Dance Parties = Love
I can't remember a time that I didn't love to dance. I was one of those little girls whose mothers carted them to weekly ballet and tap lessons. My friends and I choreographed dances after school and fawned over the cheerleaders at high school football games. My dreams were shaped by the Star Search dancers and some quintessential 80s dance movies: Dirty Dancing, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and Footloose.
Kathryn dancing with a hammocks harness[/caption]
5 Ways to get the most out of the Communities Conference
This post was written by Paxus and originally appeared at www.communitiesconference.org Sections in italics are additions to the original post.
1. Reconsider your living situation. If you let it, the Communities Conference can really shake you up. Daring people who are trying new or untested lifestyles are presenting or in attendance. Step outside your comfort zone a bit and start from the assumption that you could live somewhere else, or with other people and see what this event has to offer and demonstrate. Let go of the assumption that your next year has to look like your last year and go back to your own personal values. What do you really care about? How could this be better experienced in your daily living situation?
This is a call to be daring, which i think is the most under nurtured revolutionary trait.
2. Chat with a rock star. There are a bunch of inspiring personalities at the Communities Conference and they are more accessible in this relaxed 3 day event than they are at most times in their busy lives. Seek out the people who say something that excited you and ask to have lunch or a more private chat with them. If this is your first time attending, read the entire set of workshop descriptions upon arrival and find out which presenters sound like they are doing stuff you are excited about and then get any of the event organizers to point that person out to you. This conversation might just change your life.
This calls to core funological metrics. If you are doing something really important, it will be transformational.
3. Fall in love with someone new. I’m not just talking about romantic love. Most participants of the Communities Conference come with the intention of stepping out of their regular lives at least a little bit. We arrive open to new experiences and people who we might not consider dancing with in our more mundane day to day life. The conference also throws people together in various small groups in workshops, or child care shifts, or mealtime chats. Dare to be open to someone new, introduce yourself, dont be afraid to share your thoughts, show up.
Here we are combining principals – being daring and doing things that change your life positively.
4. Engage deeply in the workshops. There are too many good choices at this event, but dont let that stop you. Figure out which workshops are going to make the most sense to you and figure it out early. If you are unsure, go check in with the people who are presenting and figure out if they have things to offer you.
This is in part a pitch for coming to the event prepared to get the most out of it. We write up this program with all manner of info in it and too few people (i fear) dont really use it deeply as they could and would benefit from.
5. Give a workshop in open space. So you have never given a workshop before? Time to give up the idea that you can’t. Start by thinking about the thing you care most about in the world, then think about what it is that might make other people interested in it. One of the easiest ways to give a workshop is to recognize that it is not a lecture. The wisdom is in the room, not just in your head. So think of discussion questions, let other people offer their truth, often they will hit the most important points, then you can just bat clean up and add the details which make it a bit richer. Keep the conversation moving, watch for the attention of your participants. Ask questions of people who seem engaged and curious. It is time to share what you are passionate about.
Another life changers is for someone to get up and do a workshop on what they are passionate about for the first time. They almost always get inspired to continue on and they often find new allies.
Transparency Party
Several people have said the most useful piece of the Loud Love event was the transparency tools workshop. i was powerfully reminded that while the tools are useful, what appears to be really happening is that people are longing to be asked these revealing questions. With the smallest opportunity most people will share deep feelings and vulnerable information about themselves, even with people they dont know very well.
We have re-started the transparency group at Acorn. There were a few people excited about it and a number of people who showed up when it happened who seemed to like it. My original thought was that we should try to fuse Acorns more festive culture with this tool set and instead of having the classical, slightly formal transparency discussions. We should have transparency parties, where the format is more relaxed, less full group oriented and more smaller conversations. Distracting food and drink could be part of it as well.
Picasso’s girl before a mirror
Instead, at the first Acorn transparency event this year, we stuck to a more conventional format, with the group in a circle and a single person revealing themselves to everyone using several different tool sets. And i was blown away again.
What was exciting for me was that one member of the group told about their intense and difficult experience when they were young in urban gangs. What was curious was i had actually heard this story from this person before, but i did not realize how big an identity piece it was for them. How this violence had influenced their choice to leave their decaying urban center and ultimately settle into the commune sphere. In the transparency context, i could connect the dots in a way i had not before.
let me see what is really inside you
We need another new word, it is the opposite of betrayal. It is something more than just “bonding”. What transparency groups do is build trust and connections. i see it almost every time we do one. i fear that this happens so rarely, that the need for these trust building experiences are not in sufficient demand. if we are clever, we will change that.
