Participatory Democracy: New Bylaw proposals & discussion

[Transition Strategist (Greg)]

Meant to get this out a little earlier but this is still good lead
time for the AGM (first thing in June as per last meeting' consensus).

Increasing the membership categories in the following way (rules are
demarcated by '**') allows us to spread rewards around and have more
advanced democracy where no one kind of membership gets steam rolled
by the others; i.e., the workers don't get to just call the shots and
pocket windfall profits for their personal lives; consumers aren't
what it's all about with the workers treated like an underclass and
paid $14 an hour like at MEC.

The following categories for membership also distinguish between
participating-active consumers and people who just subscribe but never
really do anything for the network. So participating members who help
in their neighbourhood with tech support and house visits, keep their
routers up and in a good position (window), would be given “patronage
returns” when we have big profits. Another example would maybe be
participatory mebers keeping our stickers with them and putting them
up wherever they go around town. Stickers which tell others that there
is good signal here (and promote the network). These kinds of things
can be rewarded and recognized, thereby encouraging a truly
distributed network of people helping their network (which they feel
ownership stake in) in a decentralized way.

**2.The association has the following classes of members;
or… has the following categories for membership induction.
1.Class A members, who will be information technology or
communications professionals who meet the professional requirements of
the association and who perform work for or on behalf of the
association, and
2.Class B members who will be people or organizations who provide
adjunct services to the association.
3.Class C members who will be persons and organizations who are
purchasing patrons and also participate in the association in ways
other than monetary.
4.Class D members who will be purchasing patrons.**

The following paragraph is designed to ensure that no one membership
class gets bullied. If an issue affects workers more, than the workers
have to vote majority approval on the issue, along witht the general
membership voting in favour on that issue. This starts to enact the
principle of participatory democracy known as say-proportionate-to-
stake. It is made possible by the BC Cooperative Associations Act
under rule 41:
On special resolutions which affect categories of membership classes
differently than other classes, the association may appoint a council
of non-conflicted and uninvolved persons to determine the percentage
of a vote which the differently affected membership categories or
category will cast in favour of the resolution, in addition to
receiving the majority for passage required under paragraph (b) (i) of
the definition of "special resolution" in the act.

The following is designed to give the membership something to point
to if the Board of Directors don't apply surplus funds in the spirit
of open source and participatory economics. Participatory economics is
thought of as the natural environment for the open source ethic.
Otherwise you get what happened on the RO.B.I.N forum recently, where
this guy took NightWing and RO.B.I.N and used them to figure out
firmware for Ubiquity devices, then found the flimsiest excuse not to
release it to the community... Because of the nature of our economic
model and open-source not really quite fitting in that model, he'll
get away with it to boot. A federation of participatory coops would
have the resources to sue people like that, and everyone would know
the legal resources are at the ready to sue, so they wouldn't so
flipantly violate GPL as that guy (seemingly) did on the RO.B.I.N
forum.
So you'll notice point (C) is; the propagation of participatory co-
operative enterprise.
It is important to realize that all these are toothless except for the
first one which the law (Act) has very specific percentages of
reserves to be held to pay off share holders if they want to opt out.
The directors can for example say that they did turn their mind to
number (B) and gave it $2 of the surplus, and the law wouldn't really
have a problem with that. The real purpose of putting this down is to
explicitly set out the principles. This way the membership has the
option to say to the board 'it's here in the friggin rules, and still
you just give it lip services'. If no one much cares about
participatory cooperative enterprise and open source ethics then it
means nothing, and the coopertive is free from it (except for point
(A) which is to hold reserves). So participatory democracy is the only
real recourse to ensure the following priorities of how surpluse funds
are spent.
'(D)' is to reward a distriubted network and recognize that it is the
participation of the membership which makes our network possible. Not
to simply use the community for our own profit, but to value peoples'
efforts in improving their community.

**146 The directors must apply surplus funds arising from the
operation of the Association in a financial
year as follows:
(a) first, to the reserves required by Rule 147 of the
Associations Act of British Columbia;
(b) next, to retire all or a portion of any deficit previously
incurred by the Association, as the directors determine is
appropriate;
(c) next, to the support of participatory co-operative
enterprises;
(d) next, to patronage returns or dividends to class C
membership shares as recommended by the directors;
(e) next to patronage returns or dividends as recommended by the
directors.**

The following rule is designed to provide a balanced board of
directors. It tries to ensure all major interest groups are
represented in a balanced way. The workers seemingly get a lion' share
with up to%55 of the board positions until you put the two consumer
classes together and see that the consumer classes together could have
a majority of the board if they vote more than for the worker
candidates.
Then you think woh! 'Consumers who don't necessarily know the ins and
outs of the operation could take over the board.'
But the reality of cooperative and non-profit organizations is that
workers tend to be the most consolidated group, and thus the group who
can organize to throw their weight around much more readily than
others interests. In fact, in most studies of full fledged cooperative
economies, what ends up happening is you get a corrupt workers'
capitalism instead of corrupt corporate capitalism.
Also workers actually attend meeting where as members don't have a
tendency to go to the AGM, as we find at the Wilderness Committee: We
have 300,000+ members who we spend big bucks to communicate with and
enroll all year round, and a big turn out for our AGMs is 60 people.
The 12-20 employees who come to the AGM are always the biggest
coherent voting block who know what's going to happen and where
they're going to stand.
Also the workers get paid to come up with policy, so they have about
100 times more time to prepare and skew the policy discussion than any
consumer member is going to have.
By enshrining associated organisations (Class B) into the governance
of our coop who we do business with or who help us (e.g., provide
citizen-non-profit news coverage of the community on our portal
page), we can honestly say that we listen to, and include our
community and associates. It's not just lip service.
Directors elected:

**Class A members shall comprise no fewer than %30 of their members
elected to the board, and no more than %55 of their members elected to
the board.
Class B members will comprise no fewer than %20 representation on the
board and no more than %35 of their members represented on the board.
Class C members will comprise no fewer than %30 of the board and no
more than %50 of the board.
Class D members will comprise no fewer than %20 of the board and no
more than %25 of the board. **

All-in-all these changes are really about making a community driven
mass media platform which is truly of the community. Instead of
lipservice, outright legal liability if we don't live up to higher
ideals of a peoples' mass media and democracy.
Hopefully I can get a lawyer to look over these by May 14th so that we
can send out legal notice (2 weeks in advance of AGM) with the actual,
final wording of the rules for the AGM at the beginning of June.
Next we have to include the number of shares required to qualify for
the new membership classes. So that would be A and D (in my thinking
business members will be the new class B members, and other members
who have so far been, by and large participatory to some degree, will
be rolled into class C). We should not change the number of shares
required for those two classes when rolling them into the new classes,
for reasons of simplicity.
The other two classes, which are general consumer (people who don't
buy routers perhaps and don't help the network really) would be $10
and then the Worker class might be higher, like $40.
We should remember that the cooperative can issue the routers and
other goods and services with the membership shares kind of rolled
into the price of things. This would help people to see the router as
an induction and investment instead of just a purchase. Because now
$10 of the $40-$50 router expenditure is really a share they hold and
can redeem for cash, and which entitles them to real say in the new
mass media of their region. This helps us finance/subsidize the
distribution of the routers and encouraging the spirit of a peoples'
media.