Occupy consensus making, and why I cannot stand it

[docorion]

hrafn wrote a very thoughtful post about the Occupy movement, their consensus decision making process, and how she has been handling her contribution.  and as I read it, I thought about the consensus based decision processes I've either witnessed, or been part of first hand, and all I can say is: go you, but O HALE no, not for me.

I've seen a lot of what

Comments

[bitty]

Oh so so so totally. I've never seen consensus do anything other than grind decisionmaking to a halt. Or holding hostage to one person's whim, over and over, because someone wanted to be a de facto president and the only way to do that was to threaten to block consensus on all ideas not her own.

I had a roommate (who supports consensus as a process) who said that if you block consensus more than once in your life, ur doin it rong.

I became a fan (in smaller groups that OWS) of consensus minus one, or consensus minus two - you can still have some of the process and negotiating to try and find the path that works best, but it's not held hostage. For instance, there was a vote and I abstained. Because I was the only person in the group who disagreed, but I didn't feel I had the right to basically veto something everyone else approved of. So I chose to abstain. And it really really bothered people - they kept saying "why don't you just change your vote?" But I couldn't - that would be saying "I agree" when I don't. I agree it's the appropriate decision, but I didn't personally agree with it. Abstention was, to me, the obvious course. (BTW, I turned out to be right - it was a bad decision - but that's beside the point.)

OWS and all this hippie consensus anarchy crap harkens back to the gist of my politics posts last week - people suck, and can't be counted on to do the right thing. SOME people can. There are genuinely good people out there who think of others than themselves. But there are just as many - if not more - who are selfish, greedy, evil, and/or stupid.

Also, I hate Process. Loathe it. It's why I'm conveniently "sick" for so many staff meetings.

[hrafn]

"Consensus" at the General Assemblies is more like a 75% consensus, and no blocks, or (at the Wall St group), 90% with no blocks. Er. I think. It's something like that (they explain it when the time comes). And people aren't agreeing that they think the proposal is 100% perfect, they are agreeing that they can live with the proposal.

(I don't think your workplace should be held up as an example of anything, except how to do things wrong.)

[bitty]

My workplace makes no pretense at running by anything other than hierarchy. Well, okay, one or two people like to think it's a participatory democracy, but they know it's not really.

The consensus issues come from various orgs when I was in DC.