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#occupy, on exclusion rules

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Exclusion from #occupy movement

Judgement by association

Exclusion from the #occupy camps

Exclusion from #occupy movement

[This section was added on 07 Jan 2012 after this incident.]

Excluding someone from #occupy is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

#occupy is an OPEN movement, i.e. it is an organic group of individuals sharing a set of values, convictions, aspirations, and acting in collaboration OR individually, driven by the same values, convictions, and aspirations, with a very low (or no) barrier to entry. In other words,

1. no one needs permission to adopt the same set of values, convictions, and aspirations
2. no one needs permission to act in accordance to these values, convictions and aspirations

Def. social movement : A social movement is the alignment of individuals' actions according to a new system of beliefs, to the point where a distinctive pattern of social behavior becomes observable, at a large enough scale [from Multitude Project].

It is possible to exclude someone from a team, from a political party, from a company, but NOT from a social movement, especially if we accentuate the open aspect of social movements.  

It can happen that someone sends public signals of adherence^[1] to a social movement when in fact the actions of this individual are more or less in conflict with the movement. This situation can stem from a misunderstanding or can be fraudulent. Instead of talking about exclusion in the case of fraudulent behaviour one can talk about reputation.

It is not possible to exclude someone from a social movement, but people can have different reputations within a social movement. A very bad reputation is not an exclusion from the movement. It implies the identification of the person and public awareness about facts concerning this person. Bad reputation leads to exclusion from participation in some (or most) collaborative processes, but not to removal from the movement, which makes no sense. It also leads to a diminished influence, or diminished capacity to affect the opinion of others.

Judgement by association

We often hear the expressions “acting in the name of, or on behalf of the movement”. These expressions are grammatically and logically well-formed but, in my view, they have a semantic problem. One can act more or less in accordance with, or against a social movement, but NOT in the name of a social movement. That is because a social movement doesn't have the consistence to transfer its properties to a single individual and vice versa. And yet people use these expressions very often, and we know very well that they do have an effect on us. We tend to get angry when we hear that someone had misbehaved in the name of the movement.

The media uses this misunderstanding a lot, associating individuals who send public signals of adherence^[2] to a social movement but who act in conflict with the movement, with the movement.

To solve this problem some of us propose exclusion form the movement, to protect the image of the movement. As mentioned above, exclusion from a (open) social movement simply doesn’t make sense. Not only it doesn’t make sense, but it can’t even be enforced. The real solution is again a reputation system.  

Exclusion from the #occupy camps

I sat in a general assembly GA of #occupy Montreal and I was surprised to see us digressing back into old habits, sliding towards the system we want to abandon. The question was about exclusion. Can we exclude an individual from the camp, or can we ban information materials (books, banners...) from the camp?

The usual answer is: depending what. This seams OK, but it misses a very important point. Let’s go a little deeper: Why would anyone want to exclude someone or some thing? Are there other methods available that would achieve what we want without exclusion, as we understand it in classical terms?

Let’s take a very simple example. Suppose that we form a team to work on a project and one of the individuals signing up for the project starts bothering everyone. Should the rest of the team exclude the individual, i.e. banning the individual from the groups activities? Perhaps this individual had a very bad day. Perhaps she/he is not used to the social dynamic involved in collaboration. Who can tell if this individual, given the proper time, wouldn’t contribute something very positive to the project in the future? Are we there only to do things or also to educate?

Normally, we see a different mechanism of filtering/selection at play in small groups, which is based on REPUTATION and ROLE. As we integrate a new group we first try to know everyone. After some time, every member builds a representation of the reputation and the role topologies of the entire group. We estimate who we can trust and with what, and we learn where everyone should fit within the group, as the group is progressively (self-) organizing. Everyone starts to nurture a character, or a public persona, which is used by others to “compute” the social dynamics in context. Everyone starts to understand that reputation is very important, because it affects how much you can achieve within the group. Everyone understands that we are not all made equal, and that some of us should undertake one task instead of another one.

In this kind of setting exclusion rules are not needed. If someone misbehaves she/he will be simply marginalized, not by the group as one, through a collective decision making process, but by almost every individual in that group, separately. This is a continuous and distributed process!

Loosing reputation translates into diminishing one’s ability to extract value from the group. That is very powerful, and in natural settings it acts as a strong deterrent to unethical behavior. This is why criminality is smaller, percentage wise, in rural areas than in large cities, in which there is anonymity and informal reputation systems are less effective.  

Within a small group the reputation and role systems are informal. Everyone somehow gets it. In larger groups, the reputation and role systems needs to be formalized, because the social setting is much more complex than what a single individual can cope with.  

During the discussion at the GA, as I mentioned above, someone talked about a group known to be racist. Members of this group were seen on the camp talking to people and distributing written material. Some occupiers were irritated by their presence and thought that if we allow them on the camp they will tarnish the reputation of the movement.

So what is it really that we want?

1. Do we want to get raid of these individuals, members of this alleged racist group?
2. Or do we want to preserve the image of the movement?

There is a very large difference between the two. We might not like someone, but that alone doesn't give us the right to exclude that individual, especially from a public space. I think the consensus-probable position would be to preserve the image of the movement. But if this is the case, we can act in a different manner, avoiding exclusion. Here’s one possible solution:

Whenever we see these individuals, members of this alleged racist group, on the camp, we send one or two occupiers to accompany them. If they stop someone to talk, we can pass our message too. If they give a pamphlet to someone, we give one too. We even engage them politely in a debate. All this must be done with a lot of respect. There is also a possibility that through this process the individual in question gets educated/rehabilitated.

We don’t need to exclude anyone from the cam, unless someone becomes a real danger: can kill, ca rape, can intentionally harm, etc. There are other mechanisms we can use. In an open environment the best idea ALWAYS wins. We don’t have to exclude ideas, nor people based on their beliefs, nor the physical support of any idea (a book, a poster, etc.) when we can use our own ideas. Applying force is accepting weakness. I am confident that our ideas will prevail because they are powerful. If we express them loud enough no other voice will stand out. We don’t need to exclude...

And if the racist, the sexist, the xenophobe insists people will notice it and will avoid him/her, we’re now back to reputation. That individual will feel unwelcome on the camp, and will eventually self-exclude.