But Nathan, you know that if you want to make the process fair, you have to have long activist meetings. I pointed out on the A16 list about two months before A16 that I thought it was important, as a guy who works in downtown D.C. and commutes to College Park, that the meetings start on time (7 pm) so those of us who commute could get home at a reasonable hour.
Another good criticism I heard was that some working people work in the evenings, thus weeknight meetings were out of the question. Throw in family obligations and people's energy level after work and you can see why the meetings structure favored activists without family obligations, flexible work schedule, or lots of free time.
A solution to this problem would have been to have the meetings on weekends.
Still, after being involved in the A16 planning process, I think many of these problems could have been worked out if we had had 6 months to prepare, instead of 3. I raised some process issues early on, but bit my tongue later when I realized that the short time frame justified cutting a few corners. My hope was that we could address these problems a little bit leading up to A16 and more in depth afterwards.
> 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.
There was a diverse range of people who had input into the scenario working group. I guess a few conference calls or some pre-meeting convention, several months in advance, would have helped.
>From my experience, I think those folks involved in planning locally
lose sight of the needs of outsiders. I was surprised when I heard Wobs
complaining to me that they didn't know what was going on when they
showed up. I had assumed that they had read the website, discussions on
lists, and announcements. My feeling was that since I was spending so
much of my time on organizing that those who came from out of town could
have at least made the effort to read the website.
> 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.
Actions that use the DAN model in the future need to make these things a priority. And folks who are being excluded need to speak up. We can't solve these problems unless folks bring them up during the process. At least a few people did do this with A16.
> 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.
That's true. This is why we need the 4-hour workday, so people can go to long consensus-based meetings. ;-)
> So it is no wonder that a lot of folks were alienated from the A16
> process.
Including some of us involved in the core of the process! ;-)
This is new for most people. There will be hurdles to overcome until more and more activists and working people learn how to use this process.
<< Chuck0 >>
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