Democratic Dialog & Deliberation

My main work over the past 44 years has been about figuring out how we can consciously develop democracy all over this country. This has included 16 years of active involvement with the cooperative/solidarity economic movements. I believe that bringing this developmental perspective to the cooperative movement can be a rich and productive way for celebrating the 20th birthday of the USFWC. 

Resistance in the digital environment demands that we center our values, intentions, and dreams, focusing on other ways to live, be, and know. May First Movement Technology is a cooperative (primarily based in the United States and Mexico) that aims to put these values into practice: digital media that supports social struggles and grassroots movements working to create the world we know is possible.

A look at how a worker co-op with 140 members, a flat pay scale, and no hierarchy functions.

As a consensus facilitator, I am constantly trying to make it easier for everyone to contribute what they have that's relevant to the conversation. Then I do what I can to establish how those contributions are rooted in a reasonable interpretation of group values (and therefore worthy of taking into account), as distinct from personal preferences. 

Through sociocracy you can design feedback systems so everyone in your community knows what is going on and can be heard on matters that affect them. In this webinar, recorded on December 2022, Sociocracy for All’s Ted Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez share in dept knowledge about using consensus to foster a sense of harmony and connection in your group.

In different parts of Mesopotamia environmental movements have been feverishly nurturing the emergence of the grassroots institution of the ecology council for the preservation of communal livelihoods.

Some suggestions for navigating transparency and discretion in conflict in intentional communities.

A session on participatory budgeting and sociocracy by two co-directors of the Participatory Budgeting Project. Presented at the Sociocracy Annual Conference 2023.

The networks, organizations, and movements that we generate reflect the quality of our own consciousness in the moment. What does the global state of human consciousness tell us then about the movements that we're capable of building?