> I basically agree with Nathan on all the points he made. Since I
> couldn't take much time off from work to go to A16, I ended up
> participating as an outsider, merely a warm body to swell the number
> of people who went to D.C. And these problems -- informal hierarchy
> based upon who has time to go to many long meetings, etc. -- have
> become regrettably reproduced locally in a network of activists that
> we formed after the CWA strike at the Ohio State University (about
> which I posted last month), due to ill-considered adoption of a
> "consensus model" pushed by enthusiasts of the A16 style (those who
> disagreed initially were inexplicably red-baited and silenced as
> "anti-democrats," though I was the only Marxist among the
> dissenters), which doesn't serve to encourage the attendance of
> working people, especially those with family obligations. As a
> result, our ranks have become thin (both in number and breadth of
> representation) within a few weeks since the end of the strike; the
> group started out as a multi-racial coalition of labor, student, and
> community activists, but it's now exclusively students --
> overwhelmingly white -- who come to meetings, with an occasional
> exception of the president of Local 4501, a representative from
> AFL-CIO, and a religious left activist (two of whom are single with
> no kids -- all three are white males). Now we need to adopt a
> different way of running meetings; otherwise, this network is not
> likely to survive, except as a club of predominantly white college
> kids.
The A16 model works, at least for a large coalition type action. The fact that it has kinks and people who aren't proficient in its methods is no reason to reject it as one tool in our toolkit.
But Yoshie has touched on an important consideration here. It's a mistake to take a new tool and use it on all bolts, regardless of their size.
I witnessed a similar example here in D.C. after A16. One afternoon our local infoshop collective had a marathon strategy and decision-making retreat. Our facilitator had been an A16 facilitator and had been training at one of the A16 facilitator retreats. He's a young activist and understandably enthusiastic about what happened at A16. Still, he proposed at one point that we adopt the A16 model for running our bookstore/infoshop. Many of the others got excited about this, until I threw a bucket of water on this idea by explaining that based on my experience volunteering at a cooperative bookstore, that implementing the A16 model would be overkill. We only have 20 people in the collective at this point and that number will double once our store opens. There is simply no time for us to play the "working groups report to the spokescouncil" model. We've set up working groups for things like ordering books and zines and doing publicity. But these groups won't send a delegate to our monthly meeting. That will be the traditional collective-style meeting where all members are welcome to attend.
> The model loved by A16 organizers doesn't seem conducive to
> developing participation -- let alone leadership -- by
> African-Americans. When forced to participate merely as
> _individuals_ or at best representatives of small & predominantly
> white "affinity groups," it is not likely that Blacks would ever gain
> much power in a movement; African-Americans and other people of color
> need to participate as a group, so that we can have a voice in the
> movement. It appears that Chuck0, Kelley, & Doug are not troubled by
> the absence of democratic input from people of color, since they had
> nothing to say about the subject.
I think that the A16 model *IS* conducive to participation by people of color. It is egalitarian and encourages people to volunteer to work on things they want to work on. People of color can set up their own affinity groups based on their needs and goals and a delegate from each group is sent to the spokecouncil.
I think what you really need to criticize is DAN's need to control the *agenda* of these coalitions. This is where the clique problem comes from. There is nothing inherently alienating about the affinity group model, since it has been used by a vast variety of cultures over thousands of years.
> Doug asks what I would prefer. At this point, I'd say that decisions
> had better be made by the majority rule. I think that the use of
> "blocks" is not democratic, in that even one person, through a block,
> can prevent decision-making. "Stand asides" don't help either. And
> there should be affirmative action exercised within the movement to
> build up representation of people of color (to repeat, organized as a
> bloc, a caucus, or something like that). I love quotas.
I like the idea of exercising affirmative action within these groups, but I think most people are alienated by majority rule. That method of decision-making is inherently disempowering. It makes the process more efficient at the expense of minority and contrarian viewpoints.
I don't know, I learned most of what I know about consensus decision-making from a class on West African history.
<< Chuck0 >>
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