I wanted to share with you the first review of “Another World IS Possible” by Alternative Culture Magazine.
Here it is in full:
Another World is Possible: Freedom, Economic Truth, and Creating a Society of Humanness-Colby Hopkins
Colby Hopkins brings a wealth of scholarship and practical experience from the front lines of the Occupy movement to bear on the central political, social and economic issues of our time. In lucid, commonsense language he demystifies fundamental concepts such as freedom and democracy – digging beneath the polarized rhetoric of conventional politics to the roots of the Western tradition. Then he brings the discussion home to what is needed today to reimagine and remake politics, to be responsive to human needs and rights.
The fundamental premise is that underlying our supposed disagreements is an unrecognized common ground, basic needs and rights that with an opportunity for civil discussion, we can all agree on. Well, at least, say, the 99% of us who are not currently benefiting from dominance over the political, economic and natural landscape. The Occupy movement has demonstrated a twenty-first century evolution and maturing of models of nonviolent resistance and communication that give practical hope for such a revisioning of society.
Hopkins is both humble and thorough in exploring and explaining the principles and techniques of group facilitation and consensus decision-making. Such tools are essential for making meaningful dialogue possible on a group level, as we move up the scale from local agreement to larger-scale political entities. The hope, and indeed the imperative, is that in our time the organization of social problem-solving depends not upon empty and co-opted representation, but upon true, living democracy, thriving In grassroots communities.