Cultivating Transparency and Collaboration

We believe in the need for a more open and transparent relationship between chapter leadership, working group members, and the general membership. To that effect, we propose the following measures to make the work of leadership and working groups more transparent to the general membership and creating clear lines around the division of labor to more evenly distribute work among all members of the DSA. We hereby suggest:

1. Implementing elected leadership within working groups who would be responsible for communicating working group activities to the general membership of the local chapter. It’s important to make sure that missing a monthly meeting does not mean you’re out of the loop for a working group, and similarly that work being done is not dependent on everyone being in the same room once a month. Additionally, being able to have a designated person or persons that members and other working groups can reach out to is a crucial need for transparency and collaboration. Given the responsibilities that ensuring communication for a working group would entail, a democratically elected point-person is vital to keep working groups functional.
2. Officially designating a Chapter Communications Coordinator position on the Steering Committee to act as an ombudsman for the general membership of the chapter and to disseminate information from the Steering Committee (announcements, meeting minutes, &c.) to the general membership. Currently, we leave all communications coordination work to the Co-Chairs and a few SC members, who are often too busy sending out meetings notices and post-meeting notes to the membership to be able to carry out general secretarial tasks. Meeting minutes are vital to transparency, accountability, and democratic decision making, and currently they are taken by volunteers with no clear direction on content or timelines for release. To remedy this, we’ve endorsed a bylaws amendment that would create this leadership position (see our “New Bylaws for a Growing Boston DSA” post).
3. Increase the flow of communication from leadership to rank-and-file membership regarding National DSA. Our chapter’s elected leadership is the main, and often the only, reliable source of communication with DSA’s national bodies. Given that those national bodies can be somewhat opaque and/or slow to release official communications, our chapter leadership can serve as an important resource for members to find out about and engage with what happens at a national level.
4. Generally foster a culture of communication between the general membership and leadership with clear channels of communication between the two. This applies as well to relations between working groups, where creating specific chapter-wide events for coordination would encourage communication between different groups. We’ve seen this implemented recently in the “Mega-Working Group” meetings that began in February 2018 and the Political Education/Electoral co-hosted chapter discussion on electoral strategy.
5. Chapter communication that occurs inside of meetings is often of great importance: therefore we need meetings that are accessible, and structures in place that allow for comrades unable to attend meetings to be informed and involved in decision making. We’ve endorsed a bylaws amendment that would better address accessibility in the chapter (see our “New Bylaws for a Growing Boston DSA” post).
6. Given the growth DSA/YDSA seen amongst college students and that Boston has a large amount of colleges and universities, establishing a high level of communication, collaboration and support with local YDSA chapters is of key importance. One of the tasks that Boston DSA should undertake is establishing a structure by which this can be achieved.
7. We should also encourage greater communication with DSA chapters and OCs in the New England area. According to DSAtlas, we are the largest chapter in New England by a significant margin. We’ve had beneficial collaboration in the past: delegates to last year’s National Convention worked together to create a regional convention event in Maine, and Worcester DSA hosted a statewide training on mobilizing that members of Boston DSA ran. Members of other chapters have asked for and received our political education materials. As a large chapter with a robust number of working groups, we should be ready to provide materials like that whenever they’re asked for. But more than that, we should be looking at ways in which we can help nearby chapters and OCs grow and build their own campaigns, their own working groups, their own structures. One such possibility would be a program like Metro DC DSA’s “Sister City Liaison”.

Read the rest of Boston Refoundation’s 2018 platform here.