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date: 2023-10-11
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time: 15:00 UTC
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topics:
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- introductions
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- formation of a mission statement
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attending:
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via matrix:
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- Scott
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- Owen
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- Dylan
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- Brian
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- Fir
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- Steph
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- Cassie
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- Forrest
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scribe: Fir
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---
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Forrest: Here to facilitate, and for politics. Be thinking about keeping a record of things, useful for grant writing, legal stuff.
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Dylan: Worked in web dev for the past decade, quit my job and trying to go freelance. Want to do impactful, meaningful work, a syndicate/coop
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seems like a great way to do that. More interested in doing impactful work than making money.
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Steph: Working in tech and academia for close to 25 years in so many things; SaaS, consultancies, making millions for billion-dollar companies.
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My intent is to try to find ways to do this without exploiting people. I can't work a lot, have multiple invisible disabilities.
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Hoping for this to be something liberatory. Cassie has egged me on to build things this way!
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Cassie: Mostly here for the politics, also multiply-disabled. Animator!
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Brian: Got introduced to this when Scott and I were working on the Working Class History project. Like Dylan I'm here to work on impactful things,
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really with the WCH thing it was trying to contribute to positive propaganda. I still have to think about everything I'm looking for out of TWS.
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First step for me is continuing the WCH work.
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fir: found its way here via working to revitalize endangered languages--satisfying, but doesn't pay much, so it put together a plan to be able to do this work full-time while supporting itself. tech turned out to be the way...until it didn't, and it's been doing language work ever since. Similar to Steph, in noticing that its work was making others a huge amount of money with little return to itself. Hopes to make use of its tech skills to do something better for the world rather than making others rich. It specializes in teaching.
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Forrest: I don't plan to be a super big part of what's happening here, want you to feel comfortable doing it yourself
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without relying on outside HR firms like I've had to. I met Scott through Owen, I don't have any work history that's pertinent here...
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that I can include on a resume. (Scott: Not true! What about No Mugs No Masters?) My background is very political in nature,
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mostly stuff I won't be comfortable sharing. Indigenous language protection is interesting to me, a lot of our early work was with
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Land Protectors, land-back movements. One of our goals with NMNM is this idea of confederated organizations that can support each other
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in what are rapidly becoming more dangerous environments. Having legal businesses is really important. I don't plan to be a mainstay here,
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just want to help you all get going. NMNM's bylaws are now used as an example by Albany Law School. We made the goal of making a framework
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that resists getting turned into just another corporate sphere, it's easy for coops to go that way. Being able to have the legal basis
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is what I'm here for, making sure there's something that can't be fucked with. If someone comes in whose idea of liberatory engagement
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is actual liberal engagement, it's good to have protections in place. We started as a poor-people's collective, that's part of why TWS interests me,
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offering options for people who need digital assistance but don't have the means for it. TWS cannot exist alone, it has to exist within
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the framework of building toward this new future of cooperative networks. I can provide names of cooperatives that are doing similar stuff.
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Scott: Segue! Everybody mentioned "liberation". I like the phrase "Liberation of all people". These worker cooperatives and such liberatory
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organizations need digital infrasturcture, and organizing people like us to fill in that labor where it's needed rather than the people
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who don't want to think about how to build a WordPress website. We can take tech barriers away.
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Owen: On the flip side, there are few and far-between unions for tech workers. Not a lot of options for people who want the protection
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of a union. Seems to be mostly contract work, from watching Scott deal with things. There's money if you're at a certain skill level,
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but there's not a lot of protection or benefits. I feel like we'd be filling two roles simultaneously: protecting ourselves as workers,
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and providing labor to organizations that aren't focused on email-hosting etc.
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Steph: The closest we've got here is a professional association which is very clear about the fact that they are not a union.
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They're not there for collective bargaining or interceding with HR, although I did get them to do that once for me.
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I've been a boss, I've been a company director, I've been an employee at every level and no one wants to be in solidarity with each other
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because everyone thinks "if I can get the right contract I'll be pulling in the big money."
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Scott: There's this trend in tech that, you're gonna write code instead of cook because it's gonna make you money. In my personal history
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that was me trying to protect myself from the poverty that is part of the capitalist system, trying to pursue privilege instead of liberation.
