Re: [sudo-discuss] requesting time to discuss omni voting proposal on sudo's agenda ?

Hi David, Below is Jenny's report back to the omnilogistics list of what we decided at our 7/23 meeting when this was on the agenda. Did y'all address these concerns with revised language or are you implying that we should have agreed to the original language and we should talk about it again? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi folks, I want to put this out to the list now so we can save some time at next week's meeting. This is a two-parter summarizing discussions with both the legal/governance working group as well as the sudo room community. The proposed revision to the consensus process (a 2/3 majority vote fallback when consensus fails) was discussed on the sudo mailing list as well as at this week's meeting. Many excellent points were brought up, which I'll attempt to summarize here: * Rather than going immediately to a 2/3 vote, it's been suggested that a 2/3 vote only take place when consensus has failed to be reached and after the topic has been tabled for one week, to allow for reflection. * Concerns expressed that the proposed process would allow individuals to purposefully block consensus expressly for the purposes of turning the matter to a majority vote (eliminating the point of consensus in the first place). * Suggestion that, if we are voting by majority, the larger collectives should get additional delegates. * Concern that other member-groups do not have a fair decision-making process in place themselves. * Suggestion that we vary the voting process depending on the topic. For example, this is how sudo room currently operates [1 [1]]: ** Any amendments to the defined, transparent budgeting process must be passed using consensus. ** Decisions involving safe space and membership suspension require a majority 2/3 vote. ** Conflicts where material compensation is sought require a 1/2 vote. ** All other conflicts are decided by consensus. ** Any amendments to our governing processes / Articles of Association are decided by consensus. * Suggestion that the majority be 3/4 or 4/5 if the intent is to prevent obstruction by individuals with bad intentions. * A reminder that the Omni is designed to be very thin, and that by and large most decisions should be made within individual collectives and working groups. If anyone's interested, I've posted the full conversation, with direct quotes, on a riseup pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/omnivoting [2] To the last bullet point, above, the Legal/Governance working group discussed ways of granting more power and autonomy to the working groups rather than "The Omni Collective" write large. This would ideally reduce the amount of information overload (both on the list and at the general meetings) and the complexity of decision-making, and encourage everyone to focus on more actionable tasks. For example only (just sketching down my own thoughts now): * Finances WG is empowered to make decisions on expenditures (up to a point), * Legal/Gov or new Permitting WG is empowered to make decisions on legal documentation and engagement with city officials on these matters. * Challenging Dominant Culture is empowered to make decisions regarding community outreach and conflict resolution processes, * Communications is empowered to make decisions on internal (eg this list) and external (eg the website) communication tools and press relations. * Common Space WG is empowered to make decisions regarding the layout and use of the common space, For matters of accountability, actions taken by working groups should be transparently documented (eg; on the wiki) and reported during the weekly general meeting (which could maybe, someday, become a monthly meeting!). Any new working group should be approved by the OOC, to prevent interest groups from forming around self-serving agendas, and all member-groups should also be represented in at least one working group. If this is too much to ask for any given member-group, I personally would seriously call into question their alignment with the values and spirit of the OOC. The Legal/Gov working group and several members of sudo room encourage other member-groups in the Omni Collective to either a) adopt a fair decision-making, conflict resolution process, and safe space policy for their group, or b) provisionally adopt Sudo's or the Omni's. I hope this is valid feedback to work with on revising the current proposal, which the sudo delegate would block at next week's meeting in its current form. Thanks for reading <3, Jenny [1] https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association#Article_3._Decision-Making [1] - -- Jenny http://jennyryan.net [3] http://sudomesh.org [4] http://thevirtualcampfire.org [5] http://technomadic.tumblr.com [6] `~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~` "Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories." - -Laurie Anderson "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." -Hannah Arendt "To define is to kill. To suggest is to create." - -Stéphane Mallarmé ~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~` Links: ------ [1] https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association#Article_3._Decision-Making [2] https://pad.riseup.net/p/omnivoting [3] http://jennyryan.net/ [4] http://sudomesh.org/ [5] http://thevirtualcampfire.org/ [6] http://technomadic.tumblr.com/ [7] http://www.enigmail.net/