You weren't supposed to hear that, Stacey. Yes, she was. I hear everything. Captions. I'm not moving on yet. I am. Transcript. Oh, something just happened. Okay. Good. So I think the infrastructure is there. This is the OGM weekly call for Thursday, January 11, 2024, just getting accustomed to saying those words, putting that last digit on the year. It was weird to almost be a quarter century into the 2000s. Y2K was just a little while ago, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Our topic today is governance, democracy, and I'm torn about whether to do an explanation or build up for it or just leap in because I think the topic is relatively self-evident, although Ambrose Bierce in his devil's dictionary describes self-evident as evident only to oneself, which I thought was pretty clever. So a show of hands, would you like me to roll a little bit of rift to get us rolling or would you like me to open the floor? Before we do that, even, I've got another question. Should we talk about past and how horrible things are now or should we just kind of look towards the future and think about what could be? Thank you. My framing is there are abundant critiques of capitalism, democracy, all these other kinds of things going on, like lots of them. Let's try not to go there and say what's broken. This is a search for what's working. This is a search for what systems have worked in healthy ways, who is exploring new paths, how we might, and there's an active question, which is maybe a second degree question, which is how might we either fix the current systems or migrate our way towards something else and strategies for migration paths are interesting, really interesting sort of second-order topics here as well, like, hey, there's a great way to do this except everybody has to speak Esperanto is probably a bad solution because Esperanto sort of had its run and is unlikely to become the world language. Klingon is probably likelier to become a world language than Esperanto. And so it's more universal. Exactly. See, see, it's already got virtues, although it's hard to talk, and I think the wrinkles on your forehead are really hard to deal with when you're trying to do personal grooming. But sort of paths forward, but examples of highly functioning systems in the past are totally open season. So one of the motivators for this call is Pete ran a book club for a while on Graeber and when grows the dawn of everything. And one of the parts of their thesis is that, hey, look, societies all around the world used to explore like crazy with governance methods all over the place. Some of them were pretty functional. Some of them got crushed by huns who showed up over the hills. But the life of life used to be nasty, British and short. Or we went from religions to monarchies to democracy and capitalism is brutally oversimplifying the actual situation for humans on the planet. So I think that's the thing. Pete, thank you for pointing that out. Let me just ask any other questions about the framing. That'll be an easier way for me to sort of prompt inward. Other questions about the framing of this call. Hank, please. Yeah, a lot of my thinking in preparing for this is the question, why is it happening now as opposed to why didn't happen 20 years ago? Or why isn't it happening 20 years from now? Is that an interesting line of discussion for people when you say why is it happening now? Which are you referring? Oh, yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Why is there so many desperate populists and people looking to to degrade democracy? Why is that happening now seemingly all over the world? You could you could argue one could argue there are a variety of cyclical theories. Leon T.F. Waves, Kondrat T.F. Waves, I don't know, whatever. There's a bunch of these that this this is a cycle that just repeats itself. And you can go back and look at eras where it looked like everything was going to pitch into anarchy. World War One starts from that moment, World War Two sort of starts from a moment like that for the US, the US Civil War starts from a moment like that around a very specific issue, which is even still contentious. So but but causes of the moment or a reflection on the moment, very welcome. Just trying to stay away from critiques of the of the system, which are unavoidable. And some arguments we are making may well need to refer to critiques of the system. I just don't want to turn this into a system bashing exercise, but rather a solution hunting exercise. Bill, great. Honest of this. Thanks, Frank. Yeah, I'm mixed minds on this, Jerry. Focusing on on on the pockets of what's working or the seeds of the possible is really powerful, important. In fact, it's been just sort of a core part of my theory of change for as long as I can remember highlighting things that do work because existence is proof of the possible, right? On the other hand, what you're calling critiques, I might call diagnosis. And somebody once said that that prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. And so it's not a matter of system bashing, but, you know, a clear eye discerning look at what is broken and what is causing. You know, to Hank's question, what what brings us to this moment? It's not like the moment is now. There are, you know, there are precedents and actions that have been taken over prior decades that bring us to where we are now. So can we we design the new without real understanding of what's wrong with the old? I don't know. That's I'm torn there. I agree. And I think also the second order questions I was pointing to about how do we transition very definitely require a good understanding of how we got to where we are and what the forces are at play in the in the arena. I think that's really important to to any realistic assessment or advice on on how to move forward. And I'm I'm I'm waiting for Kent Palmer to ask who's we you've done it for me, you know, I've trained you well. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. I didn't even see my lips move, did you? Yeah, yeah, ventriloquy, ventriloquy and zoom, ventriloquy. Now that doesn't work well. Klaus. Yeah, along those same lines of thinking. I think what what we are not so. Able to process is when I was born in 1949, there were 2.4 billion people on the planet, 1963 billion, 2006 billion. Right now we're at what 8.4 billion, something like this. And we're still calling. Yeah, we definitely crossed eight and and we are still calling at something like 80 million per year. Right. So it's simply a resource depletion. It's all over the globe. I mean, you have people in South America who are just bursting at the seams. You have governments that are incompetent and unprepared to to to manage the resources in ways that allows for a somewhat equitable distribution. So you prevent panic and desperation at the base of the economic pyramid. So that's pretty much where we are at in the United States. We have forty four million people on food stamps. We have millions of children who are food insecure. Right. This is creating tensions and anger and frustration in the population at a large scale. And that's what's hitting us now. And we are unable and unwilling to cope with that. The system is simply trying to move on with an S is without taking stock, without passing, to take to take inventory here. So I think that's why we are in this great moment of tension. So two things. Plus one, I may just posted the current world population estimate is at just barely over eight billion, so not eight point four yet. Apparently, estimates are that we cusp a ten billion and then there's a precipitous fall off a cliff. Lines that kind of confuse me and should scare everybody. Although I don't understand how having fewer people on the globe for a while wouldn't be a good thing. But but we are not repopulating in most countries on the planet. But second thing for class and for us, we are now slipping into the grimness of the past and some problems with the trends. I'd love to sort of put us back on the rails of hunting for the highly functional solutions and not go into that conversation because we could spend the whole call on that. You know, just a quick note on that. Peter Zion argues that demographic decline is going to devastate a whole lot of economies in the world over the next ten and twenty three years. Yep. And and there's a lot of things on the ground like climate change and climate refugees, for example, which is going to hit even wealthy people in wealthy places. Ha, but it's going to have all sorts of unpredictable effects and and maybe open up weird and interesting opportunities. I mean, when people are in motion and populations collide, weird things happen. Sometimes they're good things, often maybe mostly it's bad things. But but if we're going to have a lot of people in motion because they have to move, that's going to open up a bunch of possibilities. A thing I have had a couple of conversations around is that's funny. Mac OS is interpreting your hand up as a gesture for the interface. Um, is a could we treat refugees as first class world citizens? Could we give them a portable idea and a way to work around the world? Because often they are prohibited from working, etc. And could they create some kind of governance structure as they move, which would be untethered from geography that might be highly viable? I think that's a very interesting question, because they have more needed than most people to change things, change the rules, do whatever needs to happen. So I think that there's there's ways of assessing the current situation that look really grim and there's ways to say, hey, there's opportunity amid the chaos. Go ahead, Gil. Jerry, can you stop and take a breath? Yes, sorry. I'm excited for the topic. I'm feeling you like way cranked more than usual. So, OK, dialing back coffee, Jerry, have a little more coffee. And and and and haven't even drunk my tea yet. Yeah. And let's come back to what I'm not clear what this call us about. It feels like it's kind of going in every direction at once right now. Oh, sorry. This call is a is a search for positive, functional forms of governance with a little G, which may or may not involve conversations about economic systems certainly would involve decision making as groups, maybe a small scale, maybe a large scale, maybe all over the place because we're just looking for what works and what might replicate and how we might work our way toward a more satisfying, useful, productive way to live together on the planet. And anyone who wants to rephrase that and improve that, please do. So I will go to my big question that I always like to ask, who is we because I think that any governance system that's going to be functional as part of the way that it's governing must include the natural world, the as well as the inorganic world with a low view towards how do we live on a planet that is alive, only life in the universe that we're aware of self organizing and self sustaining as long as we don't screw things up. So to me, that takes it in a very different direction because most of what I hear for governance is how do we get along among ourselves, which usually doesn't include many other humans who are different than us. So I think we need to work. This is my personal opinion. Any good governance system is going to broaden out to include other species and the planet itself. So what does what does governance mean for other species in the planet itself? What a way of putting it is. Do we learn to live in the world? We learn from the living world. What is there to learn there? And there the word governance maybe doesn't operate. It's coordination or something else. Good point. The the poetic way of putting it is how do we ensure that we provide for the children of all species for all time? And one of the answers to how do we do that is some movements that are happening right now to create rights for nature, rights for rivers, to create a spokesperson or a voice for those who don't have a human voice at the table, so at least there's representation and recognition, even if the person representing or people representing aren't aren't fungi or aren't rivers and can't actually experience what those entities do, but there are some of that. In Starhooks, in Starhooks books, the fifth sacred thing, the governing councils of the, you know, the semi utopian Northern California includes those voices in council. So, you know, someone is at the table standing for redwood and standing for salmon and standing for soil and, you know, and take on the responsibility of speaking for that perspective in the governing councils. And is that book, I apologize, I've not read it. Is it fiction or is it a quest for how we should do things or is it a practice that's been held? It's yes, yes, I'll be rough. Really awesome. Yeah, it's a future. It's a speculative fiction and it's it's pretty juicy, I think. Sounds great. Thank you. And Jake put in the chat a piece by Bruce Tan on non spatial government, which is interesting. Jake, do you want to say a little more about it? Yeah, just that there's a I wouldn't call it a literature. At least there's a few things about this idea that that your rights or responsibilities, what you're bound by is not geographically determined.   