How to occupy democracy

When the civil rights movement abandoned its focus on nurturing personal, individual relationships and instead resorted to broad principles and detached theorising, it lost its power. It became coopted, removed from the people who otherwise held it accountable with the gentle discipline that is required in being true and kind to one’s friends.

I suspect that this aspect is where grand nation-building projects, based on the most beautiful of ideals, stumble.

Taking the revolution inward

Any categorization of outside and inside, enemy and friend, good and bad is an illusion of the mind. I remember a quotation by the first prime minister of the transitional government after the 1979 revolution in Iran, who said, “The Shah (king) is not gone, because there is still a little Shah living within each one of us”. His message was that the spirit of monarchy and dictatorship is not gone by the departure or execution of the monarch, but that it could continue in every meeting, every election, every institution, every family and so on.

The learning stance: A conversation with Anthi Theiopoulou

Warren: What are the particular qualities of the demonstrations in Syntagma Square that you most appreciate and would love to see deepen and expand?

Anthi: In my opinion, one of the very important ones is the learning stance. It is crucial because without this quality present, we cannot develop and work with any other quality… and because this movement in Syntagma Square is oriented towards something that still does not exist, this implies that it needs a lot of learning.

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.

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.

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 […]

Rayat-Bahra Teachers College

The landscape turns from deep green to sepia-yellow as we drive out of the tree-lined streets of the city and onto a dusty road lined with wheat fields. At some point we return to pavement and I glance out the back window to see a horse gallop across the road in our wake. Our taxi slows and turns onto a smaller road, meanders through an enclave of large white-washed structures, and comes to a stop in front of a cheerful looking building with students streaming through its front doors.

Whole person, whole system

What is less well understood is that treating each other as the patchwork, unruly human beings we are, rather than the zippered office functionaries we pretend to be, is also the only way we can really come to understand, let alone affect, the larger institutional patterns we are trying to change […]