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skyward-floored · 7 months ago

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Peggy. PEGGY. does Warriors have to go after his own family???? does he bust down their door?????? WE NEED ANSWERS 😭 (Downfall IAU)

- hero-of-the-wolf

(@hero-of-the-wolf)

...

Warriors walked down the decorated hallway, forcing himself not to drag his feet despite how badly he wanted to. The last thing he wanted to do right now (or ever) was go down this hallway, but he knew it would be even worse if he was late.

So despite the dread crawling up his throat, he kept walking, until he reached the innocent-looking door in front of him.

His fingers trembled as he knocked, but he clenched them back into a fist, crossing his hands behind him and settling into parade rest as a sweet voice called for him to come in.

Cryonis braced himself, and opened the door.

A pale-haired women sat at the desk inside the spacious office, moonlight shining bright through the windows. Purple eyes landed on him as he approached, the dim lamp on Cia’s desk lighting up the smile curling at her lips.

Warriors hated that smile with every fiber of his being.

“Cryonis, it's about time,” she said, fingers lightly tapping at her desk. The polish on them looked like blood in the moonlight. "Sit."

He sat.

Cia stared at him for several moments without saying anything, raking her eyes over him as she usually did. That same smile played at her lips, but Warriors stayed steady and still, refusing to flinch. Reacting only ever made it worse.

He hated these meetings where she got him alone. Normally it would only be a matter of time before she tried something— his brief comfort today was that this meeting was time-sensitive, and would therefore only last so long.

He hoped, anyway.

"I've got an assignment for you, Cryonis," she finally began, leaning back in her seat. "I suppose you've heard about the missing healer?"

He gave her a nod, and she raised an eyebrow, staring at him intensely.

Warriors held back a sigh. "Yes I have. I read the reports." I was required to, actually. You know that.

He briefly thought back to what they’d detailed, and felt a flash of envy for the boy who’d miraculously escaped.

I hope that kid got far, far away from here.

Cia smiled. "Good. That means you have all the details. I suppose you’re wondering how this relates to your assignment though— we've finally tracked down who helped him escape. It was the same group who assisted a known-criminal in escaping justice. It’ll be your job to handle them.”

Dread swamped over Warriors, and he swallowed. These assignments were the worst possible ones to get; arresting good people who were only trying to help, dragging supers who’d managed to get free back into this awful world they’d built. He hated it with every fiber of his being.

His thoughts flitted briefly towards who it could be he was going after, but when they veered in a rather dangerous direction, he quickly silenced them, as if even thinking of it would make it true.

Cia's smile grew like she knew what he was thinking, and she slid a paper over to him. Warriors took it and silently read what was printed there. He skimmed past the legal jargon across most of it, scanning until he reached the bottom where three names and the address of the base was.

And felt his world freeze.

No.

Please no. She can't.

I've done everything I can to hide them, I swore I'd keep them safe—

Somehow Warriors managed to keep a straight face. “Forester residence?”

Cia nodded, a barely-hidden expression of glee on her face. “Yes. They’ve been on our watch list for a while, but we now have reports of them sheltering both wanted criminals and unregistered supers. We have reason to believe they were who helped the healer escape as well." Warriors felt his heart pound faster with every word, and he wondered for a moment if he would be sick. "All of which is illegal, of course... Is there a problem with that, Cryonis?”

Despite the way he wanted to scream, Warriors still didn’t visibly react. “No.”

“Good. Take a squad and move out as soon as possible then. I’ll be expecting a full report from you when you return,” she said with a hint of a purr, still smirking at him.

Warriors swallowed back the horror and dread at the task he'd been given, the promise he’d made to himself warring with the truth that his family had finally been exposed, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He wordlessly took the file, and moved to leave Cia’s office.

“One more thing, Cryonis.”

Warriors stopped, and stayed frozen in place as he heard Cia get up, and walk towards him.

Her hand landed on his shoulder, and despite every muscle of his begging for him to run away, he stayed still when her breath brushed his ear.

“I trust there won’t be any conflict of interest here, Link,” she whispered, her fingers digging into his shoulder. “I know you won’t try anything, loyal hero that you are. Right?”

