Communities Guiding Principles

Developing Guiding Principles for Community Care

For example, for the future "intentional community" in Lika ( User:Becha/Lika), or in the hackerspaces / hackers conferences

Input: from Hacking Feminism Meetup #7 https://wiki.laglab.org/Hacking_Feminism // https://wiki.laglab.org/Hacking_Feminism#Seventh_meetup

Examples of Guiding Principles

UnConferences

- http://unconference.net/facilitating-consensus-process/

- http://unconference.net/methods/

Burning Man principles

http://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/

Radical Inclusion: Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.

Gifting: Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.

Decommodification: In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

Radical Self-reliance: Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.

Radical Self-expression: Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Communal Effort: Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.

Civic Responsibility: We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.

Leaving No Trace: Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.

Participation: Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.

Immediacy: Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.

Permaculture principles

https://permacultureprinciples.com

1. Observe and Interact 2. Catch and Store Energy 3. Obtain a Yield 4. Apply Self-regulation and Accept Feedback 5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services 6. Produce no Waste 7. Design from Patterns to Details 8. Integrate rather than Segregate 9. Use Small and Slow Solutions 10. Use and Value Diversity 11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal 12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change

Guiding Principles of Deep Green Resistance

http://deepgreenresistance.org/en/who-we-are/guiding-principles-of-deep-green-resistance

Political Action: DGR groups will only engage in aboveground, nonviolent activities. These can include legal demonstrations as well as civil disobedience.

Solidarity: Non-indigenous members of DGR remember that we are living on stolen land in the midst of an ongoing genocide. The task of the non-indigenous is to build solidarity with indigenous people in defending the land, preserving traditional cultures, and protecting sacred ceremonies from exploitation.

Justice: We are enmeshed in overlapping systems of sadistic power built on stolen wealth, white privilege, misogyny, and human supremacism. As individuals, it is our responsibility to acknowledge those systems, overcome our entitlement, and make alliances with the dispossessed. Collectively, it is our task to bring those systems down.

Liberty: DGR groups have a zero-tolerance policy for abuse of anyone, human or nonhuman. Physical integrity and emotional safety are basic human rights that DGR is sworn to defend. DGR will banish any members who rape, batter, or abuse any living creature. Masculinity, with its militarized psychology and its violation imperative, has to be abandoned personally and dismantled globally.

Character: DGR is a serious undertaking that requires loyalty, commitment, integrity, and courage. Members are expected to treat everyone with respect.

Security: All DGR members are required to abide by principles of security culture and to address breaches directly. Both lax security and paranoia are dangerous to our organization. All non-political illegal activity puts everyone at risk and is inappropriate for members. DGR groups are required to educate new members on security culture.

Hacker’s Ethics

https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/Hackers_tribes#On_Ethics

Rules

Examples of Code of Conduct

http://confcodeofconduct.com/

https://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/wiki/29C3_Anti-Harassment_Policy

http://www.ietf.org//iesg/statement/ietf-anti-harassment-policy.html

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-farrresnickel-harassment/

<https://www.arin.net/about_us/corp_docs/standardsofbehavior.html>

https://www.nanog.org/governance/attendance

ccc https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2016/a-reminder-to-be-excellent-to-each-other // https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2005/unvereinbarkeitserklaerung

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule

Beyond CoC

https://www.palantir.net/blog/beyond-being-excellent-care-and-feeding-code-conduct

http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2014/04/10/so-youve-got-yourself-a-policy-now-what/

https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/a-code-of-conduct-is-not-enough

https://holgerkrekel.net/2015/04/09/going-beyond-codes-of-conduct/

https://modelviewculture.com/news/why-the-linux-code-of-conflict-is-broken

Problems: Harassment and other abuse

- https://wiki.techinc.nl/index.php/Ladies_Night#Sexism_and_harassment

https://github.com/cjdelisle/JakeGate

- http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kameron-hurley/female-rage-doesnt-exist-in-a-vacuum_b_10227368.html

- https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/

- http://www.theferrett.com/ferrettworks/2016/05/how-we-help-breed-charming-sociopaths-or-the-con-bayashi-maru/

- https://jacobian.org/writing/assholes/

- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

- https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/our-right-to-communicate/

