Organizational Announcement, July 18, 2020

Hi everyone!

This is going to be long, because it encompasses many hours of work, collaboration, decision-making, and planning.

As you may know, Seattle Protest Network was created out of common goals from many volunteers at the beginning of June. During the month of June, SPN was loosely - if at all - organized. Most of the decisions made at SPN were need-driven; someone saw a problem and solved it! It’s been amazing to see everyone step up in a time of need.

We spent the last few weeks observing and listening to the group, getting more organized, and plotting a path forward. We’re excited to make SPN into a sustainable effort and have already made substantial progress.

We appreciate how strong this group is, deeply respect every contribution it’s been part of, and hope that you will continue to support and volunteer for SPN as it evolves.

Thank you for being here <3

- Abstractamcr, Almus, Fauxnoodel, Luckybamboo13, Model_2, and UmaThermas

Mission Statement

SPN Board Members have attempted to maintain the original focus to the largest degree possible while also making room for flexibility. To that end, we have kept the mission simple:

1. Amplify voices on the ground;

2. Document, record, and archive events related to civil rights;

3. Support and provide infrastructure to enable movements to express their rights to free speech and assembly

Structure of Seattle Protest Network

The group of Admins in the Seattle Protest Network Discord have been collaborating on the needs, activities, and structure of SPN as it continues to grow and evolve. We have an intent to continue SPN long-term. In support of that goal, SPN is actively engaged in discussions with lawyers regarding establishing itself as a nonprofit organization.

As the organization formalizes, the group of Discord Admins will become founding members of SPN’s Board of Directors. At this time, the Board of Directors will consist of Abstractamcr, Almus, fauxnoodel, Luckybamboo13, Model_2, and UmaThermas. These individuals have been working together to create a foundation for SPN since the beginning of June.

Some common motivations of the Founding Members include: promotion of safety for participants on the ground, amplification of voices and efforts from the ground, solidarity and desires to contribute from a distance, a moral imperative to record and retain the truth related to civil rights events, and deep experience and interest in building a scalable organizations.

Members of the board will be responsible for managing the organization, making decisions for the organization, speaking on behalf of the organization, attending board meetings, and acting as moderators for SPN’s communication channels.

The shape, processes, and responsibilities of the Board of Directors are actively being defined.

The “Voice of SPN”

Early on, members took it upon themselves to represent the organization and its membership, and that continues to some extent today. As SPN grows, maintaining consistent messaging, voice, and reputation becomes difficult when all members are empowered to speak with the voice of the organization at large.

Only Board Members and those expressly authorized may speak with “the Voice of SPN.” That is to say, only Board Members and its designated representatives speak for SPN or are responsible for communication external to SPN.

Unauthorized members and volunteers with SPN are expressly instructed not to represent themselves as speaking on behalf of the organization.

All statements made by SPN Board Members when speaking about SPN or activities supported by SPN are considered to be official SPN statements. Board Members will clarify that the statement is not an SPN statement and that they are speaking on their own behalf if the statement is not meant to be the “Voice of SPN.” This clarification may take the form of using personal pronouns rather than collective pronouns, statements of personal opinion, and the like.

Is Seattle Protest Network a participant in protest activities?

The short answer to this frequently asked question is, “No.” While many of us are involved with SPN because we personally support the civil rights movement in Seattle, Seattle Protest Network’s mission is primarily journalistic in nature. SPN and its members are not de facto participants in protest, civil rights, or related activities that constitute its content or viewership.

We believe that it is important not to prevent SPN’s members from activities such as on-the-ground streaming, protesting, supporting protesters, and the like, however SPN does not encourage or discourage participation in these or related activities.

SPN does not expressly employ or encourage on-the-ground reporters or event participants and does not actively encourage any of its members or affiliates to participate in any event-related activity at any time. SPN is, first and foremost, a journalism outlet intended to broaden the audience of and document the activities of civil rights movements. Participants in those movements and their associated activities participate of their own accord and at their own risk, with no liability placed on SPN or its membership.

Roles and Responsibilities within SPN

We are in the midst of discussing and defining the roles and activities that Seattle Protest Network supports. These roles include positions like Board Member, Discord Moderator, Streamer Liaison, Broadcast Curator, Twitch Moderator, and several others. We hope to have these definitions reviewed and published for feedback soon.

Each role will have requirements, responsibilities, and expectations of behavior defined and published. We intend to create space for volunteers to have autonomy over their contributions while providing enough structure to effectively scale our efforts.

