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Los Angeles County, CA June 6, 2006 Election
Smart Voter

"Vibes Watching"

By Glenn E. Hopkins

Candidate for Member, Green Party County Council; County of Los Angeles; Senate District 28

This information is provided by the candidate
Drawing on consensus work in Heart Circles, Hopkins expounds on the Green practice of empowering a "Vibes Watcher" to stimulate right-brain acuity during what might otherwise be dreary political meetings.
SENT TO GREEN CIRCLES, SPRING 2004

Officially designated vibes watchers should have the authority to suggest that everyone stop and breathe together at a meeting....to focus on areas of commonality and unity for just a moment or two to clear the air if it's getting too tense.

I have also heard such a moment called a "right-brain" exercise.

A good chair person can call for this as well. A good chair person is constantly stating and restating....I hear x saying...........I hear y saying.........Is there consensus from the group to have x and y meet on this later and move the agenda?.

We all get tangled up in rhetoric and emotions and, frankly, in pushing and manipulating for what we want sometimes...we must remember that a formal business meeting has many breakout and sidebar possibilites. It might become time to sing a song, tell a joke........clear the air. Anybody present can do this.

I wonder if that would've helped at our convention last summer.

I've heard a lot about "the rules favored the Cobb people." But they were the rules, were they not? And who the *** is going to be president who doesn't have the drive and guts to form a team and make things happen.....to work the structures, whatever they may be//// Or to get in there beforehand and set up structures that favor your agenda...........Ralph very clearly is a giant among men....but he iced everybody green out of his process very early on and apparently has very little patience for an antipatriarchal model.

As the oldest of six kids whose coming out was met with a lot of hostility from my younger siblings I am now constantly being accused of manipulation...when I see it as a lifelong habit of seeing these guys problems and then trying to help solve them. I have to learn to keep my mouth shut a lot. With faeries and with lavender greens I have treasured our tolerance when somebody's having a breakdown, our understanding that you can't really fix everybody who has a screw loose somewhere, and sometimes such kooks come out with great wisdom.

The internet is an interesting form, too. I often notice I'm not the leader that I fancy myself to be because I post something that is really a burning issue for me and....nothing......the silence or lack of response is deafening. That little tincture of iodine is something the silent universe is waiting form me to wake up to.

I dont' get why a Green circle of intelligence, i.e. a green shadow cabinet is not in place at this moment. Exploding the patriarchal presidency into ten or fifteen experts is exactly what this increasingly damn-ed country needs. It's what 900 years of democracy has evolved in Switzerland.

No. top-down top-down top-down.

For all Ralph's "go we go" he was never ready to form his team and come forward with them. Neither was David Cobb. It breaks my heart...or rather it stays in my heart as one of my deepest yearnings to the degree that it alienates people, apparently. But I burn with the sureity that this team approach is our way in. It's the technique by which we can enter the heart of the death-star that this increasingly evil empire is becoming. oil, oil, oil, oil........what could be more representative of death than a world economy based on a dead, limited fossil rather than easily replenished life forms!?!?!?!

Does my vibe become to intense for you? Does somebody want me to stand aside and breathe deeply? Almost everything I post becomes a commercial for http://www.GreenCabinet.org.

Well, once again let me call for nominations for each cabinet position. There are possiblities listed at http://www.ProgressiveGovernment.org. Spread the word.

Otherwise, I'm fine, thank you. Happy spring everyone.

Glenn Hopkins

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