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DSA North Star Caucus blog

Politics, Organizational Codes of Conduct, and Transparency

5/9/2021

2 Comments

 
  • From North Star SC
Over the past few years, DSA has put in place various codes of conduct that are intended to govern how members interact with each other and to create an organization in which all feel welcome. We applaud this effort and these goals.
 
At the same time, however, there is risk that some members and/or organizational governing bodies will rely on these codes of conduct to avoid open discussion and debate of political differences.  This route around political differences does DSA a disfavor. Use of codes of conduct in lieu of political discussion may intimidate a member or members from continuing to articulate a political position that might find additional support within DSA and will, if applied widely, effectively narrow the range of “acceptable” political positions.  We will become a smaller rather than a larger tent organization and we will be less democratic.  
​North Star Steering Committee 
2 Comments
Peg Strobel
5/9/2021 10:38:36 pm

I agree with the argument here that it's not good to use procedure to avoid discussing political differences. Doing so corrodes trust and, more importantly, doesn't help an organization clarify it's politics.

Reply
Paul Garver
5/24/2021 04:12:07 pm

To make this excellent statement more concrete, there is currently a demand from the DSA BDS & Palestine working group that the NPC remove a co-editor of Socialist Forum for expressing a personal view of BDS in Newsweek that makes members of that committee "uncomfortable.". If he were to be replaced by someone whose views are more congenial, they would feel more comfortable.

This is not the first time I have heard the statement that preserving someone's comfort level takes precedence over open discussion of issues.

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