And how do we coordinate that as we bump into each other and move around the world? So a little some good points there. It's a bit old now, but I think the main principle still holds. Thank you. Maybe sort of two things. One concept I really like some years ago was the idea of nations of choice, where we're born into a geography inevitably.  But some people are like rainbow coalition people or burn burners or whatever. And if you were to ask them what their what their primary affiliation is, they probably go there, then they drop to a nation or city or whatever else. And that's interesting because that's not only portable, but it becomes a sort of a way of living. It's an ethos. It's a way of a way of connecting to other people and finding community. It's a way of finding your carass or whatever that might be. And then second, do you mind reporting a little bit on your journey, Jake? You've done reconstitutional conventions. You have hosted a bunch of people thinking about these issues. How do you see I just love would love a snapshot of where you've come to in this in your quest on the same question. Yeah, I'll do this as quickly as I can. So I studied with a guy named Jim Dater at the University of Hawaii. And I got there because of a book called Quantum Politics, which was a set of thought experiments around what if we redesign our political system based not on Newtonian mechanical paradigm, but on new physics and evolution and relativity and all that. So that was sort of the jumping off point. And then studying with Dater, he has a concept called social inventors or social invention. And that really stuck with me. So that that's kind of the anchor term. Like we I mean, it's obvious for all of us here, but we invented the systems that we live in more or less in natural systems. But we basically live we invented the systems of government that we abide by and the religions and all of that and that we can reinvent them and we should. And so most of my journey is really less about the thing, although there are some there are some solutions. The thing is really about the the mentality and the framework. So we created a toolkit, a kind of a step by step process. If you wanted to reinvent government, what do you what do you need to do? Where do you start? Like, how do you think about things? And that's been, again, another anchor point taking this out and trying to basically, you know, a kind of renaissance of social invention. It's not something that had to happen 200 years ago. I mean, we have had very few kind of revolutionary thinking, totally new paradigms.  You know, there's been things historically, but, you know, I guess I guess the main idea is let's generate some new new things. Let's test them out because, you know, the current ones aren't really working and we don't have a whole lot in our pocket to try out and and take us forward. Thanks, Jake.  And I got to meet him later at that recon con and stuff like that, which is lovely. What are your most hopeful, fruitful examples or have you have you gone there? Like, like when you're trying to explain to people, this is what it could be like. Who do you point to or what do you say is possible? Yeah, that's hard. So it's like the big umbrella. Oh, this is what it, you know, to paint that picture. But things that I think are pointing in the right direction.  So the non representative democracy kind of things, which is which is more fluid or or liquid democracy, where we have a little bit more play rather than just OK, a vote every few years or, you know, disengagement. So can we create new touchpoints that are actually that have some kind of purchase actually in the decision making process that people want to do?  Our friend, Christopher Kovald and former mayor of West Sacramento basically calls it a war of attrition. You know, he's been to those city council meetings.  So those kind of things, I think I'm grab, you know, I gravitate to another quick point that's come out from some of these constitutional convention kind of processes that I have done. The idea of rights rights is a hammer that gets overused and it can, you know, it can do more harm than good sometimes the rights framework. But I love the ideas around. The concepts that have that have cascading potentials, you know, that are sort of modest. So, for example, the right to rest came up during one of our meetings and like, OK, yeah, the right to rest, that makes a lot of sense on its own. But then it like it would have cascading systematic impact if you really put that into practice, like disability rights. You know, we've seen all the corollary benefits to non-disabled people because of that it really sort of cascades out. So those kind of kind of simple modest ones that you would actually have to transform other systems in order to make that possible and create benefits, you know, that move out. The right to childhood was another one that comes to mind as well. So those little, you know, those kind of trim tab nudges that actually have a huge impact. I love those kind of ideas. And then finally, public service. I mean, I think, you know, I wouldn't have liked it when I was 18, but mandatory public service, I think is has a net benefit. And it allows us to actually participate in society. And then if we're going to get some kind of UBI, you know, there's a quid pro quo there. So those are a few just really, really more of directionality than sort of a whole system transformation. Thank you. And there's a whole bunch of different methodologies for bringing citizens together to discuss, debate and so forth. There's deliberative polling. There's citizen juries. There's I collect a whole bunch of them as a deliberative democracy kind of movement umbrella and a bunch of other places to go look for those. And and one of my beliefs about that corner of activity is that communities should pick the one that suits them best. And we should figure out which ones are pretty dysfunctional and kind of take those off the menu if we can. But but when people get together and try to make decisions, that's a good thing in general. And and, you know, again, I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, I love socialism, but I value my evenings. Part of the problem part of the problem with participation is it's time consuming and sometimes innervating because other people are cranky and disagree with you or or whatever. Yeah. Klaus, then John. Yeah, I'm trying to to stretch where how we think into the base, you know, the real economy and how it works and what constraints it has and what relationships it builds. And then you think about people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk and, you know, the basers and people who have more power than the government and an endless capital to support the ideas which are unrestrained, lack inputs, you know, lack consensus building and all of that. And so how does that fit into any political system because they are operating at a global level, you know, they're engaging in developing countries in Africa and East in Southeast Asia and also here in the United States. Bill Gates is now the largest farm owner. We have no idea what he wants to do with this farmland. And he doesn't talk about it when he's evasive, you know, when he's being put on the spot. And he's the biggest investor in Monsanto Bayer. So there is so much stuff that that that confuses the issue. So there is there is a level of top down thinking. And then there's a level of bottom up thinking, you know, and bottom up really has to get into the nitty gritty functions now that constrain the economy and that keep the the many injustices that are that are embedded in our society at work, right, because these there are regulations and laws and policies that seem to be unchangeable, but they're not. I mean, they are just ways of the system to manifest itself. And so it's really for me, it's a systems design issue and an engagement into very specific one at a time issues that need to be rectified. So if you're asking, for example, why are there 44 million people in the United States on food stamps? Now, why do we have millions of children food insecure in the wealthiest country on earth? That's a very direct issue that has that has, first of all, answers why it is it's obvious what could we do about it? That is also obvious, but are you willing to change it? And that goes way outside, but we don't have to change our political system for that. We just have to change our mindset and our value system. So I think it's more an issue of addressing values and worldviews than it is about building political systems which no one is going to accomplish in any reasonable time anyways. Thanks, Haas, I see political systems and belief systems as the forms of sort of concrete mental concrete channels or mazes or conduct conduits in the sense of they tend to move us towards certain goals and certain activities. They reward some things, punish others or they create certain realities that are different from past realities. So this and that to me maybe is the connection between our worldview and how we think and what we what we wind up doing with the institutions we have. But once you once you've poured institutions into social concrete, meaning there's a constitution, we have courts, we have a legal system and all the infrastructure, those things are pretty hard to budge and they have a tremendous effect on what individuals within that particular jurisdiction feel they can do, how they respond, like all those things are limited by the system. And then the more the system is rigid and can conduct people to particular places, the more it will be gamed and taken over. So there's this whole question about how plastic should the system be so that it isn't easily taken over by a single entity, et cetera, et cetera. I think Ken was asking in the chat, shouldn't we be sort of looking for a mix of systems? And I think that's a really interesting question because any single system, which then creates either single metrics or single whatever is likely to be gamed and overtaken in different ways, which is one of the problems that I think any system of governance needs to address in healthy ways, which again begs the question. Hey, what systems of governance address takeover is really well? John, then Doug. OK, thank you. I actually really, really like what's being said here. And even though the conversation is going in many different directions, I think it has to. I think we what we're kind of building by implication here is a kind of taxonomy of our concerns in relation to governance. And something like that will wind up in Jerry's brain. I suspect, you know, moments after we end the call, which will be great. And I would just urge us to continue. But also I think to be productive in a future follow up conversation, it would be good to have that document in front of us, a kind of taxonomy of dimensions of governance. And I'll just throw out a few more. There were there was a discussion about communities and about communities making choice, and then there was discussion that included institutional things and constitutions and so on and so forth. So there's a scale dimension. You know, there's a there's a set of guidelines, process, psychological, cultural, humanistic that begin at the community level.  