Twinkling

[bartelbyvqf at cs.com]

Rather than reply below I will post my opinions up top to save folks on the troublesome scrolling.
Consensus and twinkling and other trappings of white youth activist culture while they may not have initially emerged from that subculture. However they are now de facto essential to it almost exclusively. I think that de jure/de facto questions of gender/racial composition and the denial of a defacto leadership in this model of organization are the key problems of the iceberg of which twinkling is only the tip. the priciple of telling press/cops "we have no leaders" is entirely rhetorical or a matter of security. There are de facto leaders whose ascent to leadership as well as their capacity as leaders are obscured by this "process." In my experience the use of "consensus" process is more about faciliting young white folks ability to plug into the meeting as they are rolling through town over the summer or hopping from convergence to the next. Same activist ghetto, same process, Bay Area, Chicago, Vancouver, etc. Don't kid me that it facilitates the inclusion of single mother!
's, people of color or anyone without strawberry blond dreadlocks.
The other problem is the conflation of consensus process with political program or theory. We don't need a program, we don't need a theory if we run meetings like this our movement will naturally pursue the correct path.
This is the operating principle of the Ouija board.
OK done,
mcapri

P.S. See below in case you are confused as to what I am talking about.

Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:


>>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>>>  Aren't consensus, twinkling, etc. part of a subculture of white
>>>  American youths on the Left, rather than "an anarchist process"?  I
>>>  doubt that anarchists twinkled during the Spanish Civil War.
>>
>>Nope, this isn't the case, despite the best efforts of left vanguardists
>>to smear these practices with this charge.
>>
>>If anything, twinkling was introduced by older activists who have been
>>involved in the peace and anti-nuclear movements. Twinkling is usually
>>found wherever somebody is doing the spokescouncil technique of running
>>meetings. The story is that twinkling is based on American Sign Language
>>and was developed to get a sense of people's opinions without having to
>>deal with audible interruptions such as hand clapping.
>>
>>Consensus was certainly not something developed by white American
>>youths, as it is a process used by many cultures for thousands of years.
>>I first was sold on consensus, not in some activist meeting, but in a
>>graduate level class on the history of West Africa. Of course, being an
>>activist for many years, I've been through my share of meetings that use
>>consensus. I would say that the primary problem with consensus is that
>>it isn't implemented very well. When consensus works, it works very
>>well. When it goes bad, you'll often find some clique manipulating the
>>process.
>>
>>No, I don't think anarchists twinkled during the Spanish Revolution. I
>>heard they had some long meetings too.
>>
>><< Chuck0 >>
>
>The history of West Africa may have been big on "consensus" of some 
>kind.  Japanologists say the same about the history of Japan as well 
>-- ever heard of _nemawashi_?  I doubt, though, that such "consensus" 
>had much to do with democracy, opposition to "hierarchy," or anything 
>like that.
>
>As for twinkling, the main problem is that it makes you look dorky. 
>Perhaps dorkiness is supposed to counteract the tendency to emergence 
>of charismatic leadership.  :->
>-- 
>Yoshie
>
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