February 15, 2019

It's still possible to find agreement with other people

Sam Smith - For example, a group of Maine Greens and Maine Libertarians got together found these ten things they agreed upon:
1. End regime change wars.

2. Close down most U.S. bases in foreign countries

3. Terminate corporate welfare

4. Void, via repeal, the PATRIOT Act and the 2012 NDAA provision
allowing “indefinite detention” without jury trial, judge, or
witnesses for the defense as flagrant violations of the U.S.
Constitution

5. Teach and enforce our Bill of Rights and give extensive training in
such to law enforcement personnel.

6. Support municipal food sovereignty ordinances for farmer to
consumer transactions

7. Expand time to gather petitions for office to April 30, to minimize
difficulty during the most difficult weather of the year and to allow
more time.

8. Do not require caucuses to maintain ballot access in Maine

9. Allow nomination of candidates by convention as an option

10. In some cases vaccines have prevented deaths or serious diseases.
In other cases documentation exists of fatal or lifetime debilitating
injuries to people, especially infants. Accordingly, we oppose any law
mandating vaccines, which fail to take into account either sovereignty
over our own bodies or important medical variations including allergic
reactions.
In 1995, as an active member of the Green Politics Network, I joined a number of other Greens in hosting a conference of third party activists. Over a hundred showed up, ranging from one of the founders of the ancient American Labor Party to Greens, Libertarians, Perot backers, and Democratic Socialists of America. It was a recklessly dangerous idea for a Washington weekend, but Green activists John Rensenbrink, Linda Martin and Tony Affigne seemed to know what they were doing and I was happy to go along.

We established two basic rules:

- We would only discuss issues on which we might find some agreement.

- We would reach that agreement by consensus.

We broke the body into tables of ten or so, each dealing with a different topic. All policies that were proposed were written on newsprint posters. Then participants were given three color stick-on dots with their names on them. Everyone then went up to the board and placed their dots on their favorite issues (cumulative voting style, so that all three dots could, if desired, be placed on one issue). After the vote, those with only their dots on a particular issue were allowed to move them to their second choice (a la ranked choice voting) and so forth until a clear consensus of three issues emerged. This scheme not only produced a consensus, but one that was physical and visual as well as intellectual and was fun to watch.

When the various groups produced their recommendations, they were turned over to what was known as a "fishbowl negotiation." Each small group selected a representative to negotiate for it with representatives of all the other tables. The representatives sat in a circle with those they represented behind them. Anyone could stop their representative and request a small group conference but only the representative could speak in the larger assembly. It worked remarkably well.

The small group that had the most difficulty with such techniques was comprised mainly of Marxists who had selected economics as their area of concern. We were, one suggested, guilty of what the Master had called "parliamentary cretinism," and the socialists resisted it firmly. One result, ironically, was that the weakest section of the final statement was that dealing with economics. On the other hand, the libertarians came to the organizers at one point and offered to leave the meeting so a full consensus could be maintained. We encouraged them to stick around, changing our own rules to accept several levels of consensus.

Despite the wide range of views present, despite the near total absence of Robert's Rules of Order, the final document, with full consensus, called for nothing less than a major transformation. The group unanimously agreed to support proportional representation, campaign finance reform "to provide a level playing field in elections;" initiative, referendum and recall; better ballot access; the end of corporate welfare; strong environmental policies; sexual and reproductive freedom; an end to the war on drugs and treatment of addiction as a health matter rather than as a crime; a dramatic cut in military expenditures; workplace democracy and the maximum empowerment of people in their communities "consistent with fairness, social responsibilities and human rights."

Not bad for a group ranging from one of the founders of the ancient American Labor Party to Greens, Libertarians, Perot backers and Democratic Socialists of America. It shouldn't have worked at all, but because the rules we had used felt fair to those present, it did. By ignoring topics of obvious disagreement, we even surprised ourselves with the level of consensus.

We had also discovered the possibility of a political transformation, of moving beyond left and right. We understood that these were different times -- not the thirties, not the sixties -- times that required different imaginations and different risks. We had reached out and had found that we were not alone.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great list Sam and great model for moving forward!

I really like the inclusion of #10. Vaccines have still never been proven safe nor effective while at the same time they have been clearly demonstrated to be harmful in many cases. The principle of Informed Consent must be upheld as a human right or we will lose all medical freedom over our bodies.