In this culture, we need some input from a whole bunch of folks who have done a lot of work in indigenous and other communities. Then there's this idea of cutting across existing deep, entrenched issues like the 44 million people of food insecure or like Kevin's work with black entrepreneurs.  You know, saying, OK, look, go to where the people are doing this. And see if you can, you know, put some. Lubricant or something in there so that that doesn't happen. It's a whole line of inquiry to go towards. So, so, you know, what what do communities do if they're what do they do if they're faced with their small and if they're face to face and if they have certain things in common and then as you add people as you go virtual, as you add, you know, then how does that how do the processes have to change? And then you start to roll up from there and you get to different levels of what what might be called governance. So, you know, the lot here it's and and the scope can be discouraging because you can say, well, if if I'm looking for a solution over here, then I'm ignoring that. Well, no, let's just let's just recognize that we're going to have we're going to have a set of guidelines for anybody who wants to go out and do any work in communities. We have a set of guidelines for anybody who wants to do something at the city level, we're going to have guidelines for anybody who wants to work at a cultural interface.  If you if you let yourself open to it that way, it's a very, very rich conversation. It's got many landmines and many places where it can go off the road, but it has an equal or large number of minor successes. And that might be an important point as we're doing this survey, because we're going to we're going to hit so many bumps is to along the way to mark little. OK, here was a little success point. OK, there was a success point that we know about. You know, I've been in successful and unsuccessful citizen assemblies. I've done, you know, different kinds of processes with that. So along the way, along the way, there's a lot of data and the amount of data is expanding. So this I'm encouraged by the conversation so far. I think we've had some great contributions from several people. Like I look forward to this continuing given another constraint is that there's multiple conversations like this going on at the same time. I'm scheduled to be speaking in another one in 30 minutes. So I'm going to have to drop out. But I'll look forward to watching the last half hour on on the replay and looking forward to getting that kind of taxonomy of our concerns to be a visible backup document for our work and in our future discussions. Thank you, John. Thank you. That's awesome. And you triggered, among many other things, my memory of the wise democracy pattern language, which exists in Tom Adley and colleagues basically created and have put in the world. And I've just been in some conversations with Tom recently. So I'm like, wait, how did I not make that connection in my head? Because a piece of what might be necessary as a or a piece of what might be useful in a quest for better governance is pattern languages is ways of sharing wisdom that every community can appropriate and choose from methodologies or whatever else. But but as long as they're sort of adhering to the spirit of the pattern language, that might be the the guiding factor. I don't know. I think that's a really interesting way of thinking about it. Doug, Ben Stewart. OK, a workable democracy requires workable majorities. And I think in the current fragmentation of society, it's not possible to come to workable majorities. There might be workable power centers that can impose themselves, but democracy is too fragmented to be able to do it. We tend to look at democracy as a kind of fetish object, like it's just good under all conditions. And it's not. It's good under some conditions, but not all of them. So we want to be open to other ways of governing. And we're going to need that because if you look, certainly, a climate change, the ability to come to a workable majority around what has to happen with climate is totally out of reach for us right now. Thanks, Doug Stewart. Yeah, so I just have some random thoughts to contribute to the conversation because it's a huge conversation. It's just so big. And it's really interesting in response to an article that somebody just sent me about how the Republicans are likely to game the system in terms of the US election. I pulled out my constitution, my mini constitution, so I'm kind of pouring over that. And and as I look at it, you know, I just think about the audaciousness that the founding fathers of the US government had when they put this thing together, because where I come to listening to this conversation is whatever happens, it's just nothing more than a big ongoing experiment with iterations as we move through it. And in the background of that, in terms of transition, how do we get and step on to a path where we change the mindsets of all the citizens? From the place we are to where we might want to be. You know, is it drugs? I don't I don't know. I was just listening to a podcast the other night about the use of drugs in the in the for therapeutic purposes. And it's very, very interesting how that relates to governments. Anyway, the few thoughts, one, given the challenges we face as a as a planetary system right now, nation state organization seems to be a thing of the past. It was nice when it happened, when population was much smaller. But I don't I don't think it's going to get us any place in the future. What we haven't done is defined politics or governance and in some ways, my my own simplistic definition is a series of conversations by which decisions are made about how a particular group chooses to use its resources. If you think about that on a local level, on a national level, even some things on an international level. But what that brings up to me is the larger the population center, the more the chance that people will operate outside of the system. The reason I think that the US government has functioned for over 200 years is because most players at most times operated within the lines of the system. And Trump is like a classic example of someone who is just choosing not to play by the accepted rules. And so we've got havoc.  A little too small, given the industrial societies we've created, but the idea of pointing into, you know, local places.  And it's all about protecting property. And which brings me to this wonderful book. I don't know, it's a great resource. Some of you may be aware of it, the ecology of law for Jeff Capra and Hugo Maté toward a legal system in tune with nature and community. Beautiful resource. But it's all about how legal systems are mostly about protecting the property in their current configurations and how those might need to be changed. I think that's all I have to say right now. I'm just absorbing the conversation and listening to the thoughts that other people have. And also what I think we need to be mindful of is the inadequacy of words, how people, how we are using words and behind the words that anybody uses. There's a whole huge background of thinking, of imagery, of value set. And boy, we're really trying to shoot an elephant here. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be trying, but I'm saying, you know, the fact that it's slogging and difficult shouldn't deter us in some ways. It's kind of like, yeah, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Jerry. But it really requires a meditative mindset. And one of the principles, one of the numbers of the I Ching is, do you have the patience and the capacity to wait till the mud settles because we have so many different factors to think about?  Yep. One bite at a time. Yep. Yep. And just to blow up the conversation a little more because it is really big. But you brought up some lovely, lovely issues. The issue of ownership, which we take for granted, like American capitalism and democracy are way down the road on ownership. Ownership is like very preeminent. A lot of things are there to protect ownership. Ownership is one of those bugaboo issues that that doesn't need to be the way it is, has been different over time. And we are unwilling to open that jar, right? The notion of language, how, you know, we have noun-centered languages. We've had a couple of conversations in OGM and some of our other related conversations about verb-centric languages. And does that change how you think about what's possible? And does that change our degree of separation from another? Because subject-object verb or subject-for-object is very separating, just bi-linguistically is a thing. And then intent or how we see each other is another piece of it. And some of these things are incredibly easy to shift. Like I'm always looking for the subtle thing that causes a large scale shift in society. And sometimes large shifts happen very quickly that are surprising and they happen for unexpected reasons. But I'm always looking for those things as ways of causing the shifts that we're thinking about. So thanks for provoking all of that, Stuart. Yeah, and the other thing is, as I think it's wonderful to see all the hands raised because, you know, each one of us has a little piece of the puzzle. Each one of us has an answer because of the unique perceptual system that each one of us is. Thank you. So with that, let's go to Gil, Mike, Jamai, Jose, and Mark, Antoine. So Gil first. Yeah. There's something very unusual about this conversation today and its intensity. It feels we've really hit some nerves here in just the speed of response, the activity in the chat. I'm finding it challenging to keep up and stay centered and focused. And that's not a criticism, just an observation of kind of the mood of the room here. Couple of things, let me see if I can keep them straight. Stuart, I think you were raising the question of scale and how do we have democracy or something good at vast scale of humans. And it reminds me, earlier in the conversation, someone was talking about rights and I thought about rights and responsibilities and relationship. And the possibility of relationship is constrained or somehow mediated by scale. We can do things face to face, group to size, that we can't in a group of 100 and that can't do in a group of 100,000 or 100 million. So there's that challenge of how do you have relationship and responsibilities, the context in which the rights are playing out. It ties to the question of fragmentation that Doug was talking about. Like you said, workable democracy requires workable majorities. And Peter Zion posted a video last night that's very pertinent to this, I put this in the chat. And so I won't try to summarize it, but you can take a look at that about sort of what that looks like in America right now. Doug, you and I have gone back and forth on this a number of times, but if the climate crisis requires something other than democracy requires a global authoritarian regime, which I'm not gonna say it doesn't, but the real question for me there is how do we get, if that's it, how does that, how do you envision that regime coming into power? Cause I think it looks much more likely that we get a global authoritarian regime that goes in the wrong direction. And then in the right direction. And we can go back to our good friend, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who developed a strategy and worked on changing mindsets and worked on a lot of the things that we're talking about were coalesced in the Bolshevik Revolution, which was very successful at seizing state power with a small minority of people. And to disastrous consequences. So there's a danger in efficiency, in power and efficiency and unconstrained government. And I find it kind of ironic that we're talking a lot about our ideals of governance in a moment where fascism or at least authoritarianism is a non-zero possibility in this country. Why ironic? That's one of the motivators. