STILL A Revolutionary Decision-Making Process

From Wren:  I’m reproducing this article from several years ago, with C.T.’s permission. C.T. Butler and I, along with a forming collective of facilitators, have been putting new language to the many paradigm shifts that help practitioners of consensus decision-making succeed in conducting meetings that reflect the egalitarian, non-violent, post-privilege world in which we want to live. This article, nearly twenty years old, shows that, although we’re bringing clarity and new language to the subtle concepts that help consensus succeed, they’re not all new ideas. —WT

By C.T. Lawrence Butler

If you were asked to pick one thing that might bring about major social, political, and economic change in this country, what would you pick? Most people would pick their favorite issue; be it civil rights, demilitarization, environmental sustainability, or whatever. Some people would choose a system of values to replace the capitalism system such as socialism or the Ten Key Values of the Greens. But few people would even think of changing group dynamics (the way people treat each other when interacting with one another in a group); or specifically, the process they use when making decisions.

Process is the key to revolutionary change. This is not a new message. Visionaries have long pointed to this but it is a hard lesson to learn. As recently as the 70s, feminists clearly defined the lack of an alternative process for decisionmaking and group interaction as the single most important obstacle in the way of real change, both within progressive organizations and for society at large. Despite progress on many issues of concern to progressive-minded people, very little has changed in the way people treat each other, either locally or globally, and almost nothing has changed about who makes the decisions. The values of competition, which allow us to accept the idea that somebody has to lose; the structure of hierarchy, which, by definition, creates power elites; and the techniques of domination and control, which dehumanizes and alienates all parties affected by their use, are the standards of group interaction with which we were all conditioned. There are but a few models in our society which offer an alternative.

All groups, no matter what their mission or political philosophy, use some form of process to accomplish their work. Almost all groups, no matter where they fall on the social, political, and economic spectrum of society, have a hierarchical structure, accept competition as “natural”, acceptable, and even desirable, and put a good deal of effort into maintaining control of their members. It is telling that in our society, there are opposing groups, with very different perspectives and values, which have identical structures and techniques for interaction and decisionmaking. If you played a theater game in which both groups wore the same costumes and masks and spoke in gibberish rather than words, a spectator would not be able to tell them apart.

So what would an alternative revolutionary decisionmaking process look like, you ask? To begin with, a fundamental shift from competition to cooperation. This does not mean to do away with competition. Ask any team coach what the key to victory is and you will be told “cooperation within the team”. The fundamental shift is the use of competition not to win, which is just a polite way of saying to dominate, to beat, to destroy, to kill the opposition; but rather, to use competition to do or be the best. In addition, the cooperative spirit recognizes that it is not necessary to attack another’s efforts in order to do your best; in fact, the opposite is true. In most situations, helping others do their best actually increases your ability to do better. And in group interactions, the cooperative spirit actually allows the group’s best to be better than the sum of its parts.
Cooperation is more than “live and let live”. It is making an effort to understand another’s point of view. It is incorporating another’s perspective with your own so that a new perspective emerges. It is suspending disbelief, even if only temporarily, so you can see the gem of truth in ideas other than your own. It is a process of creativity, synthesis, and open-mindedness which leads to trust-building, better communication and understanding, and ultimately, a stronger, healthier, more successful group.

The next step is the development of an organization which is non-hierarchical or egalitarian. A corresponding structure would include: participatory democracy, routine universal skill-building and information sharing, rotation of leadership roles, frequent evaluations, and, perhaps most importantly, equal access to power. Hierarchical structures are not, in and of themselves, the problem. But their use concentrates power at the top and, invariably, the top becomes less and less accessible to the people at the bottom, who are usually most affected by the decisions made by those at the top. Within groups (and within society itself), there becomes a power elite. In an egalitarian structure, everyone has access to power and every position of power is accountable to everyone. This does not mean that there are no leaders. But the leaders actively share skills and information. They recognize that leadership is a role empowered by the entire group, not a personal characteristic. A group in which most or all of the members can fill any of the leadership roles cannot easily be dominated, internally or externally.

The last and most visible step towards revolutionary change in group process is the manner in which members of the group interact with each other. Dominating attitudes and controlling behavior would not be tolerated. People would show respect and expect to be shown respect. Everyone would be doing their personal best to help the group reach decisions which are in the best interest of the group. There would be no posturing and taking sides. Conflicts would be seen as an opportunity for growth, expanding people’s thinking, sharing new information, and developing new solutions which include everyone’s perspectives. The group would create an environment where everyone was encouraged to participate, conflict was freely expressed, and resolutions were in the best interest of everyone involved. Indubitably, this would be revolutionary.

You can contact C.T. Butler at:
Food Not Bombs Publishing
7304 Carroll Ave #136
Takoma Park, MD 20912
website: www.consensus.net
Telephone: 1-800-569-4054

Order copies of his books, On Conflict & Consensus and Consensus for Cities on the above site. His book, Food Not Bombs: How to Feed the Hungry and Build Community, is available on Amazon.com.

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***PRESS RELEASE***PLEASE CIRCULATE***

The opportunity of a lifetime is before me. I’m writing for support of a project to train members of media cooperatives and collectives around the world in consensus decision-making and community building.

Consensus author/trainer C.T. Lawrence Butler and I have been working with organizers to structure an event leading up to 2011’s World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal. The event is called the Indy Media Convergence, a two-week period when members of Independent Media Center, aka Indymedia or IMC, gather to create consensus-based community and learn new skills in communication, media and journalism. Afterwards, the members remain in Dakar to cover the World Social Forum, from perspectives free of corporate interests.

