I got an email from my local chapter voting on seceding from the national org. In part it reads:
BACKGROUND
On 1/22/2022 the President of the SRA, posted a letter to all members indicating that, in summation, our (now former) Financial Director failed in their duties to the organization. Weeks of auditing the SRA finances revealed massive overspending and improper allocation of chapter dues. In addition, it was revealed the SRA owes the IRS approximately $15k in back taxes and that dispersal of dues to chapters would be suspended given the current financial crisis. The SRA now owes chapters over $50k.
In the following days, said Financial Director canceled their dues, effectively resigning, without ever making a statement to the membership. On 2/2/2022 the Organizing Committee unanimously voted to formally remove the Financial Director from their post.
The SRAWU, the union representing paid and volunteer staff of the SRA, formed in 2021 under the assumption the organization was solvent enough to afford full-time staff, and with the purpose of developing fairer working conditions. In the multiple committee and assembly meetings since January 22nd, budget proposals have amounted to either laying off staff or massively reducing hours, which no negotiating party has been satisfied with for a variety of reasons. No proposal has properly accounted for every factor of this budget crisis, and they all leave the SRA deeply in the red at the end of the year.
On 3/21/2022, the SRA Organizing Committee vetoed the budget passed at the March Assembly Meeting on grounds that it violated the SRA Bylaws. On the same day, a topic entitled "We Are Doomed: The Organization Chose Death" was posted to the forum, which stirred a lot of debate surrounding the future of the organization. A [Local] member formerly served as the Web & Script Developer of the SRA and developed a reputation of being a trustworthy staff member. She posted in the "We Are Doomed" topic requesting that members stop contacting her for opinions on the state of the organization. That message was flagged by a forum moderator, who then told her she was acting "uncomradely" and proceeded to insult both her and other members of the [Local] who defended her. The moderator then suspended her account for "combative behavior." This led to a [Local] member posting a topic calling for an apology and accountability from the moderator, which was not received, and the topic was closed by the Secretary of the SRA.
The Assembly Committee on Administrative Affairs, Organizing Committee, and representatives of the SRAWU met on 3/22/2022. A joint letter was released affirming their intent to work together toward a "better future for the Organization," while stating nothing of substance, providing no inklings of a plan. On the same day, Gray_Colored_Glasses, Treasurer of the SRA, resigned for health reasons. The Organizing Committee has since pushed a fundraiser, asking for more money from members to help solve this crisis, when chapters are currently receiving zero funding.
This financial crisis has now been going on for 4 months and not one single concrete measure toward resolution has been accomplished.
CURRENT STATE OF THE SRA
The situation can be summarized as follows:
-The SRA has proven itself to be a toxic and abusive workspace, necessitating unionizing, which did not resolve the issues facing staff.
-The Financial Director failed at their job, left the SRA, and there is still no path toward replacement.
-The Treasurer has resigned, and there is no clear replacement.
-There is no clear path toward financial solvency; getting "in the black" could take years, and would involve drastically restructuring staffing and dues.
-The organization has failed to prioritize local chapters and on the ground organizing for the sake of prioritizing administrative overhead and bureaucracy.
Do Americans just really suck at managing national organizations, or do we need a different model entirely?
I think it comes down to size as much if not more than any particular American pathology. It's a three day drive from one end of the country to the other so that's like making a pan-European org geographically. The next largest local chapters mine could interact with are like a day's drive in any direction, so even cross-chapter organising is impractical if not impossible. Doing it all digitally is a stopgap but can't be the physical basis for the org, and trusting local chapters with full autonomy wouldn't work with an idea like the SRA where they tried to keep it focused on general safety training rather than any kind of political action.
This doesn't follow for me. If you can't trust local chapters in general, how can you trust the organization at all?
Specifically I mean that local orgs would use SRA symbolism at protests. There'd be nothing keeping them in line with the core strategy of the org, which was to have a clean entryist org that teaches the fundamentals of using guns. It could easily become a militia at a local level or otherwise splinter in ways that threaten a crackdown against all chapters.
Why does national have to exist, at all? Pass charter at convention, do your local shit, have mechanism of excluding locals by other locals, done.
They basically did just represent organising the convention. A coherent and consistent message from the name is the value for me. Anything with guns, especially mostly good logos with guns, risks encouraging adventurism. If we had a Kyle Rittenhouse, that would instantly taint whatever orgs they're associated with and the SRA was the only nationally present one left after JBGC's implosion. If those 50~ autonomous chapters could come together and put on a national convention to settle those affiliation rules then sure, but then the fully independent Pugent Sound SRA would go back to their much more radical area with more radical protests than my chapter's. They risk the herd by caving to local pressures to be a more radical org and there's no check on that. Whatever congress those 50~ autonomous chapters would form would effectively be the national, but a messy federation of competing interests that go beyond the point of the SRA.
It's that they're all built around amateurism and are super eclectic. It leads to no discipline, no actual relationship with the membership, and a lot of money or information in the hands of whoever happened to have the time to run for office.
Let's talk empirically.
Is that not a good description of how the SRA National unfolded here?
I honestly think some of it is :fedposting: . The FBI seems like it might be interested in taking this group out.
oh yeah. They just need to get a fed in leadership (very easy because they literally take classes and get paid to be there = wow he's so dedicated to the org) and they can just empty the coffers of an organization, have the undercover dip out, then let the org wither and die.
That is what this smells like to me. Especially because the Financial director left without explanation. FBI prefers not to get too directly involved any more with arrests or anything, they just try to compromise the org and scatter the members.
America's legacy of left wing militancy was destroyed and coopted, through COINTELPRO, but much more damagingly, non-profitization. This means that we have very little legacy, and we're kind of working on a collective memory that only goes back to 1999. It's why Phillipino and Chicano orgs are the best organized, they have a longer collective memory and radical tradition. There needs to be a real effort to find the elders who were alive in the 60's and got burned out or arrested rather than coopted, and we need to seek out their advice. Read up on your local BPP chapter and look the names up in the phonebook.
There was a guy from the local BPP chapter that we reached out to for an event a few years ago. Unfortunately he had mostly turned lib.