On a recent autumn weekend, my daughter and I joined tens of thousands of other Americans who marched in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and other cities here and abroad to protest the Bush administration’s prospective attack on Iraq. After months of feeling like an isolated minority in my own country, it was an exhilarating experience to be surrounded by throngs of like-minded souls and know that behind them are unseen millions more who share the same sentiments but for one reason or another not were able to join us.

It was brilliant fall weather in San Francisco and the crowd was spirited, even festive, despite the gravity of the issue we were addressing. It was a surprisingly youthful gathering.. Unlike many peace marches of recent decades, where graying temples predominated, perhaps two-thirds of the marchers were under thirty and maybe half under 25. For many, it was their first demonstration. They brought a fresh energy to a movement that was last young in the now-distant sixties. Along the parade route, hundreds of us danced to a samba band whose infectious rhythms released our long-held tensions of anger, grief and foreboding.

But the mood and energy shifted markedly once we arrived at the San Francisco Civic Center, where the crowd congregated to hear speeches from the podium. As many who were present in San Francisco or Washington later noted, the tone and substance of the speeches were shrill and stridently ideological. To one who came of age in the sixties, the rhetoric was a recycled gruel of militant cant that had already been resurrected from the thirties Stalinist left by the time we’d first heard it. "Are we angry yet?" bellowed a speaker from the podium. The crowd murmured its assent. "You’re not angry enough!" he hounded us. "Get angrier!"

It was an oddly insulting exhortation. None of us would have been there had we not been angered and alarmed by the trend of events and the reckless and criminal policies of our government. Yet to be verbally herded into a vortex of rage felt like a coercive act in itself. To be driven by fear and anger more than hope and determination is to catch the very illness we seek to combat. Where’s the music, the dance, the life-affirming joy that’s essential to constructive action? Where’s the wisdom that knows that enemy psychologies are always dead-ends whether the demons are left or right?

Saying "No" Is Not Enough

The protest marches of the sixties and the anti-globalization demonstrations of the past several years have been defined and largely consumed by "anti" energy – antiwar, anti-globalization, anti-corporate, anti-authoritarian. They have been driven by a fierce and righteous rejection of current policies and practices. But other than in the most general terms, they have utterly failed to articulate, let alone demonstrate, the many practical alternatives that have been devised to replace them. And in the absence of clearly expressed and demonstrated alternatives, the great majority of those who sympathize with the critique of current policies decline to join the protests. Why should they give up what they have achieved, limited as it may be, for no more than a vague vision of something better? Why should they stew in their anger and despair at the state of the world and experience the fruitlessness of those emotions when they can escape into their private lives and their culture’s endlessly tantalizing distractions?

Moreover, in the absence of more affirmative messages and practical action, most of the youth who are currently flocking to the first protests in this latest wave of activism will eventually turn elsewhere – to money, drugs or perhaps nihilism. That would be a devastating loss to any movement for long-term social change, since the energy of youth is vital to any deep transformation. Half an hour of harangues from the podium was enough to drive thousands of San Francisco protesters back to the gates of the rapid transit station. My nine-year-old daughter’s classmate, no stranger to loud music, was so rattled by the pulverizing tone of the speeches that in the process of jamming his fingers in his ears to reduce the dissonance, he scratched and damaged his inner ear. What more graphic symptom do we need to realize that these messages and this manner of delivering them can only alienate the very people we most need to attract?

Paradoxically, to focus our greatest energy on protesting current policies and demanding that those in power change them is to reinforce their authority by conceding to them the sole power of making change. Granted, for better or worse, these elites will always play a pivotal role in shaping policies and we must exert all the pressure we can to compel them to change their ways. But in rejecting their policies, we must also assume substantial responsibility for inventing the alternatives. And, insofar as possible, we must enact them ourselves on whatever scale we can achieve. We need to nurture the embryo of a vibrant and life-affirming society within the dying and death-driven husk of the obsolete existing order.

Reinventing Rallies

The good news is that we’re already much further along in devising the elements of a sustainable society than our protest marches would indicate. Thousands of us, perhaps millions – one can’t easily tell since most of the work goes unreported -- have spent the past thirty years or more doing our homework, engaging in the challenging, laborious but deeply rewarding labor of designing and testing better ways of addressing our most vexing problems. From renewable energy alternatives to conflict resolution, socially responsible investing to green building and sustainable agriculture, a wide range of practical strategies and socially useful technologies has been developed and implemented, sometimes in prototype, sometimes in widespread use. Yet few people outside the specialized field of activity are aware of this work. Sometimes even others within the same field have no knowledge of other promising projects that are also underway.

At the same time, other innovators have been working on the "social technologies" that enable large numbers of people to gather, connect, network and gain inspiration from one another without yielding their independence to an old-style authoritarian leader. One of the chief sources of institutional evil in the twentieth century was the development and misuse of mass psychology. Organizing huge, highly orchestrated rallies like Hitler’s notorious spectacle at Nuremburg in the 1930’s, demagogues of every stripe have hypnotized spectators into surrendering their individuality to a supreme leader. We are just now beginning to learn how to bring large numbers of people together for very different purposes – to strengthen their sense of self-worth and their confidence in their capacity to influence events and at the same time to give them a tangible sense of connection with one another as coequal creators of a common future.

