Hi Comrades,

This is an important time of year for our chapter: the one-year terms of our Executive Committee are coming to an end, and
it’s time to elect a new Executive Committee.
We have a Nominations Committee who will be accepting nomations between now and our next meeting, March 19th.

You can email nominations (you can nominate yourself) to Amillie Coster ([email protected]) or Sandra Blomberg ([email protected]).

The offices to be filled are two Co-chairs, a Communications Coordinator, and a Secretary/Treasurer. Please note that according to our bylaws, more than one gender must be represented on the Executive Committee.

Now for the tl;dr part!
The official duties of the officers (from the chapter bylaws, abbreviated):

Co-Chairs: the chief executive officers of the Local Chapter. They will preside over chapter meetings.The Co-Chairs will be the official public spokespersons for the Local Chapter and will initiate such actions and policies as the Local Chapter’s general welfare may demand.

Communications Coordinator: responsible for public outreach, for initiating and maintaining contact with appropriate media and groups in the Berkshire County area about BDSA activities and positions, and for managing the social media communications.

Secretary/Treasurer: responsible for taking minutes of all Local Chapter Meetings; also responsible for the funds and financial records of the Local Chapter.

(please see the Chapter Bylaws for complete descriptions: [link removed])

The Executive Committee in practice has considerable freedom to structure their procedures. For instance, although the duty of presiding over meetings officially belongs to the Co-Chairs, we decided to rotate between all executive committee members. There’s officially a somewhat complicated procedure for calling Executive Committee meetings; we’ve simply chosen to have a weekly Zoom meeting to discuss chapter business, usually about a half hour on Tuesday evenings. The new Committee will be free to change those kinds of procedures to suit their style.

The required duties of the officers are not that time-consuming: two hours of Exec Comm Zoom meetings a month, coming up with agendas and presiding over monthly meetings, checking the bank account monthly, taking notes at meetings, posting on social media and issuing occasional press releases, depending on one’s position. In practice we’ve all expanded our activities considerably to include planning events, sitting for interviews with public radio, coordinating with other groups in the area, working on electoral issues, working groups, etc.

So the new slate of officers has a fair amount of freedom to decide what they want to do with their position.

HERE’S WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO ELECT A NEW EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE!

First of all, although I think the current EC all enjoy their duties and have gotten pretty good at them, it’s critical for the growth and strength of the chapter that new leaders bring their own individual energy and ideas to the functioning of the chapter. It’s easy for us to get comfortable and even stale doing the same things over and over, and the best way to break out of that is to get some new blood in those positions.

Secondly, the current members of the EC, while they will still be available to support the new EC with their experience and energy, have developed skills and talents that can come to greater fruition they have the time to specifically focus on other areas. For instance, I think all of us have goals of developing active Working Groups like Ecosocialism, Electoral, Education, Labor, etc., but that hasn’t really been happening to any great degree because we already have EC responsibilities.

Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions; otherwise please send your nominations as soon as possible to the members of the Nominating Committee. Note that you don’t have to nominate a comrade for each position; if you just have one or two people you’d like to nominate, that’s fine.

Solidarity!
John.


__________________
John Prusinski
Co-Chair, Executive Committee
Berkshires DSA
berkshiresdsa.org



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