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.

Fun change = real change

I burnt out in third year university. The nail in the coffin on top of school and work and everything else was the effort and time I’d put into organizing a day of panel discussions about ethical consumption. I booked the best minds of our university, matching them with on-the-ground activists in the community and a good smattering of ethical producers and consumer representatives.

More adventures with Jonathan

Last year, we wrote a blog post highlighting the work of Jonathan Glencross. Jonathan’s approach to environmental advocacy has helped spark some dramatic sustainability initiatives at McGill University. We thought you’d enjoy listening to a TedxTalk that he gave a few months ago to an audience of 700

Unbinding continued

Tana’s recent post on “unbinding” reminded me of some reflections I had made in a paper I wrote a few years ago. In a section that was actually called “The Unbinding,” I was thinking about how difficult it can be to recognize exactly what it is that binds us. For someone like Tana (disciplined, orderly, […]

Fierce intentions, humble means

Cameron’s recent post made me think of my friend Jonathan Glencross. That’s his picture on the left. Jonathan is a student at McGill who is disarmingly gifted at sparking visible, large-scale change. Last year he was the catalyst for the creation of a  $2.5 million sustainability project fund, financed and governed by students and administrators […]

My life as an organization

What would it look like if my life was an organization? This is the question I was left with last evening. Friends from different circles had come over to talk about sustainability in the home (windowsill gardening, composting, etc.) It was a nice, lively discussion that I’d been inspired to organize for a few months […]

Inscaping

Brandon, a teacher’s aide at Southwest Baltimore Charter School once said to me, “The weak link isn’t necessarily the person who doesn’t do the job well. It’s the person who doesn’t do the job from within or truthfully.”

This is why, I think, that the most deeply engaging organizations I’ve encountered seem to be rooted in small, daily acts of personal revelation. […]