Tag: Atlee

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Tom Atlee: Three New Potent Occupy Together Resources

09 Justice, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics
Tom Atlee

Three new potent Occupy Together resources

Three new exciting resources have just showed up.

1. OccupyCafe.org – a linked phone and online forum space for conversations among everyone “who cares about what is happening on Wall Street and around the world.” Its phone mode uses the advanced MaestroConferencing system that enables activities like breakout groups and hand-raising. Topic conversations begun on the phone can be continued in the online forum, and vice versa. The first phone call is Monday morning. See details below.

2. Organizational consultants study grassroots activist communities – This article didn't exist online, so I got a blurry scanned copy from one of the co-authors and typed it up over a couple of days so I could post it and send it to you. The next day the other co-author posted a clear pdf online, so that's what you get below. I think it is applicable and potentially useful to the Occupy movement.

3. Some very clear advice from nonviolent activist Sharif Abdullah of Commonway in Portland Oregon. Sharif's the fellow who spread the phrase “create a world that works for all” into movement circles. Taking lessons from Gandhi, King, Argentinian activists, and his own work in Sri Lanka, he offers guidelines to help the folks in the Occupy Together movement sustain their transformational impact.

Bit by bit, action by action, conversation by conversation, we develop the collective knowledge we need to make a world that works for all…

Coheartedly,
Tom

Read full post with more detail about each and additional links.

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Tom Atlee: Occupy the Future Together

11 Society, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace
Tom Atlee
#Occupy the future together

Things are still wildly bubbling in and around the Occupy movement, which is still radically expanding and evolving. Despite many growing pains, the co-creative, committed engagement of the participants is inspiring. So many among them are using the disturbances in and around them as a motivation for personal growth and collective innovation.

Occupy Together is, as they say, a phenomenon. It is such a passionate, complex, self-organizing initiative that even chaos and complexity theories have a hard time adequately explaining it. It is ALIVE!

The word “occupy” – as a connotation-rich idea or meme – is itself a fascinating part of the movement's impact. It invites everyone who wants a new and better world, to claim a space where they can work together to co-create that world. So far, that space is usually a public park. But that's expanding and morphing: More people are talking about occupying a school, a workplace, a bank, a heart, a profession, an industry, a government office, the airwaves, our minds – any “place” where some piece of the new world needs to evolve and replicate itself to become the actual New World. And the word “occupy” suggests commitment to that place, persistence in it, putting down some roots, claiming and owning and taking responsibility for holding it and making it good.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Occupy the Future Together”

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Tom Atlee: Government Data Eye in Sky – Sickening

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, IO Impotency
Tom Atlee

George:

Re the article below:  This is terrible.  It is bad enough on its face, but to realize that MIT's Malone is at the heart of this breaks my heart, devastates my soul and outrages my professional sensibilities.  Now I am sorry that we didn't do a paper on pubic wisdom for his conference next year!  Talk about the applications of collective intelligence unmonitored by collective wisdom!!  This is NOT the power and capacity we sought to free by trying to pull together the field with our Collective Intelligence Convergence conference.

I see much more clearly now the distinction between my sense of “intelligence” and the use of that term by “intelligence” agencies.  My sense of intelligence is that it means we are able to assess reality in a learning feedback loop where we've taken an action based on certain assumptions/mental models and seen how it works in real life.  The results inform our reinforcement or revision of our assumptions and mental models.  Collective intelligence is our ability to do that collectively, as whole communities and societies and humanity.  The mere accumulation of data to inform official decision-makers – particularly in hierarchical power systems like ours – is a dangerous bastardization of the generic concept of CI.  Notice that they aren't talking about using this system to find out how successful a particular government policy or program is – whether it actually served the public good or not – so that we could have a more evidence-based government.  It is being used primarily to predict social unrest so it can be stifled or discharged so that the existing toxic power structures can remain as they are.

