On March 21st, I attended a Philly DSA general meeting at the request of a comrade in that chapter who wanted a fresh set of eyes assessing how the chapter seemed to function. As a member of a similarly sized DSA chapter, I thought it’d be intriguing to see how other DSA chapters conduct business and make decisions together. The meeting I sat in on ultimately led me down a path of Philly DSA’s bylaws and standing rules just to figure out what I was even watching. As a result, I’m now confident I am more familiar with these bylaws than my own local’s. I’m going to break this reportback into three essential parts: The Meeting Itself, How My Chapter Does It, and Possible Solutions.
- The Meeting Itself
The biggest impression I have from this meeting is simply the sheer length of it. It was always going to be long since Philly DSA convenes as a general body only four times a year for a three hour duration. However, this meeting went on especially long and it’s worth examining why in detail.
The meeting started off with a half hour long section for political education. This is not so different from our chapter, although we keep it under 20 minutes. What was suggestive to me as part of an underlying internal culture is that the Q&A for this political education was not open to membership. Rather, the questions were drafted by the Political Education Committee ahead of time. If a member had a question for the presenter, they had to rely on the Poli Ed committee to ask a similar question or were simply out of luck. As we get further on this in this reportback, we will see that opportunities for membership participation in Philly DSA are a recurring problem.
After the political education section, the general body spent about half an hour responding to points of order and points of information. Now, this could be aggravating, but I found myself sympathetic to these members as I learned that there is no internal workspace for membership to use in between meetings. Also, many of these Points of Order/Information were regarding a Resolutions Commission, an unelected body appointed by the Steering Committee to determine whether resolutions submitted by the general membership are in compliance with Philly’s local bylaws and thus determines whether or not they appear before the membership at all. I further learned that the Resolutions Commission and the parliamentarian were all members of the same caucus along with the majority of the Steering Committee. At this point, I did not fault the members for voicing their questions and concerns during the general meeting. They can only really communicate with the commission through email otherwise, and this is the only time all of the members in Philly DSA are in the same place and interact with each other. If there are no internal workspaces for members to organize other members and get questions answered, then it makes sense that a portion of time will be spent on this in the general meeting. Not too long after this, there was a 30 minute recess to address voting issues regarding members being credentialled into their system. I don’t think this recess is worth dwelling on too much. We are all adjusting to trying to do democracy on Zoom and these things do happen. As a result of both of these instances, the already three hour long meeting ended about 40 minutes past time.
During the middle of the meeting, there were just small things I noticed. For instance, I began to notice that people were calling the question extremely early in the debate for resolutions. This struck me as odd but I soon learned that in Philly’s Standing Rules, there is a rule that the question must be called or a motion to extend debate must be made after only two pro and two con speakers. I suspect this is an attempt to cut down on already long meetings; however, meeting more often would allow items to get the discussion and weight they deserve. Further I noticed that it was only selectively applied. The last agenda item we discussed actually had three or four speakers for pro’s/con’s with no motion being made to either call the question or extend debate. Additionally, it is not exactly clear how people are meant to participate in the meeting. The chat is disabled. So I wondered how people were making motions and putting themselves on stack. I learned from my comrade that people are able to do this through the voting portal, but I do not remember this being explained during the meeting itself, although it is possible I missed the explanation. However, I was not the only one confused as an older member also had trouble with this. He had raised his hand instead of getting on stack in the voting portal on the separate website. The facilitator not only failed to explain or offer support, he also explicitly denied the member’s ability to speak, and we never did end up hearing from that member.
The end of the meeting was certainly something. In the lead up to this point, 50 people had left the meeting. There had already been an extension of 30 minutes and, by the end of it, they still had three voting items. A member motioned that they extend time by 30 minutes for a second time. There was a spirited debate where people insisted that since they meet so infrequently they stay to vote on these items and other people blamed members for their points of orders and questions as to why they couldn’t get through the whole agenda. Another key argument to end the meeting was that since 50 people had already left, it would be undemocratic to continue. I understand the impulse of the argument. These are now agenda items those members do not get to vote on. In a best case scenario, the meeting would end and these items could roll over to the next agenda. All members could participate. However, if this is put into practice, what I foresee is an insurmountable backlog of resolutions filling subsequent meetings. In my opinion, it would be best to plow through the agenda and begin your next general meeting with a clean slate of voting items. After this back and forth, the motion to extend the meeting needed a two-thirds majority to pass and it failed. Then the facilitator made a motion to adjourn the meeting which needed a simple majority to pass and then that failed. There was a lot of confusion about what to do until a member suggested that since they were “at the end of agenda”, the motion to adjourn was superfluous and the meeting was over. The parliamentarian then confirmed his understanding of the rules. At which point, the facilitator basically said, “Ok we’re at the end of the meeting — let’s go onto announcements”, which was bizarre. They made a whole point about ending the meeting but then kept the meeting going. My own chapter has ended a meeting rather abruptly in the past which resulted in everyone logging off Zoom rather than going on to the next section in the agenda. This seemed to me to be a ploy to end voting items.
