For an End to “Invite Only” Organizing

I’ve tried to keep my run for Secretary of the next year’s EBDSA steering committee about positive vision moving forward. But after the events of last weekend and the response from Jeremy Gong, I’m going to bring in some personal detail, push back on his characterization of this chapters divisions, and repeat my comrades’ call for him to step down from leadership.*

(Apologies for length/jumping around in structure, I’m rushing to publish before work. Also — can’t be online while bartending so please understand if I don’t reply to comments ’til late tonight, thanks!).

There’s a lot wrong with Jeremy’s approach to this incident, and plenty is being examined online by other people. I just want to respond, personally, to this tiny bit:

“Most of these people have not chosen to meaningfully participate in any of our campaigns or committees, although many of them are now running for leadership with an almost entirely negative campaign against us and the current leadership.”

This is an accusation repeatedly leveled against hard working members who have been vocal critics of leadership, but who have formed political caucuses, who have worked on bylaws, priorities resolutions and thoughtful campaign platforms, and launched their own initiatives. Jeremy himself fails in this article connect any of his accusations with any particular person running. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with him.

What follows is my response (and my experience only) — which, of course, will be denounced as part of this “negative” campaign, but, I don’t know what else to do. He puts me in this situation. It’s this or just let him smear me and my coalition partners. Please know, I’d much rather be working on my education proposals. But I want this on the record.

Optimistic Beginnings

I joined EBDSA in the spring of 2017 when I moved back to the bay after 12 years away, the last six in DC. In the nation’s capital my social circle had been centered on the committed leftists of many stripes I had met through my involvement in Occupy DC. Because of those people DSA was on my radar before my move to California.

[Aside: I will take this moment to note that any mention of Occupy is often met by our current leadership circle with the verbal equivalent of scoffs and eye rolls. There is no recognition that, while messy, it was a key moment for the left and incredibly important in many people’s political formation. It was for me. I also have absolutely no desire whatsoever to reproduce that environment in DSA because I, unlike the people who usually make these negative remarks, was actually fairly well-involved in it. I would also note that knee-jerk dismissal of the Occupy movement (without which these Bernie-converted socialists probably wouldn’t have heard of the senator from Vermont) is an adoption of neoliberal Democrat (even right-wing) talking points used to denigrate leftists. That should be a red flag for socialists.]

Anyways — So, I joined DSA.

M4A, but not for you

Like most, I started out canvassing for SB562, the bill that purported to create a single-payer healthcare system for all Californians. I was motivated. I had lived six years in a country with a national health care system and was enraged at my country’s criminal treatment of the sick and the poor. I once even attended two canvases back to back in the same weekend. I am exactly the type of person they should have wanted on this campaign. I could speak passionately, knowledgeably, and from personal experience.

I started to help with organizing the canvasses, doing turnout, and expressed interest in expanding it to my district of Berkeley so I could be speaking with my own neighbors. I volunteered to host an informal social to gauge interest in my neighborhood. We were told that we would be assigned a speaker who would come share their experience with M4A and we should “gauge interest”. That was pretty much the extent of it. I wasn’t asked to produce or provide anything else.

The happy hour was supposed to be from 6–8. Most people didn’t get there til 7 — good lesson to learn from a first go. Around that time, 2 leadership figures (currently running on B&R) showed up. I did feel a bit like I was being checked up on, but I tried to push that thought aside and just have a good time and talk about health care. We did that!

A few days later, I got an email. It cited my other interests in DSA and suggested that “it might be a good opportunity to bring in a newer member who is looking for the best way to connect to host the next social” because they wanted to “make sure that the events are accomplishing the goal of developing the work and capacity of our chapter.” I didn’t understand if this meant they thought I had failed in that goal.

I was confused, and it sounded like something written by a passive-aggressive PR person, trying to couch a disinvitation in sunny language but again, I gave the people involved the benefit of the doubt. I decided not to jump to conclusions and assume anything without talking to people about what had “gone wrong”, maybe I had misunderstood something.

But let me back up a bit first, because the timing here is important.

