Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Consensus failures

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

 I have been present at many failures at consent and consensus. It is not a
given that either of these methods will work, and so having other methods at
hand to use to make decisions is wise. An example, The Seattle office of
Greenpeace used an open member, consensus process with great success (1981).
At one point, a group (perhaps of government agents) who claimed to be
socialist anarchists came into the group and blocked every single proposal.
As you can imagine, this shut them down until such time as a majority vote
changed the process temporarily.  I have also seen a single, misguided
invidividual do the same thing in other groups including intentional
communities and cohousing both. This is where you need a process to either
remove an individual, or move the process to something temporarily that can
not be hijacked.  There is a place where blocking on convictions is
appropriate, there is also a place where blocking is used to hold a group
hostage to a personal agenda. The Delta cohousing group that formed in
Eastside Seattle fell apart due to a couple who continually blocked the
groups progress in an effort to convert the group to a political cause.
Fortunately that group was just beginning and had no capital investment at
stake. 

It takes a great deal of humility to be able to fully participate in a
consent or consensus process, and sometimes in some groups, it just does not
work.


Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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