in and out. By focusing on evidence, not party lines, they break the deadlock and remove the financial incentives that fuel corruption.
This is political transformation from the root, not a band-aid.
HOW OUR PLAN BEGINS IMPLEMENTATION
NYC’s many fragmented, overlapping agencies are slow, disconnected, and easily captured by local power brokers, while adding significant administrative delay, financial burdens, and inefficiencies. For example, we are in a mass housing crisis but the process for developers to be approved to build new housing supply touches several overlapping agencies with redundant requirements that make the approval process a multi-year one.
This is why our plan advocates to start here. We advocate merging the below redundant city agencies and positions:
59 Community Boards (advisory only, unelected representatives with no binding power, they create red tape without real authority),
5 Borough Boards (overlap with both community boards and borough presidents, adding an extra layer of redundancy),
5 Borough Presidents (their budgets fund duplicative staff and offices despite holding little executive power),
and the City Planning Commission (duplicates land-use review already done by community boards, borough presidents, borough boards, and ultimately City Council, the Mayor, and potentially Board of Standards & Approvals, acting as an unnecessary intermediary in a process already crowded with overlapping approvals).
Our restructuring would cut red tape, reduce millions of dollars of overhead, and speed up timelines for critical projects like housing development and education reform by replacing fragmented bureaucracies with a single, citizen-led approval process.
LEARNING FROM HISTORY
Ancient Athens used this random selection practice (called sortition) to fill most public offices, ensuring decisions reflected the whole citizenry, not a permanent ruling class. Citizens’ Assemblies bring that democratic principle into the 21st century, using modern facilitation methods and transparency tools.
The pursuit of true democracy and the freedom it promises is still an ongoing project in America, yet it remains deeply embedded in our national foundation.
SHIFTING FROM IDENTITY AND REACTIONARY POLITICS TO POLICY-DRIVEN POLITICS
In our current system, debates often devolve into identity and political team lines rather than solving actual problems. The current system reduces the human experience and the political will of a nation, by preventing complexity. Citizens’ Assemblies shift the focus to shared facts, a policy-focus, and practical solutions. By working in small, diverse groups of citizens (not career politicians) with equal voice, members hear various perspectives, find common ground and vote on policies that address everyone’s needs.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED IN THE MOVEMENT
If you’re concerned about the state of democracy and the world right now like us, then know you’re not alone, but there are ways we can use this opportunity to transform into something America always intended: true democracy that supports real freedom.
You don’t need to be an insider to make democracy work better. Democracy is meant to be about all of us. Learn how Citizens’ Assemblies function, spread the word in your community, and push for them to be written into NYC’s charter.
Reach out to us to connect or learn more, spread the word, and advocate for these changes right here in New York City.
Our priority right now is to spread the word, educate New Yorkers about Citizens’ Assemblies, and build mayoral support.
HOW WOULD THESE CHANGES BE FUNDED
No New Taxes: Just Smarter Spending!
Funding Citizens’ Assemblies doesn’t require raising revenue or adding new taxes. We can reallocate from within the existing budget by consolidating duplicative and redundant agencies, boards, and positions into the single permanent Citizens’ Assemblies. The result: more effective democracy, less bureaucracy, faster and more efficient decision-making on much-needed issues like housing, and significant long-term savings.
$5 million from the People’s Money fund, a CA-like experiment,
$20.4 million from Community Boards,
$37.2 million from the 5 Borough Presidents,
$597,000 from the Borough Boards,
and $24.6 million from the City Planning Commission.
The People’s Money fund has laid important groundwork by incorporating randomized, representative participation in city budgeting. It shows NYC’s willingness to experiment with these changes. The program, however, is short-term and advisory, rather than permanent and with real decision-making authority, which our plan would implement. The existing program is also redundant with community boards still in place. This participatory budgeting program already allocates hundreds of millions annually under the Mayor’s unilateral control, and its budget can be expanded for this purpose.
WHAT ARE THE KEY BENEFITS OF PERMANENT CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES IN NEW YORK CITY?
1 - True Democracy
Shifts NYC to real representation from everyday New Yorkers. The pursuit of genuine democracy and the freedom it promises is still unfinished business in America.
2 - Policy-Focus
CAs replace party reliance and cults-of personality with thoughtful, fact-based deliberation on the actual issues and specific policies.
3 - Efficiency & Cost Savings
Eliminates duplicative agencies and positions, streamlines approval processes (especially for housing), and saves money that is otherwise wasted on fragmented inefficiencies.
4 - Corruption Prevention
CAs help remove the incentives for campaign donations and political favors that drive much of today’s corruption — addressing the root cause through a realistic, structural reform.
5 - Informed Voters
Briefings from experts and stakeholders ensure decisions are based on facts and diverse perspectives, making voters informed on policy by default, rather than overreliance on a political tribe.
6 - Safeguard Against AI-Driven Technocracy
We are thinking long-term and CAs maintain a citizen-led decision process so democratic control remains even in an uncertain future.
7 - Public Trust
Transparent, peer-led decision-making can help restore trust in public institutions, which is critical as confidence and civility reach historic lows.
Does The Free City only focus on PERMANENT Citizens’ Assemblies?
The Free City is a single, coherent restructuring of how our city governs itself. Our vision of permanent Citizens’ Assemblies becomes the operating system of NYC’s democracy, replacing fragmented, outdated subsystems with a unified, citizen-led structure. Under this framework, CAs are the decision-making backbone that connects and coordinates housing, budgeting, education, infrastructure, AI safeguards, and more.
We advocate for a broader vision of democracy: building a strong foundation for freedom in America’s greatest city at the local level. Establishing permanent Citizens’ Assemblies in NYC is our priority because it’s the single most impactful first step toward that vision: a governance model that can adapt, self-correct, and respond to future challenges as one integrated system.
You can read and learn about our additional initiatives to be written into the City Charter, incorporated into the permanent Citizens’ Assemblies oversight, and/or enacted through local laws to bind city agencies where applicable.
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permanent local Citizens’ Assemblies, freedom safeguards, and system coherence in New York City.