My Evaluation of the Caucus

If the Occupy Be the Change Caucus is to continue, I ask that it affirm clear support for holistic nonviolence. I do not ask that every member commit to practice that method personally. But I do ask that every member at least provide moral support to those who want to do so.

Thus far, it seems to me, the Caucus has failed to provide that support. I don’t know what adequate support would look like, but I suspect I’ll know it when I see it and believe that it would at least include the Caucus adopting at its next meeting something like the following policy: “To help achieve our mission, a top-priority method will be to promote the holistic Gandhi-King three-fold path.”

At the Occupy San Francisco (OSF) camp in fall 2011 a large banner declared, “A Living Example of a Better System.” Participants often referred to the need to “be the change.” The fragile community that emerged outdoors at Justin Herman Plaza aimed to be HOLISTIC, in that it:

• Encouraged participants to be whole (open, honest, transparent, true to their deepest self). 
• Considered the individual not as a separate self but as one interwoven with the whole world. 
• Addressed the whole person: the personal (which for many includes the spiritual), the social (including the cultural), and the political (which deals with governmental policy).  

The affirmation of the need for personal development was common. The importance of learning how to deal with interpersonal conflict was widely understood. Providing community services to meet unmet needs was central. And the weekly political action, protest marches, were vibrant and engaged onlookers. Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have appreciated this effort to practice the holistic three-fold path.

However, as I discussed in Wade’s Weekly at the time, OSF made certain mistakes that made it difficult for us to sustain our community. Since 100% consensus was required to make decisions, a minority faction, many of whom were prone to violence, were able to block efforts to grow a solid, holistic community and instead established their hyper-individualist version of anarchism (which differs distinctly from social anarchism).

So, while remaining active in OSF and trying to help improve how we operated, I initiated the Occupy Be the Change Caucus, hoping that the Caucus could provide a useful alternative model in terms of a more viable governance structure and also help strengthen the commitment to nonviolence within OSF by fostering inner and outer nonviolence as a way of life rather than merely promoting outer nonviolence in terms of behavior.

Before going into limbo, the Caucus made some progress. We planted seeds in terms of certain ideals and principles. We attracted and involved about 15-20 deeply committed, talented, experienced activists. And some of us experimented with the three-fold path on which the Caucus was founded (though we were unfamiliar with the phrase at the time) in that we:

• Explored a format for a peer-support group to nurture self-development. 
• Conducted a peer-learning circle as an alternative-education structure. 
• Established an affinity group to participate in the January 20 action in the Financial District. 

During the time of those activities, I told an old friend, “I feel like I’m finally doing what I’ve been wanting to do my entire life.”

In 1967, I dedicated my life to help organize “communities of faith, love, and action” – that is, the three-fold path. As I wrote in “An Evaluation of the Residence College” for my student newspaper that year, I was concerned about society’s “cruel, dehumanizing impact” on “the welfare of the whole personhood of the individual” as imposed by all of our institutions that “are all interwoven” and “extremely well-designed into a coherent pattern of vicious manipulation – designed to graduate reliable cogs in the marvelous machine of unparalleled material progress.”

I argued:

America is spiritually decadent…. [Our institutions] do not merely neglect but rather devastate vast realms of inner experience. The development of one’s own innermost experiential potentialities is truncated. Creative expression of one’s true self, whether in art, thought, or personal relationships, is not nurtured. Individuals are not encouraged to develop, to create their own vibrant sense of meaning and direction. Inner strength is seen as a threat; so the ground for a stable sense of autonomy is undercut. 

Instead, the emphasis is upon behavior. Children must learn to express themselves “appropriately.” They must be well behaved. They must develop self-control and learn the values of politeness and responsible citizenship. Thus, they must become reliable hoop-jumpers. They become dependent upon external pressures and external rewards. What is deemed most important is output….