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Forrest: It's important to note that unions, like coops, are tools, not universal goods. Even if a tech worker's union exist, they could be
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affiliated with the AFL-CIO and therefore with police unions. National unions try to avoid talking about things like "defend the Atlanta forest"
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or any politically tenuous stuff. Simply having collective bargaining is not liberatory, but it can be. Understanding that we are creating
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better conditions for tech workers must be predicated on the idea that the entire working class must have those better conditions too.
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TWS having the documents to make that explicit desire, more than just the social-democratic ideal--there's also an entire portion of this
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that talks about what goes into making tech profitable at all, rare-earth minerals, workers outside the imperial core, etc. Vital when we
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talk about talking about a liberatory cooperative is understanding that our making profit relies on exploitation.
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Steph: They may as well be called "blood minerals" with how much exploitation goes in to their production!
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Scott: There was part of me that saw that hypocrisy and that "I'm done with tech", wanted to get into agriculture. Seeing the state of the website
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for NMNM though, I see a need here. There's an element of hypocrisy to it, trying to create the privilege to support ourselves using machines that
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were made on the backs of slave labor. It has to inform our context, the goal isn't just to sustain ourselves.
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Brian: That segues nicely into the discussion about the mission statement. You mentioned there's a draft out there? If we could walk away today
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with something that approximates a mission statement, that will inform how we want TWS to function.
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Dylan: Not everyone here is a tech worker, which is great, we need that diversity of thought. Any ideas? Forrest? Should it be long, short?
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Forrest: Because we're looking at this through the lens of interacting with other cooperative structures...a mission statement is about 2 longer
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or 3 to 4 shorter sentences. Hit the important notes, why you exist at all. A cooperative still has to interface with banks, financial officers.
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Need something concise enough to show them what you're getting at, without losing the cultural aspect of what you're trying to create.
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Show the long-term goal, plus internal perspective on how you see your organization.
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Steph: A lot of people who might be interested in working with us are going to be more from the liberal mindset. Want something that doesn't sound
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too out there, but still shows this is a radical organization. How keen are we to work alongside liberals?
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Scott: We can argue when we have precise wording to look at, but I don't think we need to resort to dogwhistles, judging from the responses I get
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when I talk about this on social media.
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Steph: As a trans anarchist, who works with a lot of other trans anarchists, I bet we can get a lot of people from that pool.
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Scott: As far as exact wording: I can try to put things in my own terms a bit, I've come to some clarity as we've had this conversation.
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Mission is two fold:
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- facilitate the use of technology and
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- to sustain ourselves as workers
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The thing about that first point is it doesn't seem complete. Who are we facilitating the use of technology for?
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Brian: One thought that crossed my mind: I think we can avoid the dogwhistles, but I do want to take an ecumenical approach and realize
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we're going to have folks from a variety of perspectives, anarchists, soc-dems...anyone who realizes the system we're working in now
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is based on exploitation. Maybe that can be incorporated into it? A broad enough statement that we're looking to work with technology
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in a way that's not exploitative? We're going to have so many different opinions on the political side, I think broader is better.
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Steph: I've had some experience with left-unity groups before. There's a lot of pull in different directions, but people can work with those
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different perspectives. Often it looks like a goal like "Star Trek with [this] or without [this]". What tech does is it scales existing efforts. Words I would throw in:
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- Using tech to scale and force-multiply the efforts of other workers to act in liberatory ways
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Forrest: Thought about the formulation process: Rather than try to write a full piece of text, start with bullet points, use that to formulate
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the writing itself. Otherwise you'll get stuck constantly discussing the wording. Start with
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"what are the main things we want the mission statement to have" and then start the formulation process from there.
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fir: Perhaps since we're all in this notes document, we can start writing in our own bullet points and review that together.
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Forrest: Misson statement is for external view. May help to have an internal "points of unity" document about shared values to make sure
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everybody is feeling like they're on the same page about why we're all here. We can have a diverse number of opinions while the core goal
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and how we're going to get there is shared.
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Forrest: Just because you have a strategy doesn't mean the rest of the world needs to know what that strategy is.
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They are willing to write anyone up on anything right now, I want to make sure you have safety covered.
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E.g., the FBI updated their "hate imagery" and it includes "ACAB" now.
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Scott: Element has optional end-to-end encryption but we aren't currently using it and should bear that in mind as we go.
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Forrest: NMNM is very explicit with its radical outlook, and it took over a year for NYS to finish ok'ing the articles of incorporation. state entities will put roadblocks in your way, and they do not like this radical stuff.