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's- Well, ironic because until now, 47 minutes into the conversation, no one's mentioned that. Oh, thank you for putting it in. Yeah. And look, thank you for asking that, Jerry, cause we're sort of living in two dimensions here. You know, we're exploring the vast universe of possibility. Which is how you frame the call. And we have the very real moment of, you know, on-the-ground strategic tactical concerns in this country over the next, what is it now, 10 months. And for people who haven't seen it, the New York Times this morning did a, one of their long profile pieces about Iowa voters and how they are seeing the election. So, you know, a dozen people talked at in some detail. And I found it like altered state of consciousness to read this. What planet are these people living on? Which tells you as much about me as about them, right? But it's an interesting read. It's a reminder of how bubbly our bubble is. Thank you very much. Mike and take your time stepping in if you wish. I normally want to take some time, particularly to process everything that you just gave us. But I want to jump in and share some thoughts as quickly as possible. This is a conversation I've been having for 35 years. When I first started working with Senator Gore, he was the visionary. He was actually talking about how we would change democracy. And he had these powerful metaphors. One of the ones in my field was he would talk about massively parallel processing computers. He was a huge advocate for high performance computing as well as the internet. And in both cases, he would always come back to how these have got to be better systems than what we've got, which are centralized mainframe computers and corporate run networks. The idea that the internet was 100,000 different networks all sharing information, that should be a model for democracy. That should give us more control at the local level, more inclusion of more people. He gave these incredible speeches which nobody listened to because it was Al Gore. And because it was very wonky. He was always making comparisons to technology. But we haven't made any progress. It's actually, we've gone in a worse direction. We haven't reformed the systems and the rules that make our democracy less democratic or makes our democracy less democratic. What we're seeing right now in the house, I live inside the Beltway. And so I'm obsessed with politics and I'm watching my friends go crazy, particularly my friends working in the house and the Senate, the bylaws, the rules are allowing maybe 20 people in the house of representatives to take our country in a really dangerous way because we haven't designed the rules right. But nobody gets involved in the rulemaking. When I'm involved in a startup of an organization, I insist on being on the bylaws committee. Partly because I have a knack for nightmare scenarios. And that is so important here. And yet our bylaws, whether corporate or governmental, are allowing us to get, are creating very bad results. They're allowing power hungry people to get more power for no purpose and allowing the situation right now where we're going to have in New Hampshire a primary election where maybe Trump gets 35% of the vote, maybe 40%. But you know that at least 60 or 65% of the people voting in New Hampshire, Republicans and independents would rather have somebody else. But still the result is not what's best for the most people. It's how can a small group, a minority of people grab power and shape the agenda. So that's bullet one. I'm gonna try very hard to do Twitter length bullets here. Jake did a great job. And I wanna commend one thing he said from the mayor of Sacramento, which is that democracy is a war of attrition. I don't go to a lot of town council meetings. I do go to a lot of United Nations meetings and a lot of technical standards meetings. They pretend to be democracies and in some cases they are, but it's a terribly long drawn out process and the people with the best strongest butts often win the day or the people who can get the most trolls to echo their message. A second point, a third point I wanted to touch on and this is something Stuart said very well. And that is that we're not using the right words. I mean, I would say we should not be talking about the future of democracy because everybody defines it differently, including the North Koreans, right? It was the East Germany was the Democratic Republic of Deutschland. So let's not use that. Let's not say the future of government because what we really need is a broader look at the future of governance. And if Biden could do one thing it would change the whole equation in this election would be to say this is about how we're going to create better systems for governing ourselves whether at the city council, at the state level, in corporations, at the national level and globally. They had this summit of the democracies total failure because it was focused on democratic processes and it wasn't really focused on anything other than saying we are Democrats and democracies and you aren't. So the things we need to do I think are to start focusing on how to change process at the local level first and that would engage so many more people in politics. This whole year is gonna be devoted to national politics and it's gonna be a nightmare because that's not where action needs to happen. So I'm hopeful in the long-term I'm also incredibly hopeful about technology and that's where I'll end my rap here. One of the problems is that we don't have a good way of getting majorities. Most democratic processes scare away all intelligent people who wanna get stuff done. I'm fond of saying that in 1776, 15 of the world's most brilliant political scientists got together and created a country, wrote that little constitution that Stuart was waving. The country was 4 million people. We're almost 100 times larger. We can't find one person of that caliber who wants to be in politics. So let's find a way to develop the local talent. Let's use the technology to get their ideas out there and let's also use some of our tools to make consensus-building an easier process. Stuart mentioned liquid democracy. That was a good experiment, but there's far better. And the most important thing we can do is to fight against these untruths and make sure that we can find a way to counter Nelson's law of list serves. That law is that the person with the least to say has the most time to say it and we'll keep saying it over and over and over again. Reddit and Wikipedia, those are some ways that we can get the truth out and get good ideas to float up. And if we can find a way to change the voting process and allow for online voting at a more granular level, that could also help drive our politics in the right way rather than having to rely on polls and pollsters and pundits to tell us who are what we should do about policy issues. I'm a former college professor. I could talk for another hour and a half on this topic but I will not. Jerry, thank you for organizing it. I'm sorry we couldn't get somebody from Carnegie on this at this time. They're all very busy trying to defend democracy around the world, but I have some other ideas for future sessions and I hope we can do that. Mike, thank you. Thank you for looking for brevity in your download. You have a lot to say on this like Jake, you've been working on this for a really long time forever. I'm motivated to continue these calls. I don't know if that means doing it in OGM and in our regular rhythm or spinning out something that just attracts some people where we can build up a little more momentum and a little bit more build up some assets that other people can refer to. Yes, I'm curating my brain on this and my brain is the obscure little corner of the intertubes that very few people access that is not accessible sort of by its quirky nature but I want to be curating the big fungus with everybody else and I think that if we all nurture the big fungus we all get to feed off it. The reason I call this thing the big fungus, the shared mind of big fungus is that leaf cutter ants feed the big fungus in order to feed off it and I think that's sort of what democracy or what governance rather, sorry, because I totally agree with the critiques of the word democracy, what governance could be like and ought to be like. And we have a long- As you know, I had another call that I used to do at the same time as yours called Net for Neighbors. Net for Neighbors. And the whole idea was to get about 15 of us together talking about how we would get the internet to empower neighborhood consensus building, community building and we're looking at to do a little three- or four-page paper on what problems could technology fix? I mean, we don't know what the answer is but if we get people focused on those problems, maybe we can make some effort, make some progress. Thanks again, I'm sorry to talk so long but this is a passion. Thank you, Mike. I'm sorry that time is as limited as we have it even at 90-minute chunks as you may. Well, I have a couple of topics. One I'll be fairly brief with the other one to dig into a bit. The one that we brief with is a form of governance that we might want to just have in the back of our heads as we think about these kinds of issues and where we might go. And it's a forward-looking concept. And that is it's a non-plabiscite representation or representative democracy and that were stochastic representation, the random selection of representatives. And so it becomes a parallel to how we do juries. It's a parallel to how researchers done with doing random sampling. And the idea here is it's a democracy. It's a representative democracy because every person has potential for a voice but it's not vote-based. And so it moves away from any issues around voting. Something I've read about don't have a strong opinion when we're the other, but it might be worth thinking about as we look ahead at different forms of governance. Which I made this thing called sortition. And there's a few people who are advocates that government positions should be filled by lottery. This is in fact how Greek democracy worked. There were not big votes among all the Greeks. Everybody put every land-owning mail. And I'm gonna get some of the details wrong but every land-owning mail put that little token into the claritarian which then spit out who was gonna hold which ministerial post. And that meant that every one of those citizens excluding everybody else might be running something for a while and that creates situations where you're having competence running things but it also creates situations where payola, payoffs, corruption, all that are hard to do. It doesn't obviate a bureaucracy of civil service professionals who actually run things and make sure there is continuity. It doesn't mean you're randomizing everything every quarter or semester or year but it does create really interesting things. There's also at a more granular level, there's people who are trying to do statistical redistricting to make the districts fairer because gerrymandering has basically made a lot of the house not worried about, general elections are worried only about primaries and being more radical than their neighbors. There's a bunch of other twisty things there but the notion of just drawing lots for some of this is very interesting. So thank you, that's a nice elaboration on it. I wasn't aware about the, that's how the Greeks did it. The larger issue and I think it's something that we want, we want to drill down on a bit and Jake will back me up on this and that is in political science academia there's a term that gets used a lot that I haven't heard here yet and that is legitimacy. The recognition of the legitimacy of the state or legitimacy of the government that is, do the citizens recognize the authority and the power and the rightfulness of the government? Importantly, there's also external legitimacy. Do other governments, other countries recognize the legitimacy of your former government? And that's one of the things that we'll end up running into and I'm listening to people talking about whether we're talking about having individual or small community governments, it's like if your government has rules that are fine for your community but deeply violate my sense of morals, I do not, if I do not recognize the legitimacy of your