Iteration 2.0
May 2024
This is the more extensive half of the Code of Conduct, focusing more on procedure.
If you have not yet read the Code of Conduct Basics Document, it is recommended that you read it first, as it is higher-priority for most members than this.
Our modern society and philosophy has drawn a stark distinction between "Humanity" and "Nature", both philosophically and physically.
We reject this division, and prefer to think of both as mutual parts of The Living World: a concept that includes humans as a fundamentally integrated force within the shaping of the past, present, and future of all aspects of this world.
We seek to build a world in which we see our species and society as an equal part of that world, and where we work mutually and in concert with the rest of it without imagining ourselves as "above" any part of it.
The living world is the substrate that facilitates our continued existence. We exist to serve it, not as some ethereal ideal, but as the fundamental basis of our continued existence.
We must have an ethics rooted in an appreciation of our relationship with the rest of the Living World, which requires that we resist the domination of the living world by humanity, which itself stems from the very real domination of human by human. The alternative to that is a society based on ecological principles: an organic unity in diversity, free of hierarchy and based on mutual respect for the interdependence of all aspects of life.
“You have to have a reconstruction of the entire society … We, as a nation, must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person oriented society.” This call by Martin Luther King Jr. in a 1968 speech shortly before his assassination forms a foundation for re-evaluating the values by which we have been socialized inside our modern cultures. Because these values are unconscious, we continue to act on them, in our personal, familial, professional and movement lives.
According to a backgrounder by the United Nations, indigenous lands make up about 20% of the earth's territory, but contain about 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity, and according to the United Nations' State of the World's Indigenous Peoples document, indigenous populations only make up about 5% of the world's population. Indigenous stewardship relationships with and understandings of the rest of the living world have demonstrably led to greater biodiversity and flourishing of the land.
The values of the dominant global cultures are the values of cultures that have stripped our lives, our lands, and our air of everything that they need to thrive, and we aim to adopt a culture from those that have, instead of being responsible for the ongoing destruction of our world, been primarily responsible for its preservation.
We do not aim to replicate or assimilate specific religious or cultural practices from specific indigenous groups, but instead wish to more broadly adopt their methodologies, cultural values, and frameworks for relating to the rest of the living world.
We are an organization of free and mutual association, which means that membership is voluntary and based around relationships without hierarchy. Instead of rule by coercion, we organize around consensus as the foundation of democracy. Through this principle we combine as a collective force, dedicating ourselves to a shared vision without subordination.
Anyone can become a member of the Recomposition Collective without consideration as to their identity or background so long as they agree to abide by the platform and earn the consensus of all other members to join us. Likewise, anyone can disassociate at any time, or through a democratic decision of the organization to be disassociated from. We set, through documents like this and the rest of our platform, expectations by which our membership abides.
We are all still neighbors bound by a certain locality, and the institutions we build may not always include those who share the same interpretation or vision, but our commitment is to work together towards a convergence, as many fish of different scales and sizes swimming along the same current.
Our project is one of radical democracy: springing forth in our opposition to hierarchy but equally in embracing a vision of new social relations. This goes beyond merely our organization to how we fold ourselves into the fabric of our community, and we are expected not only to conduct ourselves ethically within our shared spaces but also within the community at large. One crucial area in which this comes into play is in our decision-making: our democratic culture.
We primarily make decisions by consensus.
Instead of tallying votes and letting the majority rule, we listen to all objections and attempt to answer the concerns raised until we have a measure of unanimity within our group. Some decisions are made more by dissensus ("does anyone object?") or through a do-acracy (where people vote by contributing to what they want to happen, and not contributing to what they deem unnecessary). We have a responsibility to each and every member and neighbor to hear them out, though our first principles come into play here as well as a baseline for what is and isn’t acceptable. Our Voting and Decision-Making Outline document goes into more depth on tools for facilitators and how we go about making decisions, but there are three important principles to our democratic system:
There are three fundamental bases on which consensus rests as a decision making system.
Counterintuitively, consensus can result not in minority voices being heard and protected, but also in the being silenced. When dissent can result in social sanction due to “slowing down the process,” we discourage people from speaking up. Someone might not want to voice an objection because they see themselves as a minority and assume they will not be taken seriously. Hierarchy trains us to go with the flow in many ways, and everyone has limited capacity to deal with conflict.
Objections should not be understood as blocks. Any concern or question should be given time to be raised. Large-scale, structural decisions should be made slowly, often with several opportunities for amendments and objections to be raised. Consensus is more time-consuming than a majority vote, and we must give the process space to work out.
When should you block? The first principles outlined in this Code of Conduct are an important place to start. If you feel an action or decision would infringe upon the principles we stand on as a collective, then you should say so and articulate why. Similarly, if an action or decision is a red-line that you do not wish personally to cross, you should voice it to the group. Some might choose to “stand aside” instead of block, but it is the responsibility of the collective to reckon with your words and to attempt to meet them.
State responses to violence reproduce violence and often traumatize those who are exposed to them, especially oppressed communities who are already targeted by the state. It is important to remember that while many people choose not to call the police, many communities can’t call the police because of reasons such as fear of deportation, harassment, state sanctioned violence, sexual violence, previous convictions, or inaccessibility.
Our commitment, as an organization, to transformative justice means that, wherever possible, we attempt for non-state, non-coercive, and non-violent responses to distortion. Violence does not happen in a vacuum and transformative justice works to connect incidences of violence to the conditions that create and perpetuate them. It acknowledges that we must work to end conditions such as capitalism, poverty, trauma, isolation, heterosexism, cis-sexism, white supremacy, misogyny, ableism, mass incarceration, displacement, war, gender oppression, and xenophobia if we are truly going to end cycles of intimate and sexual violence, as well as other forms of violence and abuse. Transformative justice recognizes that we must transform the conditions which help to create acts of violence or make them possible. Often this includes transforming harmful oppressive dynamics, our relationships to each other, and our communities at large.
