Consensus is about discussing an issue completely, from all sides, and allowing all people involved in the consensus process a chance to speak. It’s about building group beliefs from the ground up – through shared knowledge and empowering the members of your community, you can build towards and reach consensus. There are ways to use a mixed model of decision-making. For example, WILPF makes almost all decisions by consensus, but chooses to vote to elect people to leadership positions. Choosing a human representative is to me the only reason to modify the consensus process. Perpetual blocks show that the group moved too fast from community building to reaching consensus. Of course, in the General Assembly model it could also mean that people new to the public square haven’t been fully integrated into the community before being given a voice in the General Assembly.

I’m writing this because tonight I attended my first Occupy LA General Assembly. I’m not sure how many more I’ll be able to attend in the near future, as I’m getting married next weekend, so I’m a bit wary of giving public suggestions to the group. But I can say clearly and definitively – if you’re facilitating a meeting a call for a vote and then use the symbols of consensus, you have not created consensus. You have created a modified voting system that adds up sparkles to majority rule.

What does consensus look like? It starts by having a clear, realistic agenda. It starts by putting only one or two items on the table for a discussion by a decision-making body during a 1-3 hour period. The process of taking a stack means empowering facilitators to decide when under-represented voices are moved to the top of the stack, rather than allowing five white guys to suck up all the time available for a particular point of discussion. And it means leaving the discussion open until everyone has been able to speak, rather than rushing through “temperature checks” and “voting.”

Real democracy doesn’t just take place in General Assemblies. Using committees to hash out particular issues can be truly empowering, particularly for people of all genders and ethnicities who feel uncomfortable stepping up to speak in front of a large group. Accepting that participatory, consensus-based democracy is extremely slow and more gratifying the pseudo-consensus could be the first step to a real paradigm shift. And if you’re worried that going through this process wont produce “demands” to declare to the media, stop answering the questions posed by the media and instead focus on the message you can fully speak. Tell them why you yourself got involved in the Occupy Together movement. That’s something you can speak about without participating in a single General Assembly.

I arrived at sunset as the downpour ended.
Melanie is moving through the community as if it were her living room.
She has made friends and allies and nurtured relationships of mutual support.
And of course her headquarters is the Wiki-Leaks truck!

As she departs for a good night sleep and some dry clothes my son shows up with dinner just after I got my 30 seconds on the live feed.  We both agree it is shades of burning man.  Mostly because we feel that yummy sense of aliveness, community, support and love.

He offers himself fully to the task of call and response of the general assembly but after an hour wonders how everyone has the stamina.  Yet he comes up with a great idea to organize an early morning action to circle wall street with 5,000 people and is curious if we can make that happen.  He is insistant that Wall Street feel the effects of our presence.  What will their tweets read he wonders?  This is followed by an arrest of a young woman on her bike.   It is awesome to watch as those who are responsible shift from GA to monitoring the event at hand.  Cameras out, people up and like a dance the cameras move forward and those without withdraw.  The police are surrounded by those who are sharing the story in multiple forms globally.  Many in the crowd are telling stories of their recent arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge and the dry night of sleep they got in jail.  No one here is exercising power, instead they are taking responsibility and following through on it.  Beautiful to behold.

The night is full of long conversations about what this is, where it can go, what can be done as the cold moves in, how to be most effective and how to encourage others to join.  All bathed in the richness of the general assembly on one end and the non stop music and dancing on the other.  The General Assembly greeting table has a collection of our pink peace cranes as decorations and the guy from the music side came to complain that we are playing favorites and he wants his own.

The vinyl banners Kristen mothered into being were a big hit tonight, multiple requests to hold them for the cameras as they did their night stories and lots of opportunities to do photos with them.  I did meet a female corporal in the army who had come in solidarity but couldn’t hold the sign because she was in uniform.  But she likes all the messages.

The wiki-leaks truck leaves in the morning to join us in Washington on Thursday.  There is excitement in the square at the news of a push in DC.  Love and curiosity were the threads of my night.  Tomorrow more crane folding to make the welcoming table on Trinity Street feel supported.

Please join us in NYC or whereever you are.