form of government, what kinds of consequences might we envision? And so the, I think that's actually a really important as we move forward in thinking about where we want governments to go, we have to recognize that it needs to be both legitimate to its members, legitimate to its citizens and sufficiently legitimate to the outside world that it's able to survive. And so I would like to at least have that term in our pockets, the concept of legitimacy as we move ahead in this discussion both today and going forward. Thank you, Jermaine, I'll say it. Thank you, Chair. Both what Jake and Mike said about local and starting small, I wonder if actually we can take a step down below that. We said maybe democracy is not the right word. I wonder if even governance isn't the right word. Governance requires that we think that somebody should govern, that there be some level of something beyond me. My question is, is there, is it the time to question whether it's about collaboration rather than governance? I suspect that we have a worldview that's about constraining our human nature, controlling, manipulating, regulating, because our human nature is just not good. Is this a time to question that worldview? That we're no longer viewing ourselves from this idea that we're imperfect and evil and all these other things, but that we are like every other being a part of nature, we've evolved to be what we are. And that there are ways, if we were to behave in certain ways, there are ways for us to collaborate as long as we recognized our reality as a piece of life. And I think that to me sort of takes it down to the biological level rather than the governance who I have in my life, than the governance question and the issue of changing our current system versus envisioning a system that is based on our view of our current view and understanding of humanity rather than one that's a few hundred, if not a few thousand years old. So that's the question that I pose. We'll say thank you.  I will say that a big piece of my thinking over the last decade plus is around design from trust that basically starts from the notion that we're convinced that most people are not trustworthy.  And the way out is that we should rethink these things and start with an assumption of good intent but not a naive assumption of good intent. That's the model. And so that goes straight to what you were talking about and I'm happy to explain that on a future call but I think there's a lot there about how this all works. And we have a queue and we're closing in on our time.  Although take your time stepping in if you'd like. So much to say but I'll try to focus on one thing. For me it's, I totally believe in the value of collective intelligence processes. And that means getting people to come with the diversity of views on any one problem. And to make that possible at scale, it means we need better ways to aggregate a very large number of diverse opinions. And this is where I think we need new tools for the ability of democracy at scale and working on concept maps, working on ways to identify things. Now I do believe governance has its place. I do believe there is such a thing as self-interest that can be toxic. On the other hand, I think that consensus is not necessarily a great goal. We do need to maintain the diversity of views. So between the balance between really excluding or not excluding but finding ways against, I think it was Kent saying a good system of governance would not allow billionaires to emerge or any form of really predatory behavior because predators exist. And not being too restrictive as was evidenced in, there were also examples of the problems with the Bolshevik revolution and authoritarian forms of governance. But still, I think what's really key for me is making sure that we always ask, why do we want to do this? Why do we want to pass this law? Why do we want to either further or further this behavior or make this other one less likely or less favored? And having the conversation collectively about why? Why do we want this? Why do we believe this? And making that a global conversation for me is the key to better democracy. That's what I wanted to bring in. Thank you, Mark and Tom. Klaus, then Hank. Yeah, I think that the American political system is actually really brilliant in the way it's designed and in the way that it can be self-correcting. It's just screwed up right now because the beliefs that people have come to embrace basically neutralize the community level. To give you a practical example, right now there's a food fight in Washington about how to allocate money, this budget. And this is not some top-level theoretical exercise. I'm focused on farms and agriculture and food. So in the farm bill, that's the second largest bill after the defense bill.  And it's not the Republicans, it's the commodity cores, the Tyson foods, the Cargill, the Nestle, they're trying to get this out because the impact will be a decentralization in the food system by definition. Too complicated to explain right now. So what we're doing is, so I'm working as an advisor with several NGOs, the Sarah Club, the Climate Reality Project, Al Gore's thing, the American Sustainable Business Network, and we are coordinating literally millions. I mean, there are tens of thousands of active volunteers to connect with farmers because farmers vote overwhelmingly Republican against their interests. They're voting for representation that sells them down the river. And we are contacting them to create stories that rev up dissonance to a screaming point, right? Where it hurts and force the system, you know, to add a local level, right? So to make it clear to the farmer in Wisconsin in his community to understand what his representative is voting for in Washington and how that impacts him to build these connections, right? So it is all about at this point in time conveying strategic information and strategically impacting mindsets to a practical down to earth understanding. And in this context, this is, I posted earlier, climate change means different things to different people when you go through spiral dynamics. For example, you realize that you can't talk with a farmer about climate change because climate change in a farmer's mind is God, right? I mean, that's a higher power that controls the climate. So if you talk to a farmer about changing his practices in ways that becomes regenerative to the soil, then talk about soil, talk about water, right? So to change, to strategically change the language, to help bring an understanding to these groups that makes sense to them. You know, this has to be empathic. It has to be trust worthy. You know, it took me literally 80 years to gain the trust of these non-profit organizations to use this corporate dude, can we trust this guy? And so now it's really about assisting the process with strategy.  I mean, who cares? Maybe it's something we can talk about in a year. Right now, the process is running into a direction that is extremely harmful because the entire fossil fuel industry that includes the food system, by the way, because we have a fossil fuel-driven food system is fighting against change. Now it's wanting to defund and slow down any kind of adaptation that would impact their business models. That's where the rubber hits the road, right? So for example, right now I have an opportunity to go out and reach literally thousands of farmers and build a questionnaire and build video documentation and what have you, we're completely unfunded. I mean, you're fighting against the Heritage Foundation and whatever the right-wing think tank who are funded with millions of dollars and we have this ragtag of retirees and volunteers who are trying to keep up here and really working. I mean, a lot of people really working. I'm a working as a retired professor for Michigan State University who is directly linked into Senator Stabenow's office. Right, so we have built connections and a grassroots network, but we can't get funded. Because no one wants to engage, right? And volunteers, it's difficult to reach one. It's easier to create a conversation about philosophy and all the things that we should be thinking about to make this a better world at some point in time. It's very hard to get somebody to say, hey, we need a database analyst to help us with this thing. So just some thoughts, right? The rubber on the road is what I call it. Ah, the rubber on the road. That's so important, Stuart, please. Yeah, just a couple of quick thoughts. I appreciate Jose's thoughts about the need for collaboration as opposed to the emphasis on the individual because that's the change of thinking that's at the core of, I think, any large change. Part of the great challenge, I think, has been that lawyers have been major operatives of the current system in the US and many other places in the world. And they're operating on a win-lose-right-wrong fault-blame mindset. And thinking that legislation can fix stuff. That if you make more rules, it's gonna fix stuff. And I think that the real solutions go completely in the opposite direction. Not to mention the challenges that that brings up. But I just want to appreciate the conversation in terms of the different perspectives and different pieces of wisdom and knowledge and experience that people bring. It's a messy conversation, but I think it's a time to stay in the conversation and not retreat back into our individual lives. It's kind of, as I say that, I think about the 60s and what was going on at that point in time and then how everybody or most people or many people, I'm mindful of Ken's potential criticism here. How many people just retreated back into their traditional lives as opposed to using the power that they had at that moment in time to make change. Thanks, Stuart. Mike, then Hank. And then we're gonna be wrapping up this call and I have a little bit of business before we go and Stuart had a phone we'd wanted to read and I think Ken may have a phone for us. So we're sort of getting near that point. I will be much, much quicker this time, but I would first note that this group which shares a lot of common interests and most of us speak English as our first language and yet we're using words very differently. So if we can do something to clarify what words we're using would come a long way. I'm reminded of what happened when we tried to name the Internet Governance Forum, a bunch of international delegates at the meeting said, well, we don't have a word for governance. They immediately translated to government which has all the wrong connotations of what we were trying to do for the internet. The solution of course was to call it the Internet Governance Forum and the French and the Germans both adopted the word governance to their own language but we need to make very clear what we're talking about. And I also think we do need to go beyond the structures of democracies and elections and legislative procedures. We need to go and look at collaboration and new tools for building discussion as Jose said so well. The last point I wanted to make is that Stewart tried to do something courageous which was to say that he had a definition for governance as the system that allows a group of people to allocate its resources and property. Clearly that is a driving fact in most governance structures but I would go beyond that and I would say we need to also use governance as a way to build a common vision for people and help them understand share and understand the way of the world, the way the world works, the way the world could be. And I think that vision along with the norms that develop around that vision could do so much more than law and regulation. And I fully agree with Stewart's comment that in general laws have more unintended consequences most bad and particularly the way they're being done now. I am a cyber libertarian techno-optimist democrat. Small D. Small D. Is there a good acronym for that yet? There isn't. I announced that 12 years ago at a meeting and someone said and I said it's not even, it's such a minority there isn't even enough people for a Facebook group.  