He managed a nod, and she grabbed his jaw and turned his head to face hers.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” she said in a low voice, and Warriors barely held back a shudder as she stroked a finger along his chin. She leaned in even closer, until their lips were almost touching, and Warriors bit back a plea for her to stop touching him.

She’d only do it more if he said anything.

“Do what you’re told. It won’t be you who suffers if you don’t,” she finished softly, then finally leaned back, Warriors almost crying in relief. “Is that clear?”

"Yes Ma'am," he whispered, and her fingers tapped his chin once before she finally released him.

“Dismissed.”

Warriors forced himself not to run out of her office, his mind whirling with information, skin crawling from her touch. He could feel her gaze on his back up until he closed the door behind him with a hand he firmly told himself wasn’t shaking, and then stumbled against the opposite wall, breath hitching.

Something wet slipped down his cheek, and Warriors quickly wiped it away, too many emotions for him to even sort through roaring through his head.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t.

But if he didn’t, they’d only send someone else, and Cia had made it clear that if he didn’t do his job, his family would be the ones to suffer for it.

Warriors shut his eyes, then dragged in a breath, forcing himself to still his shaking. He quickly composed himself, tucking away every emotion back where he could deal with it later, then stood straight and tall, no sign of his inner turmoil visible on his face.

Time I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Then he left to go arrest his family.

#I had to build it up a bit more before we get to that sorry #but to answer your question... yes >:)#downfall iau #non consensual touching #not too extreme but it’s there #answers from the floor #lovely hero of the wolf #writing from the floor

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coffeeangelinabox · 27 days ago

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Febuwhump Day #4: Hivemind

tw: non consensual nudity, beating

Second in Command keeps his feet under him as he is forcibly marched down the corridor. He’s quite definitely being dragged, not allowed to walk himself, and it’s in his mind to use that as his resistance, to make his body limp deadweight. But, he knows, with so many of them, it won’t even slow them down, will encourage them to hurt him and frankly, naked as he is, he’d rather be out of a public corridor as soon as possible.

He still baulks when they get to the door at the end of the corridor. Heavy, corrugated iron, several thick locks, unpleasant stains and watermarks, and when it creaks slowly open, the room beyond is entirely black rubber, but for the drain at the centre. There are various restraint apparatus and a surgeon’s tray of tools, some shiny and sharp and others rusted and pre-stained. There’s a cabinet on one wall, and Second can just guess what kind of things are in there.

He stops, digging his heels into the concrete.

“Very nice,” his voice is raspy, breathless, but not shaking. He makes it as snooty as he can. “We appear to have arrived at the set of a poorly funded pornography studio. Will you be wearing stilettos and a bustier? That is what I paid for.”

They ignore him and shove him forward. Second resists with all his might, but there are ten of them and only one of him and his head is still spinning and ringing.

He finds himself on his hands and knees on the rubber flooring and stagger-leaps to his feet, hands up in a boxing stance. He will not just quietly submit to whatever Whumper has planned, not in this room with only his own skin to worry about.

Whumper closes the door, locks it with a heavy clunk of finality and then simply leans against it, watching with his cold eyes. Second can’t watch him for more than a few seconds though, at some command Second neither sees nor hears the guards fan out around him. He backs up, knowing he’s getting deeper into the room, but at least preventing them from coming up behind him.

It’s not like in the movies. They don’t politely wait and take their turns, instead four charge him at once. He fights back, a flurry of kicks and blows, ducking and weaving. He pulls off an impressive round-house kick that turns into a drop-roll that belies the injuries he’s already taken. He grins like something feral, teeth flecked with blood as he springs back to a fighting stance.

It doesn’t matter. Everywhere he is, there’s another one of them. They never seem to get in each other’s way. Either they’re phenomenally coordinated, train together at least once a day, or…

Once, before all this happened and the world went to shit, when he was one of an elite unit, but nominally part of the army regulars, they had been sent out to San Francisco to trial some experimental arcanium. He had never trusted crystalmancy, and had been firmly opposed to having an enchanted crystal materialised inside his brain. However, their’s was not to question why and so on, so he’d gone: he, Team Leader, Teammate Three and Medic, at Leader’s insistence, to monitor them and ensure there weren’t any ill effects.

