dialogue
Consensus Democracy at Occupy Wall Street #OWS #Commons
Consensus Democracy - How do the Occupy Wall Street protesters reach decisions in a very diverse group?
We filmed at the Occupy Wall Street protests recently. One of the wonderful things to emerge in these protests has been the Consensus Democracy approach: broad, highly inclusive, community-focused and introspective - everyone has a voice. This form of decision-making is similar to older forms - for example, Quaker Letters - used to find central commonalities among diverse groups.
Consensus Democracy is very powerful. When decisions are reached, you know that the vast majority agree; and that essentially all in the group will accept the result. There is a lot of listening required: deeply understanding the others' points of view and priorities - good skills for us to re-learn now, especially in U.S. politics!
Community By Design
Lawrence New Jersey takes action to design an ecologically sustainable future for itself through a FutureSearch conference. They create a marvelous vision of a livable, productive and sustainable future, using The Natural Step principles.
See: http://sustainablelawrence.org/
Produced by: Pierre Terre, 5/8/2006 Language: English Run Time: 29 min. 48 sec. Story Level 2 = Children may need to ask their parents about the meaning of the Story
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
