In 1968 I was asleep politically, only vaguely aware of the DNC Demonstrations. In 1969 I was chair of the Sales & Services committee in New Trier High School’s POWR (People to Overcome Racism). This meant I sold buttons at anti-war events. I entered the peace movement as a salesman. I’d recently won the tent selling fruit cake for my Boy Scout troop. Go with what you know.

Heading a sales firm from 1980 to 1999, I sold greeting cards, calendars and gifts and met Marcia. She bought what I was selling. During some of those years I wrote and illustrated the comic strip, Off the Deep End. I tried to make a living being funny and insightful. I was better at being droll and confusing.

My passions cover a range of activities including the comic arts, sand castles, wedding buffets and evolutionary theory concentrating on the influence of proto-dance in matrifocal cultures on maturation rates and testosterone levels. I focus on sexual selection, neoteny and the evolutionary origins of autism. Suggest to me that biological evolution and contemporary social transformations are closely related, and watch me talk without inhaling.

In 1998 I put up my first website (serpentfd.org) describing my evolutionary theory in some detail. Two months later I was in the web business. I became a web developer by profession.

By 2004 I was creating and maintaining websites for some local peace groups. Disappointed that I’d let the 1968 DNC pass without my participation, I bought a ticket on a protest bus to go to the RNC in NY. Across the isle from me sat Juan Torres whose son John had been killed in Afghanistan the previous month. In the isle, resting on Juan’s seat leaned a large poster of John. John watched me to NY and back.

I started attended meetings of several local peace groups exploring structure and dynamics in the context of building coalitions. I wanted to know what worked and why and what prevented cooperation. Moveon seemed to have the most frequent actions (once a month) so they got most of my time. From Jan 05 to Aug 05 I worked my way up from activist to team leader to regional coordinator to one of three volunteer national coordinators. I learned tons. At the same time I participated in and observed the emergence of four Illinois coalitions, one state and three regional. Again, I wanted to know what worked and why and what stopped coalitions from succeeding. I observing closely from within Moveon what worked and didn’t work in their national organizational structure while noting what dynamics most frequently trashed emerging Illinois coalitions.

Both biological evolution and social transformation are about the origins and development of unencumbered pathways of natural creativity. How can we use technology and political structure to enhance/encourage the emergence of culture transforming creativity? In different words, how do we politically empower the individual within society?

With my wife, Marcia, I am co-chair of the Tech-Web Committee of ICPJ, board member of NSPI, a founding member of NSCPJ and member of Neighbors for Peace and CCAWR. When I am not an activist I am an inactive activist.

Marcia Bernsten, Laurel Lambert Schmidt and I are co-directors of the Peace, Justic and Environment Project that networks (as of 11/23/07) 650 organizations in 20 states participating in the pjep.org project.