To his eternal relief, the damnable thing hadn’t been manifested inside him. That, apparently, was a difficult and time consuming procedure that they didn't have time for. Instead, their crystals, pulsing with the power the crystalmancers had filled them with in various strobing colours, had been attached to their foreheads by sticky straps that had felt like having a squid coiled around his head. They’d had to sleep in them, to harmonise them to their thought patterns or some such.

Then had come the trialling: mazes, puzzle solving, simple word association tasks. And they had been flawlessly in-sync. It had been hard to explain later in the reports because they were always flawlessly in-sync, they had worked together for years. He and Three had been raw recruits together, boys barely out of short trousers. This, however, had been something else. It was one thing to look at Three and know what he was thinking because he knew the man like a brother. It was another entirely to know what he was thinking on the other side of a locked door because he was part of that thought.

Despite the creeping, crawling itch in his mind, it had been fun at first. Even if Three had kept shoving him and loudly announcing that he should, “Stop thinking about that girl, Second. Jesus Christ, I never thought you’d get all lovestruck. Normally, you’re the love ‘em and leave ‘em type,” and making him blush in front of the Americans. Even if he had been half aware that Leader was frustrated with the stickiness of the thing around her head an in her hair, half afraid she’s going to have to shave off the flowing gold to a buzz cut to get rid of it, which was half funny because she’s not vain or girly at all, and half embarrassing, like watching her get undressed, because she’d never utter such a thought out loud. Even if, after hours - when they still had to wear the things to keep them tuned - Medic’s face began to look pinched and wan, and Second began to feel like she was far away, a virtual stranger in the happy little hum of companionship he was sharing with Leader and Three.

The military applications were incalculable. Split second decisions made with three sets of limbs. More, the crystalmancers assured them, it could be done for a whole squad. It just had to be one crystal, fragmented so that each had a part of the original whole. He’d been able to concentrate on his part of the mission, whilst watching Three’s back and simultaneously adapting to Leader’s new information as she was fed it in the control booth, without needing any kind of scry or crystalpulsers of their own. It had been uncomfortable, but hell, body armour was uncomfortable. He’d worn worse. Even the itch faded after that first day.

Then, they’d started losing time. The first he’d known of it was when he’d blinked at the edge of one of the pseudo missions they’d completed, already mentally comparing times with the data in Leader’s mind, and opened his eyes in the Mess Hall to find Medic talking about the fact that she kept picking up unusual auras from them and she thought the crystals might have side effects. A look at the others told him it was the same for them.

“We must have been debriefed,” Team Leader had said, pale and tense and then flushing, eyes hardening to cold stone, “And I have no idea what I might have said.”

“It could just be a side effect,” Three had suggested half heartedly.

“Or it could be that these have a secondary function as interrogation tools,” Leader had responded.

“Look around,” Medic had said quietly, and when they had followed her instruction, Second in Command had seen instantly what she wanted them to. Every other group of soldiers was eating silently, mechanically, but it was more than that. They were eating perfectly in time. Each taking a bite of potato with the same perfect precise move and then laying their cutlery to the side to pick up their water glasses. It was like watching a puppet ballet. Things not alive, controlled in perfect time, to an unheard beat. “I think the interrogation and logistic advantages are bonuses. I think the intention is to ensure a perfectly obedient fighting force.”

Second had been the first to try and rip the thing from his head. It hadn’t worked immediately and he’s a little blurry on some of the details after that though he’s read the after action reports. He knows he’s beyond grateful to Medic who had saved, perhaps not his life, but his soul, his self. And to Team Leader, who insisted on having one person there for them, not trialling the new arcanium, against the advice of their higher ups.

All this, Second remembers in a single instant. Then another of the guards strikes him across the jaw and he wavers, almost goes down, spinning to drive a fist into the ribs of the one behind him and to destroy the kneecap of another. Neither move quite comes off. They land perfectly, but the guards are wearing armour, magically enhanced, if the tingle in his fingers is anything to go by, and he has only his bare hands. His knuckles split and he snarls through the pain, dropping to his knees and spinning and landing another punch.

