December 2025 – josuterdotcom

Mennonite Action (MA) Response

We are enjoying the Christmas here while in Bethlehem on the West Bank, Christians are being slaughtered – with our tax dollars. We bury our heads in the sand. “I didn’t know”. Is it a sin if we don’t know? Or a sin to not want to find out? If sin can be described as a break in a relationship, then not talking with others may be in the same category.

Mennonite Action should not become an institution. They will just ask for money and allow the rest of us to feel OK because we donated. Praying and singing may give comfort to some, but it will not be enough. We must push people to make decisions. We must not only be God’s love but also God’s power.

The pillars of power described by MA can be misused by authoritarian governments. This model implies that we can just kick out the support structures and it will collapse. But we can’t do that. Why? I know people in all these support structure organizations – unions, media, police, etc. We can’t take away their jobs. We should not destroy the current structures without creating – and actually starting alternative forms of mutual support. Anabaptists and Amish should be good at that. Will they take the lead?

Neither will it be enough to form mutual aid societies for our own group. We must push other groups to do the same. With the right tools, they too have the ability to talk, think, and solve problems. It may require a place where people can meet in private and form some opinion before putting it on the table. (“. . . where two or three are gathered. . . “). It must also be a place that encourages seeing with new eyes and making new moves. It must be a place that turns real faith into real action.

Political demonstrations do not seem to be working fast enough. Vincent Bevins describes this in “If We Burn.” It may be that people we call “activists” are not the right people to find a solution, even if they seem indispensable for getting the process started. We must push others both inside and outside the church. Push local groups to use their own money to engage outsiders.

What other things could Mennonite Action do? A few suggestions:

1. Start Anti-War Games. These can be as varied as we can imagine. (see Greenland below)

2. Find alternative modes of moving useful information, especially when the mainstream media has failed. Push to create additional high-tech and low-tech communication sources that cannot be shut down by a power outage or censorship.

3. Ask Questions, Force choices – even small ones. Making choices can be empowering for some people who are never asked to make choices for something outside their own world.

4. Use of hypothetical situations (“what if . . . “) can help clarify our thinking and avoid nit picking. But then turn it into something real, some action and follow-up.

5. Go to nearest Synagogue and engage their members in finding a better way out for Israel. Rejected? Close off their parking lot. If they refuse to engage, then put signs “we support Genocide” in their lawn or on their cars. Force a choice. Push them to believe that their God is a living God who can change The Story. They do not have to be slaves to an Old Story. The world has changed. The Story of their God can change too. If God exists anywhere, it is in the relationship and interaction between two human beings.

6. Find a few AIPAC lobbyists in Congress and, one by one, help them find a new job. Focus many on a few for 1-2 weeks. If not successful move on or change tactics.

7. Create Ten-Two groups in which ten people support (food, rent, insurance) two in their group and free them up to do anything the group wants, including starting other Ten-two groups. Once started, the group is accountable only to themselves. Some will fail but others move forward, going beyond mutual aid to finding some purpose for the group.

8. Use Other Types of Power:

– [ #1-3 are Guns, Money, Information (Mass Media). These will not disappear. ]

– #4-10 include Division of Labor; Competition; Processes that include Privacy, Incentive, and Efficiency; Feedback Mechanisms constructed from the outside; Bottlenecks – both physical and social interaction bottlenecks; Focusing on a Few; Change the Target Learner.

9. We can make communities more secure and stable despite a downturn in the economy if we can push people to talk and solve problems with each other, then do this with other communities. We must think and plan ahead, not simply react to an authoritarian gang.

What type of society do we want to emerge? If we can create real change, there will be real support for MA both in both money and volunteers.

Transformation Steps –

Start quick, local debates both inside our church and in the larger community. Allow some privacy by creating randomly picked teams. If no one engages, then pick, name, and announce individuals for each team. If still no engagement, challenge them in public. Turn over the tables in the temple that allow people to hide. If still no engagement, move on to someone else. This is what Mennonite Action – and the rest of us – should be doing.

Our government may be realizing that taking Venezuela will be harder than previously thought. So now the Trump administration is setting their sights on Greenland. Bullies pick on a weaker states. Find a few people in Greenland (or Venezuela) who are willing to listen. If nobody answers, then put up a prize and have a competition among small groups. Keep it off the front page. Help them find extra, alternative channels of communication to their mainstream media. Then push them to think about what they themselves – personally – will do when US troops show up in their country. Only then is it time to broadcast potential future actions to everyone, including current government leaders. This is a type of anti-war game. It can continue to remain non-violent, even if the other side does not. It must push people and government officials to make decisions. Sticking our heads in the sand will not get us there.

WinDG

Problem: Democracy cannot function without good sources of information.