One Shirt for Two Television Shows
i am not much of a fashion person. i can go long periods without looking in a mirror. One of the advantages of living in the commune is no one seems to care (except perhaps Bochie) that i almost never comb my hair. Last Wednesday i agreed to go to Charlottesville to do a filming of a couple of TV shows for the All Things Green on reactors and North Anna specifically. So i went up to Commie Clothes and grabbed a respectable looking button down shirt. Which Willow laughed at just moments after i took it “you look weird in a real shirt”. They said the shows will be aired in July.
- Willow Circa Beltane 2013
Ali was handling the NBC TV 29 visit to Twin Oaks for a 90 second piece they were doing on our 46th Anniversary. Since i already had a TV ready shirt, i jumped in and did part of the interview.
Occupy Gezi
A week back, my amazing artist friend Amylin in Istanbul asked me to write about the Turkish protests in Gezi. I have worked on this post off and on, struggling with it. The problem is the unfortunate but unavoidable comparison between the inspirational revolution in Egypt which was focused on Tahrir Square and the Turkish protest unfolding in Taskin Square which houses Gezi Park. Central to this comparison was my belief, that the Turkish protests were extremely unlikely to spark a revolution, because popular uprisings rarely disassemble democracies.
Leaders can certainly lose their jobs, but even this seemed unlikely with the relatively high approval ratings Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan was holding. Yesterday, Erdogam issues his “final warning” that protesters had to leave the park within 24 hours. There will be a fight in the next few hours, and in the short terms the police will likely win and the park will be cleared. It is a relatively small space, the police have superior hardware, including tear gas and they have already demonstrated a capacity for violence, that the protester are unwilling to mimic. The police will likely win today’s battle, but unlike a week ago, it seems like the protester might just win the war.
The first triumph of the protesters, is that they were able to get their message out at all. Turkey, like Italy, is a democracy which suffers from a near monopoly on its media. [The Dogan conglomerate controls half the newspapers and three of the main national television stations]. The Turkish media is famous for blacking out stories and as one Turkish blogger wrote.
Mainstream [Turkish] media kept showing Miss Turkey and “the strangest cat of the world”.
Turkish TV stations which did cover the protests were fined by the government for “harming children”. And while there were several clever break outs from the media black out in Turkey, what is really noticeable to me, is the international media coverage this protest has gained. i organize and participate in lots of protests. i watch media attention to these events. You can easily organize 10K people to march on the Pentagon and get absolutely no media echo at all. So the amount of international press and solidarity actions this occupation inspired is incredible [San Francisco, New York City, Oakland, Brussels just to name a few cities.]
Belgian solidarity protesters for Turkish occupation of Gezi Park
Some of attention has been paid to the deep soccer rivalries being put aside in Turkey to focus on this demonstration. The protest started to save the last park in Istanbul from being converted into a mall, but it has grown to the large dissatisfaction of many (but likely not a majority) of Turks with the attack on secularism in that country.
The more i studies the clever tactics of these protests, the more i appreciate them. When pepper spray was fired at them, they threw bell peppers back at the police. When the corrupt PM called them “riffraff”, thousands of protesters changed their last names on FB to Riffraff, embracing the title as an honorific.
i also that they are using the Occupy/Rainbow Gathering model of for creating desirable spaces and handling all the needs of those attending. As in Tahrir Square protesters are cleaning up (often after the messes the police make) and making sure the space is as pleasant as it can be, given it is a low intensity war zone. One Guardian article describes it well.
Inside the Gezi Park, the utopian feeling is multiplied. There are open buffets for people feeding themselves, yoga sessions in the morning and now, a library. Every morning, after the police withdrawal, protesters got the area squeaky clean. People have fun in their own way and nobody intervenes: Kurds dance their halays, Laz people do their horon dance, and a group with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk flags chant their slogans – All this happens within a few meters’ distance.
Just as the Occupy movement changed the political dialog in the US, even after they were evicted, Gezi Park is shaping the discussion about the future of Turkey and secular government in the middle east. We can be thankful for the clever work of these protesters and look for ways to be in solidarity with them.
[The following is background information on the protests]
It started to save a park.