They surge in again, perfectly in time, in tune, and again Second thinks of looking around that Mess Hall. The hairs on the back of his neck prickle in the exact same way. Their movements aren’t fast like Whumpers, but unnatural nonetheless. It’s like fighting dolls and Second is suddenly certain that if he ripped away their helmets there would be nothing underneath, just a blank, smooth, featureless bulb in place of a head or face.

The one finally gets hands around his wrist and that’s it. The guard pulls him off balance and the others are already perfectly positioned, one to grab his remaining arm as it strikes out, another to catch his flailing legs.

Whumper speaks for the first time, “Just the chair today,” and he’s manhandled into an uncomfortable steel seat. It’s bitingly cold on his bare arse and he struggles all he can as his arms are fixed behind his back and to one of the slats, his knees pulled apart as bands are placed around each thigh and ankle. More of the strange, silent men are fixing the chair to the floor, meaning he can’t tip it, or lunge, still attached.

Whumper goes to the tray of instruments and inspects them. Second rolls his eyes, despite his fear and vulnerable position. It’s all so performative. This…this cult which infects every level of society, runs the British Isles.

They had cut communication with the wider world several months ago, but they intended, when there was last any unbiased news and such things as elections, to build the Second Great British Empire. Second assumes that by now, much of Europe has fallen. He hasn’t heard from his family in weeks. He knows what they say about the French habit of surrender, but he hopes they did so quickly, spared the rural countryside of his childhood from the vicious violent takeovers that had happened here. He wants to imagine it how it was, vineyards for miles and barely paved roads, toasted sugar from Madam Roux’s patisserie thick in the air. Possibly countries further afield had already fallen to the advance. Certainly no aid has been forthcoming.

But either way, Whumper has carried out many hundreds of interrogations. He doesn’t need to painstakingly choose his first tool.

“You find this boring?” Whumper asks solicitously as a host at a dinner party, and just as disinterested.

“Not my scene,” Second says, striving to match his tone. “Maybe I should take my leave. I’ll give your facility a good review. The henchmen were excellent, accommodations well within human right’s parametres.” He’s babbling. Performative, he might have been, but the scalpel Whumper is holding a little too close to his one still-open eye looks awfully sharp.

“Who are you working for?” Whumper says in his bored tone, flat gaze on Second’s.

“No one. Freelance.” He rotates his wrists inside the cuffs, but, though doll-like the guards may have been, they have also been brutally efficient. He’s not getting out of these. “You?”

Whumper looks back at him. “Supervillain. As are we all.”

“Oui, but who is he? He just appeared in power one day. He never appears on the telly, never speaks to his glorious subjects. He never even appeared on the stage when he had the old Monarchy guillotined, to the delight of the masses. You’re in the inner circle. What’s his name?”

Whumper ignores this torrent of words and does not answer, simply leaning down and cutting a burning line from the corner of Second’s lip along the contour of his jaw. “Your organisation?”

This time, Second ignores him. “Ah, you’re not in the inner circle at all. Just classe ouvrière, like the rest of us.”

Whumper turns back to his tray, and in his hand this time is a glass vial with a glowing worm the size of his thumb within.

Second gives up on bravado and roars, struggling in his bonds. He’s heard of those, knows exactly what it’s for. If he hadn’t wanted a mere crystal shard inside of him, there’s no way he intends to permit that.

The guards, as one, look at Whumper in question and then, still as one, back up a step, forming a solid rank behind him. Even if he could break his chains like Samson, there’s no way out now. Whumper holds the worm closer.

“Get the fuck away from me!” Second shouts, blood mixing with spit and frothing on his lips. Then he realises that screaming is not his best tactical option and clenches lips tight together like a toddler refusing broccoli.

Whumper looks not even the slightest bit perturbed. “Open your mouth,” he says in his calm, expressionless way, “Or I will have this inserted somewhere a great deal more unpleasant.”

Second’s eyes widen and his nostrils flare, but he doesn’t obey the command, stubbornness and pride willing to take the abuse instead of being complicit.

