Section 0: Method of Reading Group - 3/13/2026
https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1973/xx/microsect.htm
Note: Any passages/phrases in italics is me directly quoting the author of a piece.
Overview/Notes:
@chima and I mainly discussed “Anatomy of the Micro-Sect” (1973) by Hal Draper. Although Draper’s essay is 50+ years old, the main criticism he has about socialism as a broad political movement in America is still unfortunately relevant today. The very introduction to his essay states how the American socialist movement cannot really be called a movement because a “movement” would imply that something as in an organization or multiple orgs are moving together and actively collaborating towards a similar end goal with mass support of the working class. Instead, Draper argues that socialism in America as a historical phenomenon has always consisted of several scattered groups that hold socialist ideals to varying degrees without any real cohesion or claim of widespread support. Draper believed that the past and present of American socialism has been defined largely by the tendency of leftist orgs to form into sects rather than groups that can effectively organize people, resulting in a situation where there are socialists in America but no socialist movement. He goes on to define a “sect” as an org that presents itself as the embodiment of the socialist movement, though it is a membership organization whose boundary is set more or less rigidly by the points in its political program rather than by its relation to the social struggle, i.e., groups that care more about internal dogma than actually doing something that can draw up mass support from the working class.
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A “historical fact” that every socialist must contend with, Draper argues, is that nobody can “make” a revolution happen; it must occur organically. Even socialist orgs with well-intentioned goals are engaging in sectarian behavior if they believe themselves to “have all the right answers” and are unwilling to adapt to changing times and circumstances.
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A real socialist movement in America will exist once a practical foundation has been laid. This requires a level of conscious organization between active socialist elements and a nascent working class movement. Genuine revolution cannot be created simply because a cadre of socialists say so, and neither will a socialist revolution spontaneously emerge through working class furor.
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The sect-mode of organization which Draper defines as the dominant mode of political organization amongst American socialists results in “sterilizing” any possibility of a socialist movement before it can even begin.
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Draper argues that the sect mentality has caused American socialism to be deeply fragmented and deeply ignorant of its own history by the 1970s. Whereas in the 1930s several “classic” socialist sects consisted of Trotskyists, Social Democrats and Marxist-Leninists who read Marxist theory, Draper takes aim at certain socialist sects that arose in the 1960s/70s (specifically Maoist-Castroites, in his own words), who don’t really understand Marxist thought and practice a vulgar form of Marxism if they engage in it at all. He refers to these types of sects as “neo-Stalinist” in that they are not really interested in forming a working class movement, that their conception of socialism mainly revolves around state control of a collectivized economy, where power is in the hands of a select group of elites and not with the working class. Personally, I believe that my main issue with Marxist-Leninism and Trotskyism stems from the fact that many of its proponents are also not really interested in bringing about a real working class movement, that these socialist sects hold an elitist disdain towards who they actually consider part of the proletariat and who can lead a revolution. Draper does refer to Marxist-Leninism and Trotskyism as “futile and fossilized” c. 1973, but doesn’t seem to consider in his essay that what he’s specifically criticizing Maoist-Castroites for can also be found in earlier sects, that the sect-mentality commonly found within socialist orgs might be due to something inherently faulty within the socialist tradition that needs to be remedied somehow.
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Sects don’t necessarily see a lack of membership as a limitation and might even view it as a badge of honor.
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Draper paraphrases Marx that the “classic” version of a sect is an org that counterposes its sect criterion of programmatic points against the real movement of the workers in the class struggle, which may not measure up to its high demands. A sect treats its own program, political philosophy, bylaws, etc. as an unshakeable tenet that cannot be changed in any way. Marx’s approach instead was that one needs to be strategic when organizing sections of the proletariat into mobilized action against the state, the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie, and infiltrators within working class movements. The reality of building any authentic workers’ movement is that you will have to interact with and be in conflict with people who share a different socioeconomic class background than you. Rather than withdrawing from this reality as sects do, an organizer must acknowledge this reality in order to elevate their own class consciousness and those of the people they’re trying to mobilize.
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Sectarian behavior, in Draper’s view, can be seen most visibly within socialist attitudes toward trade unions. Despite Marx and Engels supporting trade unionism, socialist history has been divided on this front, with reformist types like social democrats or democratic socialists arguing in support of trade unions, while more radical types have argued against supporting trade unions. Draper argues that very few people who claim to be Marxists have truly understood Marx’s thoughts on supporting trade unions, that Marx’s strategy for building a socialist movement lies in getting a significant chunk of working class power to collide with established systems of power.
