{"id":1006,"date":"2016-07-23T17:29:45","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T00:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2018-01-19T08:50:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T16:50:38","slug":"the-power-supply-for-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.annefocke.net\/?p=1006","title":{"rendered":"Gossip and the “power supply” for change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Against today’s\u00a0backdrop of one tragic news story after another, I constantly ask myself what\u00a0we can learn from events around us and how we can find ways to move forward to something better. Several\u00a0speakers at Town Hall Seattle recently offered both\u00a0specific and distressing insights into the state of our economy and our democracy, but the same speakers also expressed hope for the future, hopes\u00a0that lie in similar places. <\/em><\/p>\n

Robert Reich believes that with knowledge, people could ally themselves to form a new “countervailing power” \u2014 \u201cThe vast majority must regain influence over how the market is organized.\u201d He also places hope, he said, in young\u00a0people who\u00a0surround him in his teaching and who are interested in public service, to which the young African American woman standing next to me responded by smiling widely and nodding vigorously. <\/em><\/p>\n

In their talk, Robert McChesney and John Nichols told us that what\u2019s needed to make the necessary structural change in our political economy is \u201can army of aroused and informed citizens.\u201d The \u201cpower supply\u201d for change, they said, is \u201cthe great mass of Americans, many of them already active, many more ready to be engaged.\u201d “There is only us,” they say in the introduction to their book,\u00a0<\/em>People Get Ready.\u00a0“We the people are the only force that can make a\u00a0future worthy of our hopes and our humanity.”<\/em><\/p>\n

As a first step in sharing\u00a0my own response, I offer the following piece, written a few years ago. Its connection to the challenges identified by Reich, Nichols, and McChesney may seem like a stretch, but in part it’s about breaking down an impression I hear again and again, the sense that everyone, especially young people, are\u00a0just holed up, wearing\u00a0head phones, staring at\u00a0their screens, unconnected to other, live, breathing human beings. In the piece\u00a0I ask\u00a0whether\u00a0an active culture of conversations with a purpose and a new sense of the commons can\u00a0play a role in creating this \u201ccountervailing power\u201d and \u201carmy of aroused and informed citizens.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Written in 2013, the piece was part of \u201cGet up!\u201d \u2013 my contribution to \u201cChamber Music,\u201d an exhibition at Seattle\u2019s Frye Art Museum. \u201cGet up!\u201d had several parts: a wall piece, historical documents for \u201cthe living library,\u201d and a series of conversations and new writings. This was one of the writings and a theme of a conversation.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"A
A gossip chair at the Frye<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Conversation, gossip, and the commons<\/span><\/h2>\n

Positioned in the middle of the Chamber Music\u00a0<\/span><\/em>exhibition* <\/sup>\u00a0is a three-armed, specially designed and built piece of museum furniture. The inspiration for it is the pinwheel-shaped, antique \u201cgossip chair\u201d long found at the Frye that suggests the gallery was meant for talking, not just solitary contemplation. Similarly this contemporary, extra-large version of a \u201cgossip chair\u201d proposes conversation as an integral part of the show. With this inclusion, the show itself reflects a trait curator Scott Lawrimore sought in the artists included: it both celebrates \u201cindividual mark making\u201d and offers an opportunity to strengthen community ties among all who show up \u2013 artists and others. Built into the big chair\u2019s arms are benches for sitting and cubbies for artists\u2019 materials designed to spark ideas, conversation, and maybe even gossip.<\/p>\n

\"Chamber<\/p>\n

Lately I\u2019ve been intrigued by how often I hear or read about yet another conversation, and more than that, about another series<\/em> of conversations or gatherings with some intention or focus. I know that this observation could be affected by the phenomenon that causes us to start seeing red cars everywhere once a red car\u00a0is\u00a0called to our attention. But the sense of being surrounded by the desire for conversation feels bigger than that.<\/p>\n

