Bcc: FYI
rkm website: http://cyberjournal.org
___________________________________
Greetings,
The reason I haven’t been posting much to cyberjournal is that I’ve been VERY busy helping organize a nationwide movement here in Ireland, as well as helping organize a very promising event in Switzerland.
Earlier I posted the announcement of the forum we held at Boghill, in the West of Ireland, which was held at the beginning of March. That forum was very successful. We had over 30 people there, we had an excellent ‘Art of Hosting’ facilitator (Chris Chapman), and the event was amazingly positive: lots of diverse view, but no debates or arguments. The participants have been working together ever since, in various working groups, and we now have an energetic nationwide movement gradually building momentum. Here are two facebook pages that, to some extent, reflect what we’re doing:
IRELAND’S FUTURE: A PEOPLE’S FORUM
Irelands-Future Conversation-Forum
You can also listen to a radio interview, by my fellow-organizer Rudi Teichman, where he talks about our movement. Here’s the URL, and his interview starts at 19:21:
The strategy behind the movement is to get conversations started in communities around Ireland, looking at the question, ‘What kind of future do we want for Ireland?’. The goal, admittedly ambitious, is to work toward nationwide unity (among the 99%) around a program for Ireland’s future. (It was Alan Kay, the acknowledged inventor of the personal computer, who said, “A great project is no more work than a good project”.) If we can achieve that unity, then we can simply elect independent representatives to all levels of government, who are committed to that program. One of their first jobs, I anticipate, would be to devolve most power to communities.
Everyone (the 99%) here in Ireland feels we should not have to pay the debts to the banks, and are disgusted with our sell-out political parties. The economic crisis and the austerity agenda has created fertile ground for radically changing how our political system works! The obvious (I’d say) solution to our problems is to get out of the EU, repudiate the debts, issue our own debt-free currency, and develop a resilient and prosperous national economy. Please wish us luck! If we succeed in Ireland, you can be sure the rest of Europe will follow!
—
Over the years I’ve been working with, and staying in contact with, a community of facilitators who share a strong interest in Dynamic Facilitation, and its potential for transforming society and creating real democracy. I wrote about this in Escaping the Matrix. Recently there was a conference in Europe around these issues, called ‘Surfing Democracy’. I was unable to attend, but out of that conference a group was formed (DF_HUB) that is concerned with deepening democracy in Europe, and making Dynamic Facilitation available to any group in Europe that might benefit from it.
I joined that group, and have participated in several Skype conversations that involved people from Europe and the USA. As usual for me, trouble maker that I am, I suggested a new initiative for the group. As a result we are now planning a gathering in Switzerland that is sounding more and more promising as the planning proceeds.
We are going to invite 15-20 people, and we are going to use Dynamic Facilitation in our gathering. DF is a very powerful process, and it generally succeeds in producing unanimous outcomes, particularly when there is lots of disagreement at the beginning. Hard to believe, but it’s true, based on a great number of sessions that have been held in a wide variety of circumstances in many parts of the world.
The topic will be, “How can we deepen democracy in Europe?”. We will be inviting anarchists, people from the left and right, direct-democracy advocates of various flavors, and people who have experience in government institutions, at different levels. They will all be from Europe, and from various countries. We will of course have good gender balance. This not because of political correctness, but because it’s usually women who contribute most of the positive energy to events, at least in my experience.
Out of this event, I’m anticipating that we’ll come up with, among other things, a shared understanding of what real democracy is about. I’m very hopeful that we’ll also come up with a commitment to pursue promising follow-up initiatives, as we did at Boghill.
best wishes to all,
richard
Share: