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Local Groups Community Platform Code of Conduct Proposal

Local Groups Community Platform Code of Conduct (CoC) Proposal

‘Everybody is welcome, Everybody is needed!’

This Code of Conduct is one of the many centralized functions, resources, and tools. They are offered as a service, not as a means of establishing hierarchical structure, control, or authority. Participation and use by local groups is entirely voluntary. Feel free to use this document as a basis for your own needs.

As part of the regenerative culture process, local, weekly groups are encouraged to think about a nurturing code of conduct. This document is a living document, questions, comments, or additions may be brought up with the community. It is planned to be trialed with community platforms.

Goal

The goal of the Code of Conduct is to facilitate the rapid development of a healthy, supportive community that can accelerate and sustain long-term pressure on our leaders to achieve systemic action to avoid #ClimateBreakdown and achieve #ClimateJustice.

Summary

Gratitude
Compassion
Respect for others
Personal Integrity
Personal and Community Privacy.
Commitment to Climate Activism.
Inclusion Individuals
Inclusion Groups and Organizations
Nurture Local Autonomy & Regenerative Cultures

Throughout all interactions, please demonstrate and seek to model:

Gratitude

Appreciate others for their actions and commitment. Gratitude is an essential motivator to maintain long-term energy and enthusiasm. Threats are useless in a volunteer movement.
Respect the level of participation of others. Levels of service will ebb and flow based on personal capacity and circumstances. No one is coerced into or out of taking action. Every contribution is a gift.
Celebrate local autonomy as a key element of ‘alliance of the willing.’

Compassion

Treat yourself and others with compassion.
If you can not live up to the code of conduct, be compassionate with yourself, many of us are also struggling and continuously learning.
Contribute as much as you can, on whatever level you can.
Take breaks when needed. When possible, inform the community of your break to model self-care for others.
Try to be aware of needs and challenges especially associated with religion, race, age, sex, sexual identity and neuroatypical differences.
Be patient and tolerant of the emotional journeys and challenges of others. Please be aware, many activists experience climate anxiety.
Unexplained lack of participation or expressions of emotions: anger, fear, intolerance,... should trigger concern. Be willing to extend and enable in the community 'compassionate space’ where emotions can be safely expressed.
Tensions are common among engaged activists and mistakes will occur. Be kind, patient, and forgiving when things go wrong.
Shame and blame are regularly used by our movement to pinpoint the faults in our toxic system, especially towards the media, finance, political institutions, refrain from internal shame or blame.
Try to be specific and private with criticism, it shows compassion. General public criticism easily sparks tensions enabling our toxic system to again dominate us.
Our toxic system has unashamedly blamed the poor, destitute and the indigeneous for decades.
Try to encourage indigenous rights, animal rights and farmers to work together. While, also, being compassionate, when they need to work separately. The embroidered, iron clasp our toxic system has on each of us, will take time to unpick.
Try to encourage school strikers, youth and adult climate strikers to work together. While, also, being compassionate, when they need to work separately. Acknowledge their differences and different needs for space.

Respect for Others.

Be excellent to each other and other groups.
Respect all participants, their opinion and their pronoun preference (she/her; he/him; they/them; etc.).
Respectfully discuss other movements, organizations, and activists.
Choose your words and phrasing with care and concern for others. Do not seek to offend or intimidate.
Refrain from personal attacks, accusations, name calling, labeling.
Assume benign intent and seek to resolve specific issues one-on-one or in the presence of an objective observer, preferably from a cultural regeneration or conflict resolution team.
Broader issues/conflicts within the community should be brought to the attention of cultural regeneration teams.
If two groups have different approaches and feel they need to exist separately, central organizers shall encourage this diversity. Trust can build from this respect and acceptance.
Sometimes it may be natural for movements like Fridaysforfuture groups to experiment with decentralization and distinct sub groups. One example could be divisions along age lines, (a) a separate School Strike for Climate, (b) a separate post school youth movement ~19 to 29 group, Youth for Climate, and also (c) a general all age Fridaysforfuture.

Personal Integrity.

Represent your identity truthfully: use your real name in your profile (exceptions are permitted for those who need protection); groups are encouraged to use a name, which identifies their location and focus, if relevant (e.g., Vienna Vegans for Future).
Use “I” statements. Speak only for yourself.
Interact professionally. Community platform exchanges are intended to be a record of our work process. As such, they may be revised for up to 20 minutes but should not be deleted.
Refrain from spamming, swearing.
Do not post pornography or violent imagery.
Do not randomly add people to the channel without consent.

Personal and Community Privacy.

Respect the rights of individuals and the community to confidentiality.
Accept, abide by the GDPR Declaration of Understanding and each countries’ data privacy laws.
Always seek consent before sharing personal details or contact of others (e.g., name, personal email address, phone numbers, websites). Do not share screenshots or information about the Community outside the platform. Screenshots of private exchanges should only be used in controlled platforms to resolve conflict.

Commitment to Climate Activism.