Whether or not the student’s behavior is authentic is largely ignored…. In short, our educators demonstrate little concern with the souls of their students, even though they are in the very process of inflicting enormous damage upon those souls….

The student must develop a false, external self to cope with the demands of others…. 

Such a stability must be a precarious one. It must be a defensive identity which is unable to honestly expose itself to novel ideas or to open itself to new experiences….
So much is made of usefulness that man himself is reduced to a mere instrument…. 

What is needed is encouragement of integrity, rather than dishonesty; concern with behavior being congruent with experience, rather than with proper, high-level performance at any cost; …appreciation of the remarkable breadth of human creativity, rather than merely the powers of the intellect; illumination of the value of freedom, rather than the expediency of submission; nurturance of flexible autonomy, rather than brittle automatons;… recognition of the needs for ecstasy, as well as rational self-understanding; education, rather than manipulation; love, rather than mistrust….

The both/and perspective reflected in that litany and my commitment to holistic organizing has motivated me ever since. But a few years ago, I decided that I wanted to be more explicit and intentional with my efforts and look for others who clearly share the holistic perspective and want to openly, consciously pursue it.

So, given Occupy’s embryonic holistic culture and inspired by Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited (which was a self-help manual that Dr. King carried with him when he traveled), I circulated at OSF early drafts of the Occupy Be the Change Pledge, which was based on the holistic pledge that Dr. King required marchers to sign in Birmingham in 1963, which was based on similar pledges used by Gandhi.

Those drafts received a positive response. So, after incorporating input for suggested changes, a diverse group of twelve individuals signed the pledge and a few of us gathered signatures at the OSF camp and invited signatories to a meeting.

But the Caucus, including me, fell victim to the same over-emphasis on behavior that I critiqued in “An Evaluation of the Residence College,” as seen in the activist mania that afflicted OSF and pervades modern society. We too quickly jumped into action at our first meeting.  Consequently, like OSF, we did not establish: 1) a clear, shared positive vision; 2) written guiding policies; 3) membership requirements that clarified commitments and expectations, and 4) a viable structure and process for delegating authority and holding accountable those to whom authority is delegated.

On reflection, at that first meeting, we should have had more discussion about the proposed mission statement and pledge, including small breakout groups to surface concerns. Then, once we clarified our core principles, we should have established priority collective goals. Instead, in a rather individualistic manner, we quickly asked individuals to suggest and sign up for whatever working groups anyone wanted to propose (and ended up with too many working groups).

But feeling pressed by the urgent need for action, I assumed that the intent was made clear by our name, “be the change,” our mission statement – “to help transform ourselves and our society into truly nonviolent and compassionate individuals within a community dedicated to the common good of all humanity” – and the pledge, which includes: “to the best of my ability…, I avoid both selfishness and power trips [and] strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.”

And I assumed that those who came to meetings did so because they backed the effort to grow a holistic community with members who support one another in our personal development (which for many people includes spiritual growth), provide community service, and engage in political action.

But as it turned out, those words did not mean the same thing to the same people. Not everyone got it. And some who got it weren’t into it.

The first sign of lack of unity had emerged at the planning meeting that preceded the first membership meeting. After having gone through an extensive process of writing and re-writing the pledge (which integrates the various forms of nonviolence: philosophical, strategic, living, respect for all life), at that planning meeting some of those who had been involved in rewriting the pledge and had signed it nevertheless persistently argued that we revisit that decision and adopt strategic nonviolence instead. This discussion persisted for an hour or so, which left us little time to plan properly for the first membership meeting. Instead, we hurriedly decided to just ask participants to form whatever working groups they wanted.

The main argument for a focus on strategic nonviolence is that it can attract more people because it only asks for a commitment to nonviolent behavior at a particular action, rather than a commitment to inner/outer nonviolence as a way of life. Some of us argued that our choice is not either/or but both/and. As did Gandhi and King, we can build a strong, core community rooted in holistic nonviolence, and then join in coalitions for actions based on strategic nonviolence.

