How Youth Decides: Real Democracy and Youth Decision-Making at #OWS Occupy Wall Street
Channel: Kevin Hansen
Date: 2011-11-03

We filmed at the Occupy Wall Street protests recently. One of the wonderful things to emerge in these protests has been the Consensus Democracy approach: broad, highly inclusive, community-focused and introspective - everyone has a voice. This form of decision-making is similar to older forms - for example, Quaker Letters - used to find central commonalities among diverse groups. 

Consensus Democracy is very powerful. When decisions are reached, you know that the vast majority agree; and that essentially all in the group will accept the result. There is a lot of listening required: deeply understanding the others' points of view and priorities - good skills for us to re-learn now, especially in U.S. politics!

The use of Consensus Democracy is here described by Andrew, one of the Media Team members of the #OWS group who was present from the beginning, and had been there for more than a month when we interviewed him in October 2011.