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Dylan: Another tech collecitve I found: Rose Coded? Seems comparable to what we've talke dabout. Their website is very generic and vague,
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presumably for opsec reasons. Link here: https://rosecoded.com/about/ We can take inspiration from these other cooperatives too.
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Steph: I'm just a really big fan of direct democracy. Everything should be flat hierarchy. Everything by consent. Finding those
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"positive spins" in generic terms. Obviously everyone should have a say in policy! I'm a writer, I've done a lot of professional communication.
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If we need to put a positive spin on something I'm happy to take a go at that.
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Dylan: If you're interested in seeing what others are going, the list is at: https://tech-coops.xyz.
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Forrest: When looking at clientelle in the future, since you already have to deal with international operations, there's probably a pretty
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decent market for folks who do this kind of stuff outside the English-speaking world which doesn't have nearly as much help.
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Having Spanish-language stuff, Arabic-language stuff might help just in terms of markets.
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fir: if anybody is interested or needs to learn languages quickly, that's my area of expertise and work currently!
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Dylan: I've been learning Spanish for a year and a half, I know there's a lot of cooperatives in South America it would be great to go visit and learn from.
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Forrest: There's stuff available for sure in the Spanish-speaking sphere.
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Schools of the Chiapas is one of the only way for Zapatisa coffee cooperatives to own their coffee becuase they don't have digital infrastructure.
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Scott: We were talking the other day about the Linktree thing, and how the actual organization doesn't provide support for sex workers,
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which might be because they can't process payments.
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Steph: I know sex workers present and former, I've talked with them about what tech can do, but it's changed a lot since SESTA-FOSTA. In past roles, I've
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worked behind the scenes running adult sites, and I know payment processing has been an issue for twenty years. If you're looking for a way to
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get a lot of cash, providing an alternative system to that that isn't crypto currency that's actually legitimate, that would be game-changing.
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Scott: I have caused a digression and we should get back on topic and discuss that later.
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Dylan: "TWS exists to empower and liberate workers by providing digital mutual aid, be it through the use of infrastructure, consulting, web-app design..."[^1]
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Does that seem along the right lines?
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[^1]: https://git.techwork.zone/TWS/meta/src/commit/8acdd69ef2ffb9bea82c9f9027c84a2e2d4be178/meeting-minutes/2023-10-11_15:00_all-hands/mission-statement.md
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Steph: "...through the use of information technology in all its forms"[^2]
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[^2]: https://git.techwork.zone/TWS/meta/src/commit/60125d64dab430adf8e7671f7bc6d91df60b6004/meeting-minutes/2023-10-11_15:00_all-hands/mission-statement.md
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Scott: So, in the NMNM mission statement, it says "the liberation of all working people," and it struck me the other day that i would like to say "all people." and so im just trying to think of how to reorganize what Dylan said here, "the cooperative exists to provide digital mutual aid for the liberation of all people."[^3] I think that's a bit brief, though?
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[^3]: https://git.techwork.zone/TWS/meta/src/commit/940bc846e01bdcb2d01248fc7daab79fbfb56788/meeting-minutes/2023-10-11_15:00_all-hands/mission-statement.md
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Brian: I certainly lke the term "digital mutual aid," that's sort of along the lines of what we're doing for WCH. I also understand that there's a level of support that people need to make a living, and that's not the same as mutual aid.
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Steph: Mutual aid only really has meaning for those in the circles of anarchism. if we're going to be trying to reach people, clients, describing it that way is on the verge of being jargon and we're going to want to use as little jargon as possible, in my experience.
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fir: i'm really excited about the possibility of digital mutual aid, but maybe something in the middle might look like:
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"TWS exists to further the goal of liberating all people thru the use of technology in all its forms"[^4]
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[^4]: https://git.techwork.zone/TWS/meta/src/commit/b0f902a08d2128a7c0d3330c028705e64335f3f1/meeting-minutes/2023-10-11_15:00_all-hands/mission-statement.md
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Scott: it's a fair point that it could come off as jargon
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Brian: I am fortunate enough to be employed and don't necessarily need TWS as a vehicle to support myself. So I'm happy to continue with my belief in what mutual aid would be, but I also understand that's not what it necessasrily looks like for everyone else. I like the term, but i don't want it to be misleading.
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Scott: Mutual aid isn't just giving, it's mutual support. We do this work to help one project, and as a part of that, people they (our clients) know might offer us support back, like donations thru the linktree clone idea. It wouldn't make sense to charge per user, but having a donations page to allow others to offer us support in turn is more what I was thinking of mutual aid.