Transformative justice is a framework and approach for responding to violence, harm and abuse. At its most basic, it seeks to respond to violence without creating more violence and/or by lessening the violence. Transformative justice can be thought of as a way of “making things right,” getting in “right relation,” or creating justice together.
We must understand that justice is a process of unfolding that starts within ourselves. Practicing this viewpoint starts internally, and flows through our relations with each other, how we organize, and the worlds in which we live.
If you have questions, concerns, or suggestions about this Code of Conduct, or if you would like to report a possible breach of the Code of Conduct, please reach out to one of the Monitors by whatever channel you think is appropriate between both of you.
There are three ways we can collectively respond to harm or abuse in our spaces, based on the severity and needs for safety of our community: corrective action, confidentiality agreements and a process of accountability.
While we do not seek to punish or exile, corrective action is sometimes a necessary step before we can begin a more transformative process. When the safety toolkit fails and we are unable to find our way to restoration, or an individual’s actions threaten the safety or integrity of our community members, we may act to bring us to a place where accountability is possible.
There are three cases in which corrective action might be taken:
For the purposes of this corrective action policy, we take the following definitions when reviewing the behavior of delegates:
Progressive Corrective Action shall be as follows, with successive issues proceeding to later steps:
The later forms of corrective action should not be enacted unless the perpetuator is unwilling or unable to effectively engage with the mediation and transformative justice process.
The Monitors or the collective may bypass steps of progressive corrective action if they determine that the severity or nature of a breach warrants more immediate intervention. This may include removal of the individual from shared spaces (such as Discord or other platforms).
This cannot be the end of the process and is subject to consensus at the next general meeting for the general membership to confirm the decision, and the Monitors are responsible for investigating and conducting an inquest if requested to finalize any such corrective action.
Although we do provide our Monitors the delegated power to take rapid action (subject to confirmation or immediate recall by the body), corrective action should be done collectively wherever possible.
It should, in most cases, also be the start of a longer accountability process and attempt at restoration and reintegration into the community.
Regardless of whether or not rapid action is taken by the Monitors, the final decision on action, whether before the action or retroactively, must be made via a collective vote. Corrective action is not official until the point at which it has been confirmed by the collective as-a-whole.
Such a vote should use the same rules as an ammendment to the collective Charter, and should have an opportunity for the perpetuator to plead their case before voting begins.
The perpetuator is not permitted to vote in this vote, but they may still otherwise take part in it.
Sometimes an issue is sensitive, and the aggrieved will not want it to be discussed publicly without their consent. If the aggrieved requests confidentiality, every step should be taken to respect that and to develop an agreement between them and the Monitor(s), and eventually the perpetuator as well, until consensus is reached about how to integrate back into the community (usually through an accountability process).
Generally, Monitors should observe confidentiality until consent is given by both sides to bring the issue to the community. The needs of the aggrieved are generally given precedence, but we also must understand that we benefit from a community-lead process where the resolution of conflict and the restoration of harm is open and a project we all undertake together.
Confidentiality is also a means by which distortions or harm may occur, and pains must be taken to prevent such misuses of the system from occurring. In the case that such misuses occur, they are to be treated as distortions the same as any other, with the exception that they cannot, themselves, be the subject of a confidentiality agreement, nor can the initial confidentiality agreement stand in the way of corrective action in regards to its own misuse.
This agreement cannot prevent information passing to affected parties. Perpetuators cannot be kept "in the dark" as to what distortions have occurred, and the agreement cannot persist past the point that public action is taken in regards to the distortion.
The primary way we should handle breaches of this Code of Conduct is by undertaking an accountability process. Each process must be tailored to each individual situation and circumstances, and uses all the tools in the Safety Toolkit described in Basics - Article III. An accountability process should center the aggrieved and be led by the community in most cases, though in cases where confidentiality is agreed upon it may only involve a small group of people at first. However, true integration back into the community usually entails public reconciliation.
Someone in an accountability process usually communicates with the Monitors and is also assigned an accountability partner. This accountability partner is nominated by the perpetuator as someone they know and trust, though both the aggrieved and the Monitors must consent to the choice, as well as the partner themselves. The accountability partner’s role is to help vouch for the perpetuator's behavior and be a point of contact and support through the process.
The general progression of most accountability processes start with a conversation between the Monitors and the aggrieved, and possibly with any witnesses or other parties. Often those harmed might be requested to make a written impact statement that can be shared. Next is a one-on-one conversation between a chosen mediator (usually a Monitor) and the perpetuator (and possibly the accountability partner), which sets some terms moving forward and explains the process to follow, as well as share any impact statements to make sure the harm done is understood. Next is a group conversation involving both the aggrieved and the perpetuator. After a plan of transformation is decided on and executed, a community circle usually corresponds with the reintegration of the perpetuator back into the collective.
An accountability process involves three "R"s: restoration, repentance, and reconciliation:
Here is an example of how an accountability process might play out: A member makes an uncharitable joke at the expense of their neighbor. After their concerns are dismissed, the aggrieved reports this to the Monitors. The Monitors interview the aggrieved, have them write an impact statement. The aggrieved wants both an apology and also a commitment by the perpetuator to be more tactful. They then reach out to the perpetuator, ask if they’d like to have someone present for the conversation (this becomes the accountability partner), and share the impact statement and outline a relatively simple accountability process, where the perpetuator is asked to apologize and make the requested commitment. When all parties are together, they agree that having a 10 minute circle at the next council meeting to talk through it is all that’s required, and give everyone present a chance to speak their piece and understand each other’s position.