“To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming. Human beings are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection.”

Paulo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Thanks to the tireless efforts of my dear friend Rachel Loesche, I am now an active member of three organizations that are all in the process of adopting sociocracy as their governance model - NOVA Web Development, NOVASEN, and Social Justice Computing.

I was immediately attracted to sociocracy as I proceeded through the online Sociocracy Primer that Rachel asked us all to complete. The reason for my attraction is as simple as sociocracy itself - sociocracy struck me as a clear, simple, and elegant framework for getting things done with an inherent respect for human beings as historical protagonists with a right and duty to name the world.

Of these three organizations now embarking on their sociocracy journeys, I think that the one that can derive the fullest and most immediate benefit from the sociocracy framework is Social Justice Computing (SJC). I described the origin of SJC in a recent post. It has grown from a small non-profit started by four people with different motivations into an organization with a ten member board, and with several others, both students and community members, expressing interest in "joining" with us. Since we can't just keep growing the board, this has very organically forced us into a conversation about what it means to "join with us".

We have an upcoming board meeting on Sunday, July 19th that I will unfortunately not be able to attend (I'll be in the air on my way to Spain). We agreed at our last board meeting that we would make discussion of how we want SJC to operate and where we want it to focus a central topic for that meeting. Since I can't be there, I'll write up five proposals here that I hope my board comrades will consider.

Proposal 1: Change to a Membership Organization

SJC currently operates as a self-perpetuating board of directors. Here is the relevant definition of this from the Virginia SCC website in the section titled HOW ARE THE DIRECTORS SELECTED?:

The articles of incorporation must provide how the directors will be elected or appointed. It is not acceptable to provide that the directors will be elected or appointed "as set forth in the bylaws."

Under Virginia law, a nonstock corporation is managed by a board of directors, which, in turn, appoints the officers of the corporation. In most instances, after incorporation, the directors are selected by the members, or by the directors in office. When the directors elect or appoint their successors, this is referred to as a self-perpetuating board of directors.

It is not acceptable to provide that future directors will be appointed by a named individual. This arrangement is unacceptable because when the individual dies, no mechanism will be in place for the selection of subsequent directors.

Another acceptable director selection mechanism in the articles of incorporation is to provide for an "ex-officio" director. This is an individual who holds a particular office in another organization and will be a director of the corporation for so long as he or she occupies said office. For example, an individual serving as the president of a sister organization could be designated as an ex-officio director of your corporation. The title of the office and the name of the organization would need to be identified in the corporation’s articles of incorporation.

I propose that we become a membership organization with a membership directed board.

Proposal 2: Define Membership as Active Participation in a Project Circle

If we did agree in principle to become a membership organization, the next immediate and practical question we would need to answer is how we define membership in SJC. Since SJC exists with the purpose to "use information technology in the service of social justice", and further clarifies what this means by linking it to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and since we have agreed to use sociocracy as our governance framework, I'd like to see us define membership in SJC as anyone who:

1. agrees in principle with the mission of the organization.
2. actively participates in one of our project circles.

We don't as yet have any official project circles, but in practice we have several, namely the people who are:

1. working toward building a solidarity economy focused school in Liberia.
2. directly supporting the creation of two web tech worker co-ops, NOVA Web Development and Jetro Web Development.
3. working on a digital equity project to get FOSS laptops in the hands of young tech students.
4. working on creating a web based social justice reporter for tracking our nation's crumbling infrastructure.

To become a more effective activist organization, we should make the project circles the center of our organization, rewriting our by-laws to define what they are and how they operate, and formalizing the role of circle chair, selected in the circle for a year long period, so that they can effectively help organize the concrete work of the project circles and so that we can...

Proposal 3: Make the Board the General Circle of Project Circle Chairs

The board should be comprised of project circle chairs, reconstituted on the same schedule (annually?) as the circles. Special roles such as board president (the VA SCC recognized name for general circle chair ;-) should be determined within the general circle itself, again using sociocracy principles.

Proposal 4: Begin Transitioning to a Membership Organization by Forming Project Circles Now

If we agree on this or on some variation of the general direction proposed here, we don't need to wait to begin. We've already agreed to practice sociocracy, so we should begin forming active project circles right away, and start getting the hands-on experience we need to effectively rewrite our by-laws defining how they operate as soon as we are ready.

Proposal 5: Have the Chair / President of the Social Justice Business Club be an Ex-officio General Circle Member

One last thought. We have a number of young folks who have come to us through their activity with the Solidarity Economy Business Club, which operates as a student organization within Arlington Public Schools. It doesn't make sense to try to incorporate their club directly within SJC, since it needs to be a proper APS student run organization. We could, however, formalize the very real relationship SJC has with the club by inviting the club leader onto the SJC general circle, making them an ex-officio member. This same approach could then be utilized later with other similar sister organizations.

I'm sorry I can't make our next board meeting, but I look forward to talking with my board comrades as soon as I can thereafter to find out how the discussion went.

In solidarity,
Jeff Elkner
8 July 2026