I saw that robert mentioned Jo Freeman's, The Tyranny of Structurelessness, at his blog. I didn't revisit that article, but I used to use it at the old blog as a way of talking about some of the problems with radical feminism. I'm not sure why robert thought it would be an appropriate read at OccupyLA, but after reading this field report from OccupyBoston, I don't see the problems Freeman talked about going on at all.
Freeman's concern was with the way radical egalitarianism was implemented among radical feminists in the mid- to late-60s. There was a hostility toward specialization and talent. If someone was a good speaker, they would be brought down so that no one let "power" get to their head and start dominating all tasks that required being good as speaking. The same with writing or having in-depth knowledge of the history of social movements.
In this field report and elsewhere, Graeber's commentary, Binh's, I don't get the sense that this is an issue. In fact, in the field report the author openly discusses the idea that participants have a complicated relationship to power - they can be afraid of power, but they can also be afraid of their own power (paraphrase). My reading of this is something very different from what I've encountered from old school radical feminists who were opposed to all kinds of power.
Reading Taryn, the author of this blog (not the author of the field report from Boston) she is also a proponent of Graeber's argument that movements need intellectuals - people to do the deep thinking, etc. So, that tells me that there isn't a concern with a power as it manifests itself in a profession, specialization, or occupation.
The author of the field report is also implementing practices that are clearly rooted in scholarly theories and research in organizational psychology. Here, she talks about how, in order to build consensus, there needs to be trust built among participants, that rules about not yelling and the like are rules designed to make people feel safe - and trusting. I'm sure 95% of the people here will roll their eyes, but that's unfortunate I think. There are a lot of people here who've written me offlist in these past 10 years who often confess that they lurk because they are terrified that they will be attacked, are fearful of the power games played out among us, the old timers who don't notice them, etc.
If that happens on an email list, it surely happens in meatspace. Any of us who've ever taught - and I surely also see it in corporate life - know that people are often terrified to speak in general, and even more terrified when overt displays of aggression manifest themselves.
Anyway, this discussion of the why behind the process is pretty helpful and I can see why Graeber says so much of it is derived from feminist thought and practice these past nearly 50 years.
She is also keenly aware of the complaints made here, because they are made within the organization itself, but argues that to do things the consensus way takes time because a lot of people have to unlearn the idea that democracy is voting.
Finally, this is a really concrete example of how resource mobilization works. They have various skills they've brought with them from other forms of organizing and they are deploying those skills.
Finally2, there is no insistence on the substitution of process for goals, an acceptance or insistence on having no goals at all, as Dean seemed to argue.
Dean's was a silly argument anyway. If you've ever been involved in any kind of consensus building organization you *know* that no one is ever enamored of process 24/7. Her fear, I think, is misplaced probably because she is more familiar with the kind of organizing that happens in academia where the model isn't consensus building....?
Clearly, the deploy this process toward achieving goals. The difference is that these folks are happy that it takes time. And, perhaps this also comes from experience. Anyone's who's ever built an organization the old, voting way, also knows what happens when the vote is 60 - 54. There are 54 people pissed off that they lost, enough so that they can cause serious problems with actually implementing anything and you never get anything done.
I suppose the reason why you go with consensus building, in the end, is that one thing everyone knows who tries to do anything: the numbers are small, the people who have time to do much are few, resources limited, burn out is easy. It means you have to be nice to each other. It means that you want to make sure people build consensus because, while it may appear to take longer, you do have a lot more, excuse the phrase, buy in and, thus, people willing to do what needs to be done. When you do things the old way, you get a lot of people who are suddenly unable to do things, missing phone calls, not seeing emails....
http://www.plutocracyfiles.com/2011/10/other-day-i-wrote-about-my-early.html
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)