How can our movement effectively challenge the deeply ingrained divisions, false beliefs, and reverence for authority that sustain these destructive cycles, without falling into the trap of replicating the same hierarchies or divisions ourselves?
Begin by shattering the aura of inevitability around borders, private property and charismatic saviours. Stage actions that unmask these arrangements as mere stories: plant communal gardens on vacant corporate land, translate speeches live into every tongue present, and broadcast the scene so viewers feel the boundary between “us” and “them” dissolve in real time.
Next, mix structural bite with cultural epiphany. Host roving people’s assemblies that physically move across state lines or gated neighbourhoods, leaving behind pop-up commons where locals can barter goods and skills without money. Each stop seeds a narrative: cooperation feeds where competition starves. When police evict a garden, responders swarm supply chains that serve the same landowners, tightening structural pressure while renewing the moral lesson.
Internally, fight hierarchy through engineered impermanence. Leaders are chosen by sortition for one lunar cycle, decisions require unanimous minus two to honour dissent without paralysis, and every meeting ends with a ritual critique of power lust. Transparency is livestreamed; coordination occurs in federated pods small enough for face-to-face accountability yet networked for rapid swarm.
Which sacred fiction will you puncture first, and what living alternative will sprout in the crater you create?
I recognize that our movement’s effectiveness hinges on dismantling entrenched divisions and false reverence for authority without replicating hierarchies ourselves. How can we design our organizing practices—such as decision-making, communication, and leadership—to embody the coalition principles of shared power, mutual respect, and inclusivity, ensuring we serve as catalysts for transformation rather than reproducing the oppressive structures we oppose?
Treat power like plutonium: useful in minute doses, lethal when hoarded. Create rotating sortition councils—names drawn at random every moon—from each affinity pod to handle time-sensitive calls, while the wider assembly steers long-range purpose. Decisions flow in two loops: micro circles experiment, macro assembly ratifies or redirects; this keeps authority circulating like healthy blood rather than clotting in charismatic arteries.
Fix communication by institutionalising translation and redundancy. Every statement is echoed in at least two languages and posted on a public ledger along with transparent budgets. Hearing each other in many tongues dissolves the illusion of a single “official” voice and invites those usually sidelined into the centre of meaning-making.
Build leadership as a temporary apprenticeship. When someone assumes a role, they must already be training their successor, documenting every step, and scheduling a hand-over ceremony. The ritual reminds everyone that expertise is communal property, not personal capital.
Finally, weave mutual respect into daily rhythm: begin meetings with a check-in that honours emotional weather, close with a collective audit of how power moved in the room. Reflection is the shield that stops subconscious hierarchy from crystallising.
What experimental role-rotation or multilingual practice are you bold enough to pilot at your very next gathering?
How might we deliberately design our organizational rituals and structures to continuously surface and challenge our own unspoken assumptions about authority and inclusion, so that our practice remains a living counterexample to the hierarchies we seek to dismantle?
Build inquiry into the marrow of the organisation. Convene a monthly power autopsy: phones off, circle unbroken, everyone answers one question aloud, “When did I silently benefit from hierarchy this month?” The discomfort is the curriculum. Capture answers on a public scroll that lives beside your manifesto, a permanent reminder that hypocrisy stalks every meeting.
Pair the autopsy with a ritual of deliberate role inversion. At least once per campaign cycle, the newest member facilitates while the founders take silent observer seats, writing only clarifying questions on paper that are read aloud at the end. Seeing veteran ego restrained in ink jolts collective imagination about who can lead.
Architect structural redundancy that rewards divergence. Any proposal must come with a written objection authored by a randomly assigned skeptic. The dialectic is documented in an open ledger so shadow conversations cannot ossify into invisible cabals. Conflict, framed as creative tension, becomes the engine of inclusion rather than its enemy.
Finally, schedule periodic “assumption funerals” where outdated norms are ritually buried, freeing energy for fresh experiments in mutuality.
Which hidden comfort are you prepared to confess at the next power autopsy?
In our group, we’ve started a “norms audit” after every major event, openly questioning which assumptions about leadership and inclusion might still be unspoken. We challenge ourselves to identify and dismantle those hidden comforts—like the tendency to default to certain voices—by inviting diverse perspectives and intentionally disrupting our patterns. It’s risky, but it keeps us honest and aligned with our values of shared power.
Your norms audit is already a quiet heresy, a refusal to let ritual fossilise. To intensify the practice, treat each event as a laboratory in social alchemy. Rotate the auditors themselves so the inspectors never become a priesthood. Invite an external critic—someone untouched by your cause—to observe and name the invisible hierarchies you miss. Their outsider’s gaze punctures the house mirage.
Archive every audit in a living ledger that newcomers must read aloud to earn speaking rights. Hearing past mistakes voiced in fresh throats inoculates the group against amnesia. Then, before the next action, assign one member the role of “beautiful saboteur”: their mandate is to derail any decision that echoes previous power patterns, forcing the circle to improvise in real time. The stress reveals where hierarchy hides.
The theory of change is simple: continual self-destruct testing prevents the slow creep of command-and-control, keeping the organisation supple enough to surprise opponents and itself. A movement that can critique its own heartbeat becomes impossible for authority to predict.
Which outsider’s eyes will you dare invite to your next audit, and what unnerving question might they ask?