Tahoe ARSEs

Mr. Ingles,

Your work has absolutely lit my imagination on fire. I have dreamed
about building a string of ARSEs (Aggressively Resource Secure
Environments), pun intended, from the Central Valley of California, up
the Sierra Nevada Mountains and around Tahoe -- the most beautiful lake
in the world. Your work has taken me 50 steps further than I imagined
possible.

I am running for Supervisor of the 5th District of Nevada County on the
platform of putting our struggling builder community back to work
creating a series of resource secure urban communities set in the middle
of wildness and linked by the trams we are so good at building. To put
people on a small footprint and give land back to nature which we can
see from our walkable homes, offices, schools. I want to be looking out
my window at a bear fishing for trout, or wolves hunting an Antelope.

The current environmental model at Tahoe is large greenbelts that add
value to 15,000 sq ft homes in far flung subdivisions which is giving us
an esthetically pleasing "billionaires and busboys" economy, but we have
severe resource vulnerabilities. At the core of my plan is to
completely change the nature of capital in Tahoe. I am looking to form
a democratic corporation that would build and own these communities,
fund it with government guaranteed bonds, and organize it so the
economic leadership is deeply accountable to the people who work
together to prosper. This is based on the core concept of "Capital as
a Commons" and is inspired by the work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom,
and the concept of "Corporate Democracy" as practiced by the John Lewis
Partnership in England and the Mondragon Corporation in the Basque
region of Spain.

To fund this, I will seek a $2.5 billion County guaranteed JobBond to
begin constructing this new future. The Truckee and Tahoe of today was
built with the great Railroad Bonds of the late 1800's and I believe
that our future will be built with JobBonds that bring our capital home,
create jobs, and forge an economically democratic future -- for as Sony
Founder Akio Morida said "nations are a dying industry, corporations are
the structures of the future."

The challenge I have is stoking the imagination of folks so that they
can visualize the future. I am wondering if you might be willing to
take this idea on as a design challenge? I am a graduate of the Yale
School of Drama and worked for three years right next to the
Architecture School and thought that there may be students there who
would want to play with the idea of urban structures in the snowy
mountains of the Sierra Nevada, or perhaps the Stanford Center for
Sustainable Development or the Berkeley Department of Urban Design.

I know you must be a very busy man, and the chance of this even reaching
you is remote. So, I don't really expect to hear from you. But no
worry, I plan to reference your work, and when I am elected, and I get
the bond passed, we will be in touch and then we could actually hire you.

Thanks for the healing imagination you share so freely.

--
Mike Rogers
530-587-5160
mike@MikeRogers4Supervisor.com
www.MikeRogers4Supervisor.com

Please hire me on June 5th to represent your interests
on the Nevada County Board of Supervisors.

Vibrant Small Business, Progressive Big Business!

Letter to George Rebane 1/27/2012

Many progressives are calling me a crackpot, but I think the "experts"
have messed things up so much that maybe we need some crackpots. So,
here is a crackpot idea --

1) The TPP organizes a constitutional convention for the drafting of a
constitution for the Nevada County Constitutional Partnership
Corporation (NCCPC). Anyone in the county who gets 30 proxies from
registered voters in the county can be a delegate. The convention is
organized online using bulletin boards and other near-zero cost
coordination tools -- Nevada County voters are welcome review and
comment, but maybe on certain forums only delegates can post.

2) The constitution is submitted for ratification by 2/3rds of the
represented residents at the convention.

3) If ratified, a $2.5 Billion JobBond is placed before all the citizens
of the county. The capital generated from the bond would be managed by 5
representative capital councils for each district in the county with
$500 million each to fund the creation of the NCCPC. These councils will
have the decisions on where to invest their share.

For instance, if 4 of the 5 councils decide that a bank is one business
to build, then they can send representatives to a countywide bank
council. Rather than creating four banks, they might decide to create
one bank where each district has branches. The local branches could have
certain inalienable rights but agree to give up some autonomy to gain
security or non-zero sum benefits. In the case of underwriting
guidelines, the 4 branches could chose to agree upon system wide
underwriting criteria to insure that no one branch can risk the whole
bank. Additionally, they most likely would decide each to contribute
funds for one computer system that all the branches use.

