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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]:
** 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

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

- -- 
Jenny
http://jennyryan.net
http://sudomesh.org
http://thevirtualcampfire.org
http://technomadic.tumblr.com

`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
"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
~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`
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