Then the door he was pushed through, minutes or was it weeks ago, creaks open and a voice he almost recognises says, “Whumper.” in cool, but unmistakable command.

Second cranes over his shoulder, but can’t turn far enough to see past the rank of blankly staring soldiers behind him.

Whumper straightens smoothly, and for a full second, Second thinks he’s been granted a reprieve by the presence. Then Whumper speaks to the men at his back. “Get it into him. I’ll return after my meeting.”

He steps past him. The soldiers step forward, perfect as a parade ground. Out of the corner of his eye Second a metallic glimmer. Chains of office. Supervillain. He strains his neck, turning to see exactly who-

Then one of the soldiers punches the breath from his body and he’s lost in choking, swirling darkness and pain.

#my writing #whump #writing prompt s #whump prompts #whump community #defiant whumpee #febuwhumpday4 #hivemind #febuwhump2025 #tw non consensual nudity #world building #my personal challenge this year is making this one continuous story #tw torture (non graphic)#magic universe

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widowshill · 1 year ago

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— I couldn't care less about your future. — Well, you'd better care, because you're part of it, and so is your wife.

r/v/b for @tortoisesshells.

#victoria devlin starring in: i gave up trying to find my father so i just got a few boyfriends old enough to be my dad. or my uncle.#tortoisesshells #➤ roger collins & victoria winters & burke devlin. ┊ to know how it ends‚ and still begin to sing it again.#➤ edits & art. ┊ the evans cottage art gallery.#gifs.#i've been accused of not exactly truth-telling when it comes to posting about r/v ... well.#this is lies. we made it up. but look at them! aren't they just darling!#thank you 60's daytime television.#this is my unethical polycule. the nonmonogamy is consensual and negotiated we're just evil in other ways.#(one of them framed another one for vehicular manslaughter and sent him to prison.#two of them have been the other one's employees at one point or another.#they have all — at some point — accused each other of murder; except for accusing vicki who is by all accounts an angel #and who would NEVER frame her boyfriend for her manslaughter on purpose. although this does happen in canon. accidentally.)#also that she stabs roger with a knife in the au but that's not *really* her fault because she's under hypnotic vampire influence.#(and – moreover that roger a. deserves it and b. enjoys it)#because they are doomed to reenact the machinations of collinsport's tripartite love story.#because a woman in possession of josette's (& laura's) locket; of an adventuring‚ prosperous husband who builds her a home in collinsport;#of a vampire-coded boyfriend also in love with her but doomed chiefly to yearning and the occasional bite;#of a foretold fate of falling from the cliffside; and on top of all that is a brunette – well‚ she must be josette.

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dailyanarchistposts · 1 month ago

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Syndicalists have always supported a form of direct democracy based on majority rule. Like most American unions, the Industrial Workers of the World officially endorses Robert’s Rules of Order — although some of their smaller branches use a stripped down version called Rusty’s Rules.[1] The point to taking a vote is that it enables an organized group to come to a decision that expresses the collective will, even when there is some disagreement.

This doesn’t mean that all decisions are made by voting. In grassroots organizations based on majority decision-making, it often happens that most decisions are made without taking any vote — especially in smaller meetings. That’s because people are often able to come to agreement just by discussing the issue or proposal.

As a mass organization, a union will inevitably tend to have a diversity of viewpoints. On the other hand, the ability to reach agreement is helped by the shared circumstances. The members of a base union — such as a grassroots union in a particular workplace — are working class people who share common subordination to a particular employer, or they work in the same industry. Although different jobs or departments may have special problems, and some groups may experience particular forms of discrimination, they share the general conditions of that workplace. Many will have personal connections with other members from working together. This makes it easier for members to take up the form of “we” consciousness involved in making collective decisions in a union.

Nowadays many radical activists object to making decisions by majority vote and advocate “consensus decision-making” as an alternative. Consensus decision-making among activist groups in the USA is relatively recent. This practice originated with the anti-nuke movement and women’s consciousness raising groups between the ‘60s and ‘80s. The Quakers were the original source or influence for consensus decision-making in that era. Quaker groups like Movement for a New Society and the American Friends Service Committee (the social service arm of the Quaker religious groups) were important advocates for consensus back then. Later on this practice was continued by anti-war groups like Direct Action to Stop the War during the opposition to the Iraq war in 2003. The most important recent experiment with consensus was with Occupy Wall Street and the various Occupy assemblies in American cities.