You could say I implicitly understand the limits of imperialism. The unifying principle in any empire is the belief that your way of life is superior and must be spread. Empires are built many ways – by conquering people’s beliefs by imposing religious beliefs through superior weaponry; by conquering people’s lands by introducing diseases that kill the majority of the population; and by the economic tyranny of “free-trade” capitalism.  The macro-historical view I began to see in college was crystallized by reading Chalmers Johnson and Naomi Klein.

I fundamentally believe in pluralism and self-determination. Simultaneously, I believe in universal human rights.

It is on this backdrop that I entered anti-war activism. My focus remained corporate personhood and the root causes of war long after the U.S. put boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. I reasoned that other people were in the streets fighting against these wars and it was important for me to take the long view of history. Eleven years into that strategy, I realized that unless you relate your fundamental beliefs to current events, you’ll be hard-pressed for attention among progressives, let alone The Media. And that’s about the point when I joined the CODEPINK national team.

The ignorance of imperialism is writ large in Iraq and Afghanistan. The American Empire Project published Peter Van Buren’s book today, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. He was interviewed today by Dave Davies of Fresh Air.

Over the weekend, I facilitated a teleconference with Dr. Rashad Zaydan, founder of the Knowledge for Iraqi Women Society. I was frankly surprised to hear how strongly she denounced the veracity of the article “Fight for Women’s Rights Begins All Over Again,” by Rebecca Murray on the Inter Press Service site. Dr. Zaydan challenged us to see Iraqi women’s rights in the context of human rights. She reminded us of the many economic and social rights enjoyed by Iraqis prior to the U.S. invasion — the Iraqi government ensured all citizens had basic food stuffs, free education for both genders, free medical care, and housing. After the occupation, none of those things have been guaranteed, and the killing of many Iraqi men has created an expanding population of widows without means to provide for their families. Additionally, the war and occupation have destroyed Iraq’s electrical grid, leaving most people without access to continuous electricity. She reminded us that there must be justice and peace. It is not acceptable that occupying soldiers rape and murder with seeming impunity, further exacerbating the failed state created by the initial invasion. Dr. Zaydan recommends completely withdrawing all troops and war-profiteering-contractors by the end of the year and allowing Iraqis time and space to re-develop their country.

You can listen to our complete conversation with Dr. Zaydan by calling (661) 673-8609, entering access code 780252# and then entering reference number 1 when prompted.

Unfortunately, the situation in Afghanistan is no better than in Iraq. International human rights lawyer Tzili Mor spoke with CODEPINK LA on International Peace Day. She served eight months as the Gender Justice Adviser based in Kabul for the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) primarily on the establishment of special violence against women prosecution units and related issues around access to justice for women. According to Ms. Mor, there are laws in Afghanistan that protect women’s rights, but the process of implementation is slow and many layers of work must be done. While women have returned to the Afghan legal field as prosecutors and judges, people of all genders can allow their personal biases to affect their job performance. For example, a female prosecutor might suggest to a man that his wife be imprisoned for misbehaving when the wife reports that she was the victim of domestic violence. Additionally, cultural norms can have the force of law – on some roads, police pull women off buses, claiming they have broken a law by traveling without their husband or father. No such law currently exists in Afghanistan, but in some areas women serve 5 year prison sentences for this “offense,” though sentences vary widely. Despite these disturbing anecdotes, there are many areas of Afghanistan where women are respected, equal members of society. It is vitally important to continue supporting women’s participation in Afghan society, politically, legally, and culturally. As Laura King pointed out in the LA Times,  Afghans know the presence of Westerners makes targets of everyone nearby.

In the coming weeks, we will continue to demand an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as part of Occupy Wall Street, the encampment at Freedom Plaza, and throughout the country. Additionally, on October 7, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan will be speaking at Pasadena Community College, and the event will be video streamed on the Afghan Women’s Mission website. And if you’re near San Diego, attend an in-person Conversation with Dr. Rashad Zaydan at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Theatre on October 13.

I hope you will join us in challenging empire. Between the U.S. diplomats based in the Middle East who can’t speak Arabic and the soldiers tasked with killing people one hour and helping rebuild the schools destroyed by the U.S. military the next, it’s a wonder that the U.S. empire hasn’t already collapsed under the weight of its hubris. I remain hopeful because progressives are gathering in the streets to demand fundamental change, to demand Make Jobs, Not War.

