Finding that Equity Lens

 Foggy this morning so I guess I won't get out there and weed right away. I do plan to spend the day outside and let my thoughts and feelings sort themselves out in silence. 

Met my neighbor's new dog last night and realize I am the only house on this side of the block without a dog. I think there are now 9 in only 5 households. No wonder all the squirrels live in my yard. I think I'm the only one feeding birds now too, so I get a lot of great birds, but also all the cats. At least one of them is belled. As much as I would like to make friends with the cats, I have to chase them off. There are some baby squirrels right now. Seems late and they're scurrying to gather leaves and make nests everywhere. They're cute...but they can't all live with me.

Yesterday at the Park Blocks we had many many Cedar Waxwings. Although they are beautiful to see, they love eating laurel berries and the booths across from me, under a cedar tree, were just covered with purple fragments. One canopy was probably destroyed by them and will never be white again...but what can you do? I wish I would have thought to offer a cloth to throw over it, which might have helped a little. You don't expect to have to bring a cover for your cover. I was out of the fall line just barely, but it was still a hard day, even with bright birds to admire/resent.

There were also lots of people and some were dressed up. It made for some fun. I always am sorry I didn't go to more trouble. I was the apocalyptic vision of my future as a crafter. It says "HOW may I help you?" on the back because obviously if you are at Walmart, you need help. And we're gonna force it on you.

We all need help. I've been obsessing over my Board Educational Minute on Equity and of course I have an hour's worth of things to say at least. I'm consulting the hive mind on FB about it and actually it's helpful. It's about planting a seed so the next time I mention the word in the context of a policy, people will know what I am talking about, or will do some research of their own on how the organization is dealing with our equity issues.

I'm hopeful that we can get to it to a degree. We've been putting out fires for a year and a half so we haven't had the luxury of much reflection time, but several of the things that happened touched on DEI issues. We have them...sexism, racism, ableism, otherism, cultural appropriation, intolerance, microaggressions, pretty much all the things on the pyramid of racism and tenets of white supremacy graphics, but we don't address any of them directly as a rule so I am just assuming some or most of us are not aware of them. We've been lucky as far as I know to not have a lot of overt ism situations, but for sure they come up.

It's well established that hippie origins like those of the Market bring along white supremacy culture in structure and policies. Because at least one of our founders was not a hippie, and in fact escaped Nazi Germany, we built in a bit of awareness of equality, but a lot has changed in 53 years and we have not done any deep looks into what our assumptions lead us to. I know we tend to listen to the people at the table, who are essentially a self-selected group of people who have time to volunteer, and while there is an age range, that may or may not help. Younger people who grew up with more awareness of multiple cultures and didn't necessarily have hippie roots might know a lot more than I think they do, but I haven't seen a lot of my hard-core feminism operating in recent times. I know I am not middle-of-the-road in that aspect. I have to struggle to allow men some slack and while there are a couple of men I admire in my circles, it's never a given. I want to get myself somewhere in a genderless thought space where I never think in binary terms, as that might help my perspective. I mean, "not all women" either. 

The hive mind is reminding me that it could be possible to bypass all the ways I want to task my org with the faults I have observed and imagine what progress might look like. Not a self-congratulatory minute saying what we're doing right, but some way to convey what an equitable process would look like, so we can make a bit of an immediate shift. Because I know we don't have any funds for a professional training, as much as it would be useful, and we don't have time for any difficult conversations unless I form a focus group or something, which would likely attract more people who want to do the work, rather than those who need to do it. But if they ask me to do that, I probably will, as typically committees are the way we have the type of protracted discussions we need on all the many subjects. 

I'm going to have to make every word count. I figure I will ask for something easy to remember, which is to use an "equity lens" when we make policy. We can try that right away and in the process, figure out what that feels like. Obviously if I start with anything dramatic like saying I am a racist raised in a white supremacy culture they will likely fall easily into degrees of denial or acknowledgement, and that could actually allow a few others to feel that we are the same page in our process, but we need to work on a lot more issues than racism. So I think I will make an attempt to talk about how we all use privilege, without thinking about it. 

As individual member businesses, we are set up to think mostly about how our needs must be met, as we can easily opt out if that isn't happening. The guy next to me packed up an hour early yesterday and I worked hard on what to say about it. I wasn't able to talk to him directly, but I know I was cold when he tried to say goodbye. Fortunately the person he was sharing with stayed, so after he left I thanked her for staying and said a little about how it is our group agreement to stay open, for each other. She already agreed with me. I stopped myself from the full lecture. Increasingly I feel that it is not my job to police the other members, and it is detrimental if I do it. I'm already set up to be the cranky old lady who upholds tradition and uses an abundance of ownership to impose my will on everyone else. I'm not going to be that lady if I can help it. I mean, I FEEL ownership, but that is my privilege speaking there, as I benefit from my participation in many ways and need to do the work of limiting that and working for equity, myself!

