A Social Transformation Network (Draft Proposal)

Introduction

We the undersigned would likely be available to participate in a holistic social transformation project of the sort described in the following proposal if and when an inclusive organizing committee launches it. This proposal is divided into three sections:

• Basic principles
• Initial questions
• Possible methods

We assume that the participants in any such project would modify these recommendations. "A Social Transformation Network" is a suggested working title for the project.

We welcome comments. If you would like to help rewrite this proposal, please let us know. Once we've received more feedback, we may ask more folks to sign it. Please let us know if you want to be notified if and when we take that step.

Take care,
[insert names]

Basic Principles

Mission: to help transform our society into a compassionate community dedicated to serving the common good of the entire human family and protecting the environment.

The Network’s primary method for achieving this mission is the holistic Gandhi-King three-fold path, which creates models of the change we seek by integrating the personal, social, and political:

• Ongoing personal development: By growing ourselves and the groups we work in, we more effectively engage in political action.
• Meaningful community service: By building alternatives that meet unmet needs, we foster joyous communities that attract diverse involvement.
• Effective political action: By focusing on winnable objectives and being rooted in nonviolence and reconciliation, we build momentum and nurture evolutionary revolution by winning concrete victories.

These three areas reinforce one another and sustain us over time.

The initial organizing committee will:

• Be inclusive.
• Establish methods to insure that it remains inclusive.
• Maximize internal democracy and horizontal collaboration, while insuring that the leadership is inclusive.
• Operate transparently -- by, for example, conducting written deliberations in a way that is viewable by the general public on the Web.

Initial Questions

Once a sufficient number of participants are involved, the Network will address and answer the following questions:

• How can we nurture self-development?
• How can we meet important unmet human and social needs?
• How can we engage in effective political action?

Possible Methods

Form teams of individuals who endorse the Network's principles and meet at least once a month in one of their homes or a community center to:

• Share a meal.
• Enjoy fellowship.
• Support one another.
• Make decisions about their future activities.
• Select one or more representatives to meet with representatives from other teams to serve on the Network's governing board.

Personal Development.

When they gather, each team member could report on their efforts to nurture their ongoing personal development, provide meaningful community service, and engage in effective political action. Each member would define their own goals. No feedback or discussion concerning these reports would be necessary. Merely being asked to report in this manner would enable each member to share their efforts verbally (which is generally helpful) and would serve to hold members accountable to their commitment.

Community Service.
By engaging in its own collective efforts to help meet unmet personal, social, or environmental needs, the Network would make itself known to others, which would help attract new members as well as be beneficial in and of itself. Ideally, these projects would enable Network members to address their own needs as well as the needs of non-members. In this way, they could better avoid top-down paternalism. Given widespread social isolation, lack of deep meaning, and limited peer-learning opportunities, the Network might address such personal issues with rewarding social and educational activities.

Political Action.
In additional to participating as individuals or other team members in political campaigns undertaken by other organizations with limited, short-term goals, the Network might encourage and participate in campaigns based on the following guidelines:

• The campaign would:

• be dedicated to a long-term vision of social transformation, such as, for example, the one that is articulated in the Network's mission statement.

• affirm that steady incremental improvements can eventually lead to fundamental, comprehensive social transformation.

• focus on winnable objectives that can be achieved in the near term.

• be willing to negotiate and compromise.

• first invite key decision-makers to engage in public dialog about how to address a particular point of concern.

• adopt its own proposed solution only after fully researching and considering various points of view, ideally including input from such public dialogues.

• The campaign's leadership would be inclusive and would take steps to assure that it remains inclusive, while assuring as soon as feasible the bottom-up control of the project by the active members.
• The campaign would operate in an open, transparent manner, including promptly posting minutes on the Web, largely conducting discussions on a listserv viewable by the general public, and openly posting its plan of action.
• After adopting its proposed solution, the campaign would present its proposal to key decision-makers and seek a negotiated settlement. If and when these efforts are unsuccessful, the campaign would conduct rallies and picket lines and perhaps a boycott. If those efforts were still unsuccessful, and the campaign gains sufficient support from the general public, it could then escalate with tactics such as sit-ins.
• The campaign would take vigorous steps to assure that demonstrations remain peaceful. These steps could include seeking permits and honoring those permits, having many monitors, distributing a nonviolence pledge specific to each event, reciting this pledge in unison repeatedly, asking demonstrators to raise their hand to endorse the pledge, respectfully asking those who do not raise their hand why they don’t, asking those who have no good reason for not endorsing the pledge to leave the demonstration, and perhaps photographing any who refuse to leave.
• Throughout such demonstrations, the campaign would emphasize its willingness to negotiate.
• One possible common strategy would be to focus on the lobbying activities of large corporations. Asking any one corporation to engage in business activities that would put them at a disadvantage with their competitors would not be realistic. But we could ask them to support legislation and regulations that would enhance sustainability within their entire industry. And we could impact their lobbying by exploiting their sensitivity to their corporate image (as efforts to get corporations to withdraw from ALEC worked). This approach could help increase awareness of the influence of big money in politics.

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The latest draft of this proposal will always be at:
http://www.obtcc.org/Solutions/Network