Consensus: group decision-making & community organizing #3

 Your group is multicultural, including some from marginalized groups

Even if you are not engaging in a formalized consensus-based decision-making process, a partial consensus process can help reduce the inequalities that marginalized members feel and, in their reticence to participate, participate in some ways in perpetuating that marginalization. One study of this intersection of phenomena revealed by post-process discussion to be perceived by all as a helpful tactic. In this particular case a professor noticed that some students participated far more and some not at all--including some who were likely self-censoring out of caution of being silenced by others. The professor simply wrote a name on the board when a student raised a hand and wrote the next name underneath when a different student raised a hand. Students quickly began to enforce a no-talking-out-of-turn process and later told the professor they liked that process very much. It's not pure consensus (the professor is still responsible for the process) but it gave far more agency to students and felt much more empowering to them as they later expressed (Johnson, 2023).

References

Johnson, S. (2023). From free‐for‐all (free‐for‐some?) to speakers’ list: Using consensus‐based decision‐making practice to enhance student participation in the theological classroom. Teaching Theology & Religion, 26(4), 129–134. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1111/teth.12650

Consensus: group decision-making & community organizing #2

 Consensus vs hierarchy

Virtually all forms of decision-making tend to favor a hierarchical organizational structure except for consensus. Ah, one might say, so consensus is anarchy! No hierarchy!

Well, if so, it is the most solid, informed, deliberate form of anarchy imaginable. And, in many cases, like some situations of anarchy, it's only briefly anarchical before returning to some form of hierarchy. 

But when a group commits to making a particular decision using consensus, the hierarchy is flattened. Positions with titles--President, Chief Operating Officer, Grand Poobah--are all checked at the door, as are all intelligence-gathering for purposes of revenge. No disagreements that flare up in a consensus process may be used for later punitive purposes. 

In short, willingness to engage in a real consensus process involves trust. Any violation of that trust may doom future use of consensus, and that is crucial for the facilitator to emphasize. 

It is not a coincidence that many feminist-value groups use consensus, as they usually feature a nurturing, flatter hierarchy than typical command-and-control organizations. This is partially why consensus is a natural component of a conflict transformation practice (or degree program).

Consensus: group decision-making & community organizing #1

What is consensus decision-making?

The best little handbook helping us learn consensus decision-making is Consensus through conversation: How to achieve high-commitment decisions by Larry Dressler (2006). He defines consensus as, "Consensus is a coöperative process in which all group members develop and agree to support a decision that is in the best interest of the whole" (p. 4). 

Consensus decision-making is not perfect for all decisions. It takes time and time priorities for low-impact decisions often preclude a laborious consensus process. But when stakes are high, consensus can be well worth the investment of time taken to arrive at the wisest course of action. 

As an example, as a result of the outbreak of covid-19 the European Union health experts undertook a complex and time-consuming consensus process to develop an on-the-shelf plan for public health emergencies preparedness, response, and recovery (PHEPR). Public health experts from across the EU eventually reached consensus on developing checklists for the EU to be ready for a wide range of possible public health emergencies (Kagma, et al., 2025). High stakes deserve the time and the gathered expertise that true consensus can, and should, deliver.

What to have for dinner shouldn't take more than a bit of conversation unless it's a high stakes event. The host can make a command-and-control decision without a great deal of risk. Knowing the difference can tailor the process appropriately.

References

Dressler, Larry (2006). Consensus through conversation: How to achieve high-commitment decisions. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Kamga, L. S. K., Voordouw, A. C. G., De Vries, M. C., Koopmans, M. P. G., & Timen, A. (2025). Which sectors should be involved in public health emergency preparedness, response, and recovery decision-making? A RAND-modified consensus procedure among European Union country experts. BMC Public Health, 25(1), 1–11. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1186/s12889-025-23557-8

Countering the bizarre world of Trump: Constructive coercion: Nonviolence and momentum

Some people consider nonviolence to be pacifism. That, of course, misses the historical reality of nonviolent victories. Masses of Serbs caravaned to the capital, Belgrade, in October of 2000 to overthrow the dictator, Slobodan Milosevic. Film of that day shows the huge crowd massed up around the Parliament building and the movement leadership exhorted the crowd to remain nonviolent, which they did--and they won. The police and military abandoned their enforcement actions and stepped to the side of the people. Milosevic was done. 

Serb society was not previously known for its nonviolent civil society campaigns; indeed, it was the opposite, with a robust vendetta culture that kept hate and grudges alive quite literally for centuries and was still in the throes of many levels of violence[1]in Kosovo, the horrific massacre at Srebrenica, and the relentless slaughter in Bosnia and Herzegovina and more. But the 2000 revolution, led by college students, was 100 percent nonviolent and a reasonable observer of that region would estimate the percent of pacifists in the huge crowd on the day of deposing the dictator to be shy of one percent. 