So, a work in progress for sure, and I hope to put my editing skills to work to create a dynamic and memorable few minutes that will be useful to everyone in the zoom room. I have a couple of days. I will let my much-appreciated right brain ruminate on this while I get outside and do some weeding, because yay, the sun came out! But do let me know if you have something to add to my quest of the day. I signed up for this minute over a year ago and sure don't want to waste it. This old world has got to change.

I don't like Autumn, but this is a good one

 A lot has changed in the past two weeks. I can sleep again, and my stress level has gone down almost to "can enjoy life" again. Not all the way...it's just not a safe world and there are still plenty of challenges.

I watched the Jan 6 show and noticed my increasing anxiety and wish to distance, but I'm glad I stuck it out for the powerful ending. The voice vote to subpeona actually brought some emotion to my numbed soul, seeing those studious and determined people stand together to do what they know is not only right but will put them in personal danger. Obviously they all put their careers on the line long ago but the way human life is disregarded now for ideology has to be scary for everyone who is trying to work for justice. Every day, every minute.

We made the needed personnel change for my org and it was much less painful than expected, though for me the pain was in watching the train wreck and knowing my voice was not one that could be prominent. I didn't have to hold back with the team members I was working with, and I am grateful for their respect and willingness to listen, and I hope they felt gratified that I was such a good team player and was able to put aside so many things to just get on board for the best possible course of action. But I definitely had to take about a week of retreat to get back to work for the org. 

It was disheartening to even add things up in my journal in the account of how much I paid for the last two years. I remember sitting on my deck for an entire day when the train first went off the rails, processing my anger and disbelief at the position I had gotten myself into. I do not tolerate being deceived. I am way too trusting. So to go from backing someone as wholeheartedly as I could to a whole different course of action was tough, but I navigated it as well as I could. I thought I was riding a risky line but staying on the side of being honest myself, but was still surprised at the outcomes. Many times.

And I've been unpleasantly surprised over and over and had to re-evaluate myself and everyone else countless times as we weathered the blows of the injustice of liars and bullies. Since so much of it was confidential personnel stuff I wasn't able to talk about it with anyone in depth. I needed a highly paid professional and instead leaned on a few key people and I feel it was their loss. I got to process it, but what they learned didn't help them and made a few things worse despite my best intentions.

But it was a lot of water under a fragile bridge and it almost seems like we got that bridge reinforced now so it will serve for at least a few months before we have to get out our tools again. I still need therapy. I can maintain, but quality of life is thin. Mostly food is my go-to, and being in the garden, but I am still triggering my food allergies, since I love all the things I can't really tolerate, and my back issues are preventing me from doing all of the work I want to do. And I'm still wearing a mask every time I am out in public and often even with small groups of people. Just don't feel safe.

The lifting of doing the Market day and the standing up the whole time are getting to be too much. I hate to admit it. I dread the first rainy day as I might find out I can no longer deal with the pop-up and weights. I am not likely to be one of those who gets other people to do my work, as it just isn't my way. So maybe I skip. We only have three markets left, so maybe I get lucky and the drought holds on the weekends. Holiday Market is probably manageable although there is still plenty of lifting and hard work. And I have a big pile of denial about any longterm physical limits. Add it to my denial list. It's pretty long.

I still have people sending me bad energy when I speak out and maybe I am getting stronger about it. I can be strong on the outside while I work on it. I know how to block people now so at least they can't access me and make me respond on social media. Most bullies are too cowardly to do much in person, fortunately. One in particular has a way of going to others with all his innocence and then they try to caution me...but enabling bullies is bullying and I am not tolerant of that either. So probably I appear unreasonable about a few things but I know what is true and what is not. And no one gets to tell me not to tell the truth.

When I am courageous enough to tell it. My social media interactions have diminished to almost none. Since I don't post this on FB I get about 3 readers...that's okay I guess. I am doing to to keep writing and to remind myself how to construct logical essay structures and so that I don't forget that I am a writer with big projects to do. Someday. When things get stable for more than a couple of weeks at a time. In the winter. Next summer.

Ha, next summer won't be happening. I need a new roof, and I have the opportunity to do some solar on it, but I know I can't do much of it myself, if any. So every dollar I can put away will be important. So I'm mad about one of my selling days getting discarded by other people who didn't need it. If the weather is good I might try to sell with the farmers, if they let us. If it isn't I will enjoy a day off I suppose, reluctantly. I'm not mad at any individual who made that decision for the org, just mad that my arguments didn't hold more weight. I argued for the community gathering, for the people who don't sell at HM who also lost their last selling day, and for the heritage of Rain or Shine and honoring our commitments. We show up. We work hard.

I've been reflecting that hard work is really my core value. I even work hard to finish my library books and get them back on time. I don't know how my life works if I can't work hard. That makes it a bit of a self-destructive addiction on the scale of things, and a protestant white supremacy cultural value. if I am not a hard worker, how will my value be measured? 

