Jenngate & DSA Blono: A Measured Sequel

10/18/2021

[Full disclosure: I am a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. However, I’m currently in exile from the local chapter. So, it’s complicated. The following is my own personal statement and not the statement of DSA or the local chapter. Please make a note of it.]

An Unwelcome Guest

It was 11 o’clock at night. I was cooking after an exhausting several hours of debating why it was terrible idea to block then-Alderperson Carrillo from posting their DSA BloNo critiques on JustBloNo.net. At least, I would soon have dinner.

Then, my cellphone telephone starting ringing. I already wasn’t in a mood to speak with anyone, but especially not the person who was calling. I ignored them.

All of the sudden, there was a ferocious banging on my door. I knew who it was. It was the same person who couldn’t understand what no means regarding my cellphone telephone. Maybe I can just ignore them? Pretend I’m not there? Fake my death?

The knocking did not stop. I walked down the hallway towards the door, still naively assuming best intentions. I grabbed the door knob, but not before a deep and portentous sigh. The door opened revealing the unwelcome guest.

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Did you miss the exciting phenomena that was #JennGate? Worry not for you can still re-live all the straw-people, red herrings, reductio ad absurdums, and ad hominems that transpired:

• Intro: i. Honey, we need to talk about DSA…
• Part 1: I. Honey, we need to talk about DSA…
• Part 2: II. Honey, we need to talk about DSA…
• Part 3: III. Honey, we need to talk about DSA…
• My Measured Response

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Post-Jenngate Round-Up

Jenngate was a local political phenomena of the Left in May of 2021, when then-Alderperson Carrillo (who uses they/them pronouns) wrote a series critiquing the Bloomington-Normal chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and I removed their access to JustBloNo.net prior to my own response being published where I levied a biting critique of their series. In response to my article, Carrillo issued a cease-fire between the various Leftist camps involved. Jenngate was ultimately a collapse of solidarity among the BloNo Left that had taken a decade to build starting with the Occupy Movement in 2011. It’s taken months to properly analyze the situation and its aftermath, only to come to the conclusion that serious fissures exist on the BloNo Left that may take years to heal.

In the wake of this event: I was suspended from DSA BloNo (more on that later); Carrillo largely faced significant backlash, including from people of color; and, the Bloomington-Normal Afro-Socialists of Color caucus (which is loosely affiliated with DSA BloNo)¹ saw a large increase in participation leading to a very successful 3rd of July block party and a series of other community-based events.

While emotionally draining for those involved, Jenngate really only slowed down DSA BloNo for about a week. DSA members continued their successful housing work signing tenants for IHDA rental assistance. The assistance offered both back-rent & future-rent making sure tenants behind on rent could not only get caught up, but also remain in their homes. DSA members canvassed homes and apartment units making sure as many people as possible had the stability of housing.

There were several protests and teach-ins on the Israel/Palestine conflict led by anti-fascist members of the organization.

The fem-soc working group was working on clothing swaps, little free pantries, and addressing food insecurity.

The work continued to be done, despite a momentary hiccup.

Then, the June election for members of the Executive Committee (Exec) happened. It occurred on June 30th, 2021. The three main positions up for election were co-chair, secretary, and treasurer. The incumbents for these positions were not running for reelection. The people running for these positions were running unopposed. Public Relations Officer Louis Goseland was running for co-chair. Anakin Fox was running for Secretary. And, Sarah Hurley was running for Treasurer. Initially, it was scheduled to be another boring election. Candidates running unopposed is pretty standard among DSA chapters of BloNo’s size.² However, members are allowed to nominate themselves for the position up to the election meeting, so anything is possible.

Anything including, famous critic of DSA BloNo, Alderperson Carrillo suddenly joining DSA on June 17th, 2021, 13 days prior to the election. According to the DSA BloNo Bylaws, as long as you’re a member of DSA national and you live, work or go to school within the boundaries of Bloomington-Normal, you are automatically a member of the local chapter. Typically, the Secretary will contact the new member when National updates their membership lists once or twice a month. Prior to the new administration, once the local chapter recognized a new member, they would be given immediate access to the DSA BloNo Slack space where most internal discussion occurs.

Yet, this did not occur when Carrillo renewed their membership.³ They reached out to then-Secretary Joel Studebaker with proof of their membership to National DSA asking to be let into DSA spaces like Slack. On June 23rd, Secretary Studebaker said they would be waiting until National updated the chapter’s membership list before giving Carrillo access. Studebaker also cited the multiple instances both privately & publicly where Carrillo stated they did not wish to affiliate with the local chapter and their ideals did not match with DSA’s as reasons for the caution.