Activist C.T. Lawrence Butler is co-founder of Food Not Bombs, the international network of local organizations feeding homeless and redistributing edible food that would otherwise go to waste. Local Food Not Bombs groups operate by consensus, and C.T. has led workshops in the US, Europe and Africa, showing thousands that horizontal structure is possible. He’s the author of the definitive On Conflict and Consensus, as well as Consensus for Cities and Food Not Bombs. He has been arrested over fifty times protesting war, nuclear power and exercising his right to give away food.

I, Wren Tuatha, am a writer/filmmaker/facilitator who has lived and practiced consensus decision-making at Heathcote Community for fifteen years. I’m Artist-in-Residence there, and am currently writing a book, Consensus for Kids, based on twenty-five years in alternative education and seven years designing and facilitating Heathcote’s Open Classroom. I am a facilitator/consultant to Intentional Communities, helping established and forming communities prioritize what I call “social technologies”—consensus, conflict resolution, ZEGG Forum, etc. My website, HippieChickDiaries.com, is a first person account of life in Intentional Community, or, as I like  to put it, “Wren Tuatha’s complicated adventures in simple living….”

IMC is a network of collectives, established in 1999 around the anti-WTO protests in Seattle.  Going to Dakar, IMC will be covering the World Social Forum, a series of events in answer to the capitalist World Economic Forum. IMC organizers are committed to members learning interpersonal communication and inclusive decision-making, as well as practical media skills, such as building radios and transmitters.

To organizers, the point is really the process. “If we don’t have consensus training, then it’s just a technical workshop,” says Sphinx, a documentary filmmaker and IMC organizer from Cameroon, now living in exile in the US. Indymedia’s mission incorporates consensus principles but many of the over 200 chapters need training.

During the 2011 Convergence, over 100 Africans, as well as members from South America, the US and Europe will experience consensus, as well as Open Space Technology, and possibly ZEGG Forum, an often emotional group process in which communities and their members view and get past some blocks that may interfere with their common work. We will also facilitate cultural sensitivity work to help the diverse community come together through understanding.

Now that our organizing structure has been adopted by the group, we need funding to make the trip. We need to raise $11000 for our consensus work in Dakar.

DESCRIPTION    AMOUNT
WSF reg & on ground expenses, CT & WT    1000
airfare for CT & WT    5000
CT home expenses    1500
WT home expenses    1500
100 copies of On Conflict and Consensus 1500
emergencies & miscellaneous    500

11000

I became acquainted with GEO’s Michael Johnson through several ZEGG Forum facilitator trainings at Ganas Community. And I’m excited that he and I are beginning to collaborate in helping worker-owned cooperatives continually develop their social technology skills, so that existing horizontal structures don’t have to revert to hierarchy, and so that all members can share power and be heard in decision-making. This breeds a profound sense of community, and streamlined energy to act on and realize our dreams.

IMC organizers like Sphinx want to use the consensus community at the Convergence to inspire participants to go home and create a handful of sustained, working models of consensus in Africa.

Through my site and networking, I’ve advanced my goals of putting Intentional Community on everyone’s list of “top ten ways to go green,” and helping communities, landed, work or affinity based, to realize that social technologies—the ability to make decisions that include every member’s buy-in, skills at arriving beyond conflict by listening and understanding the other, not just delivering one’s own point—are as important to a community’s success as having the greenest building idea or innovative Permaculture garden design.

An upcoming book C.T. and I are working on develops this idea. Often people tell us that they tried consensus or saw it in action somewhere and they decided that it was too slow or didn’t really work. We agree that consensus done poorly looks just like that, and it isn’t satisfying or effective. We observe that people try to apply the basic concepts of consensus but have problems if they are neglectful or unaware of what we are coming to call the body and the soul of consensus.

When I was in film school, instructors would admonish us to learn the rules first, then feel free to break them. In the same way, consensus has a specific structure, or “body,” that should be learned, not because rules are rules, but because getting them deeply will inform your choices when you go to improvise. We see well-meaning activists who are quick to shed the saddle but then don’t know how to ride the horse.

Also, horizontal structures such as consensus are true paradigm shifts, not just changing Robert’s Rules of Order for Butler’s. Over time practitioners shed old habits, assumptions and attachments  and form new curiosities, learning to trust the group. But in the meantime, consensus decision-making with members who are still trying to debate or practice old styles of leadership can be hard. We think of the paradigm shift individuals and groups go through as the “soul” of consensus.

So, as you might imagine, it is hugely important to the Dakar Indy Media Convergence that the architects of  the “body” be there to help community members discover the “soul” of their community’s process.

What can you or your organization contribute? We are asking for donations totaling $11,000 to fund our travel and facilitation efforts, as well as providing students with books. We plan to blog daily from the Convergence and the WSF, as connectivity allows.

If you should wish your contribution to be tax deductible, we can work through Indymedia’s finance committee, a non-profit.

Please contact Wren Tuatha, curiocoast@comcast.net, 410-458-2310 or C.T. Butler, ctbutler@together.net, 301-586-2560 for details.

Thank you so much for partnering with us in this work that can help all groups deepen the difference they’re trying to make in the world.

Wren, Heathcote Community, November 11, 2010

After weeks of working long hours at the fairs, I got to reconnect with my tribe in a sweet way at last night’s hot tub party!

Our wood fired cob hot tub, with two beaver profiles sculpted at the firing end, was made as part of a workshop. Gotta love education at Heathcote! I have other  workshop ideas, like How to Give Wren a Much-Deserved Massage, and Preparing and Serving All of Wren’s Favorite Comfort Foods for Maximum Consumption Before She Passes Out in Bliss… I strongly feel that education should be kept relevant.

Heathcote Community members have been engaged all weekend in a retreat lead by students in Laird Schaub and Ma’ikwe Ludwig’s two year facilitation course. We are tackling the question of how to support our education programs while also maintaining Heathcote as a relaxing, safe home for our residential members.

