Collaboration Incubator *18 Report #1

MAKING EVERY VOICE COUNT: A LESSON IN
OKL1810
SOCIAL CHANGE
By Peter Wolff;
Collaboration Incubator: Berlin, October 2018
I recently participated in three-day workshop / conference / thinktank
offered by Vanilla Way. The organizing question in the
invitation was, “How do we build a global grassroots democracy
that enables us to create a future that nurtures us and the
planet?” (http://collaborationincubator.net/). I’m usually interested
in programs that deepen my commitment as a global citizen, and
the weekend also provided an opportunity to build my network in
my newly chosen city of Berlin.
I appreciated the intention of the organizers, that the results of
the weekend should be an enhancement to the work that each of
us is already doing, thereby serving both our personal needs and
the long-term needs of society. My work as a leadership
development consultant fit well with the profiles of the other 10
entrepreneurs, facilitators and community organizers. I had more
prior knowledge of the agenda than most people attending
because I volunteered to facilitate a couple of sessions on
evolutionary leadership. I’ve also traveled extensively and my
accumulated years of wandering the planet expanded my ability
to see multiple sides at once. This ended up being an asset over
the weekend.
Although the current state of global governance was a reference
point for our discussions, we intentionally did not try to map all of
its systems or propose solutions to fix broken pieces. Our main
focus was to explore possibilities for grassroots democracy, and
specifically projects to which we can apply our thinking and acting
in local communities. Later in the article I’ll outline a project called
#ALLVOICES that I chose to start and coordinate.
Our legacy of liberal democracy
In these times, when right and left are polarized, it’s easy to
forget that this political theater is all happening on the stage of
liberal democracy, the form of governance that since the fall of
communism has become the de facto (or at least dominant) form
of global governance. Although it is important to protect the
frontier of devolving democracy against fascism, recreating of the
rules of democracy so that it works for all is a more urgent task.
Liberalism is simply the movement towards freedom. In Europe,
the dawn of modern liberal democracy is celebrated each year on
July 14th, Bastille Day. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas
were used to rally the people during the French Revolution in
1789, called for legislative power for the people, creating a new
social contract. Thomas Paine wrote Rights of Manin France in
1791, after influencing the American Revolution with his writing
and activism. In it he defends the French Revolution, believing a
revolt by the people is justified when a government does not
protect the natural rights of its citizens. Since the American and
French Revolutions, “liberty, equality and fraternity” have been
the fundamental cry of democracy around the world.
During more than 200 years of democracy, the concept of “all
people” has been updated both in terms of who is represented
and the total number of people governed. It used to mean male
property owners. Now we can see and hear people on Internetconnected
devices across the globe who also want equality. In
1800 the global population was 991 million. In 2019, the number
approaches 7.4 billion. We find ourselves in a more complex
world with governments challenged to achieve fairness and
inclusion for massively diverse and connected voices.
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