Eventually, a few members in the chapter began to ask in Slack why Carrillo’s membership and access to DSA BloNo spaces were being denied. To be clear, this was a minority of the active membership. The few voices that did speak up for Carrillo were either Jennites⁴ or did so on principled positions of fairness and allowing dissenting voices. Carrillo said in their “Honey, We need to talk” series they probably couldn’t get an audience at a general meeting, and if that was put to a vote, the majority would agree with them. Jenngate left the majority of active members antagonistic towards Jenn and their political strategies & tactics. Since any member in good standing can literally declare their candidacy at the meeting, there was a deep suspicion that Carrillo joined specifically to run against PR Officer Goseland for the co-chair position. Carrillo maintains they had no intention of running for an executive position and joined merely “to bear witness to the election and to see the shit show that was going to happen.”

On June 28th, 2021, two days before the Election Meeting, the Executive Committee of DSA BloNo officially responded to Alderperson Carrillo.

They insta-blocked Carrillo. Carrillo was literally canceled. Without even filing a grievance against Carrillo, Exec unanimously made the decision to immediately place Carrillo on a 7-month suspension. This not only prevented Carrillo from running and/or voting for an Executive position at the June Election meeting, but also at the December election. Because the suspension was for less than a year, Carrillo was unable to appeal this decision to National.

Now, I had mixed feelings about this. After Jenngate and my first (but not the last) exile from the chapter, I was inclined to let Jenn in or at least allow them to attend meetings or run for office. At the same time, Carrillo’s long-term hostility towards 4/5s of Exec and many other members would be highly toxic to the space. Regardless of my opinion, when Exec decrees something, that’s typically it.

Now, this ended up backfiring big time, and is an example of an hypothesis I have: the previous Executive Committee, which includes the two current chairs, simply cannot think rationally and objectively when it comes to Jenn Carrillo. You see, no one had announced they were running against Officer Goseland for the co-chair position. As mentioned above, Carrillo says they had no plan to run. Goseland likely would have sailed into the position no problem. Instead, Exec insta-blocked Carrillo which had the unfortunate side-effect of pissing off one Robert Garcia. Like Jenn, Robert had also been a former member of the chapter who canceled their membership for an extended period of time. Robert had recently rejoined the chapter because of his own increasing involvement in the local Afro-Soc caucus. As wild conspiracies of Carrillo attempting an insurrection fed into the echo chamber of Slack, Garcia stated to me that they would vote for Goseland over Carrillo. Garcia also had major disagreements with Carrillo. But, Garcia was still one of the few people speaking up for Carrillo in slack simply on the principled positions of fairness & allowing dissent.

When Exec chose to insta-block Carrillo, Garcia decided he wanted to run for the co-chair position against Goseland. Garcia, a very principled individual, was worried about what he perceived as abuses of power, silencing or canceling dissent against leadership, and a range of other behaviors that are objectively outside the norm of other chapters our size.

And, it wasn’t just Carrillo who had trouble joining in the weeks prior to the election. Probably a dozen people attempted to join DSA BloNo prior to the elections. Some of them [squints closely] may have some relation to Jenn Carrillo. Most of the people who tried to join did not receive an acceptance response from the local chapter, did not get access to Slack, and weren’t given information about the upcoming election. DSA BloNo leadership basically considered it an attempted insurrection for the purpose of sowing discontent.

Now this may surprise some people, but Robert Garcia and Jenn Carrillo are… not the same entity. They are, in fact, two completely separate with their own hopes, fears, and desires. Just because people who are sympathetic to Carrillo chose to vote for Garcia, does not mean these two people are the same.

The election meeting itself was lit… and by lit, I mean it was a dumpster fire. DSA BloNo meetings are typically public even during elections. But the only people allowed into the meeting were DSA BloNo members, and only members that arrived on time to the Zoom call. Anyone who wasn’t in the virtual meeting by the time the Community Agreements were read, were locked out of the meeting. They could still vote as voting was online, but it was only open from like 7PM-10PM and several members missed the window and couldn’t vote.

But, the real show was for those that got into the June 30th Election meeting and could then hear from the candidates and ask them questions. Chairperson Long facilitated the meeting with an iron fist. She began the meeting by declaring that because of the recent tension in the chapter, this meeting would follow a very strict agenda. Everyone was told they would be given one warning if they were disruptive, and after that they would be ejected from the Zoom call. Long said because this was an election meeting and not a business meeting, the agenda would not be changed.

Of course, the DSA BloNo bylaws explicitly states the Executive Committee is “subordinate to its Legislative bodies, the General and Electoral Meetings.”⁵ The bylaws also allow any member to invoke Robert’s Rules of Order at a meeting which explicitly allows for the body to democratically overrule the facilitators if they so choose.⁶ Long wasn’t having any of that democracy shit.