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The student activism and leftist intellectualism of the New Left, according to Draper, was largely repelled by the idea of organizing alongside labor. Even leftist elements that advocated for organizing within factories treated trade unions as needing to be replaced with a more radical form of labor union. This inherent contempt for trade unionism resulted in organizing attempts to be antagonistic and ineffective, oftentimes causing the organizers to discredit themselves to the workers they claimed to be helping.
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Draper identifies two possible options for eliminating sectarianism: (1) uniting all sects together through a call for unity or (2) creating a sect that essentially represents all other sects by taking up a program that’s so abstract and watered down that everyone can agree to. Neither is feasible, in Draper’s mind. Uniting all sects would be impossible to implement because many sects hold beliefs that are fundamentally opposed to each other. At best, a call for unity could hold for a short while if sects are able to identify a common enemy or come together during a significant political event. Having a sect to stand in for all others is doomed to fail the very moment one group inevitably proposes a more radical stance, thereby exposing the “uniting” sect and its program as not really standing for anything or representing anyone.
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As long as the life of the organization (whether or not labeled “party”) is actually based on its politically distinctive ideas, rather than on the real social struggles in which it is engaged, it will not be possible to suppress the clash of programs requiring different actions in support of different forces. — If a leftist org in any broad sense doesn’t actually represent or engage in real issues facing the people they claim to represent, then those orgs will succumb to engaging in lofty ideas rather than engaging in real political action. This quote from Draper really surmises a lot of what his main criticism of American leftism (particularly the New Left when he wrote this essay) is about, that various orgs, whether focused on socialism, feminism, environmentalism, black liberation, LGBTQ+ rights, anti-imperialism, etc. have the tendency to make the claim of representing social struggles without necessarily having popular support even within the marginalized communities they claim to represent to back up those claims. Draper keeps his focus mainly on American socialist orgs, but his criticism of that sector of the Left can be ascribed to really any left-leaning movement either in 1973 or today.
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All of the issues Draper prescribes is a matter of actually achieving a mass base within a movement. This won’t resolve sectarian infighting completely, but can help counterbalance internal political disagreements if an organization actually has the mandate to respond to the “will of the people.” In Draper’s opinion, without a mass base, a sect that claims to call itself a “party” or the face of a movement will be unable to respond to the age-old question of whether to engage in a popular or united front (i.e., whether to form a broad coalition comprised of leftist, liberal and centrist voices, or to retain independent goals while advocating for joint action in specific, limited tactics).
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There has never been a single case of a sect which developed into, or gave rise to, a genuine socialist movement — by the only process that sects know, the process of accretion. — Sects typically hold the erroneous thinking that because you believe your org carries the “correct” political opinion on everything, that it will only be a matter of time before enough people see it your way and eventually your org will develop a mass base. Several orgs still operate under this line of thinking, despite Draper’s claim that this has never actually worked anywhere in the world amongst the 200+ years of socialist history to draw lessons from. The sense that things will gradually go your way politically demonstrates passivity rather than internal reflection on organizational priorities and a failure to recognize the vested interest your political enemies have in preventing you from succeeding.
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Draper reminds us that having even the slightest understanding of Marx’s writings will lead you to the conclusion that Marx was fundamentally opposed to sects, that he never tried to organize a sect while he was alive and scorned those who did.
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In the seventh and final section of Draper’s essay, he offers some suggestions to avoid wasting your time and energy with sects. First, he suggests that the best way to contribute to forming a socialist movement is by developing a socialist circle in your local area, preferably within your workplace. Draper believes that trade unions are the only viable space for organizing a working class movement in America, that an organized militant opposition within trade unions must be formed in order to shift the focus on labor organizing to a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down approach.
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Draper returns later in his essay to the issue of sects that organize in unions but don’t truly have the workers’ interests in mind, that they care more about recruitment and are willing to harm workers’ interests in order to achieve their own goals. Draper brands these sectarians as “enemies of the working class” and admonishes anyone in using their tactics.
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It’s important to build an informal and formal network of people you know, in your workplace, in some third space, whom you can influence them with your political beliefs. The point isn’t necessarily to recruit them all as a member of your org or to fully persuade them that socialism is good, etc., but to form a good understanding of issues that are of actual importance to people where you live. Draper says that if you are doing something like this, then it’s a step in the right direction. He also calls on all left-leaning movements to build this type of community networking.
