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 …
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 …
Refugees in U.S. Take Up Farming, as they always have: At the Saturday farmer’s market in City Heights, a major portal for refugees, Khadija Musame, a (Bantu) Somali, arranges her freshly picked pumpkin leaves and lablab beans amid a United Nations of produce, including water spinach grown by a Cambodian refugee and amaranth, a grain harvested by Sarah Salie, who fled rebels in Liberia. Eaten with a touch of lemon by Africans, and coveted by Southeast Asians for soups, this crop is always a sell-out Among the regular customers at the New Roots farm stand are Congolese women in flowing …
Well it’s not a revolution yet, but the #OccupyWallStreet movement is certainly generating a lot of interest. It was a surprise to me that the origins of the movement were actually in Vancouver, where Adbusters publisher Kalle Lasn and his friends brainstormed on the idea that occupying Wall Street could bring attention to the depth of resentment about wealth inequity in the world. Reading this article in The Tyee, it is clear that Lasn has both a clear thought about what the movement could demand (a one percent tax on financial transactions) and a sense that there never was a …