Be committed to action to avoid Climate and Ecological breakdown.
Accept the Local Groups’ Core Values as the founding principles and focus of this platform, the community, and fellow organizers.
Keep interactions targeted to Climate and Ecological breakdown to avoid distracting or co-opting the purpose of the platform or the movement. When examining each system of oppression please try to show the relationship to Climate breakdown.
Be relatively agenda-free. The platform is not intended to promote personal beliefs, campaigns, professions, projects, etc. or to judge those of others.

Inclusion Individual

Seek to break down the systems of oppression and discrimination inherent in our society and ourselves, acknowledge how these may factor into intrapersonal relationships and our work, and aim to create an inclusive healthy community.
Value and welcome different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds. Differences influence relationships, personal interaction, ease of communication and expression,... Wide-ranging opinions, approaches, and ideas enrich and empower the success of our community.
Approach discussions with an open mind and any conflict with curiosity. Seek to understand the views and opinions of others. Be open to changing your mind or learning something new.
Give others the benefit of the doubt. If misunderstandings, tension or conflict arises, assume benign intent. Provide an opportunity for clarity and resolution.
Use Non Violent communication and do not accept or engage in racism, sexism, ageism, discrimination or hate speech.
Often it is difficult to work as an activist with no Blaming and Shaming. Firstly, it only applies to human beings and not to companies. We need to call out all institutions, including the media, pension funds, fossil companies.
There are also some contexts to examine ridiculous lifestyle choices, eg private jets, above 100 tonne per year, or climate activists flying to save the climate at a COP meeting.
The Carbon Footprint reduction programs by British Petroleum and NGO programs to push no plastic, no meat and no cars, creates unhealthy personal guilt.
Focusing on necessary individual consumption for people creates personal guilt, especially if they feel they can not change our toxic system.
Guilt creates resistance for people to ‘Make their voice heard!’ and we need everybody.
Creating personal guilt for people, normally leads to frustrations.
Frustrated people often feel unwelcome, and are less likely to actively join the Community. Less voices in activism reduces active individuals in our democracy.
Inclusion means diverse people shall have the opportunity to be involved over time. , rather than including everyone in every decision.
Trying to include everyone in every decision is impractical, a lot of hard centralised work with many mistakes and also undermines local autonomy.
Some sub groups may choose to be exclusive for short periods, eg 3 months decision process which is age centric. This does not negate the work and decisions of others. An age centric group shall not exclude others long term

Inclusion Groups and Organizations

Over time several groups have started in the same country. For example, a School Strike 4 Climate or Youth for Climate may have started in parallel with an ‘Everybody is welcome’ Fridays for Future group or a Friends of the Earth group. With inclusive respectfulness, these groups shall be able to co exist.
An example of respect includes, a first group would like to share or use a photo from a second group. The first group posts a picture as public, wanting the post to be shared. If the second group would like to ‘permanently’ use a photo from the first group, then a request in writing shall be made. Permanently could include using the first group’s picture as part of a banner of the second group.

Nurture Local Autonomy & Regenerative Cultures

Encourage and value the initiative of other groups and individuals through an ‘alliance of the willing.’ No permission is needed. Ideas are welcome to go forward if there is sufficient interest to support and implement them. Another’s work shall not be hindered, discouraged or stopped unless it is clearly outside of the Local Core Values or the Action Guidelines.
Collaboration promotes everyone while competition, undermining, and public criticism weakens the entire movement.
Local groups are autonomous and welcome to develop relevant core values, codes of conduct and decision making processes.
Regenerative cultures shall nurture respectful decision-making and positive community interaction.
Technology and processes shall enable and follow decentralized social systems, rather than social systems adapting to technology. All groups shall be represented fairly on the technologies.

Community chat platforms, e.g. Slack, are built for Team Chat: synchronous, of-the-moment, presence-privileged, ephemeral conversation and announcements. With thousands of members across the Climate landscape, having moderation that is both quick to respond and to ensure interactions are in keeping with our Regenerative cultures and Local Groups’ Core Values is crucial.

By participating in the community platform you agree to hold yourself accountable to achieving the above guidelines, compassionately assist others with meeting these expectations, and act with the well-being of the individuals, community, and climate movements in mind.

Why have a Code of Conduct?

People in movement’s need guidelines everyone can try to adhere to. This reduces the risk of deliberately hurting others.

Guidelines and principles are useful, but please remember that people can be aggressive when they are hurt etc. Regenerative cultures must include caring for people who get aggressive, and not penalising them for not following 'rules'. Local internal groups can decide in specific contexts whether a person has been too aggressive too many times, and then that person can be kindly told they are not welcome for a limited period, e.g. 3 months. Regenerative cultures should not be about imposing rules, but guidelines are more useful.

When people get upset / aggressive, often it is because they do not feel heard.

LISTENING SKILLS are probably one of the most important things about Regenerative cultures. Regenerative Cultures groups are recommended to be between 3-5 and have a participant bias of non cis men.

Please note, this is an internal policy whereas external social media may exclude ‘trolls’ permanently.