There you go. Mike, would you say it again? Cyber libertarian techno-optimist democrat with a small D. Thank you, sir. So anyway, I really do respect the founding fathers and having lived in the Senate for five years in the White House for four years, I've seen their genius. The problem is that they were focused on distributing power. And so between the introduction of a piece of legislation and the president's desk, there are at least 50 major decision points as it goes through different sub-committees and then goes through committees and then they get together and have to negotiate. And it's a very slow and painful process except when it's bypassed. And the old system, the way it's supposed to work allows for lots of different people to make lots of different input. And when something's clearly wrong you can fix it along the way. What's happening now is we're seeing these two-week deadlines where we're gonna decide how to spend $100 billion or we're gonna fix the 30-year-old immigration policy problems that we've been unable to fix for 30 years. We're gonna do that in the next week. I mean, that's when we get control by fringe elements. That's when the corporate interests get to buy their way in at the last minute. I mean, everything that the founding fathers work to fight against is coming true in capital letters every day. But anyway, thanks again. Thanks for a great conversation. I hope somebody will capture the chat, feed it to an AI algorithm that will then generate 10 op-eds because we've got at least 10 op-eds here in the material that we've viewed out. And feed us all the answers. So I'll find the right solutions. Thanks, Mike. Good job, Jerry. Hank, please. Yeah, thanks. Sorry, I should have raised my hand earlier because what I want to do now is bring this conversation into a larger context and then there's no time to talk about that larger context here. So maybe that could be in a future call. But I certainly agree with most of what I've heard today and I certainly liked the way Klaus said very early in the call, it's a systems design issue. But it's a systems design issue, not just in America. For your information, at least according to the media that I read, there are approximately one fourth of the people on earth live in countries that have elections this year, national elections, local elections. Some of the largest countries are America, India, Turkey, Russia, European Union, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, the UK, South Africa. It's more than two billion people can vote this year. But how are they going to vote? What's shaping their minds and what's shaping their values? There are a lot of different countries that claim to be a democracy. And I think it's not up to me to say, well, this one is a democracy and that one isn't. But certainly all of the countries that I mentioned and more need some resources, resources that help them think about and act on what their values tell them is important in the world. And echoing Mark Antoine, we do need to have a bigger conversation globally. So of course we're running out of time now. So I just want to ask as a, not hopefully not a rhetorical question, how are we going to move on from this conversation? There've been great things said, some captured in the chat, all captured in the recording. But is there something we would like to do to add to the resources that could be used in more than one country? Resources that are relevant to America, but also to the European Union and also to Turkey and India and Pakistan and all the other countries voting this year. So I'll just finish again by citing Klaus, whose systems design issue made a big impression on me. We don't have to reinvent political systems. We just have to deal with values and mindsets and how we can respect mindsets, even if we don't agree with them and how we can help change our own and help other people to change theirs. So that's my contribution, thanks. Hank, I think your contribution is perfectly timed in part because I would love to continue this conversation. And I think that you're simulating us and motivating us to sort of take it to a different and better level, which I completely agree with, I love that. So I'm going to propose, and you can all vote this down by doing downhands, that we take the OGM call in two weeks and I'm not going to continue doing that. I might split this off, but I don't think there's enough momentum to go do a separate call on this, but let's stay on this topic two weeks from now. So we'll alternate our formats as usual, just to give ourselves time to do this. Sounds good, thank you. Let's each of us invite a couple of people that don't look like us into that conversation, please. Pretty please. And also I'm happy to collaborate with anybody who wants to build some durable artifact out of this. Pete, I'm going to try to create a couple of OGM Wiki pages that capture some of this, that maybe anybody could riff off and share those onto the Mattermost channel. If you want to spend a couple neurons on that, I'd love to figure out how to do that. Anybody else who wants to think about that, chat with us on the OGM Town Square Mattermost channel. That's a reasonable place to hold this conversation because that's where I every week post the video, the transcript, the chat and the AI summary of these calls. So that'll be right next to our conversation. Let's sort of build this conversation there. I think that's all I meant to say. So that seems like a plan, Pete. Yeah, it's a great plan. Thanks, Jay. I'm led to wonder if there ends up being a persistent group of people meeting and discussing like this, if it might develop a system of governance of itself and apply it as a way of kind of practicing a little bit of what it preaches and also exploring the practical realities of governance.  A very good question and a question for us as we meet as well. And I think that would require us to have more intensive interactions as a group to require a form of governance to do that. If we're just a casual call, we probably don't need a form of governance, but the minute we step up and try to do something we very likely will, does that make sense? Makes a lot of sense. And the impetus for that suggestion, I like it a lot because I like MetaThings. And I think it's also practical, even though maybe this group doesn't cohesive enough for it to need it.  And my immediate thought was it would be really nice if we made a rule that you couldn't attend unless you brought somebody who didn't look like you. But then that rulemaking needs to be subject to governance, et cetera, et cetera. Yep. And so I'm gonna use the benign dictator role for just a little while or moderators, prerogative or whatever that is, before heading into like larger governance structures, I think. But I agree. Stacy, please. Yes, I was just moved to quickly share what my friend Barry Fort, who's a renowned system analyst, always reminds me. And that rule-based systems lead to chaos and that we need protocols, not rules. Thanks. Stacy, thank you. If you have any resources or whatever, that would be great to share into the group. And I think a couple of us, we know Barry and I can find some of that. Stuart had a poem and I'm hoping Ken has a poem. Let us go out of this meeting with a little poetry in our ears. Yeah, so this poem is kind of a motivational piece in part based upon all the conversation and it happens to be the poem for tomorrow. Two reflective questions. What happened the last time you were called to take bold action? Did you respond or let the moment pass? And the poem is called Responsibility. Now, no better time, destiny calls life to the line. Fearful stomach, full and chest, time for strength, put forth best. Many moments take a chance, grab the next rung, do a new dance. Don't let possibilities pass by or sit on the doorstep, ready to cry. Swallow deeply called by mission, permission not needed for sacred vision. No shrinking from responsibility, there's a new earth to see. Follow sparkles in your brain, follow footsteps out of pain. Trust in heart song, honor plan, your future proud, I am. Reflect what was resistance about, why so nervous without a shout. No worries if you did not possess all the skills and tools for happiness. Thank you. Mr. Homer, floor is yours. Thank you, Stuart. I do a poem, it was written 89 years ago. It was written by somebody who was left out from a lot of governance decisions and it's called Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes. Let America Be America Again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plane seeking a home where he himself is free. America never was America to me. Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed. Let it be that great strong land of love where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme that any man be crushed by one above. It never was America to me.  Equality is in the air we breathe. There's never been equality for me. No freedom in this homeland of the free. Say who you are, what mumbles in the dark and who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am poor white, fooled and pushed apart. I am Negro bearing slavery scars.  I'm the young man full of strength and hope tangled in that ancient endless chain of profit, our grab of again, of grab the land or grab the gold, of grab the ways of satisfying need, of work the men, of take the pay, of owning everything for once and agreed. I am the farmer bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro servant to you all.  The poorest worker bartered through the years, yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream in the old world while still a surf of kings who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true that even yet it's mighty daring sings in every brick and stone in every furrow turned that's made America the land it has become. Oh, I am the man who sailed those early seas in search of what I meant to be my home for I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore and Poland's plain in England's grassy lee and torn from black Africa's strand, I came to build a homeland of the free, the free who said free, not me, surely not me. The millions on relief today, the millions shot down while we strike, the millions who have nothing for our pay, for all the dreams we've dreamed, for all the songs we've sung and all the hopes we've held and all the flags we've hung, the millions who have nothing for our pay except the dream that's almost dead today. Oh, let America be America again, the land that never has been yet and yet must be the land where everyone is free, the land that's mine, the poor man's, Indians, Negroes, me, who made America, who's sweat and blood, who's faith and pain, who's hand at the foundry, who's plow in the rain, must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose, the steal of freedom does not stain from those who live like leeches on people's lives, we must take back our land again. America, oh yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me and yet I swear this oath, America will be out of rack and ruin of our gangster death, the rape and rot of graph, graft the stealth and lies, we the people must redeem the land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, the mountains, the endless plain, all the stretch of these great green states make America again. Thank you for reminding us of that poem and reading it so beautifully. Marc-Antoine proposes in the chat that as a closing statement, we could sort of quote Astros Taylor, democracy doesn't exist, but we'll miss it when it's gone, means to resonate with Langston. Let's maybe let's start the next democracy session in two weeks with reading that Langston Hughes poem again at the start. Love that idea. Thanks, Gil. I wanna thank you all for being here. I was a little excited at the start of this call. Thanks for talking me off that ledge a little bit. And I look forward to two weeks from now and to our discussions online in between. It's a pleasure to be with you here. Thank you, everybody. Thanks. Bye now.