Our regular hot tub parties are a shiny way to pamper ourselves and deepen our shared quality of life. Last night, Paul tended the fire for several hours until the water temperature was just right. We arrived in waves and soaked five at a time, making jokes about the lobster not knowing it’s boiling alive. The kids were in and out, one teenage host served brownies, judging herself harshly on the results of her baking. Nick arrived with his guitar and the chords of The White Album started wafting up with the campfire smoke.

In the deep darkness, while the moon was still tangled in the trees, I could only see my tribe members in silhouette. I noticed that I wanted to take some photographs but I knew my cameraphone wouldn’t have done those silhouettes justice. While I was aside cooling off, I couldn’t quite hear what people were discussing. They could have been any community, at any time in history. A fire, a soak, some music, the woods, we were every tribe while we were being ourselves.

We chatted. We sweated. We hydrated. We rotated in and out of the hot tub and left in waves, as we had come.

And now, the next morning, it is time for me to return to the retreat meetings, the head space and this specific moment.

I woke up in the Heathcote Mill Conference Center, lying on a couch in a ring of couches, a beach sized towel over me. Sunshine and cool, post-rain air came in windows on three sides.

I was staring at the blackboard, with the previous night’s business meeting agenda on it, and a easel with a large pad on it, opened to a list of visitor weekend work day projects and the names of volunteer supervisors. I had been the facilitator last night and I briefly felt echoes of the dramas, connections and over-extendedness that strangers might or might not guess, looking at the chalk and marker words.

I moved my sleepy attention to the ceiling, pondering the plaster sun face sculpture there, with the hematite third eye. When Patty and the other volunteers had painted the Conference Center recently (oh, how it had needed it) they lovingly painted around the sculpture, great job.

I heard Charles and Patty talking downstairs in the Mill kitchen. I heard the intern Kat singing there. Someone came into the room and sat at the table behind my couch, eating an apple, booting up a computer. It was Kwame, an intern from Ghana.

Patty came to check on me, just as I was sitting up and drinking more mint tea. No, no stomach pain at all! I feel wiped out, but much better! She smiled widely and clasped her hands together. “I’ve been there, I know how that feels, that was a real emergency!” She let me know she’d be in the Farmhouse if I needed anything.

At Heathcote we’ve had several casual discussions about how each of us likes to be dealt with when we’re ill. It ranges from baby me to don’t even knock on my door. I’m nearer the baby me end of the spectrum, because I’m likely to shut down, fail to hydrate and pick crazy solutions, like that infamous epecac syrup caper years ago. And I find it comforting to know someone is there when I don’t feel well.

I had had a bad reaction to a cocktail of six medications, vitamins, mostly. When I get sick, I get stupid. The logic center of my brain (not a frequently visited location anyway, some would say) shuts down.

I had taken my cocktail with breakfast and prescription prilosec, given to head off stomach upset, and I continued with my day. I was weak but I arrived at the Carriage House and plodded through filling ten freezer bags with the dry ingredients of the vegetarian dog food we make. Before I loaded up on peanut butter and TVP, I needed to sit down.

I joined Betsy in the sitting area of the Mill kitchen and we chatted. I complained that I was starting to feel stomach upset and we commiserated about the limitations and Frankenstein mentality of mainstream Western healthcare. Bob came in for coffee. I asked him to put enough water in the teapot for me to get some mint tea for my stomach. Betsy suggested ginger, but I’d warded off the upset with mint the previous night, so I stuck with that.

But two sips into my tea, it was time to lie down. The gluten-free crackers I’d tried while scooping dog food hadn’t worked and the tea was coming too late. I was crashing.

I was having sweats and shakes, and severe stomach cramps. Betsy brought the cool rag I asked for and I tried to relax enough to sit up again and get more tea.

Nick happened through, making a phone call. He asked if I needed anything. I was beyond being able to relax. I had him call the doctor. The physician’s assistant on the phone said that I could come into the clinic and just live through it, because there isn’t much they could do for me, or I could just live through it at home. She didn’t think I needed to go to the emergency room.

Considering that Western medicine had gotten me where I was, I was ready to cut that cord and let my body work it out at home.

Do you want reiki? Patty asked from the quiet room. My yes overlapped her question and then her hands were above my abdomen. By this time, I was tensed with pain and my breathing was stressed, making my tensing worse. Kat was willing to breathe with me and hold my hand.

As I breathed in healing and groaned out pain and stress, my body got clear that we wanted to expel something, one way or another. So Patty and Kat helped me upstairs to the bathroom. By the time I got there, I was too tired to sit on the toilet, so I lied down on the cool concrete floor. It was summer at Heathcote, so the tie-dyed sundress was all that I was wearing. I didn’t care that it bunched up around my waist as I rocked on the floor. I was among women in a bathroom. I just worked on relaxing.

Then the healing purge came. I made it to the toilet and Patty held my locks back while I vomited. She had the cool rag on hand and I appreciated being able to wipe my face as soon as I was done.

All along the way, my community mates let me ask for what I needed and be in charge of my healing. I agreed with the suggestion that I lie on the couch and once I was there, my extremities were cool and tingly. They found an over-sized towel that was just enough, and brought me my tea from downstairs. Patty joked about our “checkin.” She and I were supposed to meet to process a delicate matter over lunch. Oh yeah, our big, dramatic checkin. I guess we had a different one, I answered. I drifted off to sleep for an hour or so, waking to the late afternoon sounds of Heathcote at work.

And the sunshiny room, and the chalkboard agenda, the circle of couches, and a cup of cold mint tea, sitting safely in the middle of a wooden folding chair, waiting for me. I woke up feeling weak but pain free, and loving my community that was willing to be a vehicle of my healing, and willing to let me drive.