What started as an effort to preserve one of the last green spaces in Istanbul, blossomed into a nationwide protest of the increasingly repressive policies of PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development party (AKP). Since it’s third re-election, by wide margins in 2011, AKP has been shifting the country to a more fundamentalist Muslim culture. This has taken the form of significantly restricting access to alcohol, a near total ban on abortions, banning kissing in public and reversal of LGBT rights. Spiritual complaints just begin the list of protesters critiques of the government, aid to Syrian rebels, the crack down on dissent within Turkey, the control of media and unchecked development of Istanbul are also sited as reasons for these mass protests.
Erdogan has already given up on the original shopping mall proposal for the park, which is a major victory for the protesters already. “It’s the first time in Turkey’s democratic history that an unplanned, peaceful protest movement succeeded in changing the government’s approach and policy,” said Sinan Ulgen, the chairman of the Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, a research group in Istanbul, according to the NY Times. But an arrogant and defiant Erdogan has said there will still be a mosque development at Gezi Park in Taksim Square.
The US supplies tons of tear gas to Turkey
Despite retreating in face of tremendous popular support over the last weekend, the Turkish police have managed to injured over 1,000 people and kill two protesters. Early protesters took the name and tactics of the Occupy movement and called themselves “Occupy Gezi”, which is the name of the threatened park. Turkish police donning tactics used in Oakland on Occupy destroyed tents, beat protesters and let loose a hail of tear gas.
It is hard for US americans to appreciate the significance of this photo, rival teams rarely agree.
- As in Tahrir and many Occupys, Gezi protesters clean their streets
This is a video about how life is changing in Turkey
A letter to a candidate who wants to speak at Twin Oaks
Dearest Stephanie:
Somewhere in here is proof that the sun doe snot rise in the east
Vote Spinners
It seemed like such a good idea at the time. We would run a contest in which we got people to submit essays or short video about a “deserving dad” and we would crowd source the voting and selection process, so the people could choose the most popular ones. Some of the first entries we got were heartwarming, including this video from the near by town somewhat unfortunately called Bumpass.
Then came the vultures. There is apparently a significant collection of people who spend a lot of their time on online contest, which i dont have a problem with. But there is a subsection of this group which cheats. The easiest way to cheat is to buy votes, they start at $10 per hundred. The top vote getting winning entrant got fewer than 350 votes. Which means you could have secured a $150 hammock for $35, if you did not get caught.
Hawina and i late at Corbs sleuthing thru the internet
But we did catch a bunch of people, multiple entrants by the same people, tips from upset participants about cheaters, votes from Facebook accounts which had 0 friends, many votes for single sentence essays who did not bother to promote their essays on their own FB page. A number of our cheaters were notorious enough to have warnings about them published by other companies running contests, usually after they disqualified them. Facebook is apparently very slow to close profiles of even the most blatant abusers, reminiscent of their position on sexual assault friendly humor,
And there are “legit” vote exchange services as well, where money is not changed hands about people to agree to vote up other members context entries. This is where is started getting a bit hazy.
Then we started getting tips. The first few were quite useful. They told us about known cheaters who were on our site, pointed out the information given by one woman to open three of the top four vote getters was sufficient to prove that they were all the same person and so disqualify them.
And then it got more fuzzy. Relatives of participants contacted the contest organizers with tips on people who were cheating. Then some people who we did not think were cheating were implicated. Then we started getting tips about cheaters from people who were implicated, but their information seemed legit/verifiable.
In the end we were pretty convinced the people we eliminated were trying to scam us and only a couple of the winners were questionable.
[To be clear anyone can be a "deserving dad" and win our contest, including for example a 5 year old girl. Just not cheaters.]
Here is the criteria we used to disqualify people
How we determined the winners of the Dozen Dads competition
We learned a lot about online contests in selecting these winners, much of it distressing. In the end we disqualified 7 of the top ranked contestants for what we believe was inappropriately gaming the contest. The method we used was somewhat complex and included judgement calls on our part. This is the outline of our methodology:
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Anyone who got more than a few votes from facebook profiles which had 0 friends were determined to be harvesting votes from fake accounts and were disqualified.
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Anyone who had been identified online as cheating in other online contests, by contest sponsors, and who also entered our contest, was disqualified.
