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Henry takes this to extremes. The process itself is not inherently loaded with the UN agenda. I have participated on Watershed Councils, Community Action Plans and Non-Profit and Public Agency Board retreats where the meetings included a vision statement, were facilitated and used consensus.

In fact, I facilitated professionally and taught facilitation as a corporate trainer decades ago. (It was an outgrowth of Japanese "quality circles," where employee' ideas were used to solve problems.)

I stand by the process. Although I have had a bad experience with concensus where one participant held the group hostage in making any decisions by refusing to agree to anything.

I have also seen the USFS and the BLM use the process to direct, control and contain public comment. (Particularly in the use of breakout groups and predetermined topics.) One simply refuses to participate in such a forum and protests loudly in favor of traditional timed open mike.

As a representative of the people, I find such forums useful in letting me know community opinion and concerns. The problem is often, (as Property Rights Attny. Karen Budd Fallon says,) that "recommendations are made a by those that show up." This is a participatory form of government. It does not work well when you sit at home, vote for someone to make decisions and then never share your knowledge and experience on matters with them.

Public officials need information to make good decisions and this process is one way to provide that information.

This is a participatory form of government. It does not work well when you sit at home, vote for someone to make decisions and then never share your knowledge and experience on matters with them.

Working people raising families don't always have the luxury of attending these type of community meetings. They are not just sitting at home, they are feeding the kids, doing the laundry and other things they weren't able to get to during the working day. Social parasites usually have the advantage in these situations, in that often they are retired pensioners, unemployed volunteers, or employees of taxpayer funded government organizations or foundations receiving taxpayer funds.

Although I have had a bad experience with concensus where one participant held the group hostage in making any decisions by refusing to agree to anything.

I'd wager that this participant was ridiculed and harrassed for standing firm on what they believed in. I congratulate the individual you refer to in your posting. The objective of the consensus technique is to break the will of such type people, and to marginalize them an anti-government extremists.

I too have participated in visioning, stakeholder groups, forums and the like. Perhaps, in the area you are in, the state/local government/group running it is open minded about the outcome.

Here in PA, yes, they give all the participants an opportunity to say what they want, but the group moderator and writer already know what the outcome is to be, and you can see it. While they are equally polite to both sides (unlike environmentalist participants), they have trouble finding points from the opponents that merit putting in the board. They re-phrase their points in ways that change the meaning from opposition to support.

When the recommendations come out, they always have the same things - control growth, more government programs and employees, more public transportation, more trails, more government control over how things look. Occasionally, if they've have 4 or five people say that we need to get jobs that pay decently since manufacturing is gone, they'll through in a token "work with the business community to create jobs".

We've done Vision202; Overlay corridors for a new interstate; Greenways; Regional Planning and more. All that I've been to have the same background: the local environmental organization got a grant to help the community decide their future; their have their core members as moderators; over 50% of the participants are paid government staff; they list all the same reasons for concern and why we need to do this; and they all come up with the same lists of what needs to be done.

Sorry, in my experience it was not open and honest. I did several of these before I even knew what Agenda21 was. Once I went to the UN website and read about it, I recognized immediately what I has experienced. At least I was able to see at future meetings which points to argue most strongly against (for what good it does). I signed up for their mailing lists, but once they recognized my opposition they stopped sending me information about future meetings.I guess I value my 'freedomshed' as much as they value their 'viewshed'.

Glad it's truly participatory in your area though.