No Intentional Community can be a substitute for trained healthcare practitioners, nor can an Intentional Community take on all illnesses. I regularly meet people who hope living in Community will magically heal their mental illness or provide them with the caregiving they need for some chronic condition or disability. Honestly, it’s case by case, and the seeker should be transparent and up front about what s/he is asking a Community to take on. The answer may be yes, and it may be no.

But being in Community, and falling ill, as we all do sometimes, I feel so blessed and held, not pampered or nursed in a passive way, but honored as the driver of my own body. My mates provided a safe container for me to operate.

As I sit today, weak but researching alternative solutions to my lingering health issue, I reflect that the support and empowerment I got are more reasons that Intentional Community is more sustainable than the isolated, Western lifestyle that surrounds me. If I lived there, I wouldn’t know my neighbors and I wouldn’t have been in common space when I got ill. I would have had to live through it, as the physician’s assistant said, alone.

—WT

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Something was missing. I felt a restlessness in The Force. I had heaps of work to do but no zen to go with it. So when I saw Lea Jones‘ post on Facebook advertising his performance at One World Coffee House in Columbia, it clicked: Life in a rural Intentional Community can be ironically isolating. I needed a musical distraction!

Lea Jones’ band, Swing States Road Show, had appeared at Heathcote Community as part of our house concert series. So I knew I was in for some great covers, originals and spot-on harmonies. It was fun to catch up with Lea, who has added  drummer Steve Raskin and horn player Seth Kibel to his band. Singers Judith Geller and Stuart Rodes and bassist John Seay, of Jones’ now defunct Swings States Road Show were aboard as well. The full sound was great, especially Seth Kibel’s passionate clarinet solos! “It’s great when the audience jumps in and claps for the solos, without a lot of prodding from the bandleader,” Lea quipped.

It was great to get out and discover this intimate venue, One World Coffee House, which is put on by the Unitarian-Universalist Congregation of Columbia, Maryland, and held at the Owen Brown Interfaith Center.

One of many highlights was the tight vocal harmonies on Holly Near’s Mountain Song. It took me back to my Kentucky roots, not fighting coal, but fighting for LGBT rights on Louisville’s Fairness Campaign. Our nationally known local band Yer Girlfriend also did a haunting, rousing version of Mountain Song, now seared into my own story.

Lea has a new CD, Contact Information, which is actually a remastered double album of his previous releases, Against the Wall and Feels Like Love to Me, the two being “an unintendedly orbital musical reflection on love, co-dependency, pop culture spirit and community.” Cheers for the cardboard cover, in addition to the tunes, which range from troubadour with guitar to polished studio tunes, catchy and ripe for radio.

At the intermission, Lea’s fourteen year-old son Will came around selling CD’s. Lea rightly refers to Will as his “business manager,” as he strategically priced his wares. Artist and business manager had a quick eye conversation over what I should pay.  My companion C.T. Butler and I had to laugh, because I play that role at C.T’s  consensus workshops, selling his books at full price. C.T. himself has a habit of slashing prices without being asked.

After a night of thoughtful, rocking musicality, C.T. and I managed to find a restaurant still open, Hunan Manor. The vegetarian options were many. I picked the sweet, C.T. got the savory and they were both excellent and twice as much as we could eat. We enjoyed them at lunch the next day as we whittled away at our business plan for Hippie Chick Diaries. Now it’s C.T.’s turn to be my business manager! Why is it so much easier to play that role for another than ourselves?

After a day of discussions, we joined the Heathcoters for community dinner. Then several community mates climbed the steep hill to my homestead, Hina Hanta, for more music, a sing along! We were hoping to have Heathcoters Paul Phillips and Nick Corso to bless us with guitar and banjo respectively. But life and motorcycle repairs got in the way. All good. Heathcoter Charles Curtiss, formerly a professional rock drummer, played guitar for us as we called out song after song from the Rise Up Singing Songbook, including some C.T. and I had heard Lea do the night before—Mountain Song (Holly Near), When I’m Gone (Phil Ochs), The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore (Than Hall via Jean Ritchie).  Some paged through, discovering a memory or two on the next page, others had a song or artist in mind and dove through the indexes. We crooned to

• The Beatles—Blackbird, In My Life, Let It Be, Octopus’ Garden, Yesterday;
• Jacques Brel—If We Only Have Love;
• John Denver—Annie’s Song, Back Home Again, Rocky Mountain High
• Carole King—Up on the Roof
• Anna McGarrigle—Heart Like a Wheel
• Joni Mitchell—Big Yellow Taxi, Circle Game
• Malvina Reynolds—Little Boxes
• Smokey Robinson—My Girl
• Simon & Garfunkel—The Boxer, Homeward Bound, Sounds of Silence

…and all the ones I can’t remember! What a night. But we weren’t done. John Fox had a very personal musical gift for me.

I love Carole King and James Taylor, both. I have all their albums. Yes, I said albums. I know every word, every solo. Carole, in particular, is just my goddess. I can’t say more.

But with my commitment to simplicity, also known as subsistence, I have never seen my goddess in concert. Ironic for the emcee of Heathcote’s house concert series. But it’s true. As a matter of fact, the only major name concert I’ve  been to since adolescence was the Indigo Girls, and I found myself there because the woman I was dating won tickets on the radio.

Any time Carole would tour, I would say to myself, maybe. But when Carole and James announced their Troubadour Reunion Tour, with Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel from their original band I said, this time! I watched email updates and built a coalition of Heathcoters ready to go with me. The tour’s NYC dates overlapped with my ZEGG Forum training at Ganas Community in Staten Island! It was fate. Almost.

The email came offering advance tickets. I experienced some momentary disorientation. $175, is that for four tickets? No. Oh. Something must be done about this rampant inflation, really. This is what concert tickets cost?

