Hey! Do we have a meeting tonight? I'm planning to come at 8 PM since this was when we've done them in the past. Is anyone else planning to be there?
I would like to submit a proposal: I think Sudo Room
should hold elections for a "board of responsibility and limited power"
in late February.
Our meetings are
frequently long, disorganized, and acrimonious. We have no meaningful
systems of accountability. We experience the same challenges with
effectively organizing ourselves and finding consensus again and again
and again. And I think in this context, we should go back to basics.
Most
organizations use variations on the same structures: a few people are
selected by the collective to assume the primary responsibility for key
functions like running meetings, maintaining infrastructure, providing a
key contact for member concerns and arbitrating disputes and
allegations of violations of a code of conduct. I think it's somewhat
quixotic that we as a group persist in using unconventional tools that
have consistently failed us (catastrophically, imo) in our attempts to
execute Sudo Room's statement of purpose.
I
don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm not
proposing that we discard our ideals of horizontal power distribution. I
think the elephant in the room is that we don't have a horizontal power
structure. A few people hold the power to assert their will
unilaterally, and most people only have enough power to derail a
meeting, but not enough to bring it back on track. Perhaps if we rebuild
trust and teach more people how to make themselves heard, a board will
become unnecessary and we can effectively execute the vision that we're
unsuccessfully trying to execute now. But I think it is long, long past
time to actually make substantive changes to how we operate, and
agreeing to have a consistent meeting chair and a membership
coordinator, etc. selected by the collective sounds to me like simple
common sense.
This proposal is now open for
discussion at tomorrow's meeting (Weds. 1/3) and ongoing discussion and
revision. If there is no block, it becomes eligible to be accepted at
our February meeting on Weds. Feb. 7.
"