Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: removing members

[Unnat (Zen]

Hi Stephanie and all,


>  John gave some pretty convincing examples of why it was
> necessary to consider ahead of time what a group would do in case a
> member was so dysfunctional as to disrupt the functioning or health of
> the rest of the group.

I agree.  Developing good processes and communication and practicing all
the time is important.  When the going gets rough you all kick in to
auto-pilot.  This is different from trying to enforce a hard and fast rule
at a time when at least one person is going to be highly resistant.

I will be offering our community some of the recent conflict / concensus
examples to look at as part of expanding our 'real live' living together
skills.

A recent experience:

I am involved in environmental (nonviolent) activism.  A few days ago, 6
of us entered a meeting (uninvited) to ask for documents and maps that we
believe should be public informaton.  The meeting consisted of about 15
high level bureaucrats who have been meeting over the past couple of years
to decide on the future of the old forests ( and it's not looking good!).
Well, we made our request, they refused ( which we expected as a matter of
course ) and told us to go. We didn't so they did.  They packed up and
left.

What struck me was the apparent inability of any of these people to deal
constructively with this relatively mild situation.  I attempted some
gentle mediation, appealing to them to look at another way of handling
this situation.