Renato Flores argues for a culture shift around meeting procedures that takes into account differing backgrounds to make our organizing spaces more accessible to everyone regardless of education and time available. Reading: Unoriginal Smack.
We rarely discuss the rules and procedures that socialists use for debates and decision-making in present-day socialist organizations on their own terms. Too often “the procedural is political”, meaning that participants articulate political disagreements as debates on proper procedure. This misses that procedure can be political in a different way: by excluding potential comrades and hiding power imbalances.
We often decide on procedure via custom, rather than from scientific analysis. For example, most debates in the US are organized through Roberts’ Rules of Order. Henry Roberts wrote the first manual in 1876, and in 2021 this choice is largely still taken for granted in many associations from all walks of life, including many political projects. The rules are extensive. The last paperback edition of them is over eight hundred pages long, and the concise version is over two hundred. Because of their length, it is not a stretch to say that no one reads the book and that operating in a Robert’s Rules world is mostly learned by watching and by practice – an important point to which we will return repeatedly.
The first time I joined a meeting, I was thrown off by watching points of order or points of privilege without really understanding why people were jumping the line to speak. After a short time, I thought I got points of order, which you can use when someone breaks a rule. But I didn’t understand which rules were being broken, the whole language of appeals and calls to question seemed strange, especially as English is not my first language. It really was like entering a different world.
After enough meetings I had digested the basics, but I still think I do not really get the rules in the way others do when they’ve practiced them for years. After all, these rules operate in many places across society, such as “church groups, county commissions, homeowners associations, nonprofit associations, professional societies, school boards, and trade unions”. This essentially means that people who enter the socialist movement from a middle class background and who have participated in more ‘respectable’ institutions will have on average spent much more time in these sorts of meetings, and will have much more practice with the rules than people who enter the socialist movement from a less-well off background, or from a foreign country.
This power imbalance creates a skill monopoly that can be exploited, even unintentionally. I have seen numerous examples of people in their first or second meeting with a socialist organization ending up not speaking or not bringing up their points because they do not know the rules on how to speak, and it was never their turn, while others who know the rules ended up speaking many times. They are left thinking that this is unfair, or even worse, that the socialist movement is not their place in society because it is not welcoming. After all, why should they figure out rather complicated rules before they start contributing, when they might just have a simple comment to add to the debate, not necessarily being “for” or “against” a motion.
From here, there are basically three alternatives. The newcomer takes time to learn the rules through observation and adapts to Robert’s Rules, eventually learning enough to operate in the environment; the newcomer never really accepts the rules and turns against having rules of debate in the first place; or the newcomer leaves the socialist movement feeling unwelcome or that it is not their place. Most of us would accept that some rules of debate are necessary, and that even among friends we don’t all speak over each other for the entire conversation. However, casual ways of speaking don’t scale up to tens or hundreds of people in a room, meaning we need to structure debate somehow. This leaves us with the question: what is the most effective way to organize debate and make sure everyone is welcome?
Meeting procedure is a vital weapon in the organizer’s arsenal and the building block of any organization practicing collective action. A good meeting helps a group of people—small or large—to accomplish more than they could as individuals by coordinating their forces. However, without a democratic and efficient way to make decisions, we can do little more than burn ourselves out and reinforce the idea that the socialist movement is nothing more than one useless meeting after another.
This piece should not be seen as a diatribe against Roberts’ Rules; they have their place in society—otherwise they would not be used all around the country. If used appropriately, they can structure debate in large (100+) rooms rather effectively. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) uses a simplified variation of them called Rusty’s Rules, and in the Houston Tenants Union (HTU), we use a similar variation called Roberta’s Rules. The problem is not so much with the rules themselves, but with the fact that practitioners create skill monopolies which magnify class and cultural differences, leading to a hostile environment in our meetings for those with less formal education.
In HTU we try to solve this problem by regularly training members in debate rules and by training new people to chair meetings every month. These methods break down the skill monopolies held by experts in Roberts’ Rules, leveling power held by members from different backgrounds. With this, we regularly manage to hold 20-30 people meetings that make everyone feel welcome. The rules operate in a visible manner, and we try hard to convince everyone that using them is necessary, motivating them to take part in every meeting. It is important that every member understands how to fully participate in meetings so that we can put our heads together to find the best solutions. A way organizers have found effective is to use a simplified version of Robert’s Rules, such as the IWW pamphlet on Rusty’s Rules which is just twenty pages long, meaning that more people will have the time and energy to read it. We also need to take the time to train people in these rules, as part of new members’ introductions. Having accessible resources on parliamentary procedure is necessary for this.
Take this advice seriously: every system of rules, either written or unwritten, will have power imbalances. Someone or something has to decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t, and there will be people who can work around the rules through knowledge or informal influence. Take these power imbalances seriously, because generally power imbalances are weighted towards middle class, white and male voices, which are privileged even accidentally due to the sexist and racist society we all live in. Only consciously trying to eliminate these imbalances will result in progress.
Keep meetings efficient
A common reaction to the power imbalances that Robert’s Rules introduce is to refuse the need for procedure completely. However, every system of rules has imbalances caused by trying to reconcile a complex set of problems. Getting everyone to contribute equally is hard—some people are naturally more prone to talking, priority between speakers has to be determined, etc.