I notice it says the system will use “publicly accessible data”.  I'm so dubious.  They talk about traffic webcams and digital location trails from cell phones.  Are these publicly accessible?  And that begs the question of the fact that no one except giant institutions (governments, corporations) has the computing power to do those analyses.  It's like freedom of the press when you can't afford a press.

They want to predict when the people will revolt.  Ok.  But where's the people's capacity to predict what the government and specific corporations are going to do?  This is so one-sided.  It empowers only half of Robert's vision of open source intelligence, and it feels like the same old crap is being given new capacities.  This is collective intelligence?!!!?  This is panopticism – the ability of the power center at the top to see everything going on the whole system.  It has been brilliantly contrasted by Jean-Francois Noubel with holopticism – the ability of the whole and all its parts to view the whole.  We don't need more panopticism.  We need more holopticism, to help us navigate our collective destiny.

I am disgusted and horrified.

What can be done to reclaim the good name of collective intelligence?  I do not feel drawn to or capable of organizing the kind of professional outrage that headed off Operation Camelot and Total Information Awareness (see the article).  But I'll be damned if I will lend my good name to this so-called collective intelligence initiative.  At the very least, I can blog my protest – and have it picked up at least by IARPA….

Shit!  Damn!  I want to cry!

Tom

Begin forwarded message:

*GOVERNMENT AIMS TO BUILD A ‘DATA EYE IN THE SKY‘*

By John Markoff
New York Times, October 10, 2011

Safety Copy of Full Article Below the Line.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Government Data Eye in Sky – Sickening”

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Tom Atlee: #OWS Emerging Patterns & Suggestions

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Tom Atlee

#Occupy Together – emerging patterns and suggestions

I'm beginning to sense a progression of developments that may productively unfold in, through, and because of the Occupy Together movement. It is still somewhat vague, but something like it is definitely in the works. All of it is happening both as a sequence and simultaneously.

1. Share stories, creations, and demonstrations of frustration and outrage that
.    a. speak to and rouse an increasing majority of ordinary people
.    b. challenge the institutional sources of that frustration
.   – and while we do it, create occupation communities that reflect our values
.   and experiment with new, better ways of being together.
2. Encourage, stimulate, provoke, catalyze and convene expanding conversations
.   about (1) and every subsequent step, in every sector, nook, and mind in society.
3. Consciously reach out to more and more people unlike ourselves –
.   the rest of the 99% – creatively, powerfully, and lovingly expanding toward 100%
.   inclusivity. Welcome people into a new world of possibility.
4. Learn about and explore dreams and alternatives – about new economics, politics,
.   governance, education, health care, community, and all the rest…  Gain real
.   certainty that “another world is possible.”
5. Develop and articulate a powerful shared vision of the society we want.
6. In place of demands, clarify two things and organize to make them happen:
.    a. What millions of ordinary people can do to further the vision.
.    b. What governments and institutions must do, not only to further the vision,
.        but to continue functioning at all, in the face
.        of the rising forces for justice, sustainability, meaning and joy.
7. And while we do all this, share, learn from experience, and use all forms
.   of diversity, skill, passion, technology and struggle creatively.

Below are some of the ideas and images that make me feel something like this is beginning to unfold. I find all of them important, both in themselves and as signs of the larger societal motion (“movement”), the larger awakening that seems to be happening here.

See various links and full texts including “Bringing the Salt March [Gandhi in India] to Wall Street.”

Oh, and don't miss the video “Marine Defends Occupy Wall Street” that's included below. I can't help wondering what its many impacts will be.

Coheartedly,
Tom

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Tom Atlee: #Occupy A Dance of Inspiration & Strategy

03 Economy, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace, Officers Call
Tom Atlee

#Occupy – a dance of inspiration and strategy

Here are some more good articles and websites about the Occupy Together movement, the global extension of Occupy Wall Street.

In this posting there are a number of pieces about strategy and tactics – appeals to and descriptions of nonviolence (including some tips useful in everyday life as well as demonstrations); what contributed to their success in holding onto their NYC site; the logic of their non-partisan messages that are not tied to specific demands; etc. You'll also find a powerful video highlighting the hypocrisy of US officials condemning crackdowns on Arab Spring protests while condoning crackdowns on domestic Occupy protests.

