Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Objections in Consensus [was: principle vs preference / Formal Consensus

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Mar 29, 2007, at 9:26 AM, Rosemary Gould wrote:

> Does sociocracy
> allow for objections to be presented repeatedly over a long period?

Yes. All decisions are reconsidered (1) any time there is new 
information and (2) on a regular schedule. The "regular schedule" might 
be in the context of a 2 year strategic plan review and it might just 
be a re-affirmation. It doesn't have to be a whole long process of 
re-discussing if there is nothing to discuss.

I'm not sure how specific the proposal was in the Quaker example, but 
if there had been a proposal to ban slave holders from the meeting that 
did not achieve consensus, it could be raised again within the same 
rules that allow re-raising any other issue. The facilitator would ask 
for a quick reaction round on the request to reconsider -- one word, up 
or down.

A proposal does not have to be discussed if there is no consent to 
discuss it so the member couldn't hold up the meeting to discuss an 
issue no one wanted to discuss, but it could be raised again. And in 
this case, over time, the consents were greater in number and 
eventually the proposal passed.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
http://www.sociocracy.info