Patterns

Title Pattern Text
Sustainable Design
Rob Knapp

Human welfare depends on using the Earth's resources, material cycles, and biological processes, but current approaches are blind to their destructive effects on the Earth. We need to consider each building or product as an intervention in the Earth's cycles and processes, and in the human culture of needs and techniques. The ethic of Sustainable Design suggests that future existence — as well as justice and beauty for humans and for the rest of nature —should be possible.

Anti-Racism
Lori Blewett

Efforts to improve societies are hindered by privilege, fear, and prejudice across race, caste, and ethnic divisions. As with gender divisions, other hierarchies intertwine to erode the effectiveness of organizations. Anti-Racism has two dimensions: Anti-Racism through awareness and Anti-Racism through action. An anti-racist orientation to social change can help organizations challenge policies and practices that mask power, exploitation, and resource grabbing.

Spiritually Grounded Activism
Helena Meyer-Knapp

Some social change agendas and strategies are derived from sacred texts, religious doctrines and traditional spiritual practices. Grounding one's public engagement in this way can lead to productive and insightful action. Remember that ritual, sacred or secular, can strengthen bonds among organizers and provide the respite necessary to keeping on with the work of change.

Cyberpower
Kate Williams

Digital inequality often affects the same people as traditional inequalities such as poverty, oppression, discrimination, and exclusion. With Cyberpower individuals, groups and organizations use digital tools for their own goals. Cyberpower also means using digital tools as part of community organizing and development, when Cyberorganizers help people gain Cyberpower.

Earth's Vital Signs
Jenny Frankel-Reed

We need a revolution of decision making and awareness in order to tackle the complexity and urgent nature of our environmental problems. Earth's Vital Signs are indicators of ecological health or the earth's capacity to accommodate human demands. Human decisions about how to live on earth currently drive unsustainable trends. They can also help us change course.

Big-Picture Health Information
Jenny Epstein

Real change in improving health means shifting away from expert clinical opinion only and towards awareness of the effect of environment. Demand and produce health information that identifies environmental and social causes of ill-health. Analyze the links between causes and solutions, and bring individuals, communities and governments together in putting the solutions into effect.

Whole Cost
Douglas Schuler

We leave our mark on the world through the clothes we buy, the food we eat, the cars we drive, the way we dispose of our waste, or how we work or play. The price tag on a product can hide environmental abuse, or aspects that are harder to quantify such as the loss of cultural heritage. The amount on a price tag doesn't represent all the present or future costs. Knowing the Whole Cost of a good or service can be educational and it can inspire action.

Indicators
Douglas Schuler

When people in the community identify Indicators that are important to them, they are more likely to carry personal and operational meaning than when social scientists identify constructs that are significant only to an academic community. The real work begins after the Indicators have been identified. The Indicators must be measured, discussed, and publicized. Ultimately they can be used to develop policy and projects that address them.

Public Agenda
Douglas Schuler

The issues receiving "public attention" change dramatically from day to day giving us little time to actually think about one issue, before another takes its place. Who decides what issues are important, what issues are on the public agenda? The public agenda ought to be more than the set of issues that people have in their heads at any given time. We need to think about what issues belong on the Public Agenda and what we can do to put those issues there and keep them there.

Democratic Political Settings
Jonathan Barker

People low on the social scale are often barred from political meetings. And for many reasons women, poor people, and others may not voice their views in meetings. New and reformed settings can establish a base of democratic experience for change in older, powerful settings. New settings that are open and democratic can give people who have never been invited to express their ideas an opportunity to gain experience and confidence.

Big Tent for Social Change
Mary Reister

When groups work on social issues without learning what other groups are doing, opportunities for cooperation are lost. Worse, groups that should be working together sometimes argue over fine points. Bringing groups together in a Big Tent event like the World Social Forum fosters better understanding of the enormity of the world’s problems. It can also encourage collaboration and cautious optimism.

Opportunity Spaces
Douglas Schuler

Opportunities are critical as they help determine possible paths to the future. Opportunities can include classes and seminars, volunteer positions, jobs, timely announcements, contests, access to the media, mentoring, scholarships, grants and others. It is imperative to devote attention and resources to help create new (and improve existing) Opportunity Spaces for people and communities who need them.

Strategic Capacity
Douglas Schuler

Occasionally, a person or group with meager resources fighting a powerful foe wins. One famous example is David vanquishing Goliath. Thousands of other struggles — against poverty, against oppression, against environmental degradation — have seen equally improbable outcomes. Groups with Strategic Capacity are often imaginative and reflexive, have diverse membership, ties to many networks, and knowledge of various tactics and strategies.

Media Literacy
Mark Lipton

Media Literacy allows us to critically view media and to evaluate the role that media play in our lives. Media Literacy helps develop awareness of our roles as active agents when engaging media. We must arm all people with the knowledge, skills, and values that Media Literacy provides. We need to grant people access to new technology and information about its workings and ideological implications and to develop alternative communication systems.

Participatory Design
Douglas Schuler

Many artifacts and systems do not appropriately address the needs of the people for whom they are designed. This can be avoided if the users of the systems (such as information and communication systems, buildings, and city plans) and those who will be affected by the systems are integrated into a Participatory Design process in an open and authentic way.

Citizen Science
Stewart Dutfield

The role of science will become more critical in the years ahead, as health care, energy, resources, and the global environment become more problematic. Science needs greater participation from people, and people need a greater voice in science. Citizens, policymakers, and professional scientists all benefit by integrating scientific knowledge and local knowledge to bear on the problems that they experience.

Mobile Intelligence
Douglas Schuler

We can't think or act intelligently in relation to the world if we think statically. The problem is that we think that things change, one-at-a-time when things are constantly in flux. The answer changes while you're still trying to understand the question. One of the main points of Mobile Intelligence is encouraging positive possibilities that the new technology opens up, such as emergency communications.

Techno-Criticism
Douglas Schuler

Unquestioning reliance on technology can create a culture where people expect technological solutions to all problems. This blind faith can help put decisions in the hands of the technologists, degrade public discussion, and divert attention and funds. It often alters power relations by amplifying the power for some. We need to understand and anticipate the effects of specific technological artifacts and the broader implications as well.

World Citizen Parliament
Douglas Schuler

Governments and corporations have forums that further their interests. Civil society must create institutions that are strong enough to assert theirs. The deliberative bodies that we develop are likely to be advisory at the onset but hopefully will lay the groundwork for a more integrated and influential World Citizen Parliament as time goes on.

Economic Conversion
Lloyd Dumas

Why is US military spending at cold war levels despite the fact that the most pressing threats to security are not effectively addressed by military force? Economic Conversion is the process of efficiently transferring people and facilities from military-oriented to civilian-oriented activity. Given the urgent need to redirect attention and resources to new economic and security realities, Economic Conversion has never been more important.