Many view nonviolence as a pipedream that only privileged classes can practice. They argue that calling for nonviolent conduct is arrogant elitism. That is an ahistorical assertion when we think about the early nonviolent victories and the decades of them--e.g., India's liberation from the British in the 1940s, decolonization in Zambia, Ghana, and Tanzania in the 1950s and early 1960s, the US civil rights victories in the Deep South from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, the defense of democracy and stopping a civil war in 1986 in the Philippines, the successful end to apartheid in South Africa in the late 1980s, the complete victory for the Anishinaabe treaty rights in the same period, and then we reflect on the truth--that each of these victories were achieved by people of color, and that mass nonviolent civil society power was created by people of color for the most part, in resistance to white oppressors. Nonviolence is the most gain with the least pain[2], used by wise resisters who understand that the best way to both advance a social agenda and keep people as safe as possible is clearly the use of nonviolent methods of struggle. In truth, throwing a soda can at a cop and then not being shot dead is an act of supreme privilege that people of color know they do not likely have.

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[1] https://www.britannica.com/event/Bosnian-War

[2] https://www.youtube.com/live/QoeYypa007E

Countering the bizarre world of Trump: Deëscalation in order to escalate the struggle

The gold standard method of deëscalation used by unarmed civilian protection teams around the world is the CLARA[1]method. This acronym breaks down into Calm, Listen, Affirm, Respond, and Add information.

How is this germane to managing Trump, to managing his Make America Great Again MAGA followers, many of whom are violent? How can a deëscalation method be used to reduce the harms from Trump's ICE, his Homeland Security officials such as Kristi Noem, notoriously noteworthy for having shot her young dog because it didn't respond to her training as she wished?

On an individual basis, the CLARA method, while not a guarantee of success every time (nothing is), is recognized by those working to protect civilians in hot conflict zones as the most likely to succeed. Just as a Gazan who wished to survive does not scream or even argue with an Israeli Defense Force member, dealing with an ICE agent in the US is best done with some finesse, not hurling epithets or even making accusations based on a legal or moral argument.

In the literature on civil resistance we find a key to dismantling Trump's bizarre grip on America: security defections based on loyalty shifts (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). This is unlikely to occur with military or law enforcement when they are under actual attack, even with nonlethal violence arising from the passions of the moment--a thrown stone, or a shove in the chest--but also when they are vilified and met with scorn and rage. However natural and understandable that outrage may be, expressing it to the armed agents of the state will not generally do much except cause them to close ranks and jack up repression. 

Part of how to bolster such needed defections is the strategic use of humor, especially humor that mocks only the leader, not law enforcement, not military, and not his mass of supporters. This was one of the key elements of the success led by young people in Serbia to overthrow dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. The components of that strategic strand of their resistance included exactly those admonitions from the core leadership of university students as they led the group Otpor!, the Serb word for resistance; they told the growing number of Otpor! chapters throughout the country to poke fun only at Milosevic, not anyone else. This helped lead to a fissure between the autocrat and those who had been loyal to him.

Activists err when they regard law enforcement as a monolithic block of oppressors; recent research drawn from interviews in Germany on police attitudes about authority, compliance, and enforcement vary considerably by individual, concluding:

"current ideas on authority are reflexive, meaning that they are not solely determined by police culture or formal rules, but are individually reconsidered, questioned and reconstructed, allowing room for maneuver and can be shaped by different contexts, internal and external to the police" (Weber & Schophaus, 2024, p. 169).

It is axiomatic in the field of Conflict Transformation that one universal for humans is that all cultures highly value being respected as an extremely important factor in the process and progress of managing conflict. When any person or any group is convinced that they are held in contempt by others, conflict with those others is much more likely to escalate and become destructive. When, on the other hand, the very same issues are at stake but a party feels respected, the chances for that conflict to be constructive, even productive, generally rise.

Some worry that mocking Trump by infantilizing him might by extension diminish the reality of the harm that Trump does by his behavior that seems stuck in the most narcissistic stage of normal human life, a period during infancy. "President Trump’s critics come by their rhetorical infantilizations quite honestly. He emotes like a child. He lashes out against resistance and criticism. He is, by many standards, mischievous and untrustworthy" (Gilbert, 2021, p. 333). Pairing characterizations of Trump's petty, grotesquely immature behavior with the disastrous results is one key to making that humor more effective.

The other danger in overuse of some targeted humor is the sense that the resisters are discourteous and petty themselves. The balance may not be easy to achieve, so many nonviolent leaders stress simple constant respect for all, even those who may not be worthy of it at times, to keep the image of the resistance spotless. 

For example, when Gandhi advised the Dalits (Untouchables) in India who wished to pray in the temple, he told them to be respectful of all, to not curse at those who oppressed them, but to show nonviolent courage under all circumstances. They did so, setting up a human blockade on the road to the Vykom temple, and did so for months, even during the monsoon season, sometimes standing resolutely in chest-deep waters. In the end, after such a display, the temple opened its doors to them, acknowledging the devotion with which the resisters kept their presence, a devotion that wore down those who were in charge of the temple (Bondurant, 1965).

