If you are a part of an #Occupy group and are focusing on the facilitation teams, I’d like to offer you some resources from the Art of Hosting community.
On my site are scads of Facilitation Resources for use. All of these are offered free of charge of course. In terms of some of the challenges that #Occupy camps are facing, consensus decision making is one of the big ones. I am amazed at the capacity people are showing in undertaking consensus at the General Assemblies. But there will always be frustrations with these processes. My friend Tree Bressen offers a comprehensive set of consensus decision making resources on her pages and that is well worth a look.
In terms of deeper hosting practice Here is a link to a document i wrote a number of years ago called “Hosting in a Hurry” it can be a useful printout to hand to Occupy Groups to help them think about process. It was written for an indigenous North American audience which explains a few of the context specific stuff. But the essence of it is that it conveys art of hosting practice in a simple and succinct way. It can be used to compliment facilitation or as a discussion document among facilitators at #Occupy events who are learning as they go.
There is some amazing facilitation happening in the #Occupy world and people are learning on the fly. I hope these resources can be useful.
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Lawrence Lessig has noticed a very important practice that is emerging from the #occupy movement. It is the principle and the practice of non-contradiction:
In this movement, we need a similar strategy. Of course a commitment to non-violence. But also a commitment to non-contradiction: We need to build and define this movement not by contradicting the loudest and clearest anger on the Right, but instead, by finding the common ground in our demands for reform.
This is a a very useful contribution to the tools that are emerging from the #occupy movement. It is edgy because in traditional social activism you are defined by what you stand against, and opposing things is the means to ending them.
But one of the implications of “we are the 99%” is that no one is more 99% than anyone else. That is a big tent, and it is powerful as long as we can practice true diversity within it. This is a massive challenge. The 99% contains every kind of person, friend and ally and loathsome enemy. That is the nature of a huge complex human community. So practicing non-contradiction is like practicing non-violence in that it requires us to be in relationship with those we do not like.
Even though I practice non violence as much as I can I bet there is a limit to that. My job as a peaceful human being is to stretch myself beyond my own limits in practicing peace. Sometimes non-violence gets tagged as “compliance” but it isn’t that really. It is a commitment to a new world and a new way of being.
It is similar with non-contradiction. There are things in the world that probably need contradicting, and I am sure there are limits to this principle in my own practice and capabilities. But for this movement, and for this new world, we need conversational space and space is opened by engagement and being non-contradictory. If you believe that we truly interdependent, then we have to work to see that one person’s racism is my problem too. That I participate in the conditions that perpetuate those things that I would otherwise stand in contradiction to.
Let’s track this modality. Election seasons, protests and events can all benefit from this practice. It is a high calling to call yourself a practitioner of non-contradiction, but is it essential to a world of interconnection, interdependence and mutual benefit.
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It’s been a week since I was in New York City visiting the camp in Zuccotti Park (renamed Liberty Park) where the Occupy Wall Street movement was in full swing.
I was struck mostly by their process, but also by the earnest and deliberate attention that these people, young and old are giving to the chance they have to open discourse on the big issues of wealth disparity and social equity in America.
When I was there earlier in the week they were engaging in a participatory process to create their demands. It was as much about defining why they were there as anything else. But the fact is that many people are gathered there and supporting the occupation for various reasons. Mostly it is to draw attention to the vast disparities of wealth in the United States and the effect that is having especially on the poor and otherwise marginalized. There was a lot of conversation going on there last week within the group as well as between the group and the Wall Street workers. Surprising amount of joint discerning about what is really going on in America.
What is interesting about the movement there is that they eschew leaders of any kind. This is a traditional anarchist approach, and it’s being put into practice quite deliberately. There are many facilitators who are helping the group to decide themselves on what to say and do and so far the group has been very clear about non-violence and is even actively discouraging vandalism. I was in one meeting of the outreach team who were reporting on the controversial debate taking place about whether to mark subway maps with the local of the protest. in general, the group there wants to be very careful not to give the police any reason whatsoever to become violent with them. So they are staying away from anything that might be construed as violence or damage and are instead focusing on powerful speech, using their first amendment rights to talk about and explore what they stand for and what the issues are. There is no presence of the Black Bloc or other masked militants who have brought the wrath of the police state reigning down on protests here in Canada in recent years.