Names of specific gatherings come to mind, some more formal than others and all in Seattle: Art Klatch, What\u2019s Up?, John Boylan\u2019s Conversations (which recently took \u201cconversation\u201d itself as a topic), Thirsty Thursday, Poetry Potluck, Civic Cocktails, Think & Drink, Canoe Social Club, Penny U,\u00a0Melting Seattle, Transpartisan Salon on Art & Creativity, Geeks Who Drink, Thought Shop, Cheap Wine & Poetry, Conversations on Creative Aging, Soup Salon, City Table, Table Talk, One Pot, Aging Your Way Gatherings, Conversations that Matter, and more. We\u2019ve also recently seen the rise here of \u201cco-working spaces\u201d and the Seattle Collaborative Space Alliance \u2013 seventeen co-working spaces including the Hub Seattle, Makers, and Office Nomads. All this is set against a backdrop of book and movie clubs, all kinds of meet-ups, \u201ccommunities of practice,\u201d and civic and business breakfast clubs. While not discounting the role of digital forums or the possibilities of interaction between digital and live exchange, my interest here is in-person, face-to-face exchange, gatherings with focus and intention. And, of course, it doesn’t even begin to include all the Seattle activist groups organized with specific causes in mind.<\/p>\n

A few names given to conversations in other places or at other times include the Back Room (Portland), Creative Mornings (Vancouver), Philosophers\u2019 Caf\u00e9 (Vancouver), Z\u00f3calo Public Square (Los Angeles), and the Long Table of artist Lois Weaver, as well as more structured versions like National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, Fierce Conversation (a kind of career counseling), and a real favorite of mine, the Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs of New Orleans.<\/p>\n

This country\u2019s history is full of gatherings with a purpose, from town hall meetings, quilting bees, camp meetings, and barn raisings to the voluntary associations and free expression that Alexis de Toqueville identified as being at the root of American democracy when he visited in the 1830s. Longer ago, Scottish coffeehouse culture in the 1600s is credited with establishing key foundations of civil society, and, farther back still, the Lyceum in ancient Greece was a place for philosophers such as\u00a0Aristotle, who engaged students in cooperative research and walked as he taught.<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00ab\u00ab\u00ab\u00ab\u00ab\u2022\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the years, I\u2019ve wanted to understand the concept of \u201cthe commons\u201d as part of searching for whether and where we can find common ground today. I\u2019m interested both by what the concept of the commons has meant historically and where we find versions of it in our lives today. One of the best short descriptions I\u2019ve found is from Elinor Ostrom and Charlotte Hess. \u201cCommons,\u201d they write, \u201cis a general term that refers to a resource shared by a group of people.\u201d They say:<\/p>\n

Historically, in Europe, \u201ccommons\u201d were shared agricultural fields, grazing lands, and forests that were, over a period of 500 years, enclosed with communal rights being withdrawn by landowners and the state.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Historically, in the United States, \u201ccommons\u201d has most often referred to shared spaces that allow for free speech and the democratic process\u2026The U.S.-type commons underscores the importance of shared spaces and shared knowledge in fostering viable democratic societies.<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A friend and colleague, Peter Pennekamp, has been actively involved with communities in northern California for over twenty years learning how people in the region come together in what he has called \u201cliving, breathing, on-the-street democracy.\u201d Among the underlying principles of this \u201ccommunity democracy\u201d is an essential requirement for community commons. \u201cSpace is necessary for a rich public life,\u201d he writes, \u201cspace where people come together to build and experience civil society in an environment that assertively values community knowledge and where the playing field is level.\u201d And he says:<\/p>\n

In an era focused on private ownership and rights, such space is declining as is recognition of its value. When people speak with passion about community it is often the value of the commons that they are referring to. Community \u201ccommons\u201d is where innovation and community change happen. It is the place where the individuals, groups, and networks that make up a community come together to spark ideas, develop agreements, and build trust for common action.<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These places are essential, he says, to \u201ccountering hierarchies, static power structures, nonproductive decision-making processes, and official sources of knowledge that suppress improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00ab\u00ab\u00ab\u00ab\u00ab\u2022\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

So with thoughts of Scottish coffeehouses, de Toqueville\u2019s observations about associations and free expression, community democracy, and the commons in mind, I wonder whether all the conversations going on around us now might in some way be laying groundwork for a new or revitalized sense of the commons in our lives, or of civil society and democracy. And I don\u2019t mean \u201cdemocracy\u201d as it\u2019s played out through all the layers of our representative democracy, as important as those are, but rather something closer to Peter\u2019s \u201cliving, breathing, on-the-street\u201d democracy.<\/p>\n

All this leads to a few comments and questions:<\/p>\n