Stories can be factually correct and still misleading if framing is incorrect or key parts omitted. The same can be said for “truth”. A better concept is “useful information”. Useful Information (UI) implies a need for ideas and information to complete a specific task or answer a specific question. It may require a search and more discussion.

How do we even talk with people who have their own facts, or seem uninterested, or intent on building a counter narrative? We can challenge them to a game of discovery. We may discover new things too. The tools of discovery involve the creation of small group structures to help find and filter useful information. Organizers of such groups can even make a small profit, a Win! How do we start?

Good Question

We are all asked questions by family, friends, and teachers early in our own development. Many of us will learn how to ask ourselves good questions. Leaders and talking heads ask questions too, some of which are rhetorical questions – to which, of course, they have the answer. Some questions are intended to mislead or incite some action in the audience. The point here is that these questions initially come from someone else, even an outsider. These may or may not be the best questions. With a bit of practice and a few other people, we can learn to frame the problem, develop better questions, and search for solutions in a more efficient and effective manner.

How Do You Know?

This question, “How do you know – anything?” is an essential question to make progress toward solutions. If this question is not asked, people don’t know that they don’t know. Trusting the source is often equated with trusting the information. The opposite is equally true, i.e. not trusting (or not liking) the source will lead us to reject information from them.

Create Information Filters with Discovery Games (DG)

One can create an information filter on the receiving end (not the broadcasting end) by using Small Groups (SG) of people divided randomly into teams with a few players each, plus some judges, also picked randomly, who can decide which team has the best information and wins the prize. This is real competition for a short period of time – minutes, hours, and sometimes days if the search time must be extended. Players and Judges (PJ’s) are mixed and remixed as needed. Outsiders who may believe different facts can be invited a few at a time and folded into the mix. One does not have to argue with them in public. Simply challenge them to bring their facts to the game.

Play Ball

Discovery Games follow the model of sports, except that the goal is to find and filter ideas and information rather than to hit a ball into the net. There will be look-alikes who swear they have found the truth, but their results can be run through another filter at any level. Which one will you believe? The process must be efficient and take almost no time of the organizer or sponsor. PJ’s can even start their own game. If necessary, they can each put in a small bit for a prize to help focus their minds for a short period of time.

Push the Process

DG’s can be useful, but the real power lies in pushing the DG process itself to other small groups and other communities. Starting a new DG in another place can be the goal of a preliminary DG. Getting outsiders to use DG’s may require a larger starting prize, but not too high. The prize should be just enough to hold attention for the duration of the game.

And what issues? What is the Discussion Question (DQ)? It can be almost anything in which better information could make a difference, but there is really no limit. It could be a personal question, a local issue within a church or school. Even national and international issues are fair game.

Campaign finance is often associated with ‘getting out the message’. The number of votes received often correlates with the amount of money spent but this is not always the case. It should be about finding better information. Better information in political campaigns can be achieved with a DG-type filter. This requires debates within the private team setting before presentation to each panel of judges. Debate is essential. Andy Grove, CEO of Intel during an especially turbulent transition period, learned the importance of having a vigorous debate before making decisions that would affect the whole company. Democracy now needs more real debates on many issues and at many levels.

DG’s are not a social gathering. The goal is the finding and filtering of useful information. Players can use any source of information. Keep prize money local and offline if possible. Challenge other small groups. They must often make the discovery themselves. An example might be a tobacco company who want to make cigarettes in a local factory to provide jobs. Not everyone believes that is a good idea for their long-term health.

Win Win Win

Readers of this web site (YOU) can start a DG and make a profit. Your added value lies in organizing people who may not normally talk with each other. You are giving them the tools to move forward on some issue. Once people understand the game and want to play, they can contribution a small amount of money. You keep 10% for organizing the game.

You do not have to be the moderator, however. Simply invite a dozen people (5 minimum) and divide them into 2 or 3 teams of Players, plus Judges (PJ’s). Give a DQ (Discussion Question) and a time limit. Teams meet in private. Judges decide on the winning team and a prize is awarded. Players and Judges can be re-mixed (or not) and the next DQ is announced. This process is repeated until PJ’s find better information or have something to act on. Follow-up to an action can be done with the same structure.

Why is privacy important? Why is competition important? These can be Discussion Questions for a game. The DQ process must be transparent to the PJ’s, enough so that they can trust the results. First games can start with any Discussion Question and then move toward more serious issues.

Push Uphill

Once players understand the game structure they will expand its applications to other groups and other communities, near and far. Competition can be with any other group and on any issue. Pushing one community uphill toward sustainability can be a series of games with many parallel DG groups focusing on that one community. Why push others uphill? Because a lot can be learned and brought back home to use. Plus it can be fun.