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Participants who had combinations of the following criteria were disqualified: extremely short essays & hundreds of votes & no mention of Twin Oaks Hammocks or the Dozen Dads contest on their FB wall during our contest & really new FB accounts with very little personal information on them.
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Contestants who made more than one entry under different names were disqualified.
All 3 contestants entering videos we granted hammocks because this showed significant effort.
We are aware that some of the winners know each other and voted for each other as they have in various other contests. We also know some winners are involved in what we have deemed “acceptable” vote exchange systems.
All decisions are final. Contestants who have concerns about this selection process are encouraged to write to: dozendads@twinoaks.org
Organizer versus Promoter
I skipped most of the workshop blocks i was not facilitating at Loud Love. Not because the content was disengaging, but because there was so much organizing to do. We joked that the new staff to the organizing collection were called “disorganizers” because theoretically open space can be run by a loosely affiliated collection of participants – but we have not quite figured out to do that yet. Sky grabbed me and said he wanted to talk about funology before i gave the workshop. So we talked during the “Negotiating Good BDSM Scenes” workshop.
Sky at Loud Love Phoenix Circa June 2013
He had three main points:
Funological grading/Grad Inflation: Sky was critical of the funological grading system which i developed and promoted, feeling both that it lead to grade inflation (saying events were better than they really were) and that undercut our inspiration to do better. He proposed a multiple index system, where novelty, an events life changing capacity, it inspiration for future events and other factors might be averaged for an aggregate grade.
sometimes the best is just too good
Insidious mainstream creep: Sky also warned that event organizers must be ever vigilant of mainstream values creeping into our work. We need to make sure we are not drifting towards events with are consumption oriented, or move us towards observer/performer dichotomies instead of everyone as participant, or that create access stratification based on access to money. To name just a few.
Beware of actions looking radical, but is still replicating mainstream values. Just because something has the image associated with something radical doesn’t mean that it is radical.
it is not enuf to just appear radical, one has to be it.
Promoter versus organizer: But his most important point was a critique which was of me quite specifically, that the two rolls i play in event organizing are occasionally in problematic conflict. I both promote events and i organize them. In the process of promoting, especially around the recent Loud Love event, i started to believe my own hype about how big or how wonderful the event was and did not do the organizing necessary to insure the quality of the event.
June is False Accusations
i cant write about the details yet, but it almost certain that June will be called False Accusations.
For folks who tuned in late, i often name my months. This is a practice i started when i was living in the Czech Republic at i was informed by Erikk Piper that the Slavs used a completely different month naming practice than the Roman influenced world. It was not about roman gods, but about seasons and colors and cultural things which were happening. Month names like Harvest (for August) and Animals in Heat (for September) or Red (which is June).
It was only a small step from the novel Czech month names to coming up with my own – including forecasting local and global events (like Japan closing all it’s reactors or Qaddafi falling)
So i have a trigger around false accusations, which is stronger than most peoples. This comes from being someone who is with some regularity bending or breaking the rules. Anarchists climb fences, graffiti walls, disassemble sleep schedules, go to jail, and write long essays about why they are anarchists.
And with quite some regularity, in community, in my action groups, with my friends and intimates i have to explain the unconventional decision i make. i am accused of being foolish, naive, a danger to myself and others, and more. i am regularly accused of something that i did do and i spend some fraction of my time explaining why i am doing what i am doing to an upset, curious or confused comrades.
So when someone accuses me of something i did not do, i often get angry. i would likely get far less angry than if i did not have to spend so much time on the legitimate accusations which come my way. But so it goes.
Often i am guilty
Unicorns Club – Not a cult
“We dont want to exclude people, that would make us a cult.” Izzie was commenting on her desire for the membership of the new unicorns club to be inclusive. And i realized i needed to explain what a cult really was.
So the 4 things which typify a cult are:
- it has a living charismatic leader
- you give them all your money
- you are kept away from your old friends and family
- you cant leave when you might like
They are bright kids, these sisters of Feonix, who quickly were intrigued by the idea that if a group persisted after its charismatic leader died, it shifts from being a cult to being a religion.
everyyone showing off their unicorn tattoos
Zoe quickly quipped “We gave you a temporary unicorn tattoo, we want all your money, like that is going to happen.”
We had one lunch of this august group, i was quite honored to be the only person old enough to vote in the group.
Unicorn Club is in no way affiliated with the Twin Oaks home schooling program called Unicorns School, tho Zadek is in both.
