What is a general meeting?

People who follow Paja's telegram channel may have noticed message that repeats once a month. The message asks everybody to join the so called general meeting.

To understand general meeting it is necessary to understand principles of Paja first. Generally speaking Paja doesn't work like regular voluntary association with board and president, but in Paja all the decisions are made together and everyone has an equal chance to affect on a decision. This is why we have general meetings.

General meeting is a place where direct democracy happens. All the decisions made in paja are made in general meetings. To be able to attend the meeting person doesn't need to fulfill any requirements, they can just walk in and be part of the decision making. At first this may sound like receipt for catastrophe. Most of the decisions in our society are made behind closed doors and often by old males, so we are not familiar with this kind of decision making. In real life general meeting system works very well. One could even say it works better than traditional board and president structure would ever work.

A person who knows little bit more about Paja may now think: "Wait, I have heard that there is Paja board and head of the board." That person is right. Paja general meeting system is not a valid way to make decisions according to authorities. Because Paja asks money from Helsinki city we also need to have registered association, "ry". For that a board is needed, but in reality board members hold no power over anybody else in Paja. Board doesn't even have any meetings except one mandatory one at a beginning of each year.