I've also excerpted an inspiring, sober open letter from long-time Christian activist Jim Wallis. His whole article is worth reading. It was sent to me by my friend and colleague Rosa Zubizarreta who writes:

“I highly recommend that people GO. visit. see for yourself. engage in wonderful conversations. volunteer. contribute…. yes, there are clearly challenges and difficulties (it's certainly not perfect, as Rainbow Gatherings and Peace Camps and Soup Kitchens and all of those various manifestations of “free zones” are not perfect…) AND, it is so very much alive, filled with many wonderful moments and lots of learning and creativity and connection… On Friday morning in Occupy Boston, there were several classrooms visiting… their teachers bringing them in for a field trip… it was awesome!”

Others have written to me about conversations happening among finance professionals about the changes that are needed in their sector – conversations stimulated and energized by the Occupy Wall Street protests. Increasingly, this aspect of nonviolent protest – encouraging urgently needed conversations about change – is becoming the trademark of this movement. And this is an invitation to those of us who know how to make conversations meaningful and productive…

Blessings on this 13.7 billion year old highly interactive Journey.

Coheartedly,
Tom

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Tom Atlee: #OWS How Do You Make a New World?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace
Tom Atlee

Occupy Wall Street: What is involved in making a new world?

My sleep was cut short last night by waking up worried at 3:30 a.m. PST about NYC Mayor Bloomberg's ultimatum that the Occupy Wall Street protesters leave Zuccotti Park – aka Liberty Square – at 7 a.m. EST so the park could be cleaned. I won't share the nightmare scenarios my mind concocted, but I finally got up and was profoundly relieved to find that the intervention had been “postponed”. The Mayor's office said that park owner Brookfield Properties “believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation.” When it was announced, the massive crowd of protesters went joyfully wild.
http://bit.ly/oFLevN

Apparently a number of factors made a difference: massive protest from many quarters (including Canadians protesting to Brookfield, which is a Canadian company); the occupiers thoroughly and very visibly scrubbing down their already quite clean site during the night; a LOT of supporters showed up overnight; and they were visibly preparing for a lockdown resistance – explaining on their site how to lock arms, bike lock themselves to things, etc. Many observers (including me) suspect Bloomberg's “clean the park” project was a thinly disguised attempt to end or cripple the occupation, but at least he recognized what a mess it would make – in SO many ways – to proceed. So these determined interesting folks have made it over one more dramatic hurdle in their quest for a better world.

Several days ago I sent free copies of my two books (Priority Mail) to the Occupy Wall Street library. I'm happy they escaped the “cleaning” intervention. I encourage any other authors on this list to consider donating copies of their works. The ideas of people interested in co-intelligence should be made available to the protestors. The address is

The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street
118A Fulton St. #205
New York, NY 10038

While proceeding with work on my new book on empowered public wisdom, I continue to be fascinated by the ever-expanding Occupy movement. I find myself spending about half my time tracking it and its impact. It is quite a remarkable phenomenon. In this posting, I'm especially interested in their process.

Here's what's in this message:

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: #OWS How Do You Make a New World?”

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Tom Atlee: OWS Bumpy Road – Chaos, Order, and New…

11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence
Tom Atlee

Occupy Wall Street's brand new bumpy road – Order, chaos and a new world

Below is a slightly edited excerpt from an email written by a group facilitator participating in one of the urban Occupy actions (name withheld at their request). Their note reveals an emerging difficulty that could undermine the ability of such actions to hold their position and succeed in their mission. I then offer some thoughts on chaos and order that I hope will help them (and us all) deal well with such issues in these times of transition.

Following all that, I offer some new Occupy links, with excerpts from the linked articles. I hope you enjoy them.

Blessings on this remarkable journey.

Coheartedly,
Tom

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