I'm surprised that I haven't seen more discussion about the issues related to direct, inclusive, or horizontal democracy which attempts to employ various types of consensus. Too often what I have seen is merely mimicking the forms that have been shown on television. For example, the people's mic process was a creative solution to carry on with meetings after police in New York took away their megaphone equipment. The method had nothing intrinsically to do with any practice of inclusive democracy.
This form of democracy is developing and is still in its infancy. However, it is of crucial importance for the development of an alternative to both representative democracy and the fake forms of capitalist democracy through carefully managed and financed elections. Because I don't necessarily agree with the arguments presented in the article, I am posting this article only to help stimulate thought and discussion about a very important subject.
It seems to me that many difficulties could be removed by building a system of small groups (6-12 persons) starting with the base. I believe this size range has proven to be most effective in providing inclusive participation and also eliminates a lot of the problems mentioned in the article.
In small groups where everybody knows each other, it’s easier to detect dissent, and easier to share it. I also find that the more people there are at a meeting utilizing consensus, the more unmanageable, confusing, and time-consuming the meeting tends to be.The basic group could be organized around social connections (affinity groups) or geographical proximity. Spokespeople from these groups would be appointed to represent their views in a higher level group (same size range), and so on. Spokespeople would be limited to simply expressing the views of their home group and voting accordingly. Spokespeople would be subject to immediate recall from their home group.
In any case much experimentation, study, and discussion needs to be done to balance effectiveness with inclusive participation.
