The Shiny Plan

Damnit, it’s one am and I can’t sleep. The Board meeting went over four hours, and we still had messes to clean up and frustrations to stuff. Feels like we have to go back to 5:15 and start over.

I know when I am being sold a bill of goods. While on the one hand we’re told Saturday Market is the best thing going in downtown, we’re then sent representatives from the county and city to massage us into this deal they say is not done…but it sure felt done. They have a shiny plan and if we’ll only lose our fears (they always try to frame things as me being scared) and move into the future (the present is never good enough to stay in) then we’ll see, things will be even better (and what exactly will be better than the best?). They want us to want this building that we didn’t ask for and don’t envision ourselves in and don’t want. We clearly don’t want it. We told them: we love us the way we are. We’re thriving. Take a close look at us, try to get to know us, see if you can even understand what we have before you try to take it and ruin it.

The farmers want a building, so they can sell in the winter. We don’t want a building or to sell in the winter. The farmers want to be big, have bigger fields, grow more crops, hire more workers, make more money. We don’t want any of those. We want our lives the way we are living them, and our Market the way we built it.

We know these farmers. We’ve known them all this time…they used to be part of us. They split off because they wanted different things, and now they are so very different from us, we barely recognize them. There are still a few, maybe a dozen farmers who still come down and sell, do the work themselves, work like we do, investing your body and your heart in it for your life, not your bank account. Those are the ones I buy from. They might have a worker and they have to have them on the farm, but they want the direct connection to the person who eats their food. They don’t want to hang out with rich people and drink wine. They like work. They can tell me about their onions in a way that makes me hardly want to cut them open, they’re so full of value. They teach me. They give me melons, I give them hats. We’re buddies, but from across the street. Some ought to be on our side, and maybe that is a better plan.

But the millionaire farmers, we’re not the same as they are. We sell in one place, one day a week, not at ten markets a week all over the place. We’re not managing a business with a whole crew of low-paid people to do our work so we can drive around in a nice truck. We don’t have big sheds and equipment and production facilities and value-added products and developers for friends. We're one person businesses, two-person, small families. We're really quite simple but people don't get us. Maybe because we haven't bought into the bigger, better, American growth and prosperity fantasy. We don't want to grow. They told us "change is hard." That's one thing for you: you'll have a next project, another group to meet with. It's my whole life you're thinking about changing.

A membership organization like we are is so rare that people don’t see it. They think we’re a loose collection of people with different goals who meet once a week to sell next to each other, but we are a community. Some of us have been there the whole time, or nearly, almost fifty years together. We had children together, ate meals, mourned our dead. We’re together. We know who we are. We’re not easy to fool. You have to manipulate us carefully to take advantage of us. We have a lot of shared knowledge and history and all kinds of thoughts about ourselves. I've written countless posts about our nuances and the love we create and share. Isn't it weird how people who love you want to improve you? To fit their model?

So we’ve been flattered, and been assured that we’re the important stakeholders that have to be in, or things won’t happen, but the report went to the city and the county before our members got a meeting. They sent a nice facilitator to smooth any ruffled feathers, and he said things like “no decision has to be made tonight, this is just informational” but what he meant was “don’t say no, we know you want to say no, but if you just stay in a little longer this deal will be done and we’ll all be winners.”

We should have said no. We had planned to. We’re willing to let the farmers get their needs met, but we aren’t going to help them pay for it. There’s nothing in it for us that we haven’t been offered before. We saw the old Public Market and how that worked. There aren’t any craftspeople there now, are there? There are only commercial businesses, no handmade crafts. So even though that happened, and is in our institutional memory, well, that wouldn’t happen this time.Those people selling us the plan didn't even know about that, or they would never have called their concept "Public Market."

This building we’re supposed to like, what happens to it that is going to be any different than the one the other farmers’ market died in? I’ve read the book Market Days. They moved the farmers inside, and they really had to push to get them to go there, and it took thirty years but finally the building got sold to someone who said they were going to put in a Rite Aid, and thanks, but you can go now. That was the part of the 100-year history that is conveniently forgotten, the part where the farmers market got killed off for the next couple of decades until we started it up again. So why will this time be different? If the farmers don’t own the building, they aren’t in control.

They told us they would do what is best for the stakeholders, for the community, do what people wanted. That was when we should have said great, do what we want and dial this back. Improve the farmers' site, but not with this. This plan is trying to push us to meet with the farmers, find our common ground, figure out a way to manage this together. We're not willing to manage anything together that takes away what makes us us. You can't put handcrafters with millionaire farmers. And if we don't buy into the plan, will they still do what is best for the community? Will they fill it up with those anchor tenants they talk about, who will sell shiny stuff to make ours look dimmer? Will they put in some restaurants and some places to be, some entertainment and some beer, that will convince people that new is best and old is not worth their time?

They're not offering anything I want with their shiny plan. I think it's best to let them know now before they pay more people to spend more hours trying to make a plan that won't work. While we were meeting, at the very same time, the farmers are advertising about their Holiday Market, at the Fairgrounds, needing crafters who would get priority placement. That's our event, that we started and built and that is vital to our organization and our members. They want to be with us, but they're advertising their different hours, their different days, and now they want our vendors. So this is how they cooperate now, and we're supposed to hitch our future to them?

I wish I could just go to sleep and trust that I'm not being managed and deceived and kept in the dark. They said to call them, email them, and tell them how to make this plan better. The only way it will be better is if it is not the plan. But it is the plan, because they gave it to the county and the city, who paid for it, and who will build it if they want to. Will they dial back the plan if I say no to it? Or will they steamroll me to get to their win-win solutions that are really ways around what I want? Everyone keeps minimizing the plan, saying they want it to fit the reality, so I need to tell them the reality. People-pleasing is going to drive us right into the ditch. The shiny ditch where what we built will be buried.

I'm getting out here. Thanks for the ride, but I'd rather walk.

p.s. Thanks for the comments but for some reason I can't comment on my blog...you can email me at dmcwho@efn.org if you want to speak to me directly. And thanks for reading!