When You want Change, what do You Call Yourself?

If you want input on what you are trying to create to bring about a better society, here are some terms that I've tried to define, and some ideas people associate with these terms.

Alliances tend to be formed amongst pre-existent organizations.  It is a term used by the right-wing.  The Alliance Party in Western Canada brought two existing political parties together against the Liberals. 

The left-wing tends to use the term 'coalition'.  You see single issue groups like 'Coalition against Poverty', etc.

I don't know why people use these terms.  It may explain why people hear Alliance in a name and think of it as right-wing.

The term 'movement' suggests person-to-person collaboration and coordination. 

Look in a dictionary to confirm whether what I say about these terms is correct and maybe get back to me if I'm wrong.

Ask whether the word 'movement' captures the essence of what you are doing.  It might serve better than the word 'party'?  People probably have reasons for starting parties, because party sound familiar, political and gets people in the door.  However, when you go global people may find the word 'party' confusing.  It may have slowed down the growth of the Green Party as it expanded out of Germany.

The women's movement was never slowed down by its name.  It grew enormously fast.  It took nine months to go from the kitchen table to a world conference in Japan.

There are two types of movement.  Next decide if you're driven by ideology - in which case you are probably (a single issue movement, like health reform?) a transformational movement big on advocacy.

Now if you say that you want a paradigm shift (towards coordination rather than every individual, group or organization looking out for themselves), you start off as an 'expressive movement'.  This suggests you're bringing people together to take on an array of challenges.  If that's the case I believe you are an 'expressive movement'.

A challenge is a problem that has been defined.  It can be defined by individuals or a network. 

Now a movement probably has no structure to begin with.  It's pretty fluid.  To get things done either you adopt a top-down command-and-control model, in which case you become an organization.  This is how the church, monarchies, military and big corporations got things done.

Fast-forward to 21st century ....

We're looking for creative adaptations to the styles of organizing we've used in the past.

These days we're more into distributed decision-making.  This allows us to be global, national or local in outlook yet be flexible enough to take very local situations, and deal with them immediately, i.e. without waiting over a month for the board to meet and tell us what to do next, or ignore suffering because of higher priorities.  When you have hyper-local decision-making an international movement will have taken on the form of a geographical network of hubs or centres.  When that happens, you call yourself a network.

So when you are interested in creativity and participative operational styles, why not start off with the idea of a network reflected in the name?

Funding a network that has no tax base requires an agency that brings money to individuals creating a better world starting in their neighbourhoods.  Otherwise you go to the same bankers that everyone else ends up getting in with.

With an agency in place to generate income for a network, you can go from global thinking, to hyper-local action with compassion, and without compromise.

A network that is working with an agency to handle client needs is the only way I know that we can create a compassionate society where no-one is left behind socially and economically.

Has Toronto Newspaper blown the Secret of Occupy?

NOW is Toronto's largest circulation weekly newspaper.  Its where all the event listings are available in one place.  The paper was started by several people heavily into women's liberation.  And this week there are seventeen pages of colour ads for prostitution services. 


Liberation?  Any spiritual group will tell you that freedom is our future.  Hey, why wait another decade when we can work towards freedom NOW?  I mean, ...TODAY?  


It seems that NOW's head news editor, Ellie, the writer of the attached article, now knows the secret of Occupy.  We're not talking chocolate bars here.  This is not about using pre-chilled blocks of caramel that turn liquid at room temperature.  No.  This is very serious stuff.  We're talking about groups of humanity doing things to get to the next step in society's evolution.

http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=184946 

But there's a lot more to Occupy than Ellie knows, or that she's letting on about... yet.  

Its really quite brilliant, the way that Occupy is named.  And Occupy is much more than what goes on in the city gatherings. Some people work alone and plug in over the net. In fact Occupy is self-organizing all over the place.  What I've been able to see reminds me of a monastery or ashram for people who may not want to appear dead within organized religion / spirituality.  

Occupy is here to take us further than your average 'shram.  Its a conveniently located international chain of urban resorts for the discerning adventurer within consciousness.  It's for experiencing accelerated evolution together.

Way to go, NOW.  Wow.  Way to go, Occupy!