Is Loomio Representative?

Representative of what? Occupy Democracy? I think we are still testing the platform. I think the vote and discussion on the "demand" proposals for the January occupation helped us test the proposals and from that we were able to prioritise which ones to take forward to the GA.

I'd be interested to hear what ideas folk have for boosting participation.

I was surprised by the small numbers. I think this is not dissimilar to finding a quorate number for decision making at GA's. In my memories of 'old' labour one of the techniques for getting stuff through constituency meetings was to filibuster on an issue until people got bored and moved away an then call for a vote. I would suggest that at least 50% of the known participants need to express an opinion before a vote can be considered valid.

Liz

I came in on Loomio from outside, a distant online supporter with no experience(apart from videos) of live GA, or previous discussion, or fact base and history inside OD of the issues/proposals, and not having met any of the people conversing. It will take me some time to get the hang of it, and see whether it feels possible to participate effectively like this. This time I wasn't clear on whether we were discussing the substance of each issue as such, or just looking at the form of the proposal. Some issues definitely needed a stronger factual base shared by a bigger number of people before an effective proposal could be put forward. Eg, the money system proposal, and the 'war as diplomatic tool' proposal did not have enough people in the small online group who knew enough about the actual field or understood why the proposal was being put in that particular form and it wasn't clear to me whether that meant the issue would go back to a working party, or whether there had already been a working party but just none of the people from it were participating online. And there wasn't a big enough online group to say representatively 'yes' or 'no' or 'we need more information and discussion'. A couple of times It was said 'most people won't respond to this', meaning both 'most people i know in OD' and or' most people in the general population', but how 'representative' are statements like that?However there were a number of proposals that got everyone of the eight of us behind them with complete accord, eg 'stop the arms trade', and some that got almost complete accord apart from one word? So possibly some useful 'testing' was done - and proposals could be sorted along a spectrum from 'issue itself not understood by enough people at this time so back to a working party and more detailed discussion elsewhere' to 'resonates strongly with this group so ok to put to GA'. But I think a bigger group than eight voices would be better - 10-15 individual voices on each issue and 40-70 individual voices overall. And I/we need to know what stage we are at - are we discussing the issue, and the fact base, or are we discussing the proposal as such, and when does it feel OK to move from discussing the issue, to forming a specific proposal, to discussing and editing the the proposal, to making the final online vote? I don' know how you get more people to participate apart from reporting back to GA, or to mailing list, and highlighting the 'testing' process and the issues/proposals that need more input. For myself, I would be interested to know whether people feel it's OK for online only people to join in or whether this just makes discussion go round in circles? I also don't know what the consistency of successive GA is like ie what proportion of regulars to what proportion of newcomers/sometimes and how well all that works in building a shared knowledge base? Anyway, thank you for the opportunity!

I should assure you all that I think it has been a fine test of the platform. It is not out of dissatisfaction that I wrote this post but more a sense of inspiration and the hope that the platform can go as far as possible.

Thanks so much for your comprehensive response Linda - I find myself in agreement with what you say. I am unfamiliar with Loomio, but can see it could be a very useful online tool.

Liz

As a window cleaner living in Tewkesbury I'm not sure how I got involved in this, but I do know that the fact that I did is the key. What you are experimenting with is true grass roots, bottom up democracy. If it can be made to work it can literally make obsolete top down, dictatorial shamocracy. I came across Loomio when they were crowd funding. It's very essence is to facilitate this 'revolution' in decision making, although I do believe democracy goes back to everyone in a village voting on a hill in ancient Greece. The simple truth is we are conditioned to delegate decision making to others. My recommendation would be to perceiver in encouraging more & more involvement, & indeed voting. Ironically I cannot even remember if I did vote, although changes to our monetary system is of special interest to me. In fact I've been trying to launch an alternative currency for a few years now, but with inadequate support. One last observation, Maybe focus on just one thing at a time. Notification of other suggestions for discussion proved distacting.

Re the proposal from Saeeda on Islamophobia which kind of stalled in our small group: Islamophobia, Gayphobia, Immigrantphobia, Jewphobia and all other dark eruptions against perceived group threats, which well up from 'below' in times of political instability and repressive economic conditions and are orchestrated/manipulated/exploited from 'above' by government or other interests - can or how can discussion on this go forward in OD?

We have talked about trying to attract people from Minority groups. This is the major issue for minority groups and it is through addressing issues like this that they can step forward.

Minority groups also care about Health care and the environment but knowing that their children can be attacked or put in prison for spurious reasons or that their very identity and nationality is being called into question has become a very pressing question.

Moreover, the laws and structure put in place can be used very easily for the next group in line, and like it or not, if history is anything to go by, Occupy is in that list. If its only a case of understanding how Occupy's opponents mobilise, its worth understanding what is happening to Muslims in Europe.

@saeedabukhari1 Any ideas for speakers on this for the February occupation which is all about equality and representation?