The JobBond serves the conservative goals of local control, small
government, and a vibrant economy. The JobBond is not a budget item on
county books. The County merely guarantees it, and a percentage of the
profits could be dedicated to reducing the property taxes of permanent
residents in perpetuity as compensation. Local investors would be given
the first opportunity to invest at a coupon premium, then outside
investors would be allowed to invest at a less desirable coupon. JobBond
funds would only be advanced when there is a specific project and where
there are investors willing to invest in that portion of the bond
authority.

As the NCCPC gains political and economic power, we start demanding the
block granting of our taxes back to us for education, healthcare,
unemployment, etc. Also, the $2.5 billion bond will remove the payment
of taxes on the income on that amount. It will also return exported
capital back home and "starve" the beasts of State and Federal
government, the big banks, and Wall Street in one fell swoop.

As for the selection of candidates for public service, the NCCPC could
implement an internal judgment aggregation process and, once final picks
are made, everyone in the organization could be committed to getting
them elected. We could also pass instant recall legislation so that any
representative who was voting in a way that was not as directed, then
they could be easily removed.

Once I started thinking about corporations as a force for supporting the
establishment of Justice, the insurance of domestic Tranquility, the
provision for the common defense, the promotion of the general Welfare,
and as a tool to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity, it changed everything. If I am a crackpot, then I am at least
in the company of giant crackpots from American history (although not in
their league).

That said, these are just my ideas. I really do mean to represent the
5th district and if given the privilege of serving I will actually work
on whatever they tell me to.

Michael Rogers.

Re: Hey, Chris

Thanks.  I have some passionate followers and friends that are already handing me $100 bills.  My theme is "Save the Natives!" and it is getting rousing support.  I have an emerging economic system that I have been following for close to thirty years and is based on the work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, Sloan School of Business Professor Thomas Malone, and, believe it or not, the Great Peacemaker of the Iroquois.  It involves what I call "Common Capital" where public resources are marshaled to create broad public benefit (not just the public resources converted to private gain that Jerry Brown thinks the Redevelopment Agencies are all about). 

The main idea I am promoting is a $500 million JobBond for Truckee (and $500 million for all the other districts in the county too, and hopefully, once elected, a $17 Billion regional bond for the counties around Tahoe working with Norma Santiago and Glenda Humiston at USDA Rural Development).  This figure is based on Truckee's share of the $13 Trillion dollars in free money the banks were given in 2008, on top of TARP, through the Discount Window at the Fed.  These bonds would be sold initially to the legion of local retired teachers and firemen (helping save them from the grips of the Ponzi Capitalists) and then the unsubscribed portions would be made available to state and national investors.  I also have been looking at the EB5 Immigrant Investor program as another source of funds.  The funds will be used to create a corporation with a constitution that embodies key American democratic ideals like Checks and Balances, Separation of Powers, Elected Accountable leadership, and transparency. 

Although the ultimate decision about how the funds will be best spent will be made by each local community utilizing Ostrom's 8 design parameters for how to govern a commons, one idea that is gaining favor is the construction of a string of resource secure communities linked by mass transit (Prius Communities if you will, to compete against our recently emerging Hummer Communities).  This has the advantage of dovetailing into the Reno 2022 Olympic bid (and could be kick-started by that initiative -- however we shouldn't be waiting for that success).  It will also potentially employ all of our out-of-work carpenters, plumbers, and electricians (and a bunch from the Reno Carpenters Union too) for generations -- a modern TEA Party friendly version of the WPA.  It also has the advantage of diversifying our economy away from being snow farmers, as these communities will focus on recruiting the creative intellectual workers of the Bay Area and Los Angeles, who would much rather live and work in a resource secure community looking out their window at a Black Bear fishing for Lahontan Cutthroat Trout in a restored stream with Mount Tallac in the background and in a company where they vote for the CEO (and oh yeah, walking distance to a lift that takes them to the slopes when they need a break) than in a dingy strip center in Hayward with a 2 hour commute on the 680 freeway.

I believe that if the National and State Democratic Party aggressively supported this vision of Common Capital, it would be the key to winning over the conservative voters in the rural counties in the Sierras leading to a 2/3rds majority in the California Assembly and State Senate and could be the broad conservative/progressive economic vision that galvanizes people to return our President to the White House and bringing the progressive caucus back in line. 

I have been talking to local conservative blogger George Rebane and he has called this type of company a "Constitutional Partnership Corporation" when I pointed him to the John Lewis Partnership (a English company with $14 Billion in annual sales and 80,000 partners) and he was very intrigued by ideas, as is the Nevada County Occupy movement -- I guess economics makes for strange bedfellows too.