SPN participatory roles will be assigned via an application process, to be determined. SPN Board Members will regularly audit its roles to ensure that they are composed of members who maintain active, productive, and collaborative participation in those roles.\

SPN continues to develop its Code of Conduct that will apply to all members. If you are interested in contributing to this effort, please join the #project-code-of-conduct channel and read the pinned message, and/or submit your thoughts via the SPN Anonymous Feedback Form (https://bit.ly/spn-feedback).

Documentation

One of the core missions of SPN is to gather information about and document the details of movements and protests. We do this in several ways, including archival of relevant photos and videos, restreaming, and recording live streams from on-the-ground streamers.

All rebroadcasted or rehosted content that SPN streams and/or archives has been explicitly provided with consent or was, at the time that it was originally published, publicly available.

One of SPN’s motivations for documentation and archival is the preservation of uncensored and untampered information. We have witnessed many occasions where platforms have removed original content without consent. Content with substantial historical, cultural, and social value has been removed from public access. In light of its Mission, SPN will adopt the following guidelines:

1. Generally, SPN will not censor content except as required by the Terms of Service (ToS) of the platform(s) it leverages.

2. SPN does not control or manage on-the-ground streamers. Through other aspects of its Mission, SPN will provide information and advice related to events, protocols, and etiquette; however, streamers are responsible for their own activities, behavior, and content. SPN will not decide what on-the-ground streamers may or may not include in their footage, and SPN will not censor that footage except as described below in guideline (4).

3. When in a public place, all persons are responsible for their own privacy. Any time a person is in a public place, their face, license plate number, and other identifying information is recorded in countless places. It is each individual’s responsibility to disguise or hide their personal information at their own discretion. Generally, SPN does not and will not censor the content provided in live streams except as described below in guideline (4).

4. There are times when SPN and/or its authorized representatives may choose to make exceptions to these guidelines. Occasionally, SPN may decide to remove a source or censor a stream, primarily in the following cases:

   1. There is reason to believe that an on-the-ground streamer is acting out of malice or to intentionally damage a movement

   2. The footage is determined to be in violation of the ToS of the platform where it is stored

These decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis.

All efforts to assist with this mission are appreciated. Any media (photos, video clips, etc.) may be anonymously submitted by using this link: https://bit.ly/spn-upload

When possible, please format the filename for the media using this format:
YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_<Streamer Name/Source>_<Content description, if applicable>.<ext>

Fundraising

The Pizza Fairy team has been wildly successful, having raised a substantial amount of funding and provided an enormous number of pizzas to feed the protesters. However, the current structure of Seattle Protest Network is not yet set up to directly participate in fundraising activities, nor is it prepared to handle the liabilities involved with such large transactions. The Board has spent considerable time discussing how best to sustainably support the Pizza Fairy effort while limiting the liability of the organization.

SPN will continue to be mindful of liability reduction measures until at least such time as it obtains nonprofit status. While SPN’s Mission provides promotional and infrastructural support to Fundraising Groups, like the Pizza Fairy team, it will continue to maintain substantial separations from all Fundraising Groups and their activities.

A “Fundraising Group” is defined as any individual or group of individuals who are authorized by the Board of Directors to solicit funds from SPN’s viewership. Only authorized individuals may solicit funds from SPN’s viewership and only in relation to ongoing efforts of a Fundraising Group.

Fundraising Groups do not represent SPN, its activities, values, membership, or any other attribute of SPN, as SPN’s fundraising efforts are limited to advertisement on behalf of a Fundraising Group via its viewership.

Similarly, SPN does not and will not endorse or participate in the purpose, activities, membership, organization, operations, financial activity, or any other aspect of an affiliated Fundraising Group. SPN will provide support through responding to promotional and infrastructural support requests from select representatives of Fundraising Groups.

This relationship with fundraising activities and groups will be revisited upon obtaining nonprofit status, at which time we will have more structure to support these efforts while continuing to minimize risk.

“Pizza Fairy” and other Fundraising Groups will remain separate, yet supported, efforts that are responsible for their own internal structure, membership, finances, and processes.

1. SPN may provide channels for communication within Fundraising Groups and will establish relationships with representatives of those groups.

2. SPN will limit the number of representatives from each Fundraising Group it supports.

3. SPN may respond to requests for support from Fundraising Groups, but will not, as an entity, participate in activities beyond promotion and infrastructural support. Fundraising Groups understand that they are responsible for their own activities and outcomes.