And there is is no clear single agenda, because the totality of the problems facing the USA cannot be summarized with a pithy statement of demands. They are not hijackers and they are not holding anything ransom. They are trying to figure out how to discuss and actively represent the malaise and serious economic, social and political issues going on in the USA systemically and accurately. So much of this analysis and practice lies outside of the mainstream of American thought and debate that it is hard to say it all without seeming crazy. But the USA is coming apart in fundamental ways – even the Wall Street folks don’t dispute the fundamental economic analysis – and standing for possibilities is hard, hard work right now.
It is inspiring to watch them in General Assembly, where twice a day they work through an agenda of decisions using “the people’s mic” as their amplification system. The police have banned megaphones of any kind and so they speak to the crowd by repeating what the speaker has just said. This has the double effect of ensuring everyone can hear as well as bringing a quiet shared tone to everything. It is slow and orderly discourse. When the general Assembly isn’t meeting, the place runs in a big general Open Space – type gathering. Anyone who wants to call a session calls out “mic check!” and everyone within hearing distance repeats the phrase. When enough people are paying attention, an announcement is made, a time and place chosen and the group goes back to work. It is beautiful to watch.
All people are going to have to challenge themselves to reach across divides if there is any hope of finding solutions to the current and looming crises. At Wall Street many protesters and many bankers were willing to do just that and many many conversations are happening there between suits and sleeping bags. Very little anger at all. They set the bar high for civil discourse despite looking scruffy.
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Leaving New York today. It has been an incredible four days here working with my good friends Kelly McGowan and Tuesday Ryan-Hart and Lex Schroeder, Aniestla Rugama, Alissa Schwartz, and Aswad Foster. We were running a workshop called the Art of Social Justice in which we were investigating the intersection of participatory process and social justice work. Over three days we explored a framework that Tuesday has developed and investigated with Kelly for the past year. The framework includes and transcends the gifts and drawbacks of traditional social justice frameworks and of what we know about participatory process.
Tuesday is writing a lot more about this, but the essence of the framework is that neither social justice analysis nor participatory process are enough on their own to move us into the new forms of leadership that are needed in a world where social inequity and power are becoming increasingly complex, and where traditional forms of organizing are no longer reflective of the interconnected nature of global society..
A gift of traditional social justice analysis is the way it understands personal and collective power and privilege. This analysis concerns itself with transformation of both the personal and the social power dynamics in society, but it often contains within it an invisible current of control that runs deep in the architecture of social change process. It posits a social separation between those of us who are working for change in or allied with the struggle of oppressed peoples, and people in the system that are thought to be – traditionally – the enemy. Or it sets up a struggle between the system that perpetuates oppression and the people who are oppressed by it. In this world, in this time, that analysis is out of date. We are all connected to the entire system. As I showed in my last post, you can even discover how many slaves you employ. Even if you are heavily marginalized within the mainstream, you are connected to the system itself. As the sign said at Occupy Wall Street, “you are us.”
Those of us who are facilitators of participatory process often make grand claims about the power of processes like Open Space Technology and World Cafe to even out power differences. In a circle everyone is said to be equal and leadership can come from every chair. While participatory process does provide a useful methodology for decolonizing how we meet, it has several risks associated with it. For one thing, if we fail to take into consideration the context in which we are working, power can show up in participatory process in a dangerously invisible way. Some participants may be able to operate much more resourcefully because of their power or privilege by, for example, becoming the scribes for small groups and speaking for the group. Those who cannot write may not feel comfortable posting a session in Open Space, meaning that there is no way that their voices can be heard or their contributions incorporated. Furthermore, participatory processes, like all facilitation processes, heavily depend on the role of the facilitator. If the facilitators (and the process designers for that matter) are not aware of the currents of power and privilege within the context in which they are working, they run the risk of designing structures that keep marginalized people marginalized. If they come to the hosting role without awareness of and good practice around their own power and privilege, the social architecture that emerges can be very exclusionary.