Key to our success will be the coordination with the large federal land holdings in Tahoe.  Glenda just forwarded my the following --

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 5, 2012 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced a call for nominations to serve on a newly-formed advisory committee that will guide better management of our national forests and grasslands. The National Advisory Committee for Implementation of the National Forest System Land Management Planning Rule will advise and give recommendations to the Secretary of Agriculture and the Chief of the U.S. Forest Service."

Can you help get me appointed to that Committee?

Michael Rogers Box 38 Shinneyboo, CA  95724 530-587-5160 michael@shinneyboocreek.com www.shinneyboocreek.com  "Great things are wanting to be done."   -- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States 

On 1/6/2012 5:26 AM, Chris Trent wrote:

Hi Michael,  First, the caveat: It's been a while for me, so always trust your manager's judgement over mine.  My best advice is that you get in good with the Dem clubs, particularly the Tahoe-Truckee Club, if it's still around. North Shore Dems can't vote for you, of course, but it's a small community and word travels fast. If the clubs like you, you're pretty well set. (Folks who live in Tahoe-Donner, which is impossible to walk, often make up a sizeable portion of the clubs' membership, so it's a good way to reach that neighborhood without blowing a week driving from door to door.) Their help sometimes is less than helpful, but their enthusiasm is sincere. And you need enthusiasm to build participation in an otherwise apolitical town.  Keep in mind that although it's a Presidential year, California won't matter. The Obama campaign will suck supporters to Nevada (which could well decide the election this time). I haven't heard who, if anyone, is running against McClintock, but whoever it is probably has a slim chance, especially in the new district. So my guess would be that you shouldn't expect to ride any coattails; not in Truckee, not in 2012.  Bone up on the obscure neighborhood issues you might not be familiar with, pick a theme that you can always come back to even when you're faced with a bizarre question, and make sure the local activist Dems like you and trust you. You should be golden.  Good luck!  Chris Trent | 202-731-8421  On Dec 31, 2011, at 2:44 PM, Michael Rogers <michael@shinneyboocreek.com> wrote:  

I hear you were involved in Charlie Brown's campaign in Truckee. I am running for the 5th District of Nevada County Supervisor (Truckee) and would be very interested in talking to you about Truckee Democratic politics. Bob Dobrich has agreed to be my campaign manager and I am excited about this run for office.  Thanks for your time.  --  Michael Rogers Box 38 Shinneyboo, CA  95724 530-587-5160 michael@shinneyboocreek.com www.shinneyboocreek.com  "Great things are wanting to be done." -- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States  

Re: [OWSNC-Community] Occupy Wall Street Nevada County General Assembly of 11/6/2011

I look forward to reading your piece.  I believe that you can create horizontal, decentralized systems and still in fact celebrate leadership.  Burning Man is an example.  You would never be able to build that city in the desert without the leadership of the rangers, the medical staff, the coordinators, the people who lay out the grid.  But leadership's job is to be of service and to maximize the potential for individual creativity and personal leadership, not to decide what Art Cars to build and not to be the smartest people in the room and make the decisions, but to create a coordinated system that drives decisions to the highest level (highest meaning most decentralized) possible.  Complexity theorists say leaders of complexity have to let go of outcomes and manage for probabilities.  The job of Burning Man Inc. (a highly centralized and hierarchical company owned by only 5 people) is not to plan the city (outcomes) but simply layout the grid, coalesce decisions about culture and norms (no guns, dogs, or fireworks) and then to do everything they can to support individual creativity (probabilities).  This is neither a starfish or a spider but a creative blend of each.  

Consensus Decision Making is not from the high tech tradition of Wikipedia vs. Encarta, or of The Starfish and The Spider, or Here Comes Everybody, or The Wisdom of Crowds, but in fact was designed in the brutally hierarchical Collective Farms of the Soviet Union (in spite of what Wikipedia tries to say about it).  The Haudenosaunee (better known by the less acceptable term Iroquois) did have a form of consensus, but it was the consensus of the Hoyane (great minds), or what we would call the Chiefs.  This tradition is far from leaderless.  It was however horizontal and decentralized, where the Great Presiding Hoyane, who was so important that they recorded their names down thru 1,000 years of history, has only one vote in the council just like all of the other Hoyane.  The only way any Hoyane could bring about any decision was thru the revered tradition of public oratory (a great way to smoke out ulterior motives) .  One example is warfare.  The western hierarchical model is "the king and privy council decide to go to war and you go or die", the American model (circa 1142 AD) is "I need to convince you to go to war thru the power of my beautifully crafted argument, but I can't force you to go". 

