[Int-koordination] Fwd: [pp-eu] Would you care to fix DiEM25's inner democracy?

[Thomas Gaul <thomas.gaul AT piratenpartei.de>]

-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht --------
Betreff: [pp-eu] Would you care to fix DiEM25's inner democracy?
Datum: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 18:46:19 +0100
Von: carlo von lynX <lynX AT pirates.are.psyced.org>
Antwort an: PPEU coordination group <pp-eu AT lists.pp-international.net>
An: pp-eu AT lists.pp-international.net

TL;DR: This is a strategic briefing regarding Pirate relations with the
DiEM25 project and an invitation to
help repair DiEM25's inner democratic process.

Dear European Pirates, I have been spending some months
looking into the "Democracy in Europe Movement" project
started by Yanis Varoufakis. The political potential is
there, and probably a lot of common views with the Pirate
movement, but I keep seeing problems of inner democracy
which need to be dealt with, or we, not only individually,
but as the Pirate movement, have to take distances from
DiEM25.

The main problem is the intransparent voting system. In this age of
digital manipulation becoming commonplace we
cannot collaborate with organizations that require all
supporters to trust the webmaster. Democracy isn't just the
privilege of being consulted, it is also the guarantees that
the consultation cannot be falsified. For many months now,
even important structural decisions like the recent referendum
on whether DiEM25 should participate in elections in some
countries, was decided by secret vote on an opaque website
that would simply output some winning percentages after
closing time.

In some countries, this kind of procedure isn't even legal.
It is quite an absurdity that a movement demanding democracy
isn't practicing democracy itself. But this may all be just
a symptom of lack of competence, not evil intention. Maybe
some webmasters do not understand that transparent voting is
a lesser problem than having to trust "We are the good ones".
I'm asking that the Pirate movement gently pressure the
leadership of DiEM25 to allow for actual democracy within,
not degenerate into a fan club.

How does this even relate to us? Well, DiEM has been
congratulating us on our epic success in Czechia, in a
quite connecting way:
        https://diem25.org/czech-republic-shifts-to-the-right/

Also, I keep seeing Pirates referencing talks and materials
by Mr Varoufakis all over the world, me gladly included,
because I too find a lot of what this man says very interesting.
I also treasure and value several other great minds involved
in DiEM25. I see great potential for collaboration, but this lack
of inner democracy has to be gone before the media notice it and
catch the opportunity to damage DiEM's reputation. They had
little against us, and yet they destroyed us (in Germany) -
what can they do to someone that really has skeletons in their
cupboards?

Is there also a problem somewhere in the leadership of DiEM
if it is possible that newsletters sent out to all sympathizers
contain questionable inaccuracies? Some examples:

> "Our members voted an overwhelming YES!" 

        According to the webmaster's publication, slightly
        more than 60% were in favor. Overwhelming?

> "72.98% turnout is the result of an immense exercise of consensus building 
> after months of passionate internal debate"

        The only debate I saw was among the near 40%
        criticizing the proposal and demanding real
        inner democracy. Maybe the phpBB forum is hiding
        things from me.

> "Hundreds of amendments and proposals from members across the world"
        I saw just 5 proposals. I have talked to each of
        the proponents. Some didn't even seek consensus with
        anybody else - they just wrote down their opinion in
        form of a proposal. One proposal was misunderstood as
        a submission of amendments to the official proposal
        from the leadership organ "CC" (and entirely rejected
        by the CC). As far as I can tell there were ZERO
        amendments and only 5 proposals, but maybe I didn't     check the
confusing phpBB well enough.

Why does a democratic organization need to market its success to its
followership like this? Another interesting practice is
how I was given an impact assessment on what a certain legal amendment
would achieve, which was in no way connected to the
actual legal implications of the amendment's wording.

What can we do? In January, DiEM25 is planning to hold a voting
on amendments of its statutes. It is probably going to be the
last chance to democratize DiEM25 before all the activists I
have met in the last months are likely to abandon the project.
To them it is particularly absurd that, no matter how much
they physically work, meet, discuss - all their reflections
have little impact on the general course of the project
because the decisions are made by an anonymous invisible mass
of followers that get mobilized by mail and SMS to come to
the website and click their intransparent secret vote opinion,
frequently without consulting or participating in any debates.
As long as it is discernible which proposal has the support of
the leader, the choice is usually easy. And so far any requests
to stop the leadership from formulating their own preferred
choices and promote them by VIP video, have been ignored.

When confronted with this situation which is frustrating all
activists I met, the leadership collective (who calls itself
"coordinating" - but we know from Pirate experience how that
doesn't work out to only do coordination if you don't write
the statutes appropriately) appears genuinely concerned and
stressed, pointing out that it is trying so hard to make "coordination"
among the many multi-lingual arms of the organization work out. It is a
question of competence and
structure - if you make a leadership-oriented catchedral,
you won't have a bazaar. I'm afraid, not many in the CC have
actual experience in participatory structures. So they keep
speaking of "bottom-up" and "grassroots" while the effective
operations are as "top-down" as Merkel's CDU. They may even
honestly try not to be top-down, but that's the way the
structures they created are. There's a lot more to be said,
like the absence of an inner justice system, but I won't
bore you with that now.

Something any Pirate can do is to subscribe to diem25.org
with e-mail and phone number and become a member. Payment is optional.
So by January you may be enabled to participate
in the structural vote.

You are also welcome to join our Structures working group
where we are working on suitable participatory statutes
for political organizations in general, not just DiEM25.
More on that at http://structure.pages.de


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