At our first membership meeting, after the option of pursuing either holistic or strategic nonviolence was discussed and the pledge was adopted as an affirmation of the holistic option, and we amended the proposed mission statement to clarify that we wanted to nurture personal development, I assumed that we were in alignment. But such was not the case.

The lack of unity gradually became clear. When we invited members to a support group to explore how to support each other in our personal development, one member replied, “That just sounds like another meeting to me.” No more than four members ever came to a support group meeting. One member was disheartened by that lack of interest and what she perceived as a general lack of transparency with regard to honestly sharing feelings. When I posted a query about members’ perceptions of “activist shortcomings,” one member replied that activists are not weak but strong and effective, and quit. On a number of occasions, individuals indicated that they were drawn to the Caucus in order to promote strategic nonviolence within Occupy in a top-down, one-way process of “education” (which has been described as “moral gentrification”), rather than growing a holistic community rooted in problem-solving, peer education. When I facilitated a brainstorming session to surface potential goals in each aspect of the three-fold path and then tried to facilitate a process of evaluating and selecting from the options that surfaced, the agenda was set aside to “check in” about the recent January 20 action. Then the team that developed the proposed agenda ignored all that work on possible goals and instead proposed that the next meeting ask everyone what they would really like the Caucus to be. When I shared my vision, the primary response was “Is that all?”, laughter, and “Yea, like we could do that in a week.” At the next meeting, the last meeting so far, when we discussed organizing a public forum, some members wanted the focus to be holistic, or deep, nonviolence, but others wanted the focus to be strategic nonviolence, with us talking about holistic nonviolence “much farther down the road.” Also, no more than three members ever came to one of our learning circles, only one other working group ever actually met, and folks not following through on their commitments and doing what they said they would do became a chronic problem. For example, most members of the January 20 affinity group did not show up at the agreed on time and place and some unilaterally decided to alter their involvement after the group had decided on a plan.

So, after we decided to ask Chris Moore-Backman to lead a workshop on the three-fold path, I temporarily stopped trying to make things happen and the Caucus went into limbo. My hope was that Chris’ workshop would inspire more people to pursue holistic nonviolence. But when at the end of the workshop one member suggested that we meet again to consider whether and how to act on what we had learned, we decided to wait a whole month before gathering again and when we did, there was no mention of the workshop or the three-fold path for almost three hours and when I finally brought up the issue, the focus quickly shifted back to strategic nonviolence.

So it seems that we attracted mostly individuals who are willing to go to meetings but weren’t really into promoting holistic nonviolence. My sense of having found what I was looking for was an illusion, like a mirage on the desert.

I feel that the most serious roadblock is making an intentional commitment to personal development. As one member in the post-workshop gathering stated, it is “a bit scary” to engage in critical self-examination and to honestly share with close associates one’s observations about one’s own mistakes, all of which helps to foster self-improvement (if it’s not essential). The reasons for this apprehension are understandable and I certainly don’t have any magic solution. But I would like to pursue with other like-minded individuals how to make progress in this regard.

Fortunately, through it all, I feel that I may have found a few like-minded souls with whom I can collaborate on this project. And I feel good about the latest draft of a proposal for a “social transformation network” that I’ve begun to discuss with non-Caucus members.

Whether I continue this effort under the umbrella of the Occupy Be the Change Caucus remains to be seen. If at least four or five pledge signatories want to practice the three-fold path together in the name of the Caucus, I am available. Perhaps we can start over and do it better next time.

Other Caucus members who aren’t prepared to practice the three-fold path might take on other projects and/or meet only every 6-8 weeks to oversee and guide the Caucus, more like a governing board than a working group. Or maybe we should initiate a new project. I don’t know.

But I still seek a holistic community that would differ from the sense of community that I have found with fellow activists in the past. After having done so for 45 years, I’ll probably continue this effort in the future, in one way or another.