2. How My Chapter Does It
Now, I will not claim that my chapter is a utopia where we always end meetings on time and everyone is always in agreement. However, there are some mechanisms and internal structure that I believe alleviates many of the issues present during Philly DSA’s general meeting. The first being that we try to convene as a general body once a month. Usually about once a year, we have to skip a monthly meeting but this still means we meet around 11 times per year. As a result, we don’t have a backlog of resolutions that represents a fiscal quarter of a year. We generally have three or four voting items per meeting. As a result, if everything goes according to plan, our meetings are only about two hours long. And we have the luxury of being able to allow many people to speak during debate — only calling the question after significant back and forth.
Additionally, my chapter has an internal workspace where the entire membership can organize with each other, ask questions, and build a general consensus about voting items. As a result, Points of Information and Points of Order do not take up a significant portion of our meeting because there are other avenues of getting those questions answered. If you have questions about the bylaws and whether a resolution would be in compliance, you can simply dm any member of the Rules Committee or Steering Committee. And if you think that their interpretation is incorrect (as readings of bylaws do often entail a subjective interpretation of what they might mean), then you can hold a wider conversation among many members about how they interpret the bylaws. Generally speaking, after these conversations, a consensus will emerge and resolutions will be adapted accordingly.
Which brings me to my next comparison, my chapter simply does not have any body that resembles the Resolutions Commission. In fact, we don’t have any body that is appointed by the Steering Committee with the ability to wield absolute power over the membership. When one has a resolution, the standard practice is to bring it before our Steering Committee who will offer feedback if there’s anything that would violate our bylaws. These resolutions are adjusted accordingly by the member and then brought to the general body to be voted on. Further, we allow amendments to be made on the floor during the meeting. I mention this is as Philly does not. All amendments to resolutions must be submitted to the Resolutions Commission a week in advance of the general meeting. I think this is very poor practice as amendments should be allowed to be made as points present themselves during debate. Particularly since rank-and-file membership is not in communication with each other directly in between meetings. A resolution could be great except for one aspect of it; therefore, by allowing members to change that aspect during debate, we don’t run the risk of spending time on an item that will ultimately be shot down when it could simply be fixed by an amendment. I want to stress that our practice here is the standard for Robert’s Rules of Order and is, in fact, how many bodies who use RRO conduct their business.
Lastly, my chapter is not dominated by a single caucus. The Steering Committee has the representation of at least five different caucuses with unaffiliated comrades also serving. Ideological representation in a big tent organization is key to maintaining that big tent orientation while also ensuring that no one is benefiting or suffering from favoritism. Although, I will point out that, even if our Steering Committee was dominated by a single caucus, our bylaws do not grant the Steering Committee that much power. The Steering Committee does not have the power to appoint unelected bodies. We can appoint half of the Grievance Committee and, if anyone steps down from the Steering Committee, we can appoint a replacement. Our bylaws place almost all of the power in our chapter into the general membership.
3. Possible Solutions
All in all, I witnessed a very dysfunctional general meeting. And I believe I’ve identified some root causes. The one with the quickest fix is that they simply must meet more regularly. Even meeting once every two months instead of three would greatly reduce their duration of their meetings. Also I would recommend developing an internal workspace. The reason the meetings are filled with questions and clarifications is because this is the first time people can actually interact directly with whoever is presenting the item. The DSA is meant to be a place for organizers and yet the chapter won’t even provide tools for the membership to organize themselves. An organized and engaged membership that is in communication with each other in between meetings will lend itself to a more conducive and productive general body.
However, the last root cause is a more systemic issue within Philly DSA that is not so easily addressed. As I remarked upon earlier, the majority of the Steering Committee, the Resolutions Commission, and the parliamentarian are all members of the same caucus: Momentum. This is a problem because the Resolutions Commission gets to determine what resolutions make it to the general body to be voted on. The parliamentarian gets to decide how people should act during meetings. And the Steering Committee gets to set the agenda. And, from what I’ve heard from within the chapter, there does seem to be favoritism regarding what is accepted and what is rejected. The defense for this is that they are merely checking to ensure there are no bylaws violations; however, as I said earlier, interpretations of bylaws are often subjective and should be up for an honest debate between members. Now, there is of course the counterpoint that the Steering Committee is elected by the general body and, if the body is unhappy about this development, they could be voted out. However, according to the Philly DSA Bylaws, the commission empowered to select criteria for candidates for the Steering Committee is appointed by the current Steering Committee. It appears that a strong centralization of power is happening in this chapter, likely predicated on a belief that an efficient and centralized force is better for “getting things done”. But, for an organization that hinges on democracy and buy-in from volunteers, this will likely result in drawn out and combative meetings. So many points of information were largely about what power the membership had over the Steering Committee and the Resolutions Commission. It’s clear that a huge contributing factor to the overall dysfunction of Philly DSA is a lack of internal democracy and community. And there is simply no quick fix to change that.