One member, Ward 8 Bloomington City Alderperson Jeff Crabill, attempted to object to Long’s clear violations of the rules. Without any vote by the body, Chairperson Long expelled a sitting Bloomington Alderperson from the meeting (he was still able to vote online).⁷ Kicking Crabill out was pretty shocking to a lot of members. He wasn’t the only one unilaterally expelled either; there were several others, without being given any warnings. (According to Robert’s Rules of Order, typically someone is only expelled from a meeting by a majority vote. But, there are also circumstances where the facilitator can choose to expel someone from a meeting, but it can be overruled by the membership.)

In one week, DSA BloNo had severed (or at least, severely strained) its relationship with the only two elected officials on Bloomington City Council who share the same ideology as DSA.

In the end, one vote separated Goseland from Garcia for the position. Goseland won 31-30.

In the wake of the election, 13 grievances were filed with National DSA alleging voter & membership suppression that they believe favored Goseland. Several individuals claim they were denied a ballot (including Jenn Carrillo), some of whom planned to vote for Robert. Regardless of who they chose to vote for, no member should be denied the right to vote in an election.

Garcia ultimately accepted the alleged results of the election, but he also asked for National to take a look at what were some serious discrepancies. Post-election, the chapter’s only Harassment Grievance Officer (HGO) Neal Iden recused himself from investigating these grievances as he was named in some of them. This had the result of all these grievances being sent directly to Chairperson Long, one of the people the grievances were against. According to Mr. Garcia, Chairperson Long even tried to coerce him into dropping his grievance against her (which is considered retaliation under the bylaws; but, again, fuck the rules).

In the direct aftermath of the election, Robert was labeled privately by members of the Establishment Caucus (EC) as an insurrectionist. He was accused of attempting a coup d’etat, simply because some of the Jennites ended up voting for Robert. Of course, this ignores the numerous long-term members that had no idea about the election until Robert reached out to them asking for their vote. Most of the people who attempted join prior to the election, still have not been allowed Slack, regardless of their affiliation with Carrillo.

Even activist Sonny Garcia (no relation to Robert), who was appointed as an HGO of the local chapter and is now one of the co-chairs of the Afro-soc caucus, insisted on the insurrectionist narrative. Robert posted a conversation he had with Sonny on Twitter:

I had a similar conversation with Sonny, so this didn’t surprise me.

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Over the Threshold

You may be wondering, “Zach, didn’t you say you got punished for defending the chapter?” Why yes, I did say that. Which brings me back to unwelcome guest I spoke of earlier.

I did not lie about the events that happened on May 4th, where Alderperson Carrillo had their privileges to JustBloNo.net removed because of future posts they were planning on making which were neither comradely or journalism. But, I did omit one specific event that led me to develop the strained logic necessary for what occurred to occur.⁸ And, that omission was the arrival of an uninvited guest at 11 o’clock in the post meridian.

As I was cooking said dinner, there was a ferocious banging on my door. I knew who it was. The knocking did not stop. Though I considered faking my death to escape, finally, I walked down the hallway towards the door, still naively assuming best intentions. I grabbed the door knob, but not before a deep and portentous sigh. The door opened revealing the uninvited guest: Cecelia Long, co-chair of DSA BloNo and Heartland Board Trustee.

She forced her way through the threshold of my door. She then ordered me to remove Carrillo’s permissions to JustBloNo.net and delete all of Carrillo’s posts. Long insisted Carrillo’s posts were causing direct harm to both the chapter and multiple individual members. She kept ordering me to delete the posts. She argued with me for over an hour and half before I finally calmed her down and convinced her to leave at half past midnight.

Of course, I wasn’t going to follow this incredibly stupid, stupid, stupid order. It would have played right into Carrillo’s critique and made the situation worse. But, I also didn’t do what I should have done, which is give Carrillo their permissions to post back and allowing them to continue their series. So, I apologize to Jenn Carrillo for taking their permissions away from JustBloNo.net and not just allowing them to post what they were already planning to post. While I mostly maintain my critique of Carrillo’s critique of DSA BloNo, I also recognize my decision was a terrible editorial decision that I hope is the worst I ever do. It was certainly not worth my integrity to fall for the manipulations of someone I once considered a friend.

In my Measured Response to Carrillo, I made it explicit several times I was not speaking for DSA BloNo.⁹ Yet, despite me defending Chairperson Long and DSA BloNo in my own article, I was undemocratically and unilaterally punished by Chairperson Long and the rest of Exec. I was never given a reason for my punishment at the time, but I was suspended from DSA BloNo for a month and a half. Later, Long would claim that I as a member shouldn’t have said those things (the things defending her). In reality, I firmly believe my exile was in large part because I refused to follow Chairperson Long’s orders to delete Alderperson Carrillo’s post. I have no reason to believe the same thing wouldn’t have happened if I had followed my original plan; again, I’d still be disobeying Chairperson Long’s order (seriously, if ya’ll hear different; news to me. They aren’t great at communicating once they stop liking you). Because this punishment was for less than a year, I also had no method for recourse.