As I said, I am not willing to invest time in a consensus organization (where the guy who just wants to know where the free camping is has the same input as someone who has worked on something for a long time), however I would be very interested in being the part of a discussion about this topic in an effort to try to bring about a change of direction.    I don't know what the best answer is, but I feel very strongly that it is not the Anarchist's contribution of Consensus. 

ps One idea I just had is what if we had idea wikis where a dedicated group could go back and forth crafting an idea or initiative and then when they decide it is ready then it is brought up for consideration at a GA with little or not chance to alter it.  Only vote it up or down, and if down, then send it back with suggestions and anyone who is now interest can participate in the small group discussion.

Michael


On 11/10/2011 2:31 PM, James wrote:

Michael, I spoke to you the other night about coming to the goals/ed group. I am empathetic regarding your feelings on what is happening and concur that there is an issue. However, withdrawing is not the answer. I believe the folks are well intentioned as you said. However, I also believe that the main issue is a group of people who may be trying to work in a leaderless structure without truly understanding what that means. This happens to be the issue which is closest to my heart and which I am working toward helping people understand (I will be passing out a tract I wrote tonight regarding the importance of this issue). When people truly do not understand and function within the framework of an organic, leaderless, decentralized network they will naturally gravitate back to what they do know (hierarchical, top-down, position-oriented). I believe it is my part to help people understand the leaderless framework, then hopefully, when enough people understand it and strive to function within it, they will be able to spot those who are trying to implement the other and keep these folks from imposing the structure we say we don't want. My goal is is simple regarding this issue...know what you believe, know why you believe what you believe, then be able to effectively communicate what and why you believe to others. James

Re: [OWSNC-Community] Occupy Wall Street Nevada County General Assembly of 11/6/2011

Yes, at the 11/16 GA there was a repeat, albeit on a much less aggressively violent way, of the Detroit experience. 

My decision to withdraw from the OWSNC process is because I personally find the consensus process so flawed that I do not wish to invest my scarce time into it.  What I see is the constant diminishing of diversity of opinion in each successive generation, as contrarian thinkers are pressured into silence -- often just for the sake of "getting everyone home at a reasonable hour".  The very structure of consensus decision-making does not have the capacity to handle complexity of thought (in my ever so humble and arrogant opinion).  It is a simple math problem.  5 people, only with great difficulty, struggle pick a movie by consensus -- and usually 2 of them (or sometimes even the majority of 3 or 4) go to a movie they really didn't want to see just to be with the group.  Fine for picking a movie, but a dangerous way to run a nation and I believe a formula for authoritarianism under the banner of representing the will of the people. 

I think consensus might work in a case like your nuclear protest, a single issue where everyone is already in consensus on the strategy (stop this plant from coming online) and where you are simply discussing tactics.  But, I do not think it would ever be able to deal with the big question of whether any nuclear power is acceptable in a world faced with global warming and oil supplies that devastate the environment and/or require violence to secure.  I would like to think that I could be convinced that, even in that case, nuclear power is unacceptable, however without hearing the powerful arguments against oil sands or the blood spilled to prop up brutal dictators, I don't know where I would stand on the issue -- and I don't think a consensus process would ever enlighten me.

I find the Confederalist model, as practiced by the first Americans for almost 1,000 years, and as engineered by Deganawida founder of the League of Peace and Power of the Haudenosaunee  in August 31st, 1142 AD, as the much more dynamic organizational structure.  When I have more time I will elaborate on how the Confederalist decision-making modeI works for possible consideration by the group.  In a nutshell it is about nested councils of Hoyane (great minds) who get their authority by consent (public servant was Deganawida's idea and definitely did not come from Rome or Greece) and they can be removed by consent as well, also checks and balances (another idea invented by Deganawida), and separation of powers (yes, another brilliant idea from Deganawida).  A confederation is an alliance of autonomous entities.  So, the Haudenosaunee League of Peace and Power was a league of nations (yes, the United Nations, formally the League of Nations, is another wonderful idea of Deganawida) where each Nation does not surrender their individual autonomy but instead enters into voluntary alliance.  We tried it with the Articles of Confederation, but because we only took parts of Deganawida's engineering we were not able to get the coordination part to work.  So, at the urging of Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers, we abandoned the dream of a Confederation for the practicality of a Federalist system and have been paying the price even since. 