Watch Medea’s interview on #OccupyWallStreet with Oz House Alt News:

LA CODEPINK was present yesterday at both Obama LA fundraisers to challenge him to immediately end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bring all troops and contractors home and ensure real human security by creating jobs and ensuring access to healthcare, education, housing and food. Check out the CBS LA coverage of his appearance, featuring a quote from me around the minute mark.

CODEPINK NYC Coordinator Melanie Butler was interviewed on KPFA’s Letters and Politics program today. Listen to it online.

His speech has gotten attention from across the media spectrum. According to Rachel Maddow, the mainstream press unfairly focused on the critical points in his speech. Black commentators have had mixed reactions to his demand to “stop complainin’.” ColorLines points out that the CBC has been working on job creation longer than the American Jobs Act has been in existence. African-American author Karen Hunter claims the AP’s transcription of the speech is “inherently racist” because it was published as spoken, with dropped g’s. Tavis Smiley was particularly incensed, asking Representative Sheila Jackson Lee if Obama would dare to tell Jews, Latinos, or any other constituency to stop complaining.

Personally, I agree with Smiley’s criticism. And as a fan of Zora Neale Hurston, I reject the idea that transcribing speech as it is said is “inherently racist.” I agree that we need to get moving.

But here’s the thing – until the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are ended, until all troops and war profiteers come home, until all people have the right to marry and all gender identities are accepted, until everyone has food to eat, a home to live in, free education, universal, single-payer healthcare, until nuclear power and nuclear weapons are abolished, until our infrastructure is rebuilt and the water and power industries are fully regulated, until significant money is spent on research in renewable, sustainable energy, I will march on. And I wont waste a minute of my time or a dime of money on political campaigns. We need to continue occupying Wall Street, challenging Obama at every public appearance he makes, and gathering in Freedom Plaza. Politicians wont hand us change. Just as the New Deal was forged because of the demands of people in the streets, just as Civil Rights laws were enacted because people refused to condone racism, we must continue to challenge the empire. Will you join me in telling Obama to Make Jobs, Not War?

The “compromise” approved by the House today and expected to pass the Senate tomorrow is an atrocity. It is a rich man’s coup of our democracy. Consider this: absolutely no tax increases are included in the bill. It creates a “super Congress,” with authority to slash social services when the country is still reeling from the recession. As Robert Reich noted, the President paid a ransom when there was absolutely no reason to link the increase of the debt ceiling with cutting the budget deficit.

Last week, the NY Times published, and The Atlantic promoted, a revealing graphic, reminding us how this deficit was created: with tax breaks to the rich and unfunded and unnecessary wars. Remember this when the mainstream media focuses in on the particulars of what is happening this week. Beltway leadership will not admit that it was spending decisions made during the Bush administration that led to this point.

Who will be affected the most by the budget cuts? Women, of course. Susan Feiner delineates the ways the plan balances the budget on the backs of women in the Ms. blog. If cuts in Social Security and unemployment insurance don’t piss you off, maybe the idea of cutting safety inspections will. Between those cuts and the perennial lack of funding for infrastructure modernization, you can expect more poop in your water in the coming years.

As Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus noted, the debt deal is a ‘sugar-coated Satan sandwich.’ Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, denounced the deal as a give-away to the rich and corporations on the backs of working people and warned that both parties stand at a crossroads. The House of Representatives has already sold the American people down the river, will the Senate do the same?

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) pointed out today that the media committed malpractice in covering the debt ceiling debate. The ‘center’ has been defined far away from public sentiment and few people acknowledge the cause of the deficit or the fact that the debt ceiling can be raised without cutting vital social programs.

How did we get to this point? The National Organization for Women (NOW) thinks the lack of female leadership in the negotiations was one reason real human needs weren’t taken into account. Many men are calling for the people to march on Washington, from Keith Olbermann to Rep. John Conyers (MI-D)

Join the feminist response to the rich man’s coup. Join CODEPINK in DC as we call on Congress and the President to Bring Our War $$ Home, tax the rich, and create jobs through increased federal spending. Can’t make it to the nation’s capital? Develop a cultural response to ten years and counting of war and corporate welfare through Create, Not Hate. We are the nonviolent resistance needed to overturn this shameful usurpation of democracy. Join the PINK Team today.