Here’s a link to an article,

Occupy protesters eye diversity as movement grows

CT coaches via the meta facilitator role at Occupy Baltimore, photo by Boston Phoenix

On Saturday, C.T. Lawrence Butler was interviewed by an Associated Press reporter collecting background on the Occupy Movement. C.T., co-founder of the worldwide movement Food Not Bombs, has been writing about and teaching values-based consensus decisionmaking for thirty years. For a little over a week, he’s been volunteering his guidance and participating in Occupy Baltimore.

When he spoke to the AP he and I were on an Amtrak traveling to Boston, both to visit Occupy Boston and to see him be honored for co-founding the Cambridge non-profit Food for Free. C.T. is author of On Conflict and Consensus and Consensus for Cities, as well as Food Not Bombs: How to Feed the Homeless and Build Community.

Here’s a quick clip of his quote, for the furiously busy:

In Baltimore, there are people representing different racial, ethnic, age and income groups, but not in proportion to the city’s population. Occupy Baltimore group organizer C.T. Lawrence Butler, who is white said there has been talk of going out to communities around the city to try to attract more people, but the group is just building steam and hasn’t had a chance to put together official outreach. Instead, individuals have been reaching out to communities on their own, a strategy that may work better.

“Everybody would like more diversity,” Butler said. “The group is focusing on creating a place where everybody can feel safe speaking up.”

Of course, their conversation was about an hour long, and much more nuanced, and we cringe at the use of the title organizer, but we are happy with this as an essence.

This contact was part of a larger wave of press contacts, including the LA Times and The Boston Phoenix. In fact, C.T. and I had the Phoenix reporter embedded with us for much of the Boston trip, and a feature article will appear online this Wednesday, in print on Thursday.

From these information requests, interviews and changes in the google rankings for the word consensus, it’s clear that the press and the mainstream world are starting to ask, “What is this thing called consensus that these protesters are doing?”

C.T. will surely be fielding more of these calls in the coming weeks. His website, consensus.net, will have updated press contact information soon. For now, contact me, Wren Tuatha, at 410-458-2310 or curiocoast@comcast.net.