And, in case you are wondering, the Southern States called themselves a Confederation as a "Fuck You!" to the Federalists however they never functioned as a Confederation, adopted a Federalist system, and quickly moved to an Authoritarian system by vesting supreme authority into Jefferson Davis and ultimately Robert E. Lee.

I personally support the goal of the OWSNC group and think there are a ton of interesting folks with the right focus on the problems and you have my best wishes for your success.  However, I will keep my eye out for the fascism of forced consensus and will share my analysis with you if I see things headed in that direction.   I hope to be proven shortsighted and ill-informed.

Michael

On 11/9/2011 9:17 PM, Gary wrote:

Michael,

I appreciated your words at one of the OWSNC general assemblies I attended a few weeks back. It seemed then that you were thoughtful and had interesting ideas - we all need new thinking in these times. Subsequently, I noticed your emails on the mailing list and again appreciated someone taking the time to suggest potential solutions, particularly on the local level. 

Now, having just read your latest email I feel a sadness about whatever has personally affected you. The Detroit experience obviously felt very unfair to you. You didn't explain, however, the recent experience that triggered your email. Was it something that happened at the 'general assembly' of 11/6/2011? I didn't attend. So, I am in the dark about anything that transpired at that gathering.

In any case, I am saddened by your email and thank you for your critique of potential OWS directions. I personally make no judgement at present about OWS and the forms of 'direct democracy' or consensus that inform its process. I do know that years back, when I protested a nuclear power plant coming on line that I felt was demonstrably unsafe by choosing to be arrested, that the structure of affinity groups and consensus worked well for me and gave me a sense of safety and solidarity. That's my only bias. Otherwise, I am personally open to the good or bad of 'direct democracy' as it seems to be unfolding locally. As you say, there are well-intentioned people involved locally and I suspect that many are inspired by the possibility of something new, something that offers hope for ways out of our currently destructive economy and social contract.

I also feel that communities need a diversity of people who engage in dialogue in ways that challenge each other and lead to mutual transformations of viewpoint at levels of significance higher than any individual view. Your views have a place in this kind of dialogue. So, whatever happened, thanks for sharing. 

Be well,

Gary

Grass Valley

On Nov 9, 2011, at 8:32 AM, Michael Rogers wrote:

I have thought deeply about where the tears I shed last night came from. 

Re: [OWSNC-Community] Occupy Wall Street Nevada County General Assembly of 11/6/2011

I know that you will all grow and do fantastic things and I hope to collaborate with you as a group in the future.  

I came into OWSNC with grave concerns about the consensus process and they were dramatically confirmed at the last meeting.  Or, perhaps I saw what I expected to see because I expected to see it, either way I simply choose not to invest my scarce time in a process that I believe in successive generations will slowly limit diversity of opinion and lead to a "consensus" that will be the consensus of a few, not of the 99%.

I sincerely wish that my predictions turn out to be wrong. I may delude myself to think that I have some predictive foresight, but I do not claim to be omniscient.

Michael

On 11/10/2011 1:14 AM, Jedediah wrote:

Michael You have the right to withdraw, but then you wouldn't see any of the growth that will happen from the last GA meeting, because things will change.  I don't think many people would say that the situation couldn't have been handled differently, even Sharon voiced dissatisfaction in the results.  I personally feel you should have been heard out, so as a participant of the GA perhaps I should have defended your right to speak, and for that I apologize.  I hope you continue to participate despite the growing pains we're all experiencing in this process. Jedediah

Re: [OWSNC-Community] Occupy Wall Street Nevada County General Assembly of 11/6/2011

Just fair warning, and enough mild reminiscences of Detroit to reevaluate where I invest my time.  

