Plank 3: Internal Democracy & Accessibility
Promoting internal democracy is an important way to prefigure the democratic socialist world we strive toward and practice how we relate to each other in the world we currently live. As the Synthesis slate, we believe internal democracy means creating a structure, process, and culture that enables the greatest number of members to have a role in shaping the direction of Boston Democratic Socialists of America. A highly engaged membership is necessary for Boston DSA to build and wield power. That’s why this is a core plank in our platform.
At a minimum, we must have transparency of decisions, strong structures of accountability, and a commitment to accessibility. To make internal democracy thrive, we must foster an organizational culture that encourages members to build relationships with each other and promotes engagement of members in Boston DSA’s daily organizing, political education, and operations.
Starting with the minimum for internal democracy to function, members must be informed to participate in a democratic organization. Basic as it may seem, this requires a high level of transparency, which can be challenging to achieve in our decentralized organization with significant security concerns related to potential doxxing from the alt-right forces. To meet these challenges, we need several secure channels for internal communication to members with appropriate moderation. We welcomed the introduction of a members-only Slack to the chapter in the past year, and we can increase transparency through promoting a password-protected Wiki for Boston DSA members. In addition, we will commit to circulating agendas and meeting minutes of the Steering Committee and working groups through internal communications channels. Finally, we will work to implement the new role of a Communications Coordinator/Secretary, who will be responsible for relaying important information to members, recruiting and coordinating a team to build our communications infrastructure, and managing processes and guidelines related to social media.
Along with transparency, we must foster greater accountability with regard to elected roles and rigorous evaluation of strategies and tactics that require organizational resources. This could look like Steering Committee members holding office hours in various neighborhoods, co-chairs hosting regular Zoom calls open to all members, and regular coordination between working groups. Because Boston DSA is a volunteer-run organization in a capitalist system, it’s easy to become overcommitted. We need to be comfortable to ask each other in good faith if we can follow through on our commitments and treat mentorship and delegation as a core part of the duties of leadership. In addition, we need to make a practice of building in debriefs as a core part of membership accountability. Rigorous evaluations of activities, tactics, and strategies will help us improve our program to increase member engagement in Boston DSA.
The final necessary element of internal democracy is accessibility. Racialized and heteropatriarchal capitalism advantages able-bodied, English-speaking, bourgeois, straight, white, cis-men to be considered “productive” and “valuable” more frequently than anyone who is working-class, a person of color, trans, not masculine, queer, disabled, or non-English speaking. We cannot have true internal democracy without a commitment to accessibility for people with marginalized identities. We fully support the accessibility plan developed by the Boston branch of the DSA Disability Caucus that the Steering Committee passed earlier this year, and commit to hold meetings in ADA-compliant spaces, help build our capacity for off-site voting, and create a volunteer role to address accomodation issues at events, along with the other vital initiatives recommended by that document. Further, in Boston DSA, events are often easiest to access for residents of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. We will commit to livestreaming as many Boston DSA events as possible, offer call-in options, and promote the creation of geographic branches. Recognizing that many working class people in Boston do not speak English, we seek to create multilingual spaces in DSA by building translation infrastructure and expanding our language class program.
Finally, the network of relationships among members enable all of these necessary elements of internal democracy to become real. We need to foster a strong relational culture that increases trust among members and allows debate to build camaraderie and political analysis within the membership. With this vision, we’ve already led the coordination of the mobilizer system to broaden and decentralize the network of relationships within Boston DSA. This, too, is a reason why we favor the creation of local branches, especially in areas where members have difficulty attending meetings, to ensure that every member has a chance to build relationships with people in the chapter.
With these relationships between memberships as a foundation, we can develop the capacity of members to debate, make decisions, and implement our strategies. We support in-depth discussions among members, and will prioritize making decisions through general meetings in lieu of making far-reaching decisions on the Steering Committee. In order to ensure that all members feel comfortable expressing their opinions, these debates need to be comradely and respectful of the differences within our big tent. We should seek to persuade each other without silencing dissent. In this vein, we brought important issues like the Right to the City Alliance platform endorsement to the general membership.
These components of strengthening internal democracy will allow us to distribute power more widely and foster an engaged membership and make an effort to delegate work to people beyond our current core of members. Our wins should build up all of Boston DSA — and national DSA — rather than lead to the accumulation of power in individuals, and we’ll be stronger if we spread power and responsibility throughout our organization. This is how we will prefigure the world we will struggle to win.
Introducing the Synthesis Slate
Our World to Win: An Overview of the Synthesis Platform