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Steph: There are other groups that exist to train-up folks in disadvantaged groups, I just realized that maybe some of what that aid might be is
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building skills within the syndicate to help others more. the work that we do improves us so that we can help others better. A "virtuous cycle"
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Forrest: NMNM started out mostly as a mutual aid organization, but we've continued to do our MA efforts even though we're not making income.
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We don't mention it in the mission statement. It's if not a wonky term, it's pretty complex. It happens socially. The Zapatistas talk about this a lot:
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the entire society exists to provide mutual aid to everyone in it. Allowing yourself not to feel married to something that complex in the mission statement
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isn't crazy. There's validity on both sides here, just talking about "aid" is pretty well understood.
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(there was some poorly recorded discussion of the statement here, see [revision history of `mission-statement.md`](https://git.techwork.zone/TWS/meta/commits/commit/66a2a892a6612e7052cfce033a3355a78138bfbc/meeting-minutes/2023-10-11_15:00_all-hands/mission-statement.md))
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(around this point Dylan and Brian excused themselves)
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Forrest: For the love of God, let yourself have a rest! Please!
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Steph: Another important aspect of this is pacing. I have chronic fatigue, and I cannot keep going once I hit my limit, even if something is literally on fire. I know very well that struggle, it's one of the hardest things I've had to learn, particularly around my other disabilities. Sometimes I can't stop myself (ADHDlife) without my medication! And there is a LOT of underdiagnosed neurodivergence in tech. We might need to teach people how to pace, self-care and rest! And I am willing to teach.
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Forrest: NMNM is explicitly an antiwork worker's cooperative. Our perspective is like, yeah, you have to do labor itself to do stuff, but work itself is an evil thing, even in worker cooperatives. Having that perspective has been really helpful for us because starting a startup is rocky and when you have people freely giving their labor, it's good to have the perspective that this is a place where you're not just a worker, you're a human being with a life outside the labor we put into the world. That labor is just one part of what makes up our whole.
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Steph: I am painfully familiar with that hustle, and those bad habits are partially why my health issues are so bad.
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Forrest: I got Long COVID in Jan and I went from being mostly fine to being extremely fucked up. To see the willingness to have work be such a core concept of the world we live in, where we're currently constantly disabling people, is important to keep in mind.
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Steph: Talk to me about Long COVID, I was in the first cohort and had to learn a LOT on my own and helping others. I got tips, I got tricks, I can help people who haven't had to consider disability stuff before.
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Forrest: Co-ops in America are twice as likely as regular businesses to succeed in the first year and 5-10x as likely to succeed by the fifth year becuase socialists understand business better than capitalists.
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Steph: I only need to win once! Once I am able to be secure funds with the bug bounty work, I can funnel my extra into projects and people who need it. That's definitely something I seek to do.
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Scott: I'd be willing to keep up with it if you'd like to make a group chat for the bug bounty work.
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Steph: I want to keep people in the loop with this. If you really want to get my ideas on this stuff, you can read some of the scifi I've written, too. I do tend to jump between a lot of things, but lately I've been able to finish more things and I have a Discord where I update people once a week on where I'm at with activism and tech. If you're curious I can easily add you. I just collect neurodivergent people from around the world and put them together so they can find each other.
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# Mission
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## or, Points of Unity
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These are a list of points we feel unify us around a mission. They are not necessarily intended to be publicly visible.
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- liberating everyone
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- "we are stronger together"
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- provide a shelter to workers marginalised by bigotry or otherwise being deemed "unuseful" to capitalism
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- help other organisations with opsec/infosec
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- facilitate the use of technology and
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- to sustain ourselves as workers
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- act as a force-multiplier for other liberatory projects
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- to empower workers by providing infrastructure, technology, and consulting
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- supporting other cooperatives, liberatory efforts with tech needs
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- providing training/work experience to disadvantaged groups in tech
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- connecting other liberatory projects and groups with much-needed tech services in a manner that doesn't leave them beholden to capital and allows them to focus on their actual project rather than their infrastructure
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- creating a future where [??? without exploitation? power in the hands of workers?]
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- Something about "digital mutual aid"?
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- something something equitable distribution of power?
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- operational security for both ourselves and the groups we wish to support
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- consensus-based decisionmaking and direct democracy; flat/no heirarchy in structure
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- internationality!
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- allowing workers to REST so they don't BURN OUT! also disability support
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