I do not believe that the consensus decision process (as suggested to the Occupy Movement in NY by the exact same Anarchist and Communist Activists that I met in Detroit) is a sustainable organizing model.   5 people cannot pick a movie.  How can you ever hope to do anything more complex?  We couldn't even decide on an endorsement that was not an endorsement but definitely was not allowed to include language that even suggested other options to the real problem of Corporate Personhood, other than those put forward the radical organization Move to Amend (who has publicly stated that their real goal is to destroy the capitalist system and replace it with a socialist one), even existed.  That organizing model, I believe, leads to a coercive pressure to conform, a stiffling of dissent, and a culture of conformity and "group think" that I have no interest in being a part of.  I believe that it lacks the ability to govern complexity and will ultimately lead good people down bad roads.  Obama is not a socialist, anything that is not hyper-privatized capitalism is not necessarily socialism.  However, consensus decision making, as developed in the "worker's" cooperatives of the Soviet Union and China, that brutalized millions of souls who did not march to the party line, is, in fact, exactly socialism.  And I fear for our country if it is allowed to flourish.

If there is a small number of individuals who would like to participate with me in a group dialectic about other organizing models possibly robust enough to manage complexity in a horizontal, not hierarchical way, well then I would be very interested in participating in that discussion.

Michael

On 11/9/2011 11:15 AM, James wrote:

A concern to be sure. I have seen how biased or poor facilitation can destroy a meeting, and am very sorry you were on the receiving end of that sort of attack. I also share your concerns about the direction of the Occupy movement -- particularly with regards to the socialist, communist, and even anarchist tendencies -- but that is exactly why I participate. This group cannot claim to represent anything other than about 5-10% unless it gets participation from the true 99%. It came up a few weeks ago that reasons for all stand asides and blocks should be noted, because a minority voice in a small GA could be a majority voice on a national scale.

I understand your concern, and really do feel for you. If you do not have the spirit to give it another try, I would not blame you. But your previous experience does not seem to match what I have experienced with Occupy NC. Was there an incident with us that led you to believe we were the same as the assembly in Detroit? Or simply that we are trying to tame a beast that cannot be tamed, and you are giving us fair warning?

~James

On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Michael Rogers <m@sumpeople.org> wrote:

I know I have not been involved with your group for long, however because I share many of your goals and admire the dedication and efforts you are putting forward, I am writing to explain my decision to withdraw.  I want to share, with those of you who may be interested, my grave concerns about the direction of the Occupy movement.  Let me preface this with the statement that I believe in the good intent of all of you and I ask that my observations and criticisms not be viewed as personal attacks against any of the good people, just trying to figure things out, and trying to be of service to something greater than ourselves.

There has been a lot of talk about the difference between violence and non-violence in words, actions, and I might add processes.  I deeply believe that there is a great subtle violence lurking within how OWSNC is organizing itself.  Ironically, the last time I felt this group violence directed at me was at a meeting of the Move to Amend group at the Social Forum in Detroit.   I had spent $2,000 of my scarce resources, had taken a week of my equally scarce time, spent hundreds of dollars duplicating materials and endless hours preparing to go to the forum so that I could moderate a workshop on the issue of Corporate Personhood -- where I asked the question "What if a Corporation could be a People, not a Person?  The small and enthusiastic group that attended had some interesting insights and ideas and I went to the Assembly on the topic, hosted by the Move to Amend organization, to represent the consensus of this group.   At the Assembly, organized by the same Consensus rules you are now implementing, I was repeatedly denied the right to participate by the "facilitators" from Move to Amend.  I was not asking for a disproportional level of participation, but simply asked to participate at a level equal to the other participants and to share the work of our little group.   They were operating by what Sharon last night gave me the language for, which is a "Progressive Stack", i.e "some people are more equal than others".  I might add that progressive stacking was not a concept consensed upon and was arbitraritly imposed by the facilitators and most of us were unaware of the existence of those hidden rules.

Repeatedly, I was denied the chance to report.  At the Forum, the phrase "Check yourself" was repeatedly used when someone thought that a speaker needed to reflect upon their own actions and biases.  Faced with the real possibility that all the time, effort, and money I had invested, in wanting to be of service to change, would evaporate, naively I had the audacity to suggest that the Facilitator might want to check her own racial and sexual biases in how she ran the stack and controlled the direction of the conversation.    Well, let's just say that "the shit hit the fan".    I became the focus of the most intense group violence I have ever felt in my life (it made the harassment of my youth seem benign) -- and it did not come from the majority of the group (who seemed willing to accept my statement and reflect upon its relevance, as they were also unaware of the undemocratic imposition of progressive stacking), but instead by the small group of "facilitators" from Move to Amend.  The head of the organization decided that my simple suggestion for the main facilitator to reflect on whether she had biases that might be impeding a constructive group dynamic was such a sacrilege that the leader of the group moved to amend his sitting position to directly beside me and proceeded to stare me down in what can only be described as a look of blood lust and hatred.  I came to fear that he actually intended to physically assault me if I did not leave the room immediately.  After some moments of stubborn, but trying my best to be peaceful, resistance to his violence I finally decided that I could no longer face the intense group pressure that was being directed at me and left the meeting.    Afterwards, several people (none of them white males) came up to me and said that the Move to Amend Founder was out of line, and that they had seen nothing in my comment that had warranted that kind of aggressive response.   I now know that there was in fact a racial and sexual bias that was indeed in play and as of last night I now know its name.

