The Light of Day

I want to start by saying that for some reason of my ineptitude I can't comment on my own posts here, so I thank those who did comment on my last one but that's one reason I post on FB, and don't dialogue here...sorry for that. It's on my long list of things to learn about and fix. My FB posts are public, so feel free to share them if you make sure to either ask me or be sensitive about how you put my words out, as I do not speak for Saturday Market but solely for myself. I sound official but that is not always a good thing. 

My readers will be happy to know I'm writing in the sunlight today and not quite as traumatized by my difficult experience with the PPS report and process. I get what their charge was, their goals, and I can see how they reached their conclusions. One giant part of the problem was that their sample was so small and their timing was so unfortunate. The two days they came to the Market were an August heat wave when we were a tiny market of brave people who could stand the heat, and the infamous monsoon day in October, when Market closed early for the second or third time in history (I remember three)and they were unable to gather useful data at all. I attended many of their info-gathering efforts and every time it was a small group of often the same people driving the agenda, and some of them expressed nothing but fears and complaints. Getting a real sample of creative and amazing Eugene culture was compromised by the frustration with panhandling and the mentally ill people who are forced onto our streets, and it came out as an embarrassing condemnation of the disenfranchised and the public servants who struggle to make good decisions. It was kind of like people saw this as their first chance to really complain (anonymously too, which is of course a factor) and it was a trash-fest. Plenty of people tried hard to post positive responses and you will see if you read the data at all, that even the worst comments were only up to 5% of the responses...so that was 5-10 people and sometimes fewer. That focus cast a huge shadow.

The PPS recommended priorities were first to do social service interventions, then do programming, and then make significant physical changes, and you can see for yourself how that played out to the media and from there to the public. Headlines about crisis, news stories that were alarmist, and the whole over-correction of leveling the Park Blocks were what I saw. But this is public process, and we can all see the parallels in the national situation of playing to fears and serving them above all. World situation, really. We're the micro-microcosm. But do you think that first we will build or even equip a public shelter? Even though there are many people working for that, we kind of had that at the Park Blocks, and we saw how much understanding of it there was. People need places! Instead we get Places for People, but only the right kind, which is a class war that we somehow cannot speak about in America. Positive uses. Like retailing, consuming, and playing games. Leaves out a lot of us and a lot of things. But let's stay open and not fight that class war, because we don't all agree on how much law-and-order we apply and how much basic human rights are protected.

There were a lot of specific recommendations, and there's no chance that all of them will be accomplished now or probably ever, but the one surfacing as the most attractive to lots of people is the Park Blocks re-do. It looks so easily do-able, and the lack of maintenance of the walls of late and the trashing of the landscaping has been a process of the last year and more that we have all watched. The fountain was rebuilt in 2015. Investment in the Park Blocks stopped there. Starting with a clean slate looks so simple, especially compared to filling in the pit at the Hult, or opening the privately owned walls at Kesey. You can see the writing on the walls...yes, those walls are a symbol. I see no chance that they will be rescued, but of course they are the primary architectural feature of the 50s design and there may be some interest from the historical preservation community. I hope there is. I would support that conversation. I personally like the walls, and the park pretty much the way it is, but that is not the popular view at the moment. 

And there was a quick mention of closing 8th and Oak for events. Um, events? Like...Saturday Market? Oh boy. That will be a pitched battle no one wants to enter, but that will be one I will lead.

I personally am caught between a rock wall and a hard place. I feel my duty to my Market is to damp down alarm, yet be realistic, and keep our 600 members informed about what is coming. I have been doing this at a great expense of my time since August, and of course my efforts have not been perfect no matter how diligent. I kind of set myself up for a crash by putting so much heart in it, as we humans so often do, but I do think that despair post was an important part of my personal process. 

The matter of the man I complained about is kind of resolved...we moved past it and are again working together, with caution on my part and with whatever he is feeling on his. We didn't speak about it. I do not think he reads this blog, but anyway I am willing to let it drop and keep in the benefit-of-the-doubt-provide-helpful-information zone. That's not that hard. Personally I have vowed to call out as much sexism and control tactic and authoritarianism I can be aware of in my sphere, as I need to work on those protection skills. But I am always willing to build trust and understanding once I get over myself. I have a lot of resources to share and board training is a part of my work anyway. So not big at the moment, thank goodness. (Trigger diet for me is controlling behaviors, apparently, with a side of intense watch for injustice and unfair treatment, and a healthy dose of outrage at patriarchy.)



We have so many giant issues to work on right now to move our progressive American ideal forward, that I want to shift to more learning about racism, privilege, intersectionality (a term that has been around since the 80's but that I had to look up) and bias. I want to strengthen the tools we have to keep on the path of truth and honesty and caring for others. I want to protect the environment and health and simple life and simply survive along with everyone else. So I can't afford to use my limited time on the small stuff, on the complaining, and on the less-than-creative sidetracks that are available.

So yes, back to the Park Blocks, I think it is an over-correction based on fear, but I also see that it seems to be the will of the Council to try for it. I know they don't spend any time there, but neither does anyone else now except the markets in season. I see a few people in nice weather. It makes sense to take steps to preserve the value of the space and increase positive uses. Personally I would make do with what we have and not trash it, but then I am the kind of person who does that. And if you have $5.2 million to spend, you have to think big. At least at first.