With any nonviolent campaign, leadership is best done with many tested methods, including what some term adaptive management, that is, constant openness to assessment and reassessment, reset and adjustment. What worked 40 years ago may not find fertile soil so easily now. What works in Guatemala may flop in Hong Kong. Being alive to the signs and signals and being able to quickly evolve is part of the art of resistance, an art to which no strongman is impervious.

One of the many paradoxes of strategic nonviolence is that deëscalation of many situations enables the escalation of resistance. When we held an Easter day gathering at a remote thermonuclear command base in Chequamegon National Forest, there was a lot of singing and a musician named Glen Walker Johnson circulated amongst the crowd--which included armed forces personnel and law enforcement officials and officers--playing a soothing hand-held harp, smiling. Meanwhile, we had brought saplings with us and digging tools, we pickaxed holes in the gravel road right in front of the base gates, and planted trees while the military commander, local sheriff, and deputies observed. I had talked to the base commander the day before to tell him of our plans. He had said, "You will be hurt worse than you can imagine." But after digging up the road, we concluded our demonstration without any arrests and, as we were walking out, I lingered to make sure everyone was safe and found myself strolling with the base commander and the sheriff. I thanked the commander for not making good on his threat. "Y'all behaved yourselves," he said. Even though we had just done serious property damage, I knew what he meant. We showed no disrespect to anyone, we sang instead of chanted at them,[2] and when we broke bread during our ceremonies, we had offered them some. We continued our deëscalation of all who had seemed to support the evil of nuclear weapons while we continued to escalate our campaign to shut down that base. It worked. We won. The base is completely dismantled and returned to nature in the national forest.

References

Bondurant, Joan V. (1965). Conquest of violence: The Gandhian philosophy of conflict. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.

Chenoweth, Erica, & Stephan, Maria J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Gilbert, C. J. (2021). The diapered Donald: Comic infantilizations of a U.S. American president. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 107(3), 328–353. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/00335630.2021.1945132

Weber, M., & Schophaus, M. (2024). Personal theories of police officers about authority. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 27(2), 168-181. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1177/14613557241293588 (Original work published 2025)

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[1] https://nonviolentpeaceforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CLARA.pdf

[2] Music seems invitational and inclusive; chanting can seem confrontational and exclusionary. In one Peruvian study, researchers found that, "in general, exposure to music and dance improves levels of intergroup empathy, reduces social dominance, and fosters a greater positive stereotype toward the Andean social group, producing greater emotions and positive attitudes toward the artistic expressions of this group in comparison to the control group. It is concluded that music and dance, as cultural expressions, can be elements that help improve the stereotypical representation and appreciation of other groups and their members, thus establishing a path toward building a culture of peace" (Espinosa, Pacheco & Janos, 2023, p. 203).

Countering the bizarre world of Trump: Transforming conflict from destructive to constructive and productive with Restorative Justice

Restorative justice work is an effort to help victims of crimes seek the emotional wholeness that perpetrators shattered. Part of the goal is to help a victim no longer self-assess as a victim, but as a strong player with sovereign agency. This is not the litigious search for monetary compensation, nor the prosecutorial efforts to criminally convict and punish. This is an effort to remove revenge and retribution from the struggles to hold everyone accountable.

In some ways, the initiatives that are meant to reduce the hostility and polarization must incorporate elements of restorative justice into their methods. They may do so in direct fashion or in more oblique ways. Dialog without debate--setting up identifiable oppositional sides with the idea that the dialog is meant to seek out the greatest and tiniest components of what and why people hold their views is quite direct. Hosting a monthly potluck with families is oblique. They can work together to advance a restoration of a society in which opponents in a policy discussion can do so without rancor, objectification, or enemy-making. While psychologists explain why people are actually comforted[1] in many ways by regarding others as enemies, restorative justice aspects of the work to undermine the autocratic drive that Trump embodies can reorient that need for an enemy to something else that can be seen as cruel and oppressive to a much wider range of the populace. Working with regular working people to create a social bonding over loss of Medicaid, for example, can help restore some unity that has been lost.

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[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-big-questions/201110/enemies-enhance-the-meaning-of-life

Countering the bizarre world of Trump: Transforming conflict from destructive to constructive and productive with Consensus processes

There are two related categories of consensus process: consensus decision-making and consensus organizing. The consensus organizing is named for the inclusive, non-adversarial style of community organizing, and for the drastically flattened hierarchy in any group of participants, organizers, and deciders. It seeks a very big tent of participants, driven by the parties with the greatest vulnerabilities and needs, but organized so that oppositional factions are minimized. 

Consensus organizing can affect the spectrum of allies--that is, the various parties in any civil society struggle. This work is done using organizing styles that may or may not create an unstoppable mass movement, but the tactics are meant to have a net recruiting gain and to move all sectors slightly toward the goal. Organizing without villainizing any other sectors can reduce the resolution toward combat to which the most ardent supporters of Trump respond. Organizing with hope and promise can prompt heretofore inactive but sympathetic groups to become at least slightly active. In other words, organize to attempt to move everyone even a small step toward making the goal manifest is the spectrum of allies approach and that requires the most skilled consensus organizing.