Building a Global Movement: Core Principles and Ground Rules for General Strike

SUMMARY

This document outlines three essential protocols for building an inclusive, accountable, and accessible global movement. These principles ensure broad participation while maintaining democratic legitimacy and transparency in decision-making processes that affect billions of people worldwide.

FOUNDATIONAL APPROACH: MOVEMENT FIRST

Our primary focus must be building a unified global movement that creates safe spaces where people feel empowered, included, and excited about participation. As Hassan noted, we should avoid “putting the cart before the horse” by focusing first on movement-building rather than premature infrastructure decisions.

All other considerations—including website development, vetting procedures, and organizational structures—should support this central mission. Any initiatives that don’t prioritize movement-building should be paused while we establish common vision and mission globally.

The three protocols below represent minimum core values required for a thriving movement. If these cannot be guaranteed, we should consider establishing parallel organizations to serve different community needs.

PROTOCOL 1: INCLUSIVE COLLABORATION AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

PRINCIPLE: Open Interactive and collaborative brainstorming spaces for global community engagement

We must create environments where:

• Ideas remain open for consideration until decisions are made collectively
• Fresh perspectives and co-creation are actively encouraged
• Sociocracy principles guide policy evaluation and evolution
• All rules, policies, and systems remain reviewable and accountable to global participants
• Issues are acknowledged and addressed in timely, effective manner
• Diverse viewpoints, cultures, communities, and languages are heard and supported

This ensures the organizations and movement works for participants rather than against them, empowering broad engagement across all demographics.

PROTOCOL 2: DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND VERIFICATION

PRINCIPLE: Legitimate, verifiable decision-making for global impact

Given that decisions affect 8+ billion people and trillions of animals, we need to require:

MINIMUM LEGITIMACY STANDARDS

• Documented decisions with public verification capability
• Representative assembly meeting majority or supermajority democratic thresholds
• Direct empowerment of countries, languages, and cultures

DECISION AUTHORITY

• Only decisions made by a global assembly that represents the Global General Strike network
• Organizations may work toward broader visions, but those visions require verified votes/consensus
• Groups lacking minimum global legitimacy make decisions applicable only to themselves, not the broader movement

PROTOCOL 3: UNIVERSAL ACCESSIBILITY AND TRANSPARENCY

PRINCIPLE: Public review and multilingual access for all global decisions

TRANSPARENCY REQUIREMENTS

• All global decisions affecting worldwide populations must be publicly reviewable
• Decision-making processes, reasoning, and documentation must be accessible
• Private subgroup meetings are acceptable, but private-only decision-making cannot govern global adherence

ACCESSIBILITY STANDARDS

• Recording and documentation of proceedings (with participant anonymity options)
• Artificial intelligence integration for:
• Real-time transcription
• Automated translation into hundreds of languages for Real Time global distribution
• Accommodation for neurodiversity and disabilities
• Equal participation levels across all backgrounds

TECHNOLOGY AND PRIVACY CONSIDERATIONS

• Given that corporate AI systems process audio and text, all meeting information becomes accessible to corporations and governments. Therefore:
• Full transparency approach: treat all information as public
• Participants advised against sharing private/confidential information
• Focus on accessibility benefits outweighs privacy limitations for at least this type of meeting space
• Recorded sessions enable participation for those unable to attend live

DISTRIBUTED EMPOWERMENT MODEL

• No individual or small group controls information, links, or session access
• Anyone following established rules can share links, propose votes, invite participants, and conduct outreach
• Following Rules compliance results in empowerment, Rule violations result in removal; 

IMPLEMENTATION: NEXT STEPS

IMMEDIATE ACTION

• Schedule a PUBLIC recorded, transcribed, and translated session using:

https://www.when2meet.com/?31765638-EXXNt

This allows global participation with:

• Real-time listening, reading, and understanding in any language
• All people to experience this model, it is not better, it is different and creates diversity of meetings
• Creates Choices between private English-only sessions and public multilingual sessions

DECENTRALIZATION BENEFITS

• Multiple meeting types strengthen network resilience
• Distributed knowledge and power prevent concentration among select individuals or small groups
• Diverse approaches accommodate different community needs and preferences

PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATION

• Dissent and new ideas drive positive change. To create real transformation, we must chart new paths rather than replicating existing systems of control. We champion all forms of humanity and their right to exist, inclusive of diverse backgrounds, political stances, and religious beliefs.

CONCLUSION

These protocols ensure that our movement of potentially 300+ million people can unite across all demographics—every race, gender, ability, culture, and nation—to create meaningful change. Success requires accessibility as our foundation, collaboration as our method, and transparency as our standard.

Obviously these are just a few of the many protocols and policies and rules that need to be established, but these represent a line of the 3 most important essential components that we could bend but not break. 

Not allowing any of three protocols to be implemented represent minimum core values that are required for a thriving movement and to be in alignment with COOPerative principles of organizing. If these cannot be guaranteed, we should consider establishing parallel organizations within the same movement to serve different community needs.

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