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Comment by viklove | Hacker News Reader

That's interesting, because the marxist, separatist, feminist utopias of the 1960s, which valued the collective above all else, followed this form of speaking. A stick would be passed around the group, and the person holding the stick was the only one allowed to speak until they wished to pass the stick. What would you say to them?

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It's the same basic idea: you take turns to speak, rather than all trying to speak at once or the person with the loudest voice simply talking over everyone else.

In the context you describe it sounds like they had not had to deal with someone who loves the sound of their own voice and wanted to talk for an hour about how great their home business is and they think everyone should join in their ground level opportunity.

> That's interesting, because the marxist, separatist, feminist utopias of the 1960s, which valued the collective above all else, followed this form of speaking. A stick would be passed around the group, and the person holding the stick was the only one allowed to speak until they wished to pass the stick.

AFAIK, that was most true when those organizations were in the “forming” stages as part of the shared process of building and getting buy-in on a new community, but generally faded in the groups with any longevity either through formal abandonment or because informal norms governing surrender of the stick evolved as groups matured.

It's a great approach if it worked for them; protest and activist groups started with that approach but have changed their processes because of the problems mentioned by the sibling post.

People interested in this topic may like the book Direct Action (https://www.versobooks.com/books/2331-direct-action) on the history of protest movements.

Given that talking sticks are an historic Native American concept (my search led to the relevant Wikipedia page), I read this comment to somewhat corroborate the article's claim that white supremacy is relevant to meeting rules.

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