SPN will only agree to assist Fundraising Groups under the following conditions:

1. Thresholds must be introduced for fundraising goals.

   1. All expenses must be fully funded at the time financial obligations are established.

   2. Fundraising Groups shall not assume that any fundraising goal will be met.

   3. SPN will not be held liable for any financial obligations related to the activities of any Fundraising Group.

   4. Fundraising goals will have an associated cutoff date and time. If the amount raised by the cutoff time exceeds the goal amount, that amount may be rolled over to the following fundraising time slot for the Fundraising Group.

2. Fundraising Groups must make efforts to ensure and clarify that they remain separate from SPN, do not represent SPN, its focus, or its members. SPN may provide supportive materials or services to Fundraising Groups through its Mission; however, it does not expressly endorse or independently participate in any values, processes, activities, members, actions, or related attributes of its affiliated Fundraising Groups.
   
   This is nuanced, but important: Fundraising Groups may not claim to operate as part of SPN. For example, instead of saying that pizza delivery is “from SPN” or “from the SPN Pizza Fairy”, the Fundraising Group should say something like, “from the Pizza Fairy, paid for in part with donations from SPN viewers.”

3. SPN controls its fundraising schedule. SPN will feature, amplify, and support Fundraising Groups as its schedule allows.

4. SPN controls its ability to promote zero or more Fundraising Groups at any time.

5. SPN will work to provide basic eligibility requirements and define a process by which Fundraising Groups become eligible for promotion and support.

6. SPN’s fundraising schedule will limit how often Fundraising Groups may solicit funds from its viewership in order to maintain its fundraising efficacy.

7. SPN commits to providing priority information to Fundraising Groups that may affect their ability to fundraise or meet a funding goal during a specific time slot. Some examples include, but are not limited to:

   1. Emergence of a technical issue that affects SPN’s ability to promote a Fundraising Group during a particular time slot.

   2. Learning of public events or other pre-scheduled broadcast material that may be of particular relevance to a Fundraising Group.

   3. Learning that the details of a particular event may affect a Fundraising Group’s fundraising goal. I.e., if a protest is much larger or smaller than originally planned, a Fundraising Group may benefit from being able to adjust a financial commitment.

8. SPN may sever its relationship with any Fundraising Group at any time, for any reason. At the same time, SPN will commit to conflict resolution prior to terminating relationships with Fundraising Groups.

9. SPN will not directly provide any legal support, financial support, legal infrastructure, or financial infrastructure for Fundraising Groups.

10. SPN will not limit its membership from personally supporting Fundraising Groups. SPN members are allowed to participate in or otherwise support Fundraising Groups, as long as they are clear that they do so on their own accord and do not make claims that their participation is encouraged, controlled, representative of, or otherwise influenced by SPN as an entity

What’s next?

Aside from obtaining nonprofit status, SPN’s Board Members are working to imagine what SPN looks like after on-the-ground livestreams are no longer continuously available in Seattle. While no decisions have been made yet, we have sketched out some plans and continue to listen to participants in the Discord server.

If you have ideas of what SPN could be or how it could change, please post your thoughts in the #spnideas Discord channel. Admins may not always respond to each message, but it’s rare that we miss messages entirely.

A Note about Bias

SPN is not intended to be unbiased; as a group, we value the truth but understand that the truth does not always provide a sense of balance. The truth is also complex and may not always work in favor of the personal biases of SPN’s members.

SPN encourages its Broadcast Curators to use their skills as a means to express their values; however SPN also insists that the truth is shown, even when inconvenient.

SPN’s discussion channels are and will continue to be heavily moderated on the basis of emphasizing the value of mature and respectful discourse, independent of how participants identify. SPN does not seek to silence ideas that run contrary to those of its board or membership, although it will not enable harassment of any kind.

Resources

We want to remind SPN members of some resources we’ve begun to build up, most of which can be found on our Wiki:

• Anonymous Feedback Form: https://bit.ly/spn-feedback

• SPN Wiki: https://wiki.seattleprotestnetwork.org/

• Mental Health Resources: https://wiki.seattleprotestnetwork.org/mental-health-resources

If you have suggestions or would like to contribute to the SPN Wiki, please contact a Discord Admin or email seattleprotestnetwork@gmail.com for edit permissions.

Finally - Thank you

Sincerely, thank you. Many of you have been viewing or helping with SPN’s effort to show the world what’s been happening in Seattle - some since before it had a name. Every contribution is noticed, respected, and appreciated. We’re looking forward to continuing this fight with you.

Be well, and keep going. We got this.

- SPN’s Board of Directors