Open Space at "International Inquiry Into 9-11" conference [long]

[Lisa]

Dear Colleagues -

I facilitated Open Space for a conference entitled, "International
Inquiry Into 9-11" which was held last month in San Francisco.

The conference originator and the majority of participants are people
who feel that there is truth to be exposed as people put together the
.true? suppressed?  omitted?  unfolding?. stories of what they feel
really happened before, during and after the New York terrorist bombings
of the US's World Trade Centers.  They also relate this to similar
situations, truths and untruths around the similar attack on the US's
Pentagon, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the US's involvement in
Afghanistan and in Iraq, and other situations where US intelligence
agencies, government and military agencies were, in their opinion,
working together to orchestrate reasons for invading some countries and
for observing or restricting movement, thought and actions of US and
international citizens.

Participants range from those who are seeking to reconstruct the
situations around these events to those who feel that the US government
is using chemicals, electronic devices and other approaches to control
our minds.

It was a truly fascinating experience, as this is not a community with
which I am familiar, so I was interested in holding space for their
event.  (The conference website:
http://www.deceptiondollar.com/Inquiry911.htm )

The Open Space sessions were on a parallel track, held on the second
floor of the building; the pre-set presentations and speakers were held
on the first floor in a large theatre space.  The public attended this
event, though about 50 of the 200-ish participants were a core group
that is very involved in these issues, hosted sessions, sold and gave
away books, videos, papers, buttons and fake US currency (the 'Deception
Dollar' with President Bush's face on it) and are extremely passionate
about their collective or individual issues.  There was never a dull
moment for me as either participants were bursting into Open Space in
their own ways or coming up to me one-on-one to passionately explain
their own theories to me throughout the conference.

Their own way of doing Open Space was rather more than the usual chaos
of Open Space - a bit more anarchy.  I arrived in the morning (I
realized the situation was different than in our pre-planning) without
full knowledge of what rooms were available for sessions, which room we
would use for the full circle and how large it might be, whether I could
post on the walls or not, whether the conference coordinator /
host-sponsor had actually brought the Open Space signs she'd created or
all the materials I'd requested for the event, whether we would have 5
or 500 people, and so on.  I and a dear fellow facilitator who
volunteered to help made some hasty adjustments to the agenda
information and signage as people entered the room.

The host began (not our mutually-understood design) by asking people to
introduce themselves and tell why they were there and we went into a
long period of passionate speeches, passing around of petitions to sign
and manifestos to read and so on - eventually I turned to her and said
'we need to begin the Open Space' as we only had a little more time
before the first sessions.  During my opening statements and before I
mentioned the principles the host interrupted and said "let's get on
with it!  we want to post sessions!".  She had participated in an Open
Space before but most of the others had not; so I introduced the
principles and Law and opened up the floor for posting of topics, during
which participants posted but also some stood in the center to make a
few more brief speeches.

I breathed, feeling not very grounded amidst the chaos but still sure
that the right things were happening.  Breathing helped, because I was
carrying tension into the situation (from the planning phases through
this opening it had been a bit of a challenge for me) and I realized
that my own tension would not help the flow, as it were.  Participants
posted a lovely number of sessions (the host had color-coded the topics
paper into "public welcome", "media welcome" and "registered
participants only" because of participants' concerns about privacy in a
public event) and the multi-colored agenda wall came together (there was
only enough room in this room for Day 1 of the 3-day agenda, so we
placed signs on another wall saying "Saturday Parking Lot" and "Sunday
Parking Lot" for any sessions folks wished to write up and post in those
areas to save for those days).

Then they were off and running, as they say here in the States.

I had to move the Agenda Wall several times into other rooms (I was very
grateful that I had chosen to create a false wall of paper upon which
everything was adhered - we also used the grid method of creating the
agenda wall where participants place their topic signs direction onto a
time-space matrix without the post-it step), as our main room turned out
to not be available to us at all times.  The rooms that had been
assigned for breakout sessions changed around, too, so I and another
dear volunteer spent a lot of time making directional signs and running
to the building manager to see the latest availabilities schedule.  I
ended up holding space by a) moving around the building keeping the flow
of rooms available and signs posted and b) standing in front of the
eventually-it-found-a-home Agenda Wall.

50 people came to the opening circle -- nobody ever came to the other
circles such as the next day's Morning News - these folks are not
morning people.  200 people were involved in the entire conference and
people joined the conference at various times throughout the next 3 days
without a sense of the participant-led sessions - apparently this was to
have been communicated to all participants but it had not been. In the
US there is a game show called "Wheel of Fortune" which includes a
lovely lady standing in front of a wall of soon-to-be-revealed letters
spelling out popular phrases - I was compared throughout this conference
to this woman, Ms. Vanna White -- standing in front of the Agenda Wall
for three days as I explained the guidelines and helped each new person
post a session if they were so inclined.

