Tag Archive: democracy

May 14, 2014

Do-acracy vs. Democracy?

In a number of the social change networks that I am supporting there is very active and interesting conversation, and experimentation, going on around what I would call the process-action tension.  As I have written elsewhere, I see this as a bit of a false and often unhelpful dichotomy, and I have certainly seen and been part of networks that have gotten bogged down in some version of analysis paralysis and never-ending consensus building. Increasingly there is a leaning towards getting out there sooner than later and trying things, learning from experiments and actions, readjusting, etc., which is all well and good.  At the same time, I see it as part of my role to raise questions about how the embrace of “do-acracy” might have unintended consequences around long-term alignment as well as sustained and truly systemic impact. Read More

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February 13, 2013

Design and Emergence

emergence

|Photo by Dawn Huczek|http://www.flickr.com/photos/31064702@N05/3847338602|

Working with numerous multi-stakeholder collaborative change efforts, we at IISC are often invited to help people co-create the structures and processes that will move their complex work and collective development forward.  There is never an easy or readily apparent answer and each case is unique to its particular context and nature.  A quote that I’ve found helpful to quell some of the anxiety that comes up around this work, especially among those who want to rush to adopt a structure that others have used and “get on to the work” (more on this false dichotomy here), comes from Fritjof Capra from the Center for Ecoliteracy.  Capra writes about the importance of recognizing and working the dynamics of life. Read More

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September 27, 2012

Racing to Justice

IISC staff is engaged in reading this recently published and important book by john a. powell, currently Director of the Haas Diversity Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. I sometimes have the tendency to skip to the end of non-fiction books, in this case the Afterword, to see where the story ends. Without wanting to be a spoiler, I wanted to share these words from powell, which I find a real motivator to dig deeply into the book and the work it asks of us:

“To reach our common ground, to create a sense of mutuality and common space, we must realize that the embodiedness that spiritual seekers know is also needed in the justice system and in efforts to end suffering in our society. Abstract concepts and cold individualism fall short of justice, fall short of addressing need, and allow the victory of greed. We need to reach out to one another from a perspective that makes group membership less determinative of opportunity and more related to enhancement of self and community. We need to increase our sense of abundance and improve our sense of well-being, as individuals and in relation to one another. Accomplishing this requires an identification of the white worldview along with an incorporation of the many of visions that tell America’s story. And it requires a renewed commitment by all of us to fulfill the promise of a truly democratic society.”

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September 20, 2012

Coming Full Circle

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

-T. S. Eliot

It’s interesting to see how, as much as things evolve, there is also a circularity to this movement.  For the past few years we have been working with the Graustein Memorial Fund on Right from the Start, an early childhood system change initiative for which the Fund has served as core convenor and funder.  Come to find out that IISC’s new President, Ceasar McDowell, was in on early conversations that launched the Memorial Fund’s unique and wonderful Discovery program to seed community-based collaboratives for early childhood development planning. Read More

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April 23, 2012

Process sows the seeds of Peace and Justice

Wonder why I’m passionate about collaborative process and strong, creative process design?

Join us at Fundamentals of Facilitation for Racial Justice Work on May 8-9 in Boston to explore these ideas and more!

You can’t have peace or justice without it. Consider the following:

Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.” So says Nigerian human rights and democracy activist, Hafsat Abiola. Her words echo those of John Paul Lederach , who wrote in The Moral Imagination that peace is not a condition—a process through which people can build relationships conflicting parties and continually engage to create a reality where “the other” continues to exist.

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October 4, 2011

My visit to #occupywallstreet

I made it out to #occupywallstreet last Friday night.  Here is how my experience unfolded:

1.  Culture Shock

I’m into showers, they’re not.  I’m in my mid-thirties, grew up in a working class Puerto Rican community and I’ve been yupified over the years.  I didn’t see a lot of people of color and I wasn’t feeling the vibe.  I wondered how people from my community could ever make a link to this crowd.  I was welcomed to walk around, curiously browsing, checking out the scene, the art and the people.

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July 12, 2011

Exploded Democracy

I recently came upon the following abstract of a paper we presented at the Sutures Conference in the University of Toronto back in 2003.  I was intrigued by the continuing relevance of the concept and how these ideas continue to inform my work: Read More

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April 27, 2011

Taking Stakeholders Seriously

stakeholder

|Photo by Robert Higgins|http://www.flickr.com/photos/37893534@N07/4779016818|

“Stakeholder” is a big word in our practice at IISC. When it comes to our collaborative change work, we take  stakeholder analysis very seriously, in certain situations spending a few days to complete this critical task. The aim is generally to surface the names of those groups and individuals who as a sum total will help to ensure that we have the system represented in the room. What this means is pushing people, at times, into uncomfortable places to consider typically unheard voices and those they have outright resisted inviting to the table but without whom they could not hope to make the kind of change to which they aspire.

Typically we engage in a conversation with our clients and partners that asks them identify, in the context of some given change effort, those whose stakes are defined in the following ways: Read More

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November 2, 2010

An Extraordinary Episode

vote

Vote Today! It does matter.  But you probably already knew that.  I’m down on the state these days.  And I don’t mean Massachusetts.  I mean “the state,” the dominant organizing structure for human affairs.  But I still think we should vote – wield some of the influence we have. Read More

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October 27, 2010

Geiger Counters for Quality

signs

|Photo by marcomagrini|http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcomagrini/698692268|

“We don’t talk about what we see,

we see only what we can talk about.”

– Fred Kofman

This week I’ve been rereading Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems and really savoring it.  Each time I look at it, I pick up something new, not just about systems thinking but about life in general.  I’ve been focused primarily on Meadows’ chapter “Living in a World of Systems,” which considers how we can work with complex systems while acknowledging that even when we understand them better, we cannot predict or control them.  One of her suggestions is that we learn to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.  This is not a question of throwing out what we can quantify as being somehow overly reductionist. Rather, it is a matter of not giving up on what we cannot measure and making quantity more important than quality.  How important this is for our social change work!  Read More

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May 18, 2010

Vision, Microtrending

vision 2

|Photo by laurenatclemson|http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenmanning/2319032882/in/photostream|

A couple of weeks ago, during a training with early childhood advocates from around Connecticut, an interesting conversation ensued about vision.   This was prompted by one participant’s comment that in this day and age, “There is no such thing as vision.  There is no such thing as magic or miracles.  People are cynical.  People just don’t respond to vision anymore.”  There was some immediate push back to this comment, and also some acknowledgment that vision may not be what it used to be, thinking of the old standards a la MLK and JFK.

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February 10, 2010

Government of the People, By the People, For the People?

I’ve been thinking a lot about why people love to hate government, and why I just can’t bring myself to hate it, too. I hold tightly to the notion of government “of the people, by the people and for the people” and want to hold it accountable to serving its role to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

To the people who say (as I heard recently on the news) “I want government out of my life and out of my pocket!”, I say, see how far you get without roads, bridges, schools, water, sewer, fire and police forces, courts, public transit, public parks, libraries, and the like.  To those who say (as I also heard recently) “I was raised that if you see something that needs to be done you just do it. No whining. No waiting for government. You just do it.” I have a few questions. Does that include paving a pothole? Educating a neighbor with special needs? Making books available to children and adults doing research? Building an extension to a road or transit system? Ensuring that the air and waterways are not polluted? Providing shelter, health care and other safety net supports for people in need? Making sure that everyone does their part to avert a climate disaster? You get my point. As a tax payer, I’m getting a pretty good deal for what I pay. It would take more than 80 years of paying our property taxes to exceed just the cost of educating three sons in private schools!

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