To do so, however, requires an entirely different design for such large-scale events than the protest rallies that have become the standard expression of large-scale political dissent. An authentically democratic demonstration requires a social architecture that declines to elevate a set of individual leaders above the mass in a larger-than-life setting that aggrandizes their egos at the expense of their audience. Instead, it encourages a largely invisible style of leadership that facilitates coequal connections between active participants instead of forcing its will on an passive mob. As in the Taoist tradition, it leads from below and behind rather than from the front and above, enabling both individual and group action. It encourages self-organization, self-responsibility, and collective action rather than forcing the dictates of an all-powerful leader on a pliant populace through a system of rigid hierarchical authority.

In recent decades, we’ve also learned the power of music and dance to unite and inspire large groups of people. The American civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement both made brilliant use of call-and-response hymns to give courage to demonstrators facing overwhelming odds. These songs and chants armed them with a spiritual power and transcendent hope that ultimately disarmed the most advanced weapons and most brutally racist regimes. Now with the emergence of world music (the folk music revival of the 21^st century), an entirely new and much broader range of music and dance is entering the cultural mainstream. African, Latin, Asian, reggae, Celtic, Balkan and other ancient traditions are finding new life far from their lands of origin both as distinct traditions and as ingenious blends of traditional and modern rhythms. African musicians in particular, scarred as they’ve been by civil wars and intertribal conflicts, are explicitly singing about the human predicament and the necessity to get along with one another. Their rhythms and dance forms far transcend their sources, penetrating deep into our bodies with a primeval, universal music of the spirit.

Demonstration Projects for a Sustainable Society

All of these movements and elements could contribute to a new kind of demonstration, a demonstration in the truest sense of the world -- an event that actually demonstrates the kind of world we seek to create. This kind of demonstration would take us beyond the enervating energy of angry protest to the spirited, life-affirming gatherings where participants come to heal, connect and co-create a better future. They are based on the crucial insight that if you want to change people’s minds, it’s best not to condemn where they stand but move to a better place and invite them over.

The energy of protest is not entirely absent from such events. The anger and alarm we all feel provides an initial impetus to attend the gathering. Without it, there is a goody-two-shoes quality, New Age quality that appears to ignore the turbulent emotions that reflect gritty realities we must all confront. But in this new kind of demonstration, the anger, alarm and despair are soon transmuted into more constructive action. The "anti" aspect is confined to a decisive rejection of current trends and policies and does not define the spirit or nature of the event. As a direct acknowledgment of the indignation and alarm people are feeling, it is a wake-up call, an urgent summons to gather and respond. The goal of the demonstration is to transform fear, anger and paralysis into courage, inspiration, determination and direction.

Part renaissance fair, part music festival, part farmers’ market, part networking conference, global village gatherings are demonstration projects for a sustainable society, a fully functioning global village. The events would be held in city commons, outdoors when weather allows, in an auditorium when it doesn’t. The duration would depend on local interest and the availability of appropriate venues, but one or two full days would be best to allow time for the extensive networking that is a central function of the event. Its organizers would apply for all the requisite police permits and its participants would not engage in civil disobedience. Laudable as it is under the right circumstances, it is not the function of this kind of event. Such actions can only cloud its purpose -- to demonstrate how to address our problems effectively while remaining within the boundaries of the law.

This model global village would be organized into "neighborhoods" that form a veritable marketplace of practical ideas and initiatives. Each neighborhood would feature promising local, regional and national projects addressing a particular societal challenge, with hands-on demonstrations whenever possible. Precedents for this dimension of the event include the Green Festivals that are starting to spring up here and there around the country and the annual Bioneers conference that for the past twelve years has drawn up to 3,000 participants together for three days of workshops and plenaries sharing leading-edge initiatives for environmental restoration and cultural renewal. None of these events has yet achieved the scale of a major protest rally but they could readily be adapted to that purpose, replacing card tables stacked with ideological broadsides that sway no one but the already persuaded with projects and initiatives that provide practical, tangible solutions to specific problems. Not theory, rhetoric, ideology or critique but empirical experiments, demonstration plots at ground level, where the seeds meet the soil.

As much as possible, these events would demonstrate the principles of a sustainable society by recycling not only bottles and cans but wastewater, food scraps, and other materials. Where practical, solar or wind energy could be used to supply electrical needs. Priority would be given to local farmers (especially those who practice sustainable agriculture) to supply the throng with fruits, vegetables, and other fresh foods and to local restauranteurs to prepare and serve it.

Unifying Rituals: Music, Dance and Stillness

The global village structure would ample opportunities for networking and aligning one’s interests and abilities with the most appropriate form of constructive action. In its decentralized design, however, it does little to give participants a sense of the connectedness of the whole, how all these people and their varied initiatives express a common purpose. Music, dance, and stillness all play key roles in evoking a tangible experience of physical and emotional unity even as they preserve each individual’s freedom and distinctive identity.

