Excerpted from Alpha Lo:

“One of the compelling attractions of Occupy is that it is modeling a possible socio-economic-political paradigm for how society can run. It is a model the whole world is beginning to watch. For those who come and participate in it, its a learning experience, a training in this new paradigm.

Occupy’s general assemblies model a participatory democratic method. This method has been crucial in allowing people joining the movement to feel they have an integral part in it, and it has been key to not allowing one voice or agenda to take over the show. Without it, Occupy would probably be a much smaller movement. The general assembly has created a space where people can share many different worldviews and experiences, listen to each other, and learn how to move as a collective. It’s a rich, informative, and educational experience for many who participate in it.

…

Occupy also uses a gift economy model as people share goods and services, and all sorts of donations flow into Occupy nodes. There is a sharing of food, clothing, bedding, bicycles and computers. Occupy is a small village self-organizing into being, with free workshops, talks, medical aid, libraries, solar-powered electricity, music, yoga, bodywork, media, and bike repair. Experiencing this sharing may be quite a beautiful experience. That a gift economy can be used to create and run these small villages may come as a surprise to those who are used to living in a social system that uses market-based incentives to motivate people.

The socio-economic-political processes Occupy uses could also be improved, though, as we are sure most of the participants would agree. The general assembly method is sometimes a little too slow and runs into bottlenecks, and different voices can have a hard time getting heard because of time issues, because it can be too scary to speak in front of large groups or because of a variety of other issues.

There are also ways that distribution of goods and services at Occupy nodes could be improved. Some specific examples of difficulties and inefficiencies that have arisen:

* People having to discuss for several hours each day for consecutive days whether to portion a certain amount of money for an art project at Occupy.

* A group that was set the task to get much needed trash cans for Occupy found it hampered by what it felt were too many conditions set by the General Assembly about what kind of trash cans to buy.

* There are newcomers who have opinions and want to dialogue but do not know what groups to go to, and who sometimes simply interject their opinions in groups they stumble upon without regard for flow.

How well Occupy grows depends in part on the effectiveness of the basic political and economic processes it borrows or develops, the ability of these governance processes to be both inclusive and efficient, and the way its internal economic process can shift resources and skills to areas where needed, avoiding bottlenecks. Below are some suggestions (some of which are already being tried out at a few Occupy locales) for things that can improve the Occupy movement’s socio-economic-political processes …”

For the concrete suggestions see here.

Alpha Lo concludes:

“The Occupy network is a set of socio-economic-political experiments in many different locales. Each node or locale can test out different techniques, ideas, and facilitation processes. The best practices can then spread to other locales, The whole nodal network is thus tapping into its distributed collective intelligence to evolve new socio-economic-political systems that are more horizontal, self-organizing, participatory, democratic, and sharing based.

In addition, to more internal uses of these facilitation techniques there is also another usage of them which leads to a certain strategic direction for Occupy. Such dialogue and visioning processes as discussed above can also be used to create community dialogues with people who have so far have had more ideological differences with the Occupy movement. This would begin to seed for the larger whole a new political system based on facilitation and dialogue amongst the populace. Inclusive facilitation methods have been hailed by some as having enabled the multiple demographics of South Africa to work together to end apartheid. Can inclusive facilitation processes at Occupy be a participatory democratic process that allows even more diverse demographics to work together to navigate us towards a future more palatable to all?”