Both of these fields of analysis have something to offer to one another and both have their own drawbacks, In Tuesday’s framework, she identifies a middle path, which she named co-revealation. It is going to take me a while to unpack this concept, but I can at least begin to see how it works. In the space of power-aware participatory leadership, the gift of relationship is active. As we move together through process, the emphasis on relationship is key and in working together relationship becomes more revealed. In the process, we treat each other with more and more grace and compassion, coming to see that as we are all interconnected both to each other and the systems in which we are working to change, we recognize that personal and social transformation is also both inevitable and required. In Saskatoon last week, one of our participants in the Art of Hosting was carrying the question “how do we collaborate with dictators?” as a way of trying to discern the limits of participation. In several conversations over these last two weeks I have come to ask that question of myself, and reframing it as “how do I collaborate with myself when I am being a dictator?”. With that inquiry active, we may find that dictatorship behaviors are present everywhere, and we may also allow ourselves and others the grace to be imperfect in our lives and behaviors. This doesn’t excuse violence or oppression, but rather it gives us serious skin in the game in trying to address oppressive systems. If we are not a part of the problem we cannot be a part of the solution. And in being a part of the problem we need to treat each other with some kindness and latitude, qualities that are born in relationship, even relationship with people with whom we have fundamental differences.
It may feel as if this stuff is a little old hat, but I experienced it differently in practice. During our gathering in New York a group of three participants brought a proposal into the third day check in circle that required a complete think of our agenda, in doing so they were both proposing a new idea but also challenging the power structure of the system. The design team had been designing the days as we went and hosting the process, but here the participants were inviting us to practice what we preached about awareness of power. The group could have chosen to create a drama around the situation, but our field of relationship was very strong. And so they issued the challenge as an invitation We immediately went into a circle process first to seek everyone else’s thoughts on the proposal and second to gain clarity around how to make it work. It was clear in our group that the idea being proposed – that we all go down to Occupy Wall Street and learn what we can there – was both an excellent idea, and also not one that everyone wanted to do. In the circle, I expressed my faith in the resourcefulness of the group and the design team to offer and hold multiple options so that the decision did not have to be an either/or choice. Towards the end of the first round of circle a proposal began to emerge that made some sense, and seemed workable. Kelly and I, as host and guardian of the circle, invited a round for additional clarity followed by one more round of any refinements to the proposal. Then we thumb-voted on it, took care of two small questions and went forward with a great new design for the day.
What emerged was a process whereby the morning would be spent in proaction café which offers people a chance to work on projects. The group that wanted to go down to Wall Street decided to use that time to prepare a learning journey for themselves while others worked on other projects. The afternoon was devoted to nuts and bolts learning in our space while about nine people went off to the occupation. We reconvened at 300 and had two short fishbowls to report on what each group had learned. That harvest was recorded both in video and on flip charts so tat it could be made available to the wider community.
Among the many lessons of the day was the fact that Tuesday’s ideas take us beyond the realm of analysis and into a practice of this middle space. In fact the middle space of co-revelation can only live in practice, it has no power in analysis or in the kinds of theoretical debates that rage without relationship. In those domains the middle space disappears.
It is hard to capture exactly the effect this week has had on my practice, but it deeply continues the theme of “seeing more clearly” that has been the greatest gift of my journey in and around the Art of Hosting community of practice for the past seven years. In our workshops and learning events, we seek less to train people in methodologies and more to situate participatory process in its wider context. Doing so gives the methodologies power and effectiveness and activates the deeper gifts of invitation, collaboration, participation and transformation. And although the word feels raw and new and vague, I think I can finally describe what we do as assisting groups to enter into the space of co-revelation. That was Tuesday’s gift to the group, and that was the group’s significant gift to ourselves.
And as if to confirm it, I sensed this new space active in Liberty Park on the two nights we went down there. The young people who are organizing Occupy Wall Street are doing so in a way that gives profound insight into this concept, but that is the subject of another post.
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A great insight from Johnnie Moore on learning facilitation:
I’ve done quite a bit of facilitation training this year, loads of it with Viv. We’ve pushed to get the sponsors to accept less emphasis on learning lots of techniques and tips in favour of lots of activities where participants try stuff out. One area where we play around a lot is the “difficult people” situation.
We resist offering standard tricks for this. So we don’t offer formulaic models for managing difficult people, however comprehensively researched. Instead, we ask people to recall or imagine their encounters with the inevitable impossible participant and then recreate it as an improv scene, and ask them to play it out. And then we play around, asking them to try and play it in different ways. Or we introduce “tagging” where other participants step into the scene to try different responses.
If anyone in the audience comes up with a clever analysis, we tend to stop them and say, great, go play that idea out. Funnily, their first response is mild panic – as they realise it’s one thing to do the theory and another to do the the practice.
What this play encourages, I believe, is a growing willingness to try stuff and realise nothing is written.
via Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Holding uncertainty, living forwards.