BIEN Needs to Have Yearly Congresses

Karl Widerquist, co-chair
Louise Haagh, co-chair

We, the two co-chairs of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), have made the following proposal to BIEN’s 2016 General Assembly: “Starting as soon as possible, BIEN will have yearly Congresses whenever affiliate networks are available to host them.”[*] BIEN has held Congresses once every two years since its inception in 1986. The Congress in Seoul will be BIEN’s sixteenth. In this op-ed we explain why a move to annual Congresses are so important to BIEN at this time, and we address some concerns people might have with annual Congresses.

The main reason that BIEN needs yearly Congresses is that the Basic Income movement has grown enormous. In 1986, when BIEN began, it is hard to say there was a movement. There was a small tight-knit group of researchers; most of them came to every conference. Although some activists were interested in Basic Income, public opinion was not at point to make a real activist movement viable in many countries. Today Basic Income has millions of supporters around the world with many more joining every day. The topic has entered mainstream political debate in dozens of countries, many of which had no previous history of high-level discussion of basic income.

BIEN has to keep pace with the growth of the movement. Its role is to get people involved, to exchange ideas, to give people a chance to build on each other’s ideas. It’s missing too many opportunities to do that with such infrequent Congresses.

The second most important reason to begin having yearly Congresses is that BIEN has grown. BIEN was constituted as the Basic Income European Network, and its geographic reach was limited almost entirely to Western Europe until BIEN expanded to become the Basic income Earth Network in 2004. Even then, for several more years, most of its membership and most of the people attending its Congresses were European. But with BIEN’s expanded reach, it had to have Congresses in other parts of the world. BIEN has had successful Congresses in Africa, South America, and North America, and we expect it will have a successful Congress in Asia this July, but the expansion of geographical reach of BIEN’s Congresses has meant fewer Congresses in any region. Only the world’s most privileged people can travel halfway around the globe to attend a conference. We need to have more conferences in more regions so that more people have the opportunity to attend a one now and then.

We see very little downside to this proposal. Most organizations that have conferences have them yearly. The amount of basic income literature and activism going on today ensures that there is no risk that we will run out of new ideas to discuss at the congresses.

The most likely concern that might make people hesitate to endorse annual Congresses is the fear that they might be too much work and that BIEN might outstrip its resources. Obviously, two conferences are twice the work of one conference, but two conferences are not necessarily more work for any one person. Each BIEN Congress is run by one of BIEN’s affiliate networks. They take on the responsibility of raising funds, finding facilities, inviting participants, creating schedule, and virtually everything else involved with running a conference. The BIEN Executive Committee’s role is limited to overseeing this effort to ensure consistency.

When BIEN began in 1986, it had no affiliates, and there was only one national basic income network—the Citizens Income Trust[†] in the United Kingdom—in existence in the world. Today BIEN has about two dozen affiliates on all six habitable continents. Most of them either have hosted a BIEN Congress or would like to if they got the chance. Many more networks, many of them potential affiliates, are springing up around the world. In its affiliates and members, BIEN has far more resources than ever before. Many networks would like to get more involved in the movement by bringing the BIEN Congress to their country or region.

In 2014, three excellent proposals were put forward to host the 2016 Conference—one each from Finland, the Netherlands, and (South) Korea. According to BIEN’s rules at the time, the General Assembly could only pick one. That meant that we had to turn down two others. It was little consolation to those groups to say, “although you can’t host a BIEN Congress in two years, if you reapply, maybe one of you can host it in four years and the other can host it in six years.” That is an extremely long time to wait. We had to turn away groups that were willing and able to put on great conferences.

As the co-chairs of BIEN, we have been in touch with several groups that are interested in hosting the next BIEN Congress, and some of them are interested in doing it as early as 2017. We are, therefore, confident that we can move to yearly conferences right away. If in any year we do not have an affiliate network capable of hosting a conference, we have written the proposal in a way that allows us to skip a year.

Therefore, we see very good reason to support—and very little reason to oppose—a move to annual BIEN Congresses. We ask all of BIEN’s members to join us in supporting this motion.

— notes —

[*] The full wording is, “Starting as soon as possible, BIEN will have yearly Congresses whenever affiliate networks are available to host them. If BIEN cannot find affiliate networks to organize Congresses yearly, they will continue with Congresses once every two years.”

[†] Then called the Basic Income Research Group.

BIEN Congress