Re: consensus child care"??? / wasAnother Bush Crime against humanity and Gaia

Mitra wrote:
> While our own community (10 households)  mostly uses consensus, we allow 
> fall-back to voting though this very rarely happens. Working towards 
> consensus, and in particular listening and seriously considering 
> minority opinons, and looking for compromise and ways to keep everyone 
> happy  has been important to our senese of cohesion. BUT allowing for 
> votes, has proved critical in the community's past to prevent 
> obstructionism from one person (not always the same person).
> 
>  From the stories I've heard from other communities,  and my own 
> experience in activist groups,  I would strongly recommend against 
> adopting formal consensus (with blocking) for any project, and in 
> particular for a housing situation. For example several people at one 
> community (which I'd prefer not to name) told me how they had been 
> unable to make any significant decision for years, because of particular 
> people who would block most things, despite the overwhelming majority 
> wanting to move on some issue.  Also they had the issue of a particular 
> personal emnity between two members (I think former lovers, or something 
> like that), where if one brought up an issue, then the other would block 
> it. This person had had to resort to having other people present their 
> suggestions to avoid them getting blocked out of spite.
> 
> These are real situations, and occur many many times in consensus based 
> housing situations, essentially you can easily end up with the tyranny 
> of one.
> 
> - Mitra

 From my understanding, and without knowing all the details, some of the 
situations you describe should not happen under formal consensus. Our 
community uses formal consensus as described by Butler and Rothstein, 
and has for over five years now. Under that system a person can only 
block a decision based on principles of the group, and the group must 
affirm that the block is based on those principles. Therefore it is not 
in the spirit of the system, nor is it likely, that someone could block 
on personal emnity or just out of habit. In our experience with the 
system we have never had an occasion for anyone to attempt a block of 
any decision.

Ken Walden
Meadowdance Community


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