During this period, “these [consensus] methods became identified with anarchism,” David Graeber writes, “because anarchists recognized them to be forms that could be employed in a free society, in which no one could be physically coerced to go along with a decision they found profoundly objectionable.” (David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement, (Random House: New York, 2013), 195.) Actually, this is a very egoistic form of anarchism, as I’ll show in a moment.

Consensus and grassroots majority vote democracy share certain common features, such as open discussion, trying to reach agreement through talking things out, trying to persuade each other. Although meetings of a union or other working class organization don’t have the problem of the huge clash of interests between people of different classes, it’s very likely that people will have disagreements on important issues.

Consensus is based on the idea of talking things out until agreement is reached. In the form of consensus practiced in the ’70s and ‘80s, no agreement could be reached unless people were unanimous. This tended to lead to very protracted meetings. Six hour meetings were not unusual. Occupy Wall Street adopted a 90 percent rule, but this still allows a concerted minority to force concessions to their viewpoint. This is a form of minority rule.

I think it is possible for consensus to work fine in some settings, such as small groups of people with similar ideas. Often voting is used as a method in bureaucratic organizations such as the U.S. Congress or meetings of unions dominated by officials and paid staff. On the other hand, decision-making may be a lot less alienating in a small circle of like-minded acquaintances who simply talk things out to reach agreement. But this contrast is misleading because a working class social movement must be able to do effective decision-making in mass settings where consensus isn’t workable.

Consensus originally derives from the way Quaker religious meetings are conducted. The Quaker method of prayer is a process of “waiting upon the Lord” to reveal “the Light” within. George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), wrote: “In the Light wait where the Unity is, where the peace is, where the Oneness with the Father and Son is, where there is no Rent nor Division.” (Quoted in Howard Ryan, “Blocking Progress: Consensus Decision Making in the Anti-Nuclear Movement” (http://www.docspopuli.org/pdfs/consensus.pdf).) Quakers reject voting because it presupposes “division.” Quaker groups are based on a high level of unity. This makes it easier to reach a consensus. When people make a statement in a meeting, often there are silences. There is not a hurry to make a decision.

Quaker religious societies are an example of what John McDermott calls an expressive organization. As McDermott put it:

Unity of action is not required��The only unity required ahead of time for expressive organizations is a general will to share, to discuss, and to enter into the company of others for mutual growth, support, and enjoyment. (John McDermott, The Crisis in the Working Class & Some Arguments For a New Labor Movement (South End Press: Boston, 1980), 190.)

An expressive organization’s purpose is “to express certain things which already exist among its members.” With an expressive organization much of the purpose is in the meeting itself — as with the singing and praying in a church service. Religious groups are not the only kind of expressive organization.

As McDermott points out, the capitalist elite also have their own “expressive” organizations, such as seminars, conferences, magazines, and so on. In the past the radical left has organized grassroots institutions that played an expressive role in working class communities. An example would be the Hall of the Masses in Detroit after World War 1. This was not a union or instrumental organization. It was a place where workers who were being radicalized could come to hear talks and debates. Issues of importance to the working class were analyzed, and cultural events were held.

During the height of Occupy in 2011, people describing their experiences often spoke about how personally helpful it was to find others experiencing similar circumstances, such as unemployment, foreclosure, massive student debt, and so on. The assemblies could provide a sympathetic hearing to those talking about their life. And hearing others validated their own dissent from the system. Looking at it this way, we can say that Occupy assemblies also had an expressive character. Marina Sitrin’s report on a series of interviews with Occupy veterans also suggests this expressive character: “We would often interject how important the question of dignity is….People around the US often no longer feel it is their fault that they are loosing their homes or jobs — and instead feel a new sense of power — feeling they are the 99%.” (https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/sustainability-organization-and-anti-capitalism-talkin-occupy-around-the-us/)

McDermott distinguishes expressive organizations from instrumental organizations — organizations we form to be a vehicle for accomplishing our aims. Unions and other organizations of struggle (such as tenant or environmental justice organizations) are instrumental organizations.