While the flaws introduced by Robert’s Rules are hard to solve, we can negotiate around them. Meanwhile, other systems are structurally flawed. Organizers have recommended for HTU to bend the stick in the complete other direction: use no rules and let everyone speak for as long as they wanted. They suggested that instead we use the Latin American “quien calla otorga”, which roughly translates to “silence means consent” as an organizing principle—the implication being that we all should talk until we reach a consensus and no one else wants to talk.
This advice might seem solid, but there are two big issues with it: first, silence does not mean consent. Some people might be uncomfortable with talking. Some people just might be tired, and want to go home, allowing those with more energy to debate. Some voices might just be overrepresented by the demographic composition of the movement, while others are intimidated into silence. Second, this creates another power imbalance. Not all of us have enough time to follow a debate to the last man standing.
This power imbalance regarding time is rarely appreciated. As most of us enter activism at a young age, we might not give sufficient thought to this. Let me pose a question: if 60% of people are in favor of rescheduling tonight’s meeting, because they’d rather do tomorrow, would you reschedule the meeting? My answer would be no, unless quorum cannot be met. This seems undemocratic, but it is necessary to make sure everyone is welcome. Why not reschedule a meeting if over half the people are in favour of doing so? Because it privileges those with more time to reschedule over those who have to make more arrangements to attend a meeting. Essentially it privileges those with less familial and personal responsibilities.
For the same reason, drafting an agenda which correctly estimates how much time every item should take, and keeping to that time distribution is essential if we want to keep debate accessible. If I plan to spend two hours in a meeting, I should spend two hours maximum at that meeting. If the meeting drags on, the person who is helping take care of my family is going to suffer an extra burden, or I might even need to leave because I can only afford two hours of childcare. Again, barriers are introduced which privilege those who have less responsibilities or can afford to off load them easily.
A secondary point regarding this is that adding time to debate one item on the agenda is automatically making us more tired for future items. Take debate time seriously, long meetings are a waste of time as humans can only concentrate for a finite amount of time. If we spend two hours debating the first item on the agenda, by the time we make it to the fourth we will have burnt out. Arbitrarily extending debate time on one item is giving it a privilege over the others. Instead of motioning to add time during a debate, we can use consent agendas where participants have control over the agenda ahead of time.
Efficiency is not some middle class ideal silencing dissenting voices. Efficiency is required to achieve any aim under the time and resource constraints we live under. If we want to make the unheard voices heard we still need efficient meetings. If we are to build a mass movement for socialism, we have to understand that the masses generally don’t have that much time to speak.
Delegation vs referenda
At some point, many of us will need to hold nation-wide meetings which take multiple days, and which not everyone can attend. Even those allowed to attend cannot speak on everything. Delegation is an important part of every democratic system, and repeatedly making mass-decisions through things like referenda can actually introduce uncontrollable power imbalances which are related to time availability.
We should not want democracy for everything. There is no possible way a human being has the time to make decisions on everything. This does not mean nothing should be submitted to the people as a whole, but our organizations would not be sustainable every morning we were forced to vote on a hundred things or more. Only people with sufficient time would be voting. This is even more true about informed decisions due to the existence of skill monopolies. In our finite life-spans we do not have the time to learn what kind of chip a computer should use, when our tomatoes should be harvested and how deep trouser pockets should be.
As Mike Macnair argues in “Representation, not referendums”, decisions are often made for us in capitalism. The solution under socialism is not for everyone to vote on every decision, but instead to make sure that those who have the skill and authority to make everyday decisions are disciplined and under the control of the working class. Applied to conferences, this principle means delegating power to certain aptly-called “delegates”, and sending them to a national conference. This can take the shape of the more than a thousand delegates of the DSA convention, or the single delegate our local tenants union sends to the Autonomous Tenants Union Network. This system is actually better because we appoint a single person who volunteers their time to become a procedural expert for us. They are also more flexible to extend debate time if this is required. However, we still retain ultimate control over them at the local level— it is why it is important for their votes to be public.
This does not mean we should institute a blanket ban on referenda, but that we should acknowledge that every single time we are asked to make a reasoned choice, we are asked to commit a certain amount of time to researching the question and attending a meeting to decide on it. The amount of time we have is limited, after all, since right now many of our contributions to the socialist movement come out of a feeling of love for humanity, not necessarily because we benefit in return. We have to make sure that we build systems that do not privilege those who have more time to make decisions, those who have more availability to debate, and those who have more experience filing motions. Horizontalist ideas such as referenda or quien calla otorga are a genuine reaction to existing and visible power balances. However, they do not reckon with every power imbalance and can even aggravate the situation as a consequence.
This piece is a plea to focus on adequate procedure, reckoning with the imbalances of skill that people come into meeting spaces with, and the constraints on time they might have. Furthermore, I have up to now been assuming good faith in the debates, but as mentioned in the introduction, too many times procedural debates are a mask for political disagreements which are not brought to light. For example, the recent DSA debate on which voting method to use is masking the question on whether the leadership should represent broad consensus or give all factions proper representation even if they are disliked by the rest of members. Even if this debate did acknowledge the political question, this is not always the case, and these situations should be eliminated as soon as possible.
Take this plea seriously: Rusty’s rules might be an adequate solution for now, but we should discuss possible meeting structures and experiment with new forms of meetings and research methods such as progressive stack and speaking tokens, rather than just defaulting to traditional methods like Roberts’ Rules. The target is to eliminate the present-day culture that makes the procedural political by privileging certain voices.