Podcasting and the Caucus Comms Snafu

Right around the same time, I had started an effort to launch a podcast for the EBDSA community (early proposal doc if you’re curious). We currently had very limited online communications and NO regular full-membership meetings. I was having a hard time figuring out how to plug in (my schedule as a bartender made it especially difficult) and I thought it would be useful to the wider community. I spent a lot of time trying to find interested collaborators. This was hard, again, because there was no robust online forum where I could reach membership, newsletters were for “official” campaigns only, and there were no membership meetings where I could stand up and just say “Hey — anyone else wanna get in on this?” In the middle of trying to plug into the Communications Committee, it was dissolved. So, even with my schedule, I just tried to get to every in-person meeting I could to talk up the idea with members.

With the first interested folks, and on advice of an LC member, I started an caucus to give the effort some sort of formal designation. Recently there had been discussion of how to identify caucus communications from “official” chapter comms. There is an important discussion to be had about the role of caucuses, how to decide what is “official” and how to distinguish the two in the public eye. This conversation was never brought to membership at large, or even caucus founders.

The LC proposed language that raised quite a few eyebrows, mine included, as this was a subject I had already given some thought. Several members wrote thoughtful posts on facebook with those concerns. They were about policy, not people. They were entirely civil. So was mine — the first I’d ever posted in the group. All were deleted. There was some vague accusation that “someone” was made to feel attacked. This was, thankfully, later recognized as a serious error. But none of the posts was restored. And none of their comments or insights were recognized or incorporated. No effort was made to moderate a productive discussion on the matter, online or off.

Not surprisingly, denied the ONLY communication forum then available, an unusually large number of people showed up at the normally dry LC meeting that week.

Here is where I want to make my first point about chapter leadership — they have consistently created easily avoidable situations that they then blame on people who reacted in a totally predictable way. No forum? Show up in person. Shut down in person? Go talk about it together afterwards. This is not odd or toxic behavior.

Mature leadership should NOT be caught off guard by this or see it as a sign of hostility. But attendance at the LC meeting was definitely greeted that way. I felt like I’d walked into the middle of a grudge match. I’d come with my suggestions and concerns as a caucus founder. So had many others. Only a couple people were allowed to speak from the floor, the rest were shut down over time concerns and everyone was treated with hostility. The motion was passed with no further debate, not even tabled for discussion. I was gobsmacked.

In another totally predictable and totally preventable move, the people who were ignored that day looked at each other when the meeting was over, introduced themselves and went to go discuss it. If this is the factionalism that Jeremy and leadership and B&R decry, they made it themselves. It is their own creation. And any mature leadership should have seen that dynamic and understood it. Instead they demonized vocal members, continued to deny input, resisted general meetings, and resisted the creation of online forum. And so it goes….

Leadership as Toxic Office Politics

So this was the backdrop to receiving an email “uninviting” me to work on M4A. I was already livid about the Facebook posts when I called to ask why it seemed I was being asked to step away. I was never really given an answer. I had 2 long conversations with both the person who wrote the email (who I don’t fault so much) and the elected leader who was clearly the decision-maker.

Vague things were said about not providing a list of names and phone numbers for new possible point people (everyone at the event checked in on a tablet, btw), but I had never been asked to do that. It was conceded that was a valid point (thanks!!). Some mention of me leaving early was made, but actually, I had stayed 45 min late because people hadn’t shown up til late. I still have never been given a satisfactory answer about why they preferred I not be involved.

I also learned from one of the conversations (and btw — all three leadership people involved in this are B&R candidates right now) that one of the parties had been told by another LC member (the one who had been supportive of my podcast proposal, also a B&R supporter) that I seemed like “someone who couldn’t be counted on to get things done.” (!!!!) I’d not embarked on any projects with that person, the basis for that comment was never given, but it clearly informed this person’s opinion of why I should be discouraged from M4A activity. This was profoundly hurtful and disillusioning. This is the opposite of “engaging membership.”

One thing was made very clear: a conversation was had about me, without me present, making many unreasonable assumptions, ignoring salient facts of the situation and at no time did any party involved even consider actually speaking to me. And my involvement was decided for me. At no point did anyone involve question their own actions, their own clarity in terms of goals. I had to initiate the conversations on the subject myself. And even after leaders conceded mistakes to me personally, a la “Thanks, I’ve learned a lot from this”, no effort was made to to make me feel welcome to come back to the program.

I asked myself, to quote Jeremy Gong, “These are the kind of people I want to spend time with”?

So I stepped back from M4A, decided to focus on finishing the podcast pilot, which I did. But, just days ago, I wrote about how I regretted not sticking it out in M4A — not because I didn’t have doubts about the strategy, but because I feared it would be later used against me as proof I’m not a “serious” member. Thanks, Jeremy Gong, for proving that fear totally and completely founded.

