The promise of the square: A conversation with Motaz Attalla

Warren: Can you take us back a bit to how you experienced the early days of Tahrir Square?

Motaz: There was this sense of rediscovering pure community- with all its good and bad. Knowing what it means to receive gifts and give gifts, to receive care and give care between absolute strangers and with a totally open heart. And feeling just a sweetness of courage. And to know that we don’t have to worry about the consequences of stepping out- not because things won’t turn out bad but because there is a lot of support for the act of bravery itself. And to me that’s the glue of society. Feeling like people are for you and you are for people.

Taking the Revolution Forward

Welcome to Organization Unbound’s special themed section, Taking the Revolution Forward.

Like many people, we were fascinated by the global wave of uprisings and citizens’ movements in 2011. What struck us most was their focus on how people were coming together. Public demonstrations had a generative quality. They expressed not just demands but a kind of rich, unqualified yearning, and people worked, however haltingly, to meet that yearning right in the squares and streets where they stood.

Happy December

As Cape Town transforms into a city of relaxation and revelry over the holidays, we’re also taking some time off to celebrate life. Looking forward to diving into many new conversations and experiments in the new year!

Peace,
Tana & Warren

City of Sanctuary

Casper ter Kuile shared this City of Sanctuary clip with us as a beautiful example of a social change initiative that is completely rooted in meaning and experience. On the City of Sanctuary blog, Giuilia, a newly arrived volunteer from Italy, shares how surprised she is to see so many asylum seekers and refugees […]

Expressive campaigning

An increasing number of NGOs are turning to conventional marketing methods to convince the masses to adopt more environmentally-friendly behaviours. These campaigns motivate people to turn down their central heating by suggesting they follow the latest fashion trends in winter clothing, persuade people to reduce flying by suggesting they take the train for their next luxurious pleasure trip, and encourage parents to “spoil their little monsters” at Christmas with the latest trends in eco-friendly toys.

Anna’s class list

My last post, on John McKnight, has quickly become one of the most read posts we’ve had on Organization Unbound. I’m not sure why. But maybe it has something to do with the how central ‘disdain’ has become to our political and and social change conversations. I suspect that […]

A quick dip into anarchy

When I heard that the first-ever South African Anarchist Book Fair was being organized in Cape Town, I jumped at the opportunity to check it out. I had been to the anarchist book fair several times in Montreal, but never with a specific goal in mind. This time, I was going with a more tailored curiosity: How do anarchists go about […]

Occupy Oakland strike: Change and the power of nonviolence

There was one particular incident where violence could have been a reality. There were thousands of us standing in front of the Port of Oakland fence. Around 7:40 pm or so an employee of the port tried to drive through the mass of people to get to his job. He was driving slow, but seemed somewhat forceful with his driving. Within seconds […]

Turning John McKnight inside out

In workshops and classrooms I frequently hear some form of the question: “But how do we deal with those people who just don’t get it?” The ‘it’ is usually undefined, but everyone in the room understands it to be some combination of justice, sustainability, compassion…Heads nod. How can we hope to move forward when so many people don’t see the world from this perspective, when so many people don’t seem to care about the things we care about?

So what happened next, you ask?

During the two months that it took me to get my experiences at Rayat-Bahra down on paper, I often wondered how things were progressing at the College. I had not heard much since the retreat in April and so started to worry that nothing had come of it. Maybe the teachers decided it would be too big of a change to handle or maybe unforeseen external factors came into play that caused the process to be derailed…my mind hatched all sorts of reasons for the silence […]