OCCUPY THE HAMPTONS

I’ve been chronicling my experiences of #OccupyBoston here and here. What these experience have brought to light is that, as the #Occupy movement spreads to hundreds of cities across America, we hear about these gatherings called “General Assemblies” and talk of “consensus”. But, what do we really know of these things?

This movement is directly inspired by Arab Spring and the Campanadas in Spain. We watched the people of Egypt gather slowly in Cairo as a disorganized crowd, roundly criticized by international voices for being only elite, educated youth and being leaderless and having no clear goals. Sound familiar?

A turning point in this was the day they unfurled, down the side of a building, a list of demands which clearly spelled out steps for getting from the tyranny of Mubarak’s brutal kleptocracy to a more just democratic society. Then workers joined their cause and started striking. Suddenly, the world knew that this was serious.

How did they go from being a leaderless, disorganized “mob” to a galvanized movement with a grand plan? They embraced a system of horizontal democracy known as direct democracy and used Collective Thinking.

Read whole article:

#occupywallstreet: a primer on consensus and the General Assembly.