Groups

Proposal: Workgroups, Committees, Caucuses, and Affinity Groups (3 posts)

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Jesse Maximillian Rex said 11 months, 2 weeks ago:

In order to formalize structure within the organization, I am proposing that the assorted groups be defined as thus:

Workgroups[s]: (IE: Action workgroup)
1.Handle tasks delegated by the general assembly as per their mandate.

Committee[s]: (IE: Treasury Committee)
1.Handle tasks delegated by the general assembly
2.Has certain qualifications for entry. They should not conflict with the community agreements.

Affinity Group: (IE: Youth Affinity Group)
1.Any group that functions autonomously from the General Assembly.
[or]
2.Does not appear to perform a task delegated by the General Assembly.

Caucus: (None currently)
1.Any group that serves as a forum for disenfranchised groups[s].
2.May have participation requirements based on the group. Attendance should ideally be open, but who actually is allowed to speak and participate is retained by the group.

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Adrienne Lauby said 11 months, 2 weeks ago:

Makes a general kind of sense to me.

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Amy Robinson said 11 months, 2 weeks ago:

Thanks for doing this, Jesse. I totally support the clarification of what names mean within our organizational structure. I have a few comments, and I do not know where this proposal is in relation to GA right now, so perhaps I am too late. But…

1) Why workgroups and not Working Groups, when we have been using Working Groups all along?

2) Committee – this definition still leaves me confused vis a vis the Workers’ Committee. I have heard conflicting things from people about the “qualifications” for entry into this group. I have heard that you need to be a worker, I have heard that you only needed to be a worker for the first meeting and then it opened up, and I have heard that there was never any consensus on this qualification at all. If the first is true, it still actually seems to me to be more like a Caucus than a Committee. If the latter is true, then I think it needs to have a new name, and not just be named the Workers’ Committee for semantic reasons! How about Labor Outreach WG (a la OWS)? Or if that sounds too much like it is dealing with organized labor, how about Working Peoples WG?

Does the Workers’ Cttee have a mandate yet? If not, I think that the issue of participation needs to be clarified before we move forward with that, and I would like to be at that GA (another reason we need agendas announced ahead of time!)

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