Frontier Town, the saga of the Roaring West. Frontier Town, El Paso, Cheyenne, Calgary, Tombstone. Frontier Town. Here is the adventurous story of the early West, the tamed and the untamed. From the Pekos to Powder River, Dodge City to Poker Flat. These are the towns they fought to live in and lived to fight for. Teaming crucibles of pioneer freedom. Frontier Town. If you're ever in a frontier town called Osreous, with the frontier being what it is, you'll probably get into trouble. And if you do get into trouble, you'll probably be needing a frontier lawyer.  My professional card reads, Chad Remington, attorney at law. But the way things happen on the frontier, I've been giving a lot of thought to changing my card so that it will read Chad Remington, attorney at gun law. Yes, sir, there's trouble aplenty on the frontier. And whatever it is, along with my riding partner, Cherokee O'Bannon, I seem to end up smack dab in the middle of it. Do you think I'm exaggerating? Well, let's take what happened not too far from Osreous at a cavalry post. Fort disaster. Because of a savage outbreak of lawlessness in the territory, which seemed to be the work of a double-dyed, cased-hardened crook known as the Dallas Kid, the army had decided to reopen and reman the old frontier stockade known as Fort Disaster. When the new commandant, Colonel Carpenter, learned that he was being transferred into my neck of the woods, he wrote me a note asking me to drop in on him. But before Cherokee and I could get there, and even before the Colonel and his command reached Fort Disaster, the Dallas Kid swooped down with all the fury of a hurricane. Yes, Sergeant? We're outnumbered, sir, at least one to one. Good, Sergeant. Tell my son I want to see him at once. Lieutenant Carpenter, sir, I'll give him the Colonel's instructions immediately. And so it was that when Cherokee and I arrived at Fort Disaster, Colonel Carpenter was dead. And, Larry, the Colonel's lieutenant son was in temporary command. That's about all there is to it, Chad. Being on a route march, we were scarcely prepared for anything like that, and I... well, they caught us napping, I guess. Well, all I can say, Lieutenant, is your father's death is a great loss to the army and to the whole country. And imagine how I feel. I spent the last six months trying to be transferred to my father's command. And then, after only two days with him, this had to happen. Well, Larry, I'd cut off my right arm to bring your dad back if it would do any good. I don't suppose he ever told you. But a few years ago, he got himself badly shot up saving my life. No. No, he never did. But you know, Dad, he never talked very much. But since we can't bring him back, I can certainly help you with your mission out here. Well, that's the least we can do. Are you sure, Larry, that it was the Dallas kid who attacked you? As sure as I can be. They weren't Indians or other troops. Besides, who else would want to keep the cavalry out of here? Yes, I suppose you're right. Have you any information at all on this Dallas kid? Well, if we had, do you think I'd be sitting around here? If we could find his hideout, we'd blast him out with gatling guns. All I know is that he must have more spies than the entire army. Every time the U.S. Marshal tries to trap him one place, the Dallas kid pulls a robbery or raid the opposite end of the state. I'm afraid, Larry, that the only thing to do with a critter like that is is to trick him into pulling a prearranged raid. Prearranged raid? What Chad means is for you to bait your own trap. Force his hand and be laying for him. That's a great theory. But how are you going to force his hand when you don't know where he is? I've never yet seen a wolf pack that didn't come down for water or a pack of gun totes that didn't like to drink. Now, Chad, that isn't a nice thing to say. Drinking is a very sociable habit. And now that they think about it, I'm starting to feel quite sociable. Well, I'm afraid that I don't quite see what you're talking about. In a nutshell, having successfully raided you, I think the Dallas kid and his gang are probably celebrating in some nearby town. Maybe to Rango or Shiprock or... a better possibility is that little new town deadfall. But even with my troops, we can't surround the whole town. Of course not. But not being known in these parts, there's no reason I can't cruise around these towns until I find the Dallas kid. Chad Remington, have you the gall to stand there and say you think you can capture the Dallas kid single-handed? Oh, I certainly haven't, Cherokee. But I could let him sniff the bait for the trap I have in mind. Trap? What trap? The trap I was just talking about. Now, let's just suppose that I get him to thinking that your troops are going to escort a half-million-dollar gold shipment coming through from Nevada. Don't you think that he'd at least make a stab at trying to get his hands on that much money? Oh, Chad, that's just too much risk for one man to take. There was a lot of risk your father took the day he saved my life. What about this trumped-up gold shipment? How will I know? Tell me something. What am I supposed to do? Lieutenant, you make all arrangements to escort a decoy wagon train through Wolf Creek Pass the day after tomorrow. And I'll see that Cherokee gets back to you with some sort of definite word before then. But, but, Chad... Oh, there are no ifs ands or buts about this, Larry. You've got your job to do and we've got ours. And before we waste any more time arguing, Cherokee and I are hitting the trail for deadfall. The night was half gone by the time we reached deadfall. And being a new town of only 14 buildings, 11 of which were saloons, it was another few hours before I could pull Cherokee away from the various bars as we looked in desperation for someone who might seem to be the Dallas kid. As Cherokee and I made our rounds, the kid himself was enjoying life according to his lights in the barbed-tailed straight bar. How about it, Biller? Another bottle of champagne? Sure. I got lots of time and you got lots of money. You'd like lots of money for yourself, wouldn't you? I ain't working here just for the excitement. Now don't turn around. Just look in the mirror. See that jasper with the gray hair sitting behind us at that third table drinking a beer? Yeah. That's Matt Fitzgerald. He rides shotgun for Wells Fargo. You're all right, Biller. You know what goes on. In this business, a girl's got to. I learned a long time ago to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut. Meaning what? Oh, for example, I can tell you where you come from from the clothes you're wearing, but I ain't going around telling anybody. Where do I come from? Texas. What part of Texas? Northeast Texas. Couldn't call the town, could you? That's easy. Dallas. You all right, Biller. All right. Just as long as you keep your mouth shut. What about Matt Fitzgerald, Dallas? I notice he's been watching you.  Sit with him. What for? For money. If you happen to let me know when Wells Fargo is hauling money, you get 10%. Don't go away. I'll be back. Right back. It was luck, but as Cherokee and I came into the barb tail straight and stood looking around, Bella attracted our attention. So did the man she was talking to at the bar. When I saw her leave the bar and head for a table, I had a feeling I might find something out. So I turned to Cherokee and... Wait for me outside. But do I have a chair? Outside Cherokee and fast, I'm going over and sit at that empty table right behind the one the girls sitting down at. Now go on. I sat at the table, ordered a drink and maneuvered my chair around to where I could just barely hear what was being said at the table behind me. Are you sure, Matt? I'd love to see you after on true work, but tonight I'm too tired. What do you mean you're too tired? Come on, Bella. What do you say? Some other night, Matt. Any other night. You just name it. Tomorrow? Well, I'd like to make it tomorrow, but I can't possibly make it tomorrow. See, I'm working. Working? You mean you got to ride shotgun again for Wells Fargo? I'm riding shotgun again for Wells Fargo.  What do you mean? I'm your sick. Just don't show up. Well, I should like to, Bella, but I can't tell him I'm going to be sick tomorrow because tomorrow's a little bit too important. You see, they're all in silver for one of the minds of Montrose. Oh? Oh, what's that? After you get back, come on in. After I get back, I will come with you. I'll be here. Bella, how about... I'll be here, Matt. Just waiting for you. If you get back. It was luck, all right, but now that I had the same information the Dallas kid was getting, I paid for my drink, hustled outside, and held a little power with Cherokee. But how are the name of Billy Blue Blazers? Do you know that's the Dallas kid who was at the bar? I don't, Cherokee, for sure, but I am sure that Maverick was up to no good and just wanted the information about the Wells Fargo shipment. So? So you and I are getting that silver off the Wells Fargo wagon before they do, and you're taking it to the lieutenant over at Fort Disaster. I'm taking it. What's going to happen to you?   We'll return to the second act of Fort Disaster, our exciting Frontier Town adventure in just a few moments. Oh, Frontier Town! Did I hear you mutter something about fool luck? Well, if you did, you're right both ways from the middle. I was a fool, and we certainly played in luck. But the trail was too hot and too new to give up that easily. So Cherokee and I saturated down and taking our lives in our hands, waved the express wagon to a stop. Sorry to hold you up this way, but... Hey, if you're really planning on holding us up, this year, Rifle has a little habit of talking, and it's liable to talk right in your face. All I want is to have you turn that silver you carry on over to us. What? And if you don't give it to us, the Dallas Kid is waiting for you just up ahead. Dallas Kid? Hey, what are you talking about anyhow? It isn't what I'm talking about, Matt. It's what you talked about last night in the barbed-hill straight bar to a young so-called lady by the name of Bella. Bella, wait just a minute. What do you know about Bella? Why, you unmitigated imbecile? Didn't you realize she was pumping you to find out about this shipment? Now, if you're looking for credentials, we got plenty of them. What I want to do is to have my partner here take the strongbox with the silver in it over to Fort Disaster for safe keeping for a while. Let your partner take the strongbox? Yeah. Just a minute. What's the idea of that? Well, I want to see if we can't make the Dallas Kid think I'm a bigger crook than he is. Well, sir, I was lucky again. Lucky that Matt Fitzgerald believed me. So loading the box of silver aboard Cherokee's horse and waiting until he was on his way, Matt and I staged the dog-gondas running gunfight anyone ever saw, heading right for the spot where the Dallas Kid, or at least Bella's bar companion, lay in the way. All right, boys. Grant those bridles and pull that wagon to a stop. Keep them covered, boys. Now you, who are you? What are you doing here? Say, I don't know who you are, but this long-legged lobo has been chasing me for the last two miles trying to stick up my wagon. It's a lucky thing that you, fellas, came along. I'll say it is. I'd have had that silver and been back up in the hills by this time. Yeah? Well, we'll save you the trouble, mister. All right, you, we're taking the silver. Silver? What silver are you talking about? Don't be so smart. The silver you were hauling down from Montrose. The silver, right? Ho-ho! So that's what all the Recepting Committee was about, eh? Well, let me tell you something, friend. The joke's on you. When I got up to Montrose, I found they shipped the silver out yesterday by muleback. Please lie in. Come on, let's search the wagon. Just a minute. If you know what's good for you, you'll keep out of this. But I tell you...  Mike, pull that toplan off. See what he's got in the back of the wagon. Hey, I'm telling you, there's nothing there. Never mind telling. Well, Mike? I'm sure nothing in the wagon is plum-empty. What? See? Where to tell you? Well, can I go now? Yeah, yeah, go on. Wait a minute, mister, and I'll ride along with you. Oh, no you don't. You're coming with us, my friend. You and me, we're gonna have a little talk. You didn't think you were the only one who could find out about that silver shipment, did you? That's not answering my question. I asked you, how come you figured you could take that Wells Fargo wagon alone? I never found the game yet where I needed someone to back my play. Pretty salty, ain't you? No. Just figure I got a good head on my shoulders.  