2025-2-25 Political Education Praxis Session #1: Organization and Structure
In this session of our Praxis series, we ask how effective political organizations structure themselves. This session will introduce attendees to challenges organizations face in the democratic allocation of duties, responsibilities, and powers. We will review common organizational bodies (e.g. committees, subcommittees, commissions, working groups, campaigns) that one might find in a typical DSA chapter, and how they might relate (or not relate) to one another. We will spend the bulk of the session reading aloud together and discussing selections from Jo Freeman’s essay “The Tyranny of Structurelessness,” a seminal text written in 1970 out of the women’s movement in the U.S. Through analysis of Freeman’s essay, we will consider how certain members come to influence an organization; the difference between organizations that elect leaders and those that attempt leaderlessness; and the difficulties of cohering a strong, effective organization out of political actors who do not share identical ideological commitments, strategic priorities, or social backgrounds.
Core Readings:
When
February 25th, 2025 at 7:00pm - 9pm
Where
Zoom