On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Chuck0 wrote:
> > 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.
>
> But Nathan, you know that if you want to make the process fair, you have
> to have long activist meetings.
> 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 basically reality is that those making core decisions in political groups need time to do so. Which is why elected leadership is important, so those who don't have the time to attend (and will not have the time to attend most of the time no matter when you hold the meetings) can choose among those who have the time. Democracy exists not just in people participating but to some extent in those who can't attend democratically choosing to EXCLUDE those who they disagree with from participating in decisions. This is important because those who happen to have the time to attend will not necessarily reflect the same spectrum of opinion as those who can't.
Since it is impossible to have everyone participate, the next best thing is to selectively prune participation by those with the time until they reflect the non-participating population. This is essentially what well-run elections do. Some system of proportional representation is obviously most appropriate in a social movement where we want a diversity of voices at the table, but they should be there in proportion to that broader population to properly weight decision-making power.
> That's true. This is why we need the 4-hour workday, so people can go to
> long consensus-based meetings. ;-)
Oh God. I always thought Oscar Wilde had the greatest argument for why so many people are not socialists, despite their economic self-interest. He once said, "I'd be a socialist except it would take too many evenings."
People want Bread and Roses = and only us meeting junkies think that includes long-ass meetings fighting over the exact wording on a pamphlet.
There are real values in the anarchist model and I thought some of the DAN folks were some of the best meeting moderators I have seen, but it is not a model for a mass, diverse movement that has any real aspirations to multiracial participation. So the trick will be to maintain those values in a more structured organizational network.
-- Nathan Newman