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Draper acknowledges a positive of sect work, which is that people who are members of a sect are often the ones initiating the work of building networks with people who might politically align/sympathize with them and local community members. Despite Draper’s overall criticism of sects, he doesn’t say that they need to be eliminated entirely, or whether that’s even a practical end goal. He just believes that the “sect system” that dominates socialist organizations in America needs to be dismantled. He seems to identify here a function for sects, that a lot of them would be more effective if there was some sort of “political center,” some kind of platform that could provide assistance and information to people interested in/sympathetic to socialist efforts without getting bogged down with sectarian agendas. Historically, Draper points at Iskra – an underground Russian political newspaper co-founded by Lenin that functioned as the official party instrument of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) from 1900 - 1905 – as an example to take inspiration from. Draper argues that the formation of a socialist political center has been done most successfully in a historical sense through the publication of a newspaper or editorial.
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A political center does not need to be maintained by a sect. Ideally, a political center should not get caught up in the internal disputes and faction infighting found within political organizing. Draper goes on to say that You are the smallest-unit political center there is. You should have a network of people you trust, whether political comrades or elsewhere in your life, who can help you crystallize your own political consciousness and understanding of what’s going on in your local sphere. Build or become associated with a political center that makes most sense to you. Only be involved with a political center as far as it suits your own political views and needs; don’t get wrapped into political drama that doesn’t concern you or you find to be counter-productive. Draper believes that forming “hang-loose” relationships with other socialist orgs will lead to a better chance for a genuine socialist movement in America to emerge, rather than the current sect system that stifles collaborative action.
Pete’s Overall Thoughts: I appreciate one of Draper’s final lines in his essay: All one can do is push in a direction in which one’s efforts will not be wasted, no matter what the outcome. I feel, despite roadblocks in WCU’s own progress, that we as an org try to limit doing things that have historically been a dead end when organizing around working class issues. Draper is doing a similar thing by laying out why developing a sect mentality within a political org is a dead end every time if you are actually serious about fomenting a material change within your reality. One thing that I greatly appreciate about WCU, which is also a big reason why I joined as a member, is that the org takes a broadly socialist approach rather than being hardline about any specific issue. As someone who generally refers to their political orientation as socialist, I also refrain from labeling myself as any specific socialist identity, in part because I’m still learning by reading and through experience, and can find value in different configurations of leftist thought amidst also acknowledging where they may fall flat in some areas. The org’s approach reflects my own learning process, and I believe does its best in generally trying to avoid becoming sectarian.
I’m particularly interested in Draper’s thoughts on what he means by a “political center.” In the way he describes it, it sounds like that WCU’s proposed idea for a community newsletter, Voices of the Working Class, could potentially act as a viable political center for organizing within the San Joaquin area. Draper’s essay helped @chima and I refine our thoughts on how we might like to see Voices of the Working Class function. Personally, I don’t want Voices to be explicitly socialist/leftist in how it presents itself because I think that could run the risk of leaning into sectarian behaviors that Draper warns about, where the newsletter becomes more focused on promoting WCU as an org rather than highlighting the interests and concerns of working class people who live in San Joaquin. Enabling people to write guest articles or to write something apolitically (restaurant reviews, school sports teams, a cool social event, etc.) could offer a lot of people an outlet that makes them feel more connected to others and build a sense of community. I don’t think politics should be eschewed entirely with Voices, but should be addressed strategically, such as allowing a disgruntled tenant to write an article in Voices, for example, expressing their frustration with their landlord, or more broadly having concerned community members be able to voice their concerns for issues they’re passionate about that also align with WCU’s goals. Being able to approach local issues from a working class perspective through a platform like Voices could help formulate the very kind of political center that Draper believes is needed in engaging a mass base of people, whether nationally, globally, or in WCU’s case, locally.
That said, on a more macro level, I hold some skepticism with Draper’s concept of a political center. While I agree with his assertion that a movement doesn’t truly exist without a mass base to prop it up, there’s also the eventual risk of the political center itself becoming unwieldy once a mass base of working class support has been achieved. At this point I feel a political party has to be formed out of the necessity of there needing to be some sense of official structure and program or else risk supporters/sympathizers being picked off by established parties such as the Democrats who will try to co-opt the movement for political gain. I guess I’m wondering how one establishes/maintains a political center within a national/global context without abdicating from revolutionary commitments and gradually acquiescing to the status quo over time? This is a question that WCU will never really need to answer given the context and function of our org, but is interesting to think about from a theoretical perspective about how to spread a working class movement beyond one’s local area. Draper’s model of a political center makes the most sense to me from a local perspective, but seems to run into some issues of practicality in managing it once we are talking about potentially thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who may be influenced by something like a publication and could take it in countless directions. The need for clear parameters of organization as something expands, whether that’s a publication, a political org, or a company, is something that I feel isn’t adequately discussed in a lot of leftist discourse today, as a lot of orgs and activists seem to favor decentralization. I understand and agree with the notion from proponents of decentralization that we should avoid a top-down approach in which members lack autonomy, but large-scale efforts tend to falter in sustaining themselves if there is no formal sense of hierarchy to coordinate plans.