I was the first of  the coalition to bail, then others. “I’ve got YouTube,” I’d explain. A few weeks later, while I still had my boo-boo lip taped down in a stoic position, John came to me and asked how I would feel if he went to the show on one of the DC dates. What could I say? Enjoy!

Since then, I’ve indulged in a little musical guilty pleasure, because the price was right and it came in closer-to-eco-friendly cardboard packaging. Between my community and Liberty Village Cohousing where C.T. is staying, there is a 7Eleven. And because I sometimes enter 7Elevens to check out the chips and chocolates I’m not eating, just to monitor the threat, I know that this particular 7Eleven has a rack of Beatles CD’s, all discount priced and in cardboard covers. I want to support cardboard covers whenever I can. And The Beatles never made the wormhole trip from my record collection to my CD collection. Now, after six months of visiting C.T., I have Abbey Road, Let It Be, Revolver, Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. I am so bad.

I often forgo things I don’t need. I like the expression, the best things in life aren’t things. But this left me uneasy. A concert is a community experience, not a trinket or dust collector. Between songs on Saturday night, Lea Jones remarked “You gotta get outta the house sometimes. That’s when things happen. You never get outta the house, nothing ever happens…” I was stunned to hear his simple thought. That’s what had gotten me out of the house and to a front row table that night. I should give myself the gift of more experiences like that.

So at my sing along, my buddy John pulled a thing out of his pocket, the Troubador Reunion CD, in a cardboard cover, no less! “Pop ‘er in!” He invited. And at the hour when most Heathcote sing alongs would be winding down, John, C.T. and I sang to the concert DVD!

• Blossom
• So Far Away
• Machine Gun Kelly
• Carolina in My Mind
• It’s Too Late
• Smackwater Jack
• Something in the Way She Moves
• Will You Love Me Tomorrow
• Country Road
• Fire & Rain
• Sweet Baby James
• I Feel the Earth Move
• You’ve Got A Friend
• Up on the Roof
• You Can Close Your Eyes

C.T. was starting to turn into a pumpkin but then he was energized by Fire & Rain. I told the story of learning to waltz to Sweet Baby James so we waltzed and sang.

There were a few surprises that could only come from this double bill. I loved the band bouncing between Carole and James’ very different arrangements of Up on the Roof. It was like a medley with just one song. When I saw that You Can Close Your Eyes was the encore, I scoffed. I protested that they should rock out to Locomotion or something similar. But when Carole stood close to James and harmonized so intimately, it was the perfect close. I should know better that to second guess my goddess!

—WT

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I wasn’t born on a picket line, but I grew up there. My mom trucked me off to protests against Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant and in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Well, at forty-four, I’m living downwind from Three Mile Island and I never got the ERA. But the all-night bus rides, the songs, chants, buttons and solidarity I experienced as a child in the crowd are gifts that no corporation can negate. I learned about collective power, which I’m still practicing today as a fifteen-year member of Heathcote, my Intentional Community. But I also learned about my  personal power—not my power to always make governments and corporations listen and act responsibly, but my power to co-create culture with every little decision I make.

I co-create when I choose my toothpaste based on where it was made, under what working and environmental conditions, and with what ingredients. And I co-created nearly twenty years ago when I stood in the office of Louisville Alderman Steve Magre and experienced him looking me in the eye, telling me, despite documented hate crimes, that there were no homosexuals in his district. I told him the obvious, that I was a homosexual in his district. I let my goat poop on the City Hall steps and I didn’t clean it up. Compost happens. It was not my place to negate her co-creation.

So for a month and a half now, we’ve been going about our lives, agreeing to perpetuate the status quo, going to the store, working our jobs or looking for them, going out to dinner. Co-creating that life can stay familiar and comfortable, that this week’s soccer game or new set of tires or office conflict matters. We keep our schedules. And a couple of times a day we check in on the oil spill.

Clearly we have been benefiting from technology without truly requiring that we be able to keep ourselves and the planet safe. The marketplace consumes every new product offering without asking if it was made by children or slaves or whether it will make us sick or our planet uninhabitable. We just say, “Ooh, shiny!” and plug it in.

What now? This feels like an environmental 9/11 moment. After the planes fell, we mused at how things could never be the same. We wondered what would come next, not appreciating that what comes next comes from us, the co-creators of culture. So our collective rubber band slowly sagged back into our individual-focused lives.

I as a co-creator never got around to insisting that my government stop making enemies around the world in my name, while benefiting corporations. Let that one slip away, I did.

There’s an inherent tension between our (Western?) individualism and basing our choices on the common good, choosing to actually only take our fair share of the pie. If we really do that, what do our houses, neighborhoods, cities and families look like? Intentional Communities have been kneading this dough for decades.

Now, with the Gulf of Mexico on its way to being a dead zone, I’m standing still with the question, what comes next? What culture do I participate in today and tomorrow? Do I get in my car?

Of course, my personal responsibility for the disaster as a car owner doesn’t lessen my ire at BP executives and management. I want them to all go to prison, and not the civil one with tennis courts. I want them in poor people’s prison! Or better yet, I have a fantasy of helicoptering them over the middle of the oil slick and dropping them into it. If they make it to shore, I’ll wipe them off, if I’m not on break.

Yeah, that feels good. So will going to BP corporate offices in Washington, DC and chanting my head off! Several people on Facebook and on my path have questioned the usefulness of protests. The oil’s already in the water, lobbying to ban offshore drilling is more useful. Nice head talk.

Protesting has a logical, “head” component. Organizers are using strategy. But for the people in the crowd, the protest is a heart or gut expression. Let’s make room for those expressions, too, or they will find their own, less helpful medium.

My friend C.T. Butler, co-author of On Conflict and Consensus and Food Not Bombs and solo author of Consensus for Cities, is writing his memoir of the early days of Food Not Bombs, the decentralized international organization he co-founded with five other activists he met thirty years ago, while protesting at Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant.