And this is the first stage of an articulated dream. I still believe that the remodel is the plan from way long ago, as the Park Blocks Master Plan is never mentioned, and literally no one is speaking up to keep any of it so far. Council responses range from the infamous "Oakway Mall" remark awhile back to the one mention of Saturday Market on Wednesday (to be fair, not all the councilors had time to speak, and they probably assume we know they want Saturday Market to remain intact). The one mention was about being pleased that Market would still fit, based on the map shown in the plan which I have to say, didn't make sense if you compared the maps. (Not even getting to the reality on the ground piece yet.) You can't pick up the Market and put it back down in one piece. You can't redraw the map today and open in April without a huge member buy-in, which means individual conversations with most of the 600 independent business owners we encompass. Here are some bad photos of the plan, as I don't see it posted yet by the city:

There are so many details, like customer traffic patterns, safety issues like width of aisles, accessibility, propane tanks, the fact that you can't really run a restaurant in an 8x8 space, the established neighborhoods and support groups we have within our map now, and the personal preferences of each member regarding the number of sides of display, weather issues, loading issues, scent and sound issues, and probably dozens of issues that I don't even consider from my privilege as a successful elder. I have fears about my own location, of course! My grief is mostly that I will lose control of much of what I chose for all the reasons I chose it, so part of my duty is to reassure us that we will have control, which I can't guarantee. 

Designing the remodel to include the Market and stand alone is a complex, overwhelmingly detailed effort that could suck up most of the money in a preliminary design phase. You can't make it a parking lot, and you can't make it a garden. She mentioned packed gravel, kind of a waterfall and stream for the fountain inside a garden, a central grass area on the east block (for the food circle?) and really hardly any of the concept worked for us despite the thoughtful addition of a possible map. And of course the councilors look at the map and think the problem is solved.

So Market has a ton of work to do to communicate with the city and the public and our members and work through the countless issues before anything is even done. She wanted this all to start in April and the idea seemed to be to tear down those walls immediately and get on with things. Okay, they can do that, but then they take out half the seating in the park (benches fixed in the walls) and virtually all of the utilities which are also fixed in the walls. And we need a whole season at least to allow our members to build up their points for the choosing of spaces, which will be an immense challenge to do fairly, and will take immense amounts of staff time which we don't have (our staff is already busy all the time putting on our big weekly event) and very sensitive member-to-member negotiations and informing processes. We have a population that doesn't even all have email, with many living in the woods in other counties, and so on. Even a snail mail is a poor way to get an effective process going. So if the walls go, we are not going to simply use that found space. Maybe the city budget can include tables and umbrellas to fill those new spaces for a transition year. There will certainly be some transitional solutions needed, and hopefully provided. 

We are a membership nonprofit and we work on a consensus-seeking model of participatory management, with a fairly minimal hired staff and a lot of volunteer energy. I find myself saying that a lot. We are not a business that has a decision-maker at the top who can speak for us. Anytime we fall into putting someone in that position we tend to make big mistakes and anger our population, who fully expect to have a voice and be heard. Anything we do like this is so complex, I get overwhelmed. Lots of people get scared. So headlines about a response to crisis fill us with fears. In many ways, we are the disenfranchised.

So that has been good for me, actually, in our micro-micro, because this dovetails with my social warrior efforts. I have to fight for inclusion, be aware of my elder-white-lady privilege and perspective, and work for people I may not agree with at all. We have members who want us to buy a building (we don't have the assets to do this) and people who have wanted this redesign for ever, and we have some who will quit rather than accept whatever option is offered to them, and we have lots of wrinkly things in between that we don't even know about yet. We haven't had the first conversation about a complete redesign of our Market. 

The city doesn't know how refined and complex our layout is, and of course the consultants with their limited view of us have no idea. We can certainly provide lots of help to the city if they want our inclusion in the design process. We are more than stakeholders. We've been there since 1983, in the park. We don't even remember all the decisions we made along the way to get to how we do it now. This is a totally gigantic change for us, way bigger than moving into the park from the butterfly, and it comes at a time when our internal issues are also complex. The baby boomer cohort is fading from everywhere, some desperately needing to be able to stay in the Market for their survival, and the younger groups have new ways of doing things that sometimes don't work in our model. We have the challenges of our own survival and that of our policy, procedures and practices that have allowed us to evolve for almost five decades already, and we are already busy doing that. I can tell you exactly how much time and effort that takes.

So I'm not comfortable yet by a long distance, and also not sure of all of my personal next steps or those of our organization. It isn't up to me, and it isn't up to our manager, and it isn't even up to our leaders, as if that were a cohesive group in complete agreement. You know it isn't. Leaders step up and back according to issues and conditions, as in the macro-world. I'm here today. Tomorrow I am working for OCF, and Saturday I am working on producing the Jell-O Art Show, which will be on Opening Day of the Market (April Fools!) so I can't even go to Market. I am the Queen of the Jell-O Art Realm, which supersedes being the queen of hats and tote bags, so have a good day without me. You know I had no control over that.
  
I'll wrap this up for now because this was not my plan for today, though I am happy I came. It is really so wonderful to have other people engaged in this, as this feels giant to me. I expect proportion and perspective to improve as we go and it doesn't feel like the other crisis that isn't in the news. Big love to my friends, neighbors, public servants, and hard workers. Thanks to everyone.