Criticism:
https://socialistworker.org/2019/03/29/critical-thoughts-about-drapers-micro-sect
This archived Socialist Worker article from the now dissolved International Socialist Organization (ISO) offers some contemporary criticism of Draper’s essay. It was written and published the day after ISO membership voted on March 28, 2019 to dissolve itself as the fallout due to internal debates regarding leadership mishandling of a rape allegation in 2013. During the mid-2010s, the ISO was facing an identity crisis and a growing lack of confidence in leadership from members who felt that the org was slow to respond to social movements such as MeToo. The ISO around 2013 started to become more open to ideas outside of the org’s traditionally Trotskyist focus, which lead to some members arguing that the ISO had become less socialist in membership and in identification near the final years of its existence.
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Similar to @chima and I’s thoughts, the author of this article Brian Bean concurs that Draper’s assessment of the American far left as an atomized “non-movement” is an important, albeit not unique point that American leftists still have to contend with today. An adherence to the program of a party or organization often results in leftists differentiating themselves from the working class rather than furthering working class solidarity.
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Bean also refers to Draper’s earlier, lesser-read piece that provides similar comments on political sects: * “Toward a New Beginning – On Another Road: The Alternative to the Micro-Sect” (1971). In that piece, Draper warns of the dangers involved in a “small mass party,” i.e., an org that acts as if it is already a large, established party despite having few members.
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Bean points to other articles written by socialists who comment on similar issues Draper noticed from leftist groups, such as Trotskyist Tony Cliff’s * “Trotsky on substitutionism” (1960) where he condemns what he defines as “blackboard socialism,” where stuffy, didactic methods are used instead of real-time, collaborative dialogues that help members learn from experience. Another prominent Trotskyist, Duncan Hallas, wrote * “Sectarianism” (1985), in which he quotes Marx as saying that a sect does not identify itself and its program alongside the working class, but actually distinguishes itself as separate from class struggle. Marx was critical of those in the 19th-century who wrote and promoted socialist utopian ideas that were based around an abstract idealism of human cooperation and equality that completely ignored the necessity and inevitable conflict of a working class revolution. Bean places Draper’s pieces within a broader realm of writings coming out of the 1960s - 1970s that were critical of sectarian behavior within the socialist movement.
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Bean appreciates the questions Draper is asking, but considers Draper’s focus on sects to be a “drastic overcorrection” to issues plaguing the American far-left. Bean shares a similar issue with Draper’s definition of a “political center” as I do, in that his solution of organizing informal socialist circles around some kind of platform such as a publication seems inadequate to address the lack of effective socialist organization on a broad, national scale. I do think that Draper’s application of a political center might be more effective on a smaller, local scale, when trying to organize in a town/city where you live, but seems to run into problems once you zoom out.
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Draper wrote his pieces on micro-sects around the time that he left the International Socialists (IS) in 1971, claiming that it had become a sect. Bean, however, argues that by 1974, the IS was beginning to engage in trade union organizing, the very same kind of organizing that Draper believes socialists need to do more of when writing “Anatomy of the Micro-Sect.” Orgs like the Teamsters for Democratic Union developed out of this organizing, and that a surge of labor organizing from the late 1960s - early 1970s which peaked in 1974 resulted in the highest number of workers’ strikes in America since World War II. In the U.K., the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was also making strides between 1971 - 1974 in becoming involved within the trade union movement. The Independent Socialist Club (ISC), which Draper helped form in 1964 at UC Berkeley, eventually morphed into the International Socialists in 1968 once it began to expand as a national org. Draper, seemingly disenchanted with the trajectory of the IS and of organizational politics, remained an independent Marxist scholar until his death in 1990.