I asked him what he thinks the point of a protest is. “Lots of things, networking, people get education around an issue. Participants experience the event and meet like-minded people. For the organizers, they get their message out, fund-raise, create mailing lists…”

“Does it change things?” I ask.

“No,” He states groundedly.

“What does?”

“Money.”

So if you need to let your gut do the talking for a while, join me by attending the protest in your area. While you’re there, get on a mailing list. Don’t whine to me about being on lists. This is important. Donate to organizations for those great lobbying efforts. I know the economy’s bad and money’s tight. I’ll bet you a month’s pay that BP is sparing no expense on their lobbyists right now, even as the spill drains their coffers.

And in those frequent restless moments, ask yourself and your friends, “What now?”

—WT

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Goose

Don’t send a soccer mom to do a drummer’s job.
Ritual demands more.
Vibe to the score, don’t police it.
Tune to the slipstream, don’t minivan it.

I am my mother’s allegory/alimony/mystery.

The mysteries choose wisely.
When I pulled the sword from the stone,
I left with the stone.

And my mother, ripe/right to spare me
the life of the poet queen,
had words in rows for the stone’s return.

Duck, duck, duck, duck…

Drumbeats fall like medicine;
Medicine falls in phrases.

Don’t let your mother book your gigs.
Don’t let your mayor paint your Madonna.
And, God, whatever you do,
don’t let the accountant write the play–
“Lesbian Mudwrestling Playboy Bunnies on the
Harleys of Hawaiian Midgets” does
not need to be done to death to be old hat…

I am my mother’s protest march.
No bullshit goes unmagnified.
No magnifying glass can lie.

And the press is not left enough, thank you.

Duck, duck, duck, duck…

Live your life like Jesus
but don’t send his groupies to Congress.
Their Bulging Bibles have whole chapters
missing from mine…

…Are we on the canary draft now, or the gray?

I am my mother’s politician.

One womb, one vote. And the
Mysteries choose wisely. And the
drumbeats fall like food stamps
in the wind. And the medicine falls like
empty stomachs that can’t vote.

Goose, goose, goose, goose.

—WT

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What an amazing year Heathcote Community’s Open Classroom had, thanks to our curious, energetic learners and my apprentice, Gloria (above, left) and Heathcote intern Kwame (above, right), both of whom practiced putting down their expectations of the kids’ academic acheivment and finding their curiosities about our students’ emotional, social and environmental lives.

Gloria, a Heathcote Community member and resident of our strawbale house Polaris, right, is a science and math teacher who came bearing microscopes, minerals, birds’ nests and books, books, books! Now under her leadership we’re looking at expanding Open Classroom to five days a week, with many more students and interns, and an Arts and Sciences focus. Go NatureGlo!

Kwame, a gardening and community life intern at Heathcote, is from Ghana. He spent many of his winter hours with us while there was less  gardening to do. And of course, the kids took to him and climbed him like a tree, as they do all our twenty-something interns. He shared his family photo album and the kids mentored him in how to play in the snow during Snowmaggedon. The sight of Kwame gleefully diving into a snow bank as if it were a swimming pool will stay with me for a while!

The learners lead their facilitators into explorations of mazes, Monopoly, origami, paper airplanes, sharks, dolphins, horses, wolves, chipmunks, dragons, pandas, beavers, wombats, Singing in the Rain, STOMP, frogs, tadpoles, snakes, cooking, the food pyramid, bikes with no training wheels, ladyslipper, swinging, Frederick the Mouse and torn paper art, collage, playing store, card games, book making, chess, cheetahs, Cheetah Girl, Shark Boy, Shark Girl, Lava Girl, Lava Boy, Spiderman, Peter Parker, gymnastics, circus, juggling, unicycling, tai quan do, and so much more that is, well, life!

Open Classroom will provide children’s activities and information about the program and internship opportunities at Spoutwood Farm’s Mother Earth Harvest Fair, Sunday, October 3, 2010. Join us!

My nemesis/totem, the black rat snake, has arrived back at Heathcote on schedule this spring. This has me tenting again this year, since our project of jacking up my house created some gaps where snakes might again access my living space. Time to recall the famous story, reposted below. Click on photos for details. —WT

Spring, 2006

Sometimes the bogeyman is a flashback of some rapist or the echo of that ever negative parent. It could be that childhood biting dog or one’s inner voice. Or it could be a succession of 5-foot black rat snakes coming in through windows and walls. Okay, on a day in early May of last year, it was black rat snakes.

My dogs were already barking. This was an experience they’d clearly had before. A huge snake was outside on the window ledge, tracing a familiar path to a missing window pane covered loosely by plastic. The plastic was stapled in a couple of places, there to keep the rain out.

This would be a good time to mention that I have an understandable, justifiable childhood trauma around snakes. Okay, they’re sacred and symbolize earthiness and fertility and feminine power because we’re all past that myth in Genesis. But this means nothing to the six-year-old me that went crawdad huntin’ in Jack’s Creek on our farm in Kentucky.

You may be thinking I mean crayfish hunting, but since I’ll have no dignity by the end of this story, I might as well confess now that my sister and I were crawdad huntin’.

Granny had driven us in her Olds 98 and outfitted us with her brand new kitchen bucket. Beth and I walked the creek, turning over rocks, jumping back when the bigger crawdads would torpedo out. We rounded a couple of bends, well out of sight of Granny, engrossed.

This would be a good time to mention the Paul Bunyanesque stories my grandfather would tell about cottonmouth water moccasins. Pap claimed that they ate his dairy cows. And with each telling of how he’d gone out into the field and ended the behemoth with a shotgun, the snake got bigger and bigger. On our farm, snake stories were as fishing stories in this fashion.

