Future changes to Organising Principles - Vote by DiEM25 members

We would like to make it easier for members to come together to change the Organising Principles and other core documents in the future. The current process as per section 8 of the Organising Principles is:

Amendments of the Manifesto and of DiEM25’s Organising Principles must be a carefully designed and implemented process, lest DiEM25’s character and mission are inadvertently damaged.

1. Proposals for emendations to the Manifesto and to the Organising Principles must be submitted to the CC bearing signatures of 10% of the membership or at least 30 of the 100 members of the VC.

2. Once submitted to CC, CC undertakes to make a proposal to the VC.

3. The VC will have an opportunity either to accept the CC’s proposal or send it back to the CC for further refinement – this capacity to return the proposal to the CC can only be exercised once and with a simple majority.

4. The CC’s proposal, once Step 3 has been completed, will be put to the Membership in an internal DiEM25 Referendum. To be carried, a super-majority of 60% and a minimum 50% participation rate of all eligible members will be necessary.

DiEM25’s Organising Principles will be validated, by the VC, every year. If the VC fails to validate the Organising Principles, the CC will take note of member criticisms of the current Organising Principles and recommend amendments within six months.

Below you can vote to 
a) Keep this process,
b) Replace it with the Coordinating Collective’s suggested new process involving DiEM25 Members Assemblies or
c) Replace it with the PDP Proposal suggested by a group of members (JAMY), which involves a PDP Committee and working groups.
Please evaluate the proposals carefully.

The CC’s proposal is:

Establish DiEM25 Assemblies - giving members more control over their movement

(i) In parallel to the CC (which collates submissions from members, DSCs, NCs and puts forward proposals to the movement), totally independently and without anyone’s permission, any member(s) wishing to change/introduce X in the OPs, or to propose/alter policy Y, or to re-write a segment of the Manifesto, or to propose some new form of collective action can set up a Thematic DSC.

(ii) The announcement of the formation of a Thematic DSC for the purpose of formulating a proposal to change/introduce X may lead to the formation of other Thematic DSCs to discuss the same or similar proposals (which is one reason why Thematic DSCs are encouraged to comprise no more than 15 members before they divide and multiply).

(iii) Once one or more Thematic DSCs have produced one or more concrete proposals on one specific issue or policy, and provided a sufficient number (meaning: 10% of those who voted on average in the last 4 AMVs, with a minimum of 300 DiEMers) request it, the CC automatically calls for a DiEM25 Assembly to be constituted so as to examine the Thematic DSCs proposal(s)

(iv) The CC constitutes the DiEM25 Assembly by sortition (i.e. randomly, as in the case of the VC) by means of a randomising algorithm that guarantees gender and geographic equity

(v) The particular DiEM25 Assembly, which can meet online or offline, hears all competing arguments and, within a timeframe, delivers a proposal that may contain one or more options.

(vi) Said proposal, along possible counter-proposals to be assembled by the CC, will be then be put to an all-member vote.

More details

JAMY’s proposal is:

A Participatory, Deliberative Process (PDP)
for re-thinking DiEM25 practices and principles

Introduction

This process aims at bringing together DiEM25 grassroots members, CC members (elected and ex-officios), NC members and EW members in order to promote a culture of collaboration between CC/ex-officio and grassroots members, to make better use of the diversity of DiEM25 members' knowledges, experiences and talents and to develop together a shared culture of caring cooperation. The purpose of this process is to carry out a participatory, deliberative approach that takes into account the members' concerns and points of views. Its outcome will be the clarification of DiEM25's working methods, rules and practices and will lead to changes to the Organising Principles. The principle is not to bring changes in a piecemeal manner, but to rethink the practices, rules and principles holistically within the same specific, limited timeframe (a few months). Because of the interdependence of organisational and behavioural issues, we believe these tasks will have to be conducted in parallel.

Setting up a provisory Steering Committee for the PDP

In order to make sure the process is members-led, a PDP Steering Committee will be set up for the limited duration of the PDP process to coordinate and accompany this process. The PDP Committee will consists of 11 to 15 members, with strict gender parity, and include at least two members from the CC. The other members will be randomly selected from a pool of interested members. Detailed minutes of the PDP Committee meetings will be made available on the forum. Members of the PDP Committee should have had voting rights for AMVs for three months before the launch of the process. A majority of the members of the PDP Committee should not hold an elected position in DiEM (CC, NC, EW) nor be members of the VC or be ex-officio members. For non-english-speaking countries, the PDP Committee will ask the countries' NCs for help.

Preparation

The PDP Committee will hold zoom call(s) to address members’ questions and suggestions on the process and on the role, scope and methods of the Working Groups.

Working Groups (WG)

The core of the PDP will be carried out in four parallel WGs. Each of the groups should have at least two CC members (1 elected and 1 ex-officio) and at least five other DiEM25 members. Members will be free to join one WG. The chapters that the four WG will cover are: 1) Clarification of the Manifesto; 2) Organizational (structure) & Operational Principles (functioning) 3) Accountability & Transparency 4) Policy making and campaign coordination. WGs will exploit the existing information and input from members and form a concrete proposal on the changes required in DiEM's practices. The four WGs will produce documents that will be circulated among all WGs, the forum and the CC for comments and feedback. Each WG will create a thread on the forum to publish the advancements of their work and collect suggestions from members.

Synthesis

The PDP Committee will eventually collect the proposals of the WGs and make a final report.This document will be published on the forum and officially submitted to the CC. It will be presented to DiEM25 members during online meetings to allow the PDP Committee to answer the member's questions before the All Members Votes. The final report will be submitted to the membership through an AMV.

More details

Arguments

Watch the video of Yanis Varoufakis explaining why he believes the CC’s proposal is better:



Watch the video of JAMY explaining why they believe their proposal is better:

Vote options:

A. Keep the current process,
B. Replace it with the Coordinating Collective’s suggested new process involving DiEM25 Members Assemblies or
C. Replace it with the PDP Proposal suggested by a group of members (JAMY), which involves a PDP Committee and working groups.

The Organising Principles will be adapted in line with the results of this vote.

What should we do?