Which brings me back to my original hypothesis: the previous Executive Committee, which includes to the two current chairs, and many members of the EC, simply cannot think rationally and objectively when it comes to Jenn Carrillo. The reason for this is because of personal harm that was done, so I don’t want people to think I’m invalidating the harm they’ve experience.¹⁰ Regardless, because objectivity is beyond their capacity, they have been making very poor decisions. I believe my hypothesis is supported by the following examples:

• I was exiled despite defending the chapter. While this may have made Exec members, feeling particularly hurt already, feel better in the short-term, it was a terrible long-term organizational move. For one, most of the work I was doing for the chapter essentially halted. For two, they took one of their most dedicated members, someone who has donated literally thousands of hours to the organization (without bitching about doing the work), someone who is EXTREMELY stubborn and known for shining a highly critical light on things, and really pissed him (me) off. This led to me increasingly focusing my critical eye on Exec where I began to notice the systemic errors in the DSA BloNo organization and what I consider to be severe abuses of power.
• Part of the reason Exec insta-blocked Jenn is this belief that they are so charismatic as if the mere sound of Carrillo’s voice is equivalent to the mythological sirens that possessed sailors only to end up in a watery grave. I remember talking to people who have known Jenn for years telling me, “You don’t know how charismatic they are,” as if that was justification for anti-democratic behavior. I’m like, “Maybe Jenn from two-three years ago, but that is not Jenn we currently have.” Seriously, did ya’ll not see the backlash from Jenngate?
• Insta-blocking Jenn only created a new problem of contending with Robert Garcia who is typically fairly public when he sees perfidious behavior occur. This lead to a contentious election which was decided by one vote and is still mired in conflict.
• The insurrectionist narrative and membership shenanigans led to an unprecedented amount of grievances being filed against the chapter, creating more distrust towards leadership. It also created a Manichaeism culture, a sharp us/them mentality where them is bad, harm, and abuse.
• This sharp divide includes the transitive property of canceling. After Exec canceled Jenn from the organization, the cancellation was then applied to anyone who defended Carrillo or who defended me (me very clearly being in the They camp because… I defended Exec… against… Jenn;¹¹ and, I continue to try to “call them in” on their undemocratic ways).

All of this leads me to believe that this chapter is increasingly becoming a chapter of the UnDemocratic Socialists of America (UDSA BloNo). My exile could have been decided by a vote of the body.¹² Carrillo’s banishment could have also been decided or altered by the chapter; it would have likely been upheld, but still the democratic decision-making would have added weight to it. Members joining right before an election or important vote is nothing new: it’s called organizing. Out organize the opposition fairly and let democracy ring free. It honestly would have been so much easier than all the crazy ass bullshit¹³ that has occurred since then. If you can’t win, maybe your ideas aren’t that good.

As I mentioned above, Jenngate itself didn’t do much to halt DSA BloNo organizing. But, the election did. Since then, active membership has plummeted and the amount of events being organized is significantly less. It is the aftermath of the election, from July to now, that saw the most amount of shenanigans. I believe said shenanigans have been deleterious to the organization’s ability to function in a democratic manner, is severely alienating members, and is leading to abuses of power.

So many things have happened since the election, that it just might take more than one article to explain.

From BloNo With Love

1. DSA Caucuses are groups created largely around identity like race, sex, gender, etc. While they are affiliated with DSA in that they all share the same values and have access to DSA resources, caucuses are largely autonomous from direct DSA control. It’s more accurate to consider DSA BloNo & Afro-Soc BloNo as two separate organizations that are closely linked. Caucus members do not have to be dues-paying members of DSA to be full members of the caucus.
2. As of October, the chapter had 160+ dues-paying members, but only about 30-35 are active in the chapter (on a good day). At the September business meeting, not even a quorum (10% or 17 members) was present: no business could be conducted.
3. Carrillo had previously been a member of DSA BloNo until November of 2020.
4. People who ideologically identify with Jenn Carrillo
5. Article VI. Section 2a.
6. Article XIII.
7. Crabill told me this is the only time he’s ever been expelled from a meeting.
8. The logic being that her future posts were harmful which necessitated her removal from the platform, but those future posts had to be made public in order to show evidence of said harm.
9. I counted at least three times.
10. Carrillo still fiercely denies all accusations of abuse.
11. Please, make it make sense.
12. Full disclosure: because I was still naively assuming best intentions, I did tell people to not challenge Exec’s banishment so as not to stress out these people who were supposed to be my comrades any further. I know realize that was a gross mistake.
13. No hyperbole here; it’s been bonkers lately.