- https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/concentric-groups-knowledge-bridges-and-epistemic-communities-2/

- https://medium.com/@sw/iwasrapedtoo-799202940601#.1yo3d4rn1

- https://aspirationtech.org/blog/willow/social-disaster-cycle

- https://medium.com/@flexlibris/theres-really-no-such-thing-as-the-voiceless-92b3fa45134d#.s7d5axj36

- Online harassment via "hate speech" https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/38231/en/%E2%80%98hate-speech%E2%80%99-explained:-a-toolkit // https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/38231/Hate_speech_report-ID-files--final.pdf

- https://github.com/cjdelisle/JakeGate

Activities

Building Consensus

Hackers_tribes#Consensus

Giving or not giving consent

“FOAAS (Fuck Off As A Service) provides a modern, RESTful, scalable solution to the common problem of telling people to fuck off.” https://foaas.com/

Resolving Conflicts

• NVC

• http://empathetictechnicalleader.com // https://leanpub.com/littleguide/read

Dealing with harassment

Short-term tips against harassment and abuse

For attackers

• Be excellent to each other

• NO MEANS NO

• DO NOT RAPE ANYONE

For victims

• If you feel attacked, defend yourself

• Report "incidents" to "anti-abuse" team (CERT, ombudsman)

• Educate yourself about your rights & responsibilities

For community

• Make the events safe
  • Exclude the attackers from all community activities as a precondition for healing [[1]]
  • Remove the abusers from the communities [[2]]
• Believe the victims, take their stories seriously and support them in their healing
• Make a support group for the attacker, AFTER he has been held accountable for what he’s done.

Long-term strategies

Education

- encourage talks about ethics and social responsibility at the (hackers) conferences

- invite teachers of Non-Violent Communication to give workshops

- invite workshops & talks about consent awareness (to teach and learn)

e.g. https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-1606/msg00025.html

• https://norasamaran.com/2017/01/05/resources-for-dealing-with-conflict-and-harm/

Intervention 

- introduce trained abuse-mediators into CERT teams

- create an "ombudsman" team to enable anonymous reporting of incidents

- build abuse prevention and response mechanisms, which includes systems of support and accountability

Fostering

- continue to foster an environment where they feel safe to report their stories of abuse.

- build mechanisms for truth and reconciliation as a community

e.g https://medium.com/@flexlibris/theres-really-no-such-thing-as-the-voiceless-92b3fa45134d#.s7d5axj36

e.g. https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/the-forest-for-the-trees.html

• http://tiahouse.ca/nikki-reimer-hold-fucking-communities-accountable/

No More Rock Stars

https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/21/no-more-rock-stars/#prevent

• Have explicit rules for conduct and enforce them for everyone
• Start with the assumption that harassment reports are true and investigate them thoroughly
• Make it easy for victims to find and coordinate with each other
• Call people out for monopolizing attention and credit
• Insist on building a “deep bench” of talent at every level of your organisation
• Flatten the organizational hierarchy as much as possible
• Build in checks for “failing up”
• Enforce strict policies around sexual or romantic relationships within power structures
• Avoid organizations becoming too central to people’s lives
• Distribute the “keys to the kingdom”
• Don’t create environments that make boundary violations more likely
• Putting this to work in your community

NO HEROES!!! Johannes Grenzfurthner on HOPE-X https://livestream.com/internetsociety2/hopex2/videos/57134850

Healing

- https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/cultivating-empathy-for-the-next-crisis-8c7c9e909b6f#.ji5qjao12

- https://graceformyheart.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/narcissistic-apologies/

Nipping the Baobabs

Quotes from Little Prince

Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them. A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces…

“You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rose-bushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth…”

Children, I say plainly, “watch out for the baobabs!”

"Before they grow so big, the baobabs start out by being little."

"It is a question of discipline," the little prince said to me later on. "When you've finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care. You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rosebushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth. It is very tedious work," the little prince added, "but very easy."

http://sathyu-sathyu.blogspot.nl/2014/03/the-baobabs-and-little-prince.html

Dealing with Rock-Star culture

See also: https://hypatia.ca/2016/06/21/no-more-rock-stars/