I have thought deeply about where the tears I shed last night came from.  My first instinct was that my feelings of insecurity and self doubt had bubbled up and that I was transported to my childhood and the group schoolyard taints that caused me such pain as boy.  Or, that the pain of my recent divorce, the struggle to minimize its effects on my children, the impending lose of my business broke thru.  But what I now believe is that I needed a release of the emotional intensity that was required to stand up to the power of group think and the pressure from the great energy that is needed to oppose a powerful leader of a group that does not want your ideas to derail the much lauded "consensus" (if you doubt the power of a "facilitator" I would refer you to the work on Jigsaw Classrooms of Elliot Aronson and his identification of the power of a teacher as the omnipotent bestower of all favors and punishments in a classroom)

This deeply flawed dynamic lies at the heart of the consensus process.  True group consensus is a near mathematical impossibility.  This can be best illustrated by the Movie Picking Problem.  One person can easily pick the time, place, and movie to see.  Two people is not twice as hard, but is actually two times two times harder, because they have to agree upon time, place, and movie.  The complexity of three people deciding a movie is then exponentially multiplied again.  So, by the time you get to the small group size of 5 it becomes almost mathematically impossible to pick a movie as a group, and one person usually steps up, makes a decision, and then everyone else has only the decision of whether to go or not.  If something as simple as picking a movie as a group is impossible, how can any more complex decision hope to reach consensus. 

The practical reality is that it can't.  So "facilitators" of consensus processes learn to force consensus by picking dissenting voices to ignore.  Whether thru tools like progressive stacking, or by simply marginalizing people who raise doubts and concerns (usually in the name of "getting everyone home on time").  There is also a preference for simple decisions as opposed to complicated, contentious ones and the latter are "tabled for future discussion" where a small group meets between meetings, comes to an agreement amongst themselves, and then returns to the council and works as a coordinated sub-group to "encourage" consensus around the solution they have decided upon separately. 

Here is where I see the possible evil that can arise from this whole thing and I beg of you to guard against.  Move to Amend has publicly announced that their goal is to "destroy capitalism".    I definitely think that capitalism needs vigorous old fashion competition, however the Move to Amend group has also publicly supported socialism and communism to replace capitalism.  I am not one who sees the communist boogie man under every non-Republican rock, but I see real possibilities for a resurgence of these failed ideologies in the Occupy movement.  The appeal of these Isms was so prevalent in the Detroit Social Forum that former Marxist organizer, 95 year old Grace Boggs took the unprecedented action of warning the packed Assembly hall of young, enthusiastic organizers to be cautious of embracing Communism and Socialism as those systems have severe deficiencies in the preservation of individual liberty and the rights of minorities and she referred to Castro's assault against homosexuals specifically.   In one side forum, an intense, earnest 22 year old moderator was laying out his idea for a new economic system, and a elderly white male asked what would happen under the young man's system if someone didn't want to participate, and the budding Fascist said coldly and sternly that "we" would require participation. 

Many organizers of the Occupy Movement come from this extreme leftist history of organizing, and the consensus process is directly taken from the brutal "worker's" cooperatives of collective farms from the former Soviet Union and the revolutions of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.   I believe that "Leaderless" "Consensus" processes are easily taken over by faceless coordinators and bureaucrats and need to, by mathematical necessity, stifle and ostracize dissenters for the "good of the people, the party, or even the 99%".  They end up as powerful "group-think" machines, incapable of dealing with the complexities of the world, that implement successive failed 5 year economic plans and need to exert more and more violence to maintain their authority long after the people stop giving it voluntarily -- but by then it is too late and we have a new tyranny to replace the old one.

I know that none of you have any of what I have said as a conscious goal, however if we have learned anything in the 20th century it should be the Law of Unintended Consequences. I wish you luck on your efforts.  I believe deeply in your goals but have grave concerns about the path you are following.