So when the cartoonlike meeting of engrossed girls and startled cottonmouth took place, there was only one way it could play out–epically. The snake reared up and met us face to face to face. It opened to showcase the cottony room of its mouth. We screamed in chorus with its scream and waved our hands in the air, sending the new kitchen bucket flying. We ran atop the surface of the water all the way back to Granny and the Olds 98, so as not to leave any footprints in the muddy creekbed for the snake to follow.

We told Granny about the snake and the face to face to face and the cottony room from the safety of the car. Now I loved my grandmother and she told me on many occasions that she loved me, too. But this was not her shining moment. I swear to you that her only response was, “You girls go back and get my bucket!!!”

I note for the record that she herself did not retrieve it, either.

So as the black rat snake poked at the plastic, I was amused to find myself considering covering the pane with my own kitchen bucket. Instead I grabbed the staple gun and began stitching a solid seem all the way around, just barely ahead of the snake’s nose. I won that race and darted outside only to watch the snake retreat into an opening under my house where my tub’s drainpipe protrudes. The snake got in anyway.

I had lived in Hina Hanta, left, the Heathcote shack formerly known as the Hillhouse, for four years. And about two or three times a year I would come upon a small black snake inside. Now, I hate snakes for
understandable, justifiable reasons and I would evacuate with the dogs, wait a few hours and return with another Heathcoter to conduct an “all
clear.” This worked for me, barely, because I knew the snakes were catching mice and their bigger cousins. And for that reason I was glad of each one I encountered outdoors. But the snake in my window had no fear. This was new and unsettling.

I was unnerved enough to leave the light on when I went to bed. I don’t know why I thought that would make a difference but I found it a comfort. One of my phobias around snakes and my life deep in the woods is that they’ll end up in bed with me. Fertility be damned, I ain’t having that!

But two nights later the choice was not mine. I jolted up to the crazed barks of Echo, my brave protector of the two shelties. She was ranting and racing from the bed to the stairway of my loft room. The sight was simply a shocker: undulating across my floor, blocking my exit, were two five-foot long black snakes, mating, and I mean passionately. They showed no signs of being phased by our waking.

Evacuation being my policy I stood on my bed, holding both shelties by the collar with one hand and pulling clothes off a chair and onto myself with the other, all the while watching the snakes go on and on and on. I would have been struck awed and mystified by the beauty of their fluid movements if I were another person, without my understandable, justifiable fear of snakes. Instead I was all about escape.

But when they finally untied themselves, the snakes were still flush with whatever hormones were giving them boldness and drive. One started to the right, finding the wall and turning toward my dresser, my bed and me. The other went left to the wall and started in my direction, using the dogs’ indoor agility tunnel to make its way toward the bed. I yanked the tunnel away and that snake was discouraged enough to retreat to the stairs where it disappeared into a hole in the wall. When I looked for the right hand snake, it had lifted its head to the top of the dresser. We split. We booked. We ran on the top of the water so as not to leave any footprints in the muddy creekbed for the snakes to follow.

The next day, I brought Bob, a Heathcoter, up to the house, not for an all-clear, but to consult on plugging my many holes. As he stood in my bedroom hearing the story a black snake emerged from a seam where wall meets floor. It sat coiled, as if it were part of our discussion. These snakes without fear, this was so strange and new.

Bob became my champion at community meetings–”Wren shouldn’t have to live like this. She’s got snakes having sex on her floor!!! We’ve got to do something!!!” That was all well and good, but now huge snakes were slinking about at every turn I made. Kitchen, bathroom, upstairs and down, I came to estimate that I had between 8 and 10 five-foot long black rat snakes in my home and I was not in charge.

My friend Charles is fond of saying that the wheels of community grind slowly. The Heathcoters were not going to disappear this infestation in a day or even a week. In the meantime I needed a place to sleep, alone with my dogs, alone, without snakes, alone.

Now, I had observed that black snakes don’t tend to chew holes or dig them. They avail themselves of ones created by the critters they’re hunting. This logic is what inspired me to set up my seven by seven Coleman tent in place of my bed. I believed that if I kept crumbs and such out that mice and their larger cousins would leave the fabric intact, thus creating all the barrier I needed to get a good night’s sleep. For the record, this is not a belief I need clarified in any way. it works for me. If you are of the impression or experience that a black rat snake might in fact chew through tent fabric, there is nothing to be gained by sharing. Do not email me.

The tent became my bedroom within a bedroom. I set up a power strip inside and plugged in my alarm clock and lamp. I inflated my aero bed and each night I called the dogs inside and zipped us within our hiding place.

Enter Mr. Hacker, the snake wrangler.

Although I admit to hating snakes as bogeymen I am an animal rights activist. In lucid moments I know that they’re just returning to their hatching site to breed, being good snake citizens. Even so, I can confess to having a few fantasies involving Pap’s shotgun because I know that I ultimately stuck to my beliefs, even when they were inconvenient. Mr. Hacker of White Hall was probably the tenth humane pest control person I called. The others had said that snakes couldn’t be trapped and that repellents didn’t work. Mr. Hacker had invented a successful trap from pvc pipe and a used eel trap. Bring it on.

He installed the trap and decided to wait a while since I was so dripping with the things. For over and hour I listened to Mr. Hacker tell me stories of catching snakes. He would take the captured ones many miles away. “Sometimes I just slow down and pour ‘em out the window…” I didn’t need such details. He rambled on about family, the cousin who actually hacked up his wife’s lover in some bar, and wasn’t the family name ironic, I really didn’t need such details. Eventually a snake appeared on my stairs and he picked it up with his hands. “Wow, that’s a big one!” That’ll be thirty dollars. Here was hoping he slowed down enough for that one.

As Hacker’s trap caught one after another and sometimes two at a time, I got busy trimming every room and covering every possible entry, on the shack’s interior and exterior and winning my own eel traps on eBay. After a time the snakes stuck to the outdoors and the porch and became shy again.

