Chapter 4b
The Limited Role of Conveners


We want to reiterate our belief that it is not within our purview as conveners of the organization to pre-determine the direction or nature of the organization we want to help build. Our role, as conveners, must be limited to building the organization as a True Democracy, and then getting out of the way to let that Democracy function as it should.

We believe that we have extended responsibilities, as conveners, that we must carry out, (as will be described later when we discuss ‘rolling out’ the organization), but at some point we must ‘let go’ of the organization and allow it to function as we have designed it. If we design it well, if we design it as a True Democracy, we have faith that it will function as we hope it will. As already stated, we believe that a True Democracy cannot be a force for anything but social justice and the Common Good.

We believe that Democracy itself comprises the only Basic Foundational Principle, (as stated previously), that is the proper purview of a truly democratic organization’s conveners. The role of conveners must be limited to building a truly democratic organization, in which all power resides among the people, (as stated above). Once the organization is built, it will be up to those who join it as citizen-members to democratically establish the functional goals and working agenda of the group.

We, as those who initially served as conveners, will then take our place as citizen-members of the organization, and we will use our full powers of citizenship, we will use our freedom of speech, and whatever influence we can muster from it, to try our best to have the organization follow a path such as we describe throughout this paper. But the decision to follow this path, or some other, will not be ours to make. We will speak our piece to the best of our ability, we will cast our vote, and then we will abide by the will of the majority.


Previous Page..........................................Table of Contents..........................................Next Page