Periodically I would help various conference members find art supplies
for a spontaneous demonstration to City Hall and so forth, as one
individual, as an example, would come up to the Agenda Wall and start
taking it down to use the paper, or other little bits of creative
anarchy.

There was no Closing Circle, as the host decided not to close in that
manner (I found this out when we got to that point).  No notes were
written up, as folks were more passionate about speaking than writing.
During the weekend as the room availabilities would suddenly change, you
could walk into a room previously booked as a Open Space discussion room
and instead see a group of elderly Filipina veterans of US wars eating
lumpia (really wonderful traditional food) and doing the samba in their
weekly social gathering (the building is the home of Veterans for Peace
and other veterans organizations and that's what is normally booked
there). This little slice of celebration and life was a delightful,
although somewhat surreal, counterpoint to the very serious discussions
the 9-11 truthseekers were holding throughout the building.

It was really wild.

So, what resulted?

In the three days, there was a full series of top speakers, researchers,
writers, journalists and documentarians in the Truth Movement, as it is
sometimes called, presenting in the main large theatre.  There were over
30 participant-led sessions on emerging issues.  There was a march to
City Hall, press conferences and streaming internet video.  There was a
group of self-selected conference core participants who met for 3 hours
in Open Space to pull together what they felt were the findings of the
conference (formal presentations, Open Space sessions and all) to
deliver to the public as a full-conference closing session - a very
impressive presentation by multiple speakers who designed how to
succinctly deliver a thorough review of the issues they feel rose to the
top - sort of like an oral Book of Proceedings.  People took to Open
Space like ducks to water, in their own anarchic style.

I was told that people enjoyed how I held space, as sort of a nurturing
hostess of 'gee, that's really an interesting theory -- if you think
others should be talking about this, why don't you host a session?'
throughout the 3 days as the Agenda Wall grew and evolved from Opening
Circle to final conversations.

I learned a lot of what people (some who I feel may be on to something
and some who I feel may be "on" something) think and feel passionately
about truths, untruths, what the government is or might be doing and how
they feel about their own power or lack thereof.

Here is a sampling of some of their Open Space topics:

*       Patterns of Military Intelligence as a Tool of Elite Control

*       The CIA Connection to the World Trade Center Bombing 1993 -
video presentation of "banned" ABC News Report

*       Methods & Tools for 1-on-1 Conversation about 9/11

*       Developing a Template for 9-11 Consciousness-Raising

*       Reaching Out to the Progressive Left Media - Michael Moore,
Democracy Now, Z-Magazine - "Left Gatekeepers" or well-meaning but lost?
Either way, they will come around.  Let's speed up the process.

*       Media Strategy-Planning for 2pm Press Conference

*       Building a Mass 9-11 Movement - 911Visibility.org

*       Energy Alternatives - Does Peak Oil mean that we're all doomed

*       Afghanistan Between the Worlds - A film - a discussion and film
showing how Afghanistan was used to set up the Reagan agenda and again
the Bush Agenda

*       Sovereignty Economic Freedom & Prosperity - be untouchable,
eliminate debt, taxes and be free to challenge the status quo

*       Impact & Resistance - Patriot Act I & II - Definitions of
Dictatorship

*       The dull, boring, necessary work of summarizing David Ray
Griffin's book, "The New Pearl Harbor" into a series of Powerpoint /
keynote presentations

*       Collection (& discussion) of Existing References on Aircraft
Control

*       911 Wargames, Emergency Response Exercises & Drills and their
Links to the Plot

*       Mind Control Tactics & Technologies on Activists & the Public

*       Crony Capitalism or Global Elite: Reconciling Worldviews in the
Context of State-Sponsored Terror

*       Impeachment - Discourse & Referendum

*       What do you know about suicide bombers, Kamikazi, assisted
suicide in Oregon?  This is the key to 9/11, don't you think?

*       Let's go 1-on-1 about our personal 9/11 journey (not stuff about
the 9/11 event itself)

*       There were no terrorists - I challenge you to show me otherwise

*       UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) - You tell what you know.  I'll
tell what I know.

*       Gleanings from the 9/11 Commission - 1) the gun?  2)
notification in real time?  3) attempts to intercept?

*       9/11 - Who really did it?  The top 150 subpoena list (patsies,
helpful idiots, puppets, puppeteers, asteroids, etc.)

*       Strategy for Republican National Convention

*       Working Toward a Comprehensive Solution - the Jefferson World
Republic

Thought you might enjoy 'visiting' my experience at this conference.

Take care,




________________________________

L i s a   H e f t
Consultant, Facilitator, Educator
O p e n i n g  S p a c e
2325 Oregon
Berkeley, California
94705-1106   USA
+01 510 548-8449
 <mailto:lisaheft at pacbell.net> lisaheft at pacbell.net
www.openingspace.net


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