And I haven’t even gotten to the Socialist School stuff yet.

This winter my schedule finally gave me a night off on the same night as socialist school. I have educational experience, expressed interest in facilitating in person to both organizers and both responded that that would be great. Yay!

Then, one of the (unelected, btw) organizers of the program (who in conversation with me admitted the program was not started on a democratic basis and was pretty much being run ad hoc) wrote this vociferous attack about the efforts I and others had been making to amend bylaws (whole other ball of wax!). I reached out to both leaders expressing concern about how this might effect involvement in socialist school, to know that one of them held such antagonistic views towards things I felt strongly and positively about. I wanted to talk in person. That conversation never happened.

The director in question, Dan Deck, then become sole leader of this program due to the his co-organizer having to step back for personal reasons. Somehow, after expressing interest multiple times, in person, and via messages, I never got looped into the facilitator group. Dan explained it away as him being overloaded with the responsibility (also emblematic of a structure that does not open up opportunities for involvement in a systematic way) but I couldn’t help wonder if maybe, just maybe, the fact that he’d called me and my comrades XYZ didn’t have something to do with it. But i continued to give him the benefit of the doubt.

As the weeks passed, and the end of the session neared, I was assured that “after the convention” the program would be revisited and there’d be more robust involvement for facilitators. So I put it out of my mind til after the convention, i had a lot of work to do with Working Class Unity & Power. In the interim, an interest form was sent (not to membership at large, btw) about a new political education committee. I responded, encouraged that Dan had been sincere and that I was going to be looped into the next session.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the first class of the new session — scheduled for before the convention — when it was announced on the FB group just 24 hours before the class was supposed to take place — and never a word sent to me about facilitation. I eagerly await my political opponents criticisms of my ideas on the basis that I “haven’t even been involved in socialist school.”

Now, comrade Dan had passed off the leadership of the program to another comrade, and it’s of course possible that it was all just a series of mishaps, missed connections, typical disorganization of a growing program. But when both the old and new leader are B&R, and when almost every person currently involved in the socialist school (either as candidate or supporter) is also B&R, and when other, politically diverse comrades have been excluded with the excuse that they’re “too advanced” (absurd to even the most novice educator), and when you realize this group thinks they are the only legitimate vehicle for socialism, then you have to start to wonder.

Even if there was no conscious bias, the way things are run — on ad hoc personal connections — leaves us as an organization vulnerable to unconscious bias and accusations to that effect.

This is why the first point in my suggestions for a better political education program is to have an open call to all membership to attend open meetings on the topic, an open call for participation, and to have committee co-chairs elected by the committee itself, not appointed from above.

I am over “invite only” organizing.

This is why we need a change.

It is not the job of leadership to act like middle managers in an office deciding who gets promoted and who doesn’t, based on vague personal whims tinged with a suspicion, now confirmed, of blatant political bias, and exacerbated by a culture of in-circle shit-talking, insults, social media monitoring, over-personalization of political critiques. I still suspect that the fact I had naively expressed constructive criticism (that we should have other things to invite people to besides canvassing, that strategy needed to be revisited after SB562 was shelved) contributed to my being asked to cede organizing with M4A. Maybe it was something else. But how will I ever know? This ways lies paranoia.

That’s why actually having open respectful, informed, action-oriented discourse — which current leadership, heavily represented in B&R has systematically fought on all fronts and personally failed to achieve in many individual incidents — is the key to healing. It’s also why it is antithetical to Big Tent organizing to form a slate that positions itself as the “one way” to socialism — a claim so dripping in hubris (in an organization this new in, this disconnected from, and this lacking in authority within, the wider Bay Area leftist community) as to beggar belief.

So, my apologies Jeremey Gong, we’re all going to continue to engage you on this topic.

*Note: I have not named any specific members (except for Dan Deck in order to cite his essay) because I want to emphasize THIS IS NOT PERSONAL. I don’t know any of these people enough for this to be personal. Most of my personal interactions with all these people have been cordial if not really pleasant! I have probably exchanged 3 words with Jeremy Gong. This is about inappropriate priorities among leadership and a pattern of failure to act maturely with membership.

I also would directly address junior members of the B&R slate, and B&R supporters who I’ve been friendly with and who have expressed respect for me and my work to consider what I say here. And to respond somehow. The silence so far is pretty deafening.