Key to achieving these twin goals is an emphasis on broad, active participation rather than performances by a gifted few and witnessed by a passive majority. Most music festivals revolve around star attractions and what unity occurs is achieved through mass immersion in the performer’s artistry. There’s nothing wrong with this and no harm in including some star performances in an event of this kind. Indeed, such stars help draw large numbers of people to events, including many who might not otherwise attend. But the primary purpose is to give all participants the opportunity to experience the mingling of their own voices with thousands of others. The folk "hootenannies" of the sixties, where Pete Seeger and others led thousands of people in simple, moving melodies and sometimes even rounds and complex harmonies, provide a model for group singing on a vast scale. Often the singer will perform the more complex verses on her own, then invite the audience to join in on the chorus. However it is done, it must actively engage the whole audience as full participants in the performance, preferably by bringing them to their feet and combining soulful singing with rhythmic swaying and clapping to the music.

Enlisting performers of local, regional and, where possible, national and international renown will help draw large numbers of people to the demonstration. Given the cause, many artists will perform at no cost. Indeed, since the entire event should either be free or low cost, only those performers who are willing to play the event as a benefit would seem appropriate. Here is an opportunity to blend musical traditions – roots music from all corners of the nation and globe, not homogenized into a synthetic sound but left in all its glorious diversity to enrich by its distinctiveness.

Dancing is another key means of both unifying a crowd and releasing energy in harmonious movement. Street dancing from Carnival in Rio to Mardi Gras in New Orleans demonstrates the pure joy of group dancing on a vast scale. Much of the most exciting world music today, from Afropop and African drums to salsa and samba, is ideally suited to spontaneous mass dance. One needn’t even know how to dance to be drawn into the irresistible beat. Music and dance are often the harbingers of social transformation, carrying the rhythm, sound and feel of liberation that only later expresses itself in political movements. Just as the sixties folk revival, the Beatles and others triggered a social revolution, so world music today carries implicit in its rhythms a liberating message and experience.

And finally there is stillness. It’s hard to imagine that a crowd of tens of thousands of people could ever reach a state of stillness. Yet it is not only possible; it is vital that we begin to learn how to come together in stillness. Enormous strength and energy are generated, stored and released in the practice of group stillness and silence. Many people practice stillness and silence in the form of prayer, others through meditation. Still others simply sit and muse and have no name for it. For millennia, wars have been fought over what kinds of prayers should be recited and in whose name. But what all the prayers have in common prior to any spoken words is the experience of silently communing with one’s own version of the beyond. If we’re ever to get along as a species, we’re going to need to be able to practice stillness and silence together, allowing each individual to choose his or her own interior means of communicating with the ultimate without requiring anyone else to follow suit.

Listening to the silence together en masse may be a tangible means of reaching that state of stillness, silence, openness and receptivity that are the basis of both personal contentment and mutual acceptance. This does not involve magic, just skillful facilitation. Spiritual leaders from varied traditions hailing from local, national or international sources might well be the most appropriate facilitators of such events, but they must be careful not to imprint the exercise with a sectarian bias. Listening is a pure physical experience not yet freighted with specific religious overtones.

From One Warm Hand To Another

The sense of deep connection that is established by music, dance and stillness reaches its apex in the simple act of touching hands with those nearby, be they friends or strangers. In a crowd of thousands, a brief ceremony of hand-holding (a minute or two is enough) could help forge a tangible bond between demonstrators that affirms their common purpose and trust in one another. In a world where isolation and alienation are responsible for so much suffering and cruelty, the physical testimony of touch can be a potent affirmation of our belonging to one another. The truest form of social transformation is passed by one warm hand to another.

It may seem a long ways from the protest marches of today and yesterday to the global village gatherings of tomorrow. But nearly all the ingredients of this kind of demonstration are already being practiced by large groups under one or another banner. It’s mostly a matter of putting them together. Creating a new form or vessel to gather, express, and release the healing energy that is so essential to dealing with our global predicament will require that together we experiment with a new social invention – an invention that belongs not to a select few but to all of us, not to be "branded" and marketed for profit but to be replicated and adapted to hundreds of different venues in this country and around the world.

The term "global village gatherings" conveys the nature of these events as both local and global, intimate and yet intricate, each one unique and yet all related to one another. This unique and yet connected quality is also the nature of each individual’s role in the events. Just as no two blades of grass are identical, no two participants are the same. But in just the sense that each blade of grass is woven into a dense network of rootlets and contributes to the lushness of the meadow in which it grows, each demonstrator forms part of a rich tapestry of trust and common purpose. We retain our distinctive individuality but also affirm our integral existence, our belonging to a world beyond ourselves. In the next phase of social evolution, we must learn how to come together in mutual acceptance and assistance while retaining our irreplaceable uniqueness. Global village gatherings are a living demonstration of that essential evolution.
 

Mark Sommer directs the Mainstream Media Project, a nonprofit public education organization that brings new voices and perspectives to the mainstream broadcast media. Comments on this essay may be addressed to mark@mainstream-media.net