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Bean argues that Draper’s model of a “political center” seems “propagandistic” from an organizational POV, in that he proposes a publication to inform the thoughts and actions of any given movement in any given area, and seems to hold a disdain for what revolutionary activism can do in the building of a political movement. Two examples Draper provides of his political center model (which he himself concedes are imperfect and “neo-Stalinist”), the Monthly Review and Dissent (along with the now-defunct The National Guardian), have not sustained the formation of an American socialist movement, in Bean’s observation. If anything, leftist magazines in America have generally succumbed to centering their discourses around the Democratic Party, with critiques generally revolving around a reformist dialogue instead of offering an articulated alternative to current electoral politics. Bean points at Jacobin as perhaps being the most recognizable contemporary example of Draper’s model for better and for worse.
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A highly organized membership org is needed to combat the dominant ideas of the ruling class. The critical issue Bean seems to have with Draper’s idea of a political center is that a publication that is not anchored through an organization is doomed to become muddled and confused about its politics if it’s supposed to be holding space as an informal hub of sorts for multiple orgs. Draper emphasizes the need of an editorial board to provide oversight of a political center, which Bean views as inherently problematic as any publication not officially represented by an org would effectively be an unelected and unaccountable authority that is somehow supposed to represent a broad swath of socialists. Bean also criticizes Draper’s choosing of Iskra as a positive example of his own model, given that Iskra was the official publication of a political party and did not hold a mass base in Russia, its readership mainly comprised of Russian socialist emigrants and exiles in Europe.
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David McNally’s * “The Period, The Party, and The Next Left” (2009) is argued by Bean as a better starting point in engaging with the questions Draper asks about socialism as a stagnant movement in America. Although, Bean notes that McNally’s piece is much more negative than Draper’s, which at least proposes a solution.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1924/class.htm
Overview/Notes:
The shorter piece @chima and I read was “How to Organise and Conduct a Study Class” (1924) by James P. Cannon. Cannon was an American Trotskyist who helped found the Communist Labor Party (CLP), a forerunner to the Communist Party of America (CPA). In 1928, Cannon was expelled from the pro-Stalinist CPA for supporting Trotsky. He would go on to co-found and lead an opposition party, the Communist League of America, which eventually merged into the Workers Party of the United States in 1934. Cannon was elected as the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party in America in 1938, and would remain in that position until 1953 and as a member until his death in 1974. At the time of writing this article, Cannon was educational director of the Workers Party of America, which was the legal political party name of the Communist Party of America until 1929.
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Cannon stresses the importance of political education work needing to connect to real world struggles party members are facing, and shouldn’t become an academic matter. He also identifies the need for a party’s political education to be done in a systematic manner where members are able to recognize the importance of it and for their enthusiasm for this work to be maintained year-round.
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The “leader” of this “study class” as Cannon defines it (in WCU’s case, the Education Coordinator’s facilitation of the Education Committee), must understand that political education work must be organized all the time, or else the project will fall apart.
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Attendance must be consistently maintained, and the leader of the study class must fight against the notion that members may consider political education as optional. Political education is only effective when organized and regularly attended by people who agree to attend.
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Cannon presents two general methods in conducting a study class: (1) the lecture-question method and (2) reading and discussing the text in the class. The lecture-question method is typically employed by experienced teachers, and is the more useful method in digging deeper into political theory if the teacher is familiar with the text and has some experience as a lecturer. This requires other members to read outside of class. The read and discuss method requires less prerequisite knowledge for those who attend, making it more accessible.
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Whenever a study class, organised for the purpose of consecutive study of a certain aspect of communist theory or tactics, begins to resolve itself into a group for general discussion or a debating society, its early demise can be confidently expected. – Cannon warns against unfiltered discussion during a study class because it will divert attention from the subject matter, making it difficult for the teacher to redirect.
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The success of political education work depends mainly on organization, leadership and discipline. Study classes should last around an hour and start and end on time. It should stay on topic and not devolve into more general thoughts/opinions about the party, current events, etc.
Pete’s Thoughts: In theory, I 100% agree with Cannon’s prescriptions, as they are generally advice I’ve learned over the years from my teacher training on how to effectively manage a traditional school classroom. A lot of what Cannon states in this short article is essentially Teaching 101 advice. In practice, based on WCU being an organization and not a political party, and our small membership currently, I think that some of his prescriptions such as expecting/demanding rigid attendance and a certain level of enrollment are unrealistic for WCU, at least until we expand our capacity. Though other prescriptions, such as keeping on time whether it’s for reading group or general meetings, and avoiding diverting conversations (at least until formal matters/discussions are attended to) are sound advice when it comes to demonstrating a sense of professionalism to both members and outsiders, and are things I feel we should stress more frequently in order to respect everyone’s time.