Good evening comrades,
DSA National has issued the following statement that includes guidance for local chapters: Now is the Time for Solidarity: DSA National Statement on COVID-2019. Local officials have also asked that large gatherings be canceled, postponed, or moved online.
Sunday’s General Assembly Meeting
Tonight, your Steering Committee voted to conduct two online meetings on Sunday in place of the New Member Orientation and General Assembly Meeting, starting at the same times, following an amended agenda. These meetings will be online-only – no one will be at Unite Here.
Our new General Assembly meeting agenda will focus on the COVID-19 epidemic, indlucing discussion of the national statement, local impact and strategy, mutual aid, and what this means for our future meetings and organizing activities.
Our meetings will be conducted via Zoom – you can find meeting details on the events calendar. If you are not familiar with this application, see the How to join a Zoom meeting tutorial video / article.
During the meeting we will continue to follow our Guidelines for Respectful Discussion, amended for taking stack online:
- Assume good faith in your fellow comrades
- Know whether you need to “step up” or “step back”
- Please ask yourself: “Why am I talking?”
- Please recognize and respect others feelings, backgrounds, and cultural differences
- We have “one mic” so do not interrupt or speak while others are talking
- Respect the facilitator when they use Progressive Stack
- Members joined via the Zoom app can type “stack” into chat to be added to stack
- Members joined on the phone only can say “stack” followed by their name to be added to stack
- Have a sense of humor!
Future Meetings
The Steering Committee also recommends that all gatherings of members follow the guidance DSA National and local officials, and encourage meeting online whenever possible.
If you would like to move your meeting online, you can request to reserve the chapter Zoom account and update your calendar entry in the #requests-communications channel in Slack. The Communications Subcommittee will meet next week to discuss streamlining this process, and other collaboration tools.
We are also going to be scheduling a training next week on online organizing tools like Zoom to enable our members. Keep an eye out for more details on this.
Watch our events calendar for the latest information.
In solidarity,
DSA San Diego Steering Committee