On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Chuck0 wrote:
> Amen. As I pointed out on another list, Irene belong to an organization
> which is a typical authoritarian socialist group, thinking that all of
> this radicalism should be channeled into building a party. This may
> sound logical to true believers, but believe me, most people want a say
> in how things are done. A16 may have had some problems, bu in my 15
> years as an activist, the process at A16 was the most egalitarian and
> non-hierarchical that I have ever seen. This frustrates those interested
> in centralization and hierarchy, which leads them to attack the
> "facilitated chaos" as a guise for calling for organization which is
> more favorable for them to take over.
Yeah, instead you had a process where those with the time and lack of social responsibilities to take off weeks of work and spend endless hours in meetings end up running things. There are many good things to say about the A16 meetings and I would be the last to want sectarian socialist structures, but to claim there was no hierarchy is silly. I sat in a legal training where we were told that the rule was that anyone who left jail early would not be treated equally in any deal negotiated unless those staying in jail longer voted to include them in any final deal. Whether this kind of coerion to stay in jail longer was a good rule could be debated, but it was not. It was handed down as how things would be with no opportunity to vote on it.
More deeply, there was a broad network of DAN and other folks who basically had a strategy for A16 - the "pie slice" model using affinity groups - that was presented to folks as a fait accompli when they arrived into town. Those who arrived a few days earlier might have pushed for an alternative, but given the time, everyone basically went along wth the plan.
But the lack of structure - horrors "hierarchy" - meant that there was no way for those outside the in-group to really have a voice in strategy. Republican principles of election and equal reprentation are not the same thing as democratic centralism. And a lot of folks of color and many other working class folks without a lot of time or with day care responsibilities benefit from such representation, since their voices are properly weighted in the person of their delegate.
If everyone who shows up gets to vote, those with more time get to vote more often and have more power in the organization. In capitalist society, time is bought with both money and privilege. Any process that rewards free time with more political power is based on economic and racial inequality.
So it is no wonder that a lot of folks were alienated from the A16 process.
-- Nathan Newman