I don't think you could. Oh, no? No. You need a gun for that? Only you haven't got a gun anymore. I've got it. Mister, you are fast. That's the first time anybody's got my gun out of my holster before I could reach it. You and me, we ought to be playing on the same team. I don't know. Who are you? Who are you? Montana's the name I go by if that means anything to you. I've heard a lot of gents call Montana. Yeah. So have the sheriffs and marshals in about nine states.  The handle's Dallas. The Dallas kid? The handle's Dallas. Okay, Dallas. Maybe I could use you at that. You use me? That's right. Because the job that really brought me down this neck of the woods may be too big even for me. Job? Government money. A half a million in gold. A half a million? What's the deal? 50 to me, 50 to you and your boys. Fair enough. Where is the dinero? It's coming. Coming in army wagons. But don't let that worry you. I know when and where and I got the whole thing figured out. All you got to do is... Hey, Dallas, I got something here for you. Come on, buy your blasphemies. Bushwhacker, let me go. Who's this mic? When we split us right back in town and we came across this lemux, what do you think he was totin' at Silver Box off the Wells Fargo wagon? What? Why you... Let me handle this, Dallas. Listen, you red-nosed, pasty-lookin' scarecrow. You got about three seconds to start talkin'. We want to know who you are and if you work for Wells Fargo. I said I wanted an answer. Belly blue blazers, what sort of yellow spine creature are you takin' advantage of an old man?  Take it easy, Montana. He's so scared now he can hardly talk. He won't be able to talk when I get through with him. Now, where did you get that silver? The mine hired me. I was supposed to pack it down because they were afraid the wagon would be held up. I think you're lyin'. I don't think he's lyin'. Remember what the shotgun guard said? Yeah, and I think he was lyin' too. Well, it'll be the last lie. This one'll tell because I'm gonna... Hey, you got it, Montana. You look old. I don't want any gunplayin' here. You'll only bring the whole town runnin'. And then where'd we be with... Well, you know what I'm talkin' about. Well... Well, okay. I still think he's lyin', though. Before he makes any more trouble for us, have some of your boys tie him up. Tie him up? What for? Because I got an idea how we can use this crummy old saddle bomb up at Wolf Creek Pass. When the government tries to get their gold shipment through. Now, for the life of me, I can't tell you why I did what I did when poor Cherokee showed up, except that I instinctively realized if I didn't do something to make Dallas feel we were strangers, he might put two and two together and get me.  But when it came to saving both our lives, I figured that a few skin knuckles or a bruise on Cherokee's cheek was at least a reasonable price to pay. Although I didn't know it then, Cherokee being caught was only half of my pat little plan, which had gone haywire. The other thing that happened will take it from me nobody could have anticipated. Having told the Dallas Kid about the hypothetical gold shipment coming through Wolf Creek Pass, I couldn't back out now, even though I knew Cherokee hadn't gotten through to give Lieutenant Carpenter the message. But while I was debating what I'd tell Dallas when the wagons didn't show up, out at Fort Disaster, the lieutenant got a surprise of his own. Sergeant, this just doesn't make sense. See, Chad promised that Cherokee would bring word back to us if we were supposed to drive those decoy wagons through Wolf Creek Pass. I know that, Lieutenant, but the courier just brought in this message and, as you can see, it's official, signed by the adjutant himself and is shipping $100,000 in gold for payroll purposes. Oh, well, while we're out trying to protect the actual wagon train, what happens if Chad does succeed in getting the Dallas Kid and his gang up into Wolf Creek Pass? I'm sure I don't know, Lieutenant, but this is an order signed by the adjutant to the commanding general of the area. And if begging the lieutenant's pardon, I know that, old curmudgeon. Well, you'd better be having the bugler blow boots and saddles and getting the troops ready to ride. Yes, of all things, an actual gold shipment going through Wolf Creek Pass, and I was leading the Dallas Kid there to get it. Now, fortunately, I knew nothing about it and walked into my own trap as innocent as the newborn babe. The only thing I did do was to make sure that Cherokee was brought with us. And it wasn't because of any feeling I had that he might come in handy. All right, boys, button up your lips and listen to what Montana has to say. All right, it's all very simple. Now, there are 33 of us, and we're splitting up and lining both sides of the pass. You've got to spread out about 20 yards apart. Understand? Now, Dallas and I are staying right here where we can see both ends of this pass together. When we figure that we got them hemmed in, we'll throw the first shot from here. That'll be the signal. And remember, there's to be no shooting until the first shot from up here. Now, go on. Get to your places. I got a hander to you, Montana. This is about as perfect an ambush as I've ever seen. What are you going to do with this, Maverick? You made us bring along.  I have. Now, to start with, I'm going untie him. Untie him? You got bats in your belfry? Sure. I'm local. Completely batty. Now, don't you see if we untie him, and then when the shooting starts, we put a slug through him and leave him down there, and they find him. They'll figure that not only did he swipe the Montrose Silver shipment, but also was the jasper behind this deal. Sangy. That's really thinking. Surely, knowing who he is, they'll figure that he was behind the whole thing. And when they bury him, they'll think they got the man they've been looking for. Yeah. Hold your hands out while I cut those ropes. Chad, how are we ever going to get out of this? I don't know, Cherokee, but... Hey, Montana, here come the army wagons now. Army wagons? Billy Blue blazes, Chad. He's right. See, down there. Three U.S. army wagons. It's the real thing. What blazes are you two talking about? We were just... Cherokee, quick. Let me out of here. Chad, I got his gun.  If those men hear it, they'll think it's a signal to attack him. All right. I got his gun, Chad. I found his jaw. Not him, Chad, but how in the name of my holy ant are we going to save that government wagon train? Well, we might as well die trying. Chad, Chad, maybe we're dead now. I think I'm hearing newsy. Newsy? You birdbrain clown you? That music is a bugle, a cavalry bugle. I don't know how it happened, Cherokee, but here comes Lieutenant Carpenter and all of his troops. Cavalry? Well, Chad, do you realize this changes the entire course of history? Course of history. What do you mean? Aren't any books I have read? It's not supposed to be the cavalry. It's always the Marines who come to the rescue. Well, come on, Cherokee. We'll change the course of history right back to its normal channels ourselves. We're going to ride down there and get in on that flight. And you can be General Cherokee O'Bannon of the Horse Marine. Frontier Town starring Reed Hadley and featuring Wade Crosby is a Brucell's production, supervised and directed by Paul Franklin. Music written and played by Ivan Dittmars. Be sure to be with us again same time next week for another fine action adventure story with your favorite young western star, Reed Hadley. And now this is Bill Foreman telling you that Frontier Town comes to you from Hollywood.


Hi, I'm Mandy Johanicki and I'm running for an at-large seat on Amherst's new town council. I've lived in Amherst with my family for seven years and have enjoyed every minute of it. We live in a great town, with terrific places to shop, eat, play, and visit. Yet Amherst faces some big challenges in the next three years and beyond. I'm running so that I can be a part of finding solutions. Experience matters when tackling the town's challenges. My service in town government and the community has prepared me for this. I was vice chair of the Charter Commission, sat for seven years on town meeting, served on the committee that proposed and implemented electronic voting in town meeting, and currently serve as the renter representative to the Rental Biola Implementation Group, which looks at ways to improve the rental registration program. I am a court-appointed special advocate at Friends of Children in Hadley, putting my legal training to good use helping children. I was president of the Pioneer Valley Symphony for three years and have served on the board for six. In all of these positions, I have worked collaboratively with others to find the right solutions to the issues at hand. So what do I want to accomplish on a town council? I want Amherst's government to actively engage all residents, including those who have traditionally been left out, as we work towards solutions to the challenges facing Amherst. While on the Charter Commission, I learned that there are many voices in Amherst that are not regularly heard in town affairs. And as vice chair, I worked hard to listen to all opinions, including by organizing and attending over 16 public forums. We held these sessions at various locations in town, and at a variety of times, in order to engage as many residents as possible. We even had booths at the downtown block party and the first day of school celebrations. If elected to the town council, I will continue these efforts to ensure that every resident has a voice. This will require partnerships with apartment complexes, nonprofits, and businesses in order to host meetings and locations, and at times that are more likely to draw non-traditional participants into our government. It will also require regular requests to town officials, boards, and committees to ensure that they reach beyond the traditional times and places to hold meetings. We need to go where the people are instead of making the residents come to us. I'll make sure that happens. My next priority will be dealing with Amherst's aging infrastructure. Our library system, especially the Jones, is a gem for both our own residents and those in surrounding communities. We need to make sure that the programming and facilities are updated for how children, families, adults, and seniors use the libraries today and in the future. Replacement of two of our elementary schools is on the horizon. Our students deserve updated, safe, and healthy buildings that promote learning instead of hinder it. We need a new fire station south of town, one that's been discussed for over 50 years, and our DPW building is falling down. The voices of Amherst's voters matter on these projects, projects that represent a huge investment. They require thoughtful and fiscally responsible legislators scrutinizing them. And if a capital project is approved by the voters at the ballot box, then I will find a responsible way to fund it. Even if I personally don't support the project. For projects that do not need voter approval to move ahead, I will work my best and hard to determine whether Amherst residents support it. I'll use my judgment on the necessity of the project and the cost versus the benefit realized, all while asking the team proposing it hard questions. I want to see Amherst thrive in all aspects of government, by involving more residents in decisions, by improving our infrastructure, and through responsible, coherent, and deliberate planning that strives to maintain the character of our town. The First Town Council will also set important operational precedents. My focus on open, transparent, and inclusive decision making will result in processes that give a voice to Amherst's residents. My experience, leadership, and collaborative efforts both in government and the community will be valuable to the First Council. If elected, I will jump right in and represent Amherst well. So please vote for me, Mandy Johanicki, on September 4th and November 6th, for At-Large Town Councilor. Thank you.