[Peace-discuss] Facilitating

[C. G. Estabrook]

     ...facilis descensus Averno --Aeneid 6.126, could 
     be translated as “it's Hell to be a facilitator”

     “We started off trying to set up a small anarchist
     community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.”  
     --Alan Bennett, playwright

Taking up the facilitator's task for the first time at an
AWARE meeting, I thought that a decent respect for the
opinions of humankind, AWARE division, requires that I should
declare how I understand the task, especially after our
discussion of it at the last meeting.  I begin with two
remarks by Bob Illyes at that meeting:

	[1] “The guidelines are guidelines, not rules.” I agree. 
Given the fluid nature of AWARE's membership and attendance,
it obviously the sense of the meeting (as our Quaker friends
say) that should shape any particular meeting -– not a
supposedly pre-established rule.

	[2] “The meeting is a business meeting, not a debate.”  I
disagree.  The business of AWARE can in fact be handled quite
expeditiously, as we've seen in the past.  The meeting is at
least as much a place for the group to consider how (and why)
to exert an anti-war, anti-racism effort, both in general and
particular (strategically and tactically).  There's no manual
for that, so a prime goal of the meeting is to encourage
“unspoken thoughts ... be spoken,” as one member has put it;
we should avoid discouraging the expression of views by the
imposition of rules of order. 

Discussion is controlled in a meeting with a strong
facilitator; a meeting with a weak facilitator is controlled
by the discussion.  I intend to be a weak facilitator, and to
that end I'll generally recognize speakers in the order that
they present themselves, but I'll privilege the following claims:

	*Reply.  Anyone claiming a right of reply to a comment s/he
takes as referring more or less directly to him/herself will
be recognized immediately.

	*Objection.  The US Congress employs the phrase, “Without
objection, so ordered” -- primarily as a convenience to the
recorder.  It means something different from what it appears
to mean.  “If there is no objection forthcoming, then the
matter will be arranged that way,” would perhaps be an
adequate translation of that archaic phrase.  If there is an
objection, then of course discussion of the objection is in order.

	*Working Group.  At any point a member may propose the
formation of a working group (of which it is assumed s/he will
be a member).  A show of hands of those willing to participate
in that WG will be asked, and the names noted by the
note-taker.  AWARE has always been a committee of committees,
but the formation of a WG should not in itself preclude
further discussion in the meeting of that WG's remit. 

Regards, CGE