Homeschooling students attending the World Religions class on my porch helped me name the snakes and when we were not evacuating we were amused and amazed. And my students found my unusual bed amusing as well.

It is winter now. Whether in my walls, some woodpile or rocky outcropping, I know the snakes are asleep. I know my holes are plugged. These nights I just climb in, I don’t zip the door closed. But life is a spiral of seasons, not a straight, evolutionary trajectory. I have grown through this but I, like the snakes, know that spring happens. I might have call to zip up yet.

–Wren Tuatha

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From Wren: For my local friends, note that this is in Lancaster, UK, not Lancaster, PA…Congrats across the pond! The Mid Atlantic Cohousing Conference, Growing Smart Communities, is coming up March 20, 2010, in College Park, Maryland, USA.

PRESS RELEASE

Sustainable Living Projects Celebrate
£500,000 Grant for Halton Gorge Site

For Immediate Use

5/2/2010

Lancaster Cohousing, in partnership with LESS and Halton Community Association, has won a £500,000 grant to refurbish a derelict factory, install new solar panels, and develop a develop a community owned hydro-electric scheme at Halton Gorge near Lancaster, for the benefit of local people and local businesses.

The grant, which will be shared equally between the three groups, comes from the government’s Low Carbon Community Challenge (LCCC), a programme which aims to see ambitious cuts in carbon emissions at community level.

The Halton project is one of just 22 projects across the country to win one of these grants.

Lancaster Cohousing is a group of households who have been working and meeting together for the last four years. They plan to build around 30 cutting edge zero-carbon homes on the edge of Halton village. At the centre will be a common house with shared facilities such as eating and living spaces, childcare space, guest bedrooms and laundry facilities.

The site also includes a derelict engineering factory housed in an old Victorian mill, which will be refurbished to provide managed office space, workshop areas and studios for local businesses and arts and craftspeople. The grant provides for Lancaster Cohousing to fully insulate the factory and to install a biomass boiler, fired on wood products. Halton Community Association will install the Forge Weir Hydro, which will harness hydroelectric power from the River Lune while Lancaster’s environmental organisation, LESS (Local & Effective Sustainable Solutions) will provide solar roofs for The Mill, Boathouse and Out of the Woods buildings. The electricity provided from the Forge Weir Hydro and the solar roof panels will be sold locally, to the cohousing residents and others – and profits will go to develop new environmental projects in the village.

While many of the houses have already been snapped up the project is keen to hear from individuals, families or couples who are interested in taking up one of the 8 – 10 remaining houses, and from businesses who are interested in using the Mill facilities.

Jon Sear, Lancaster Cohousing project manager, said:
“It’s fantastic that DECC have recognised that we are planning something really special. But our project won’t just be a national example of low carbon living it will deal with the dereliction of the former North West Engineering factory so that the whole of Halton Gorge is a more pleasant place to visit. The local economy and environment will benefit because we will source food locally, not add to traffic congestion, and can approach the design of the site in a different way to a profit-driven developer. The business space should appeal especially to businesses who would benefit from being part of a vibrant working community, adjacent to a nationally recognised eco development.”
The project hopes to start work on the mill refurbishment this summer and be open for business by mid 2011. The houses should be ready in early 2012. Lancaster Cohousing hopes that this project will inspire others to seek sustainable solutions to working and living.
Halton resident Emily Jefferson said: “I think it’s wonderful that the village can use the power of the river that is so much part of this village and that it will help the community. Like many things that are right in front of you, it’s often the obvious that you miss – someone pointed out that perhaps we can use that power – and here we are able to bring it into fruition.”
Lancaster Cohousing runs regular site tours (please book in advance).

People are also welcome to the planning application preview meeting on Wednesday 17 February from 6.30pm at Halton Youth and Community Centre.

Regular Site Tours:
- 4.15pm on the last Thursday of the month (an opportunity to look at the proposed workshops/office/studio space in the mill.)
- 1pm on the fourth Sunday of the month (tour of the whole Cohousing project site, including the location of the proposed hydropower unit and solar panels).

Meet the Members – Open Brunch at the Whale Tail, Penny Street, Lancaster from 11am on the fourth Sunday of the month.

Website www.lancastercohousing.org.uk

Contacts:
Lucy and Huw 01524 65808
Kathy, Paul and Pete 01524 842924
Luke and Elizabeth (for families) 01524 599165
Managed Workspace, Paul 01524 842924 , Fiona 07778 737681
Or email info@lancastercohousing.org.uk

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I recently visited Liberty Village Cohousing Community near Frederick, Maryland. About an hour from my own Heathcote Community, Liberty Village had been on my list of places I’d like to visit for some time. I was invited by my friend C.T. Butler, author of On Conflict and Consensus, A Handbook on Formal Consensus Decisionmaking. C.T. was presenting a workshop and I was excited to get to see him in action.

After the workshop, I stayed for a community dinner. C.T. and I discussed similarities and differences between Cohousing and Intentional Community. That could and should be a post in itself, as well as a report on C.T.’s workshop, and meeting his friend and colleague, John Buck, author of We the People, Consenting to a Deeper Democracy, A Guide to Sociocratic Principles and Methods. C.T. and John Buck are teaming up to present a comparison of formal consensus and sociocracy in a two hour workshop at the Mid Atlantic Cohousing Conference, March 20, 2010.

I could write for the next year on the discussions we’ve had! But right now, let me enthusiastically invite you to this year’s Cohousing Conference. Besides C.T. Butler and John Buck, my facilitation trainer Laird Schaub will be presenting, as well as Heathcote’s Permaculture educators Karen Stupski and Patty Ceglia. Maybe I’ll see you there!

–WT

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