Although consensus is workable in some situations, I think consensus is not a viable decision-making method for unions or working class-based mass organizations of struggle.

Working class people in the USA tend to work long hours. Since the ‘70s the workweek has gotten longer, and many people work multiple jobs. The average workweek in the USA is now among the longest in the world. People also have children and relationships, and must somehow fit all these things into their lives.

This means that a type of organization that tends to have very protracted meetings is not very useful or welcoming to working people. Consensus is biased in favor of people who work shorter hours or have more flexible schedules, such as students.

An organization that thwarts the will of the majority and gets mired in long meetings is not going to be an effective vehicle for working class people.

An advantage of majority vote direct democracy is its flexibility. If there are a number of less important issues on the agenda, the meeting can move through these fairly quickly and devote more time for discussion of the more important issues. Consensus lacks this flexibility. Also, the requirement of unanimity or a high super-majority makes it harder for an organization to change its program or methods based on experience. There will almost always be a minority who prefer the original orientation that brought them to that organization. They can block a change.

The core of consensus is the ability of any individual to block a decision. David Graeber’s version: “Anyone who feels a proposal violates a fundamental principle shared by the group should have the opportunity to veto (block) that proposal.”

What counts as a “fundamental principle” is itself something that people are likely to disagree about. When someone blocks a proposal favored by a large majority, a consensus-based group can try to persuade the blocker to “stand aside” (to abstain) or they can make concessions to the blocker.

Even when no one does block, everyone is aware that anyone can. This means that there will be tension in a meeting if someone expresses disagreement with a proposal because people know that person could block it. If a person does block an important action proposal that has majority support, they better be prepared for heavy pressure. This situation actually discourages expression of disagreement. Within a grassroots organization that uses majority vote, people can express disagreement without blocking the majority from pursuing the course of action it favors. This makes dissent less harmful.

Consensus seems to be based on the idea that disagreements can always be overcome through persuasion or talking things over. But this is unrealistic. Even when people are committed to a common organization or movement, they may have deeply felt disagreements. Critics of consensus have observed for years the tendency to paper over disagreements with poor decisions. Rudy Perkins described this problem in the Clamshell Alliance in New England in the ‘70s:

“Majority rule is disliked because among the two, three or many courses of action proposed, only one is chosen; the rest are “defeated.” Consensus theoretically accommodates everyone’s ideas. In practice this often led to:

Consensus is based on distrust of the majority. That’s why the blocking rule is really the heart of consensus. Disagreements in mass organizations or social movements are inevitable. This means that there will inevitably be some element of pressure because people will be required to accept decisions they are not happy with if they are committed to that organization. Advocates of consensus like David Graeber are concerned to prevent an individual from being forced to go along with a collective decision they strongly disagree with. But they do not see the problem of coercion of the majority by an individual or small minority under consensus rules. Consensus is based on the principle of the primacy of the individual Ego over the collective will. This is why I say that consensus is based on an egoistic principle.

Requirements for unanimity or super-majorities for decisions are not helpful if the aim is building social power among working class people.

To gain some power, unions try to mobilize resistance, which can take small forms like wearing T-shirts with a message or a stronger form such as a strike. Often a strike comes only after a lengthy period of discussion among workers, meetings, growing anger, and efforts by a union to build confidence. People may fear losing their job. When workers are discussing whether to strike, there will be some who are more timid or more cautious. It may take a major effort to convince even a majority to strike. If a decision to strike were to require complete unanimity or a high super-majority, this would make it much more difficult to get a strike off the ground.

Prior to the 2012 strike by Chicago teachers, the state legislature in Illinois passed a law requiring a “Yes” vote of 75 percent plus one for a teacher strike to be legal. This was a 75 percent majority of all teachers, not just those voting. This was done to make it difficult for teachers to strike legally.

[1] See http://www.iww.org/oldbranches/US/CA/lagmb/lit/meeting.pdf.

7 notes · View notes