Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: example of consensus success

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 28 Sep 2011, at 12:02 PM, Eris Weaver wrote:

> OK, here's my "come to jesus" moment about consensus.

Mine came in 1972 with a group of parents forming a cooperative school, 
predominantly young Yale faculty members who had moved to town to join a new 
college. We were committed to diversity and having a hard time recruiting 
people of color and from a different socio-economic class. 

We were having an equally hard time finding appropriate space that we could 
afford. This was long before charter schools so we were funding the whole thing 
ourselves. We had been offered a space in a Presbyterian church in the center 
of the city, just where we wanted to be. We had had hours of discussion. 
Everyone consented to accept the lease except one very young African American 
single mother. No one wanted to either pressure her to consent or disregard her 
opinion or to lose her from the group. We had met several times in the previous 
two weeks and were exhausted, ready to take anything. It was after midnight 
when we finally agreed to sleep on it and meet again the next night.

After the meeting as we all went to our cars the conversations were about what 
we would do if she didn't change her mind. No one agreed with her reasons but 
some thought we should give up the space in order to empower her personally and 
prove that we were serious about diversity. Others found this condescending and 
patronizing.

When we reassembled the next night, everyone was tense and not meeting each 
other's eyes. We started the round with the young woman. She said she was 
willing to respect the group's decision but still felt strongly that it would 
be a mistake.

One by one, every person in the room sincerely agreed with her. The space was 
in the basement of an all white church that was fairly conservative. Most 
parent cooperative schools then had been started in reaction to segregation or 
the teaching of evolution in schools. We would be reinforcing that view of our 
school if we chose that space — even though we would have a separate entrance 
and an address on another street. Even though we were going to be an open 
school and had hired teachers with fairly radical ideas, there would also be 
pressure to conform. It wouldn't be a long term home and would be a bad start.

The self-assured optimism of the educated elite that believed it could change 
the minds of anyone with their successful progressive school and rational 
arguments, no matter how different their values, had melted overnight into her 
realism. She knew from her experience and her perspective that these people 
wouldn't change — they liked who they were and it was a church where they had 
full control. They would be more than we could bear when we were still so new 
and untested.

We found other space shortly afterward.

One thing I've learned is that few groups are willing to spend the amount of 
time and listening required to work out this level of consensus. Perhaps in 
cohousing the aims are too diverse. Pre-move-in the task is huge and complex 
but the aim focused. We set aside our other aims. After move-in, all the 
personal aims we had deferred reemerge and exist in one place. With 65+ adults, 
there are a lot of aims. People with strong personal aims elsewhere don't have 
that much the time or energy to spend on community aims unless they consciously 
make and preserve room for them.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org