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In just a few days, I’ll launch the Kickstarter campaign to publish City of Refuge, the sequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing. I’m swinging madly between wild excitement and good old-fashioned panic. Will this really work? So many people tell me how much they love The Fifth Sacred Thing–that it has meant […] Organizing after an Obama victory is like bicycling with the wind at your back, instead of peddling into a stiff head wind. I’ve lived and organized through the victories of Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush, and believe me, this is better! And we have a lot of organizing to do. […] But even more than troubles with the cops and city authorities, the biggest challenges the Occupy movement faces seem to be internal. How do we make decisions together? How do we resolve our own conflicts within our groups? Once we’ve said “We are the 99%”, how do we set standards of behavior and say what is okay and what is not? Once we’ve renounced force and coercion, how do we enforce those standards when we do set them? […] When I began writing The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups, I wanted to offer some of the benefit of my experience, including my many mistakes, to groups who were organizing without a top-down, hierarchical structure. I’ve been living and working in such groups for more than forty years, and I felt like the many dreadful meetings I’ve endured, the in-fights and the painful conflicts, as well as the glorious moments of collective creativity and spiritual ecstasy, should all count for something. I saw so many groups struggling with the same issues, whether they were spiritual circles, working groups, communities struggling to organize or activists planning a protest. And I had a few insights that I felt might be helpful. […] I’ve been on my feet all day, but I don’t feel tired. I’m exhilarated. What’s happening here is so beautiful, so powerful. It answers our most primal human needs: to have a voice, to have that voice heard and affirmed, to tell your story, to be seen, to be part of something, to stand for something, to stand together, to stand strong. […] |
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