I know my value as a seasoned and experienced membership participant is diminished and won't last. They say they respect my opinions but not in the way that they might defer to them. I didn't say "I told you so," once about the botched decisions that I proved to be right about. I know how to be graceful and to move forward. I don't expect apologies, and they won't be forthcoming. Instead I looked at my behaviors and the ways I expressed my positions and I figured out ways to be better next time. I worked on myself to be more palatable. I am such a trained 1950s woman. I will always be a team player and a cheerleader and such an earnest learner. I hope that is seen about me when I join the ranks of the dismissed and ditzy. I'll likely never stop trying to work hard for what I see needs to be done. 

It's likely to always be exhausting and only momentarily rewarding. Because I stood firm, we got ourselves out of trouble. There was a price. We have paid it. Now we figure out how to mitigate our losses and rebuild. I have no choice but to pick up my tools again. 

Maybe I can learn to pick up fewer at a time and not hurt myself in the process. Maybe if I can't learn to not work hard I can learn to moderate when and how. What if I let go of all the parts that make me feel bad? Well, it's probably like the approach of winter. Me feeling bad about it doesn't change the march of time. Maybe I learn to use winter more effectively to meet my goals. Which are...work hard, and enjoy life. Going outside now. Be well.

Mostly Market Stuff

 Although I write posts in my mind all the time, it is only on Sunday mornings that I feel like I have the time to put those thoughts down in essay form. I write in my journal every day, but there is still so much on  my mind that I have developed sleeping problems for only the second time in my life. I must have had them as an adolescent, because I vividly remember the techniques my mom gave me of counting (not that useful when your perseverating overwhelms your mathing) and constructing a dream and then drifting into it. Basically think lovely thoughts...so maybe it was Tinkerbell's advice. I don't do that well with the dream construction when my real-life dreams are being trampled.

This is my only day off and I need a lot more. It's gorgeous and there's lots of yardwork, and my foot doesn't feel as bad today since I resorted to icing it after Market. I literally can not use it on Saturday nights and that is a bad feeling. Icing it makes me think maybe it is mostly arthritis after all. It always feels better when I use it a bit but I am so exhausted after I sit down at 7:00 pm that I should probably just take a bath and go to bed then. Kitty is always mad at me though so I have to do a lot of cudddling and all that to make up for being gone so long. I have learned that making sure her food dish is full has a big effect on her insecurity issues though. And Sunday mornings my foot usually still hurts.

It was a great fall Market, hot like summer, and I cannot have the lack of grace to complain, as I am so fulfilled by my customers there...even had a couple of them giving my screenprinting a close examination and understanding the skills shown...had some interesting conversations with other members too about being master crafters and how that helps us all when we show our work. I love new members and all the talents and energy they bring but we need that mix of both. 

There are some member issues that are overwhelming me and I have a lot to say about them. It's not going to fit into the Board meeting but in working on my Equity presentation (I get a couple of minutes so it will be just a tiny dip into it, mostly to underscore the need for us to get some professional training to guide us through some long-overdue discussions about our organization) I plan to try to define the difference between the equality we profess and the lack of equity we actually practice. It's definitely time to get to work on it. So I will quickly pivot from theoretical Equity to member equity and the few really obvious places where we need to address it.

For a short version, that is fees: people who earn at the low end pay way more of an overall percentage of earnings than the more successful earners. Because we have a terrible track record of doing the calculations at the end of the day for the 10%, we have been reluctant to raise that part to 15% but we may need to go to 20%. We always end up raising the space fee (currently $15) and that just makes the regressive aspect worse. There are some other ideas and if we have the right leadership in the winter when we make this decision, we can design in some more equitable modifications. Like maybe the percentage doesn't kick in until you earn a certain amount...$200 or something. Or we appeal to people's sense of fairness and add some kind of tax on the high earners. Just one issue.

For such a loving organization we don't do that well on fairness. There are people who park in the nearby spaces all day so they can access their cars for loading out, completely disregarding that dozens of customers could have used those spaces (some unmetered) to spend money on all of us, and that parking is a real issue that is going to get worse. There are a lot of ways each one of us breaks the rules, which are designed for a pretty good level of fairness and equality, if not equity, but only work when they are followed. Many people (and I include myself) have a way of picking and choosing the rules we will strictly follow. Many do try to follow them all, at least in the intention of them.

We have an extremely obvious condition of privilege in our reserve system. Currently you only have to sell in your reserved space 12 times out of 33 to keep it. (It does cost $150, about $5 per market.) That is only about a third of the times we are open, so not that huge of a commitment to the Market. Some folks got up a (self-righteous imo) petition to change it to only 9 times attending, so more like about one fourth of the times we are open. ( Food booths have to come 27 times, or pay a fine.) So they want to have even less commitment to Market's needs, and retain their privilege to the reserve space. It goes without saying that those are the best spaces. In fact almost all of the spaces are reserved, and there isn't a lot of turnover except for during the pandemic. Not that many people retire. 

The argument is that anyone can sell in those spaces when the reserve folks are not there, but you have to wait in point order to get them, and if you have low points it can be 9:30 when you get the space, so you get about 20 minutes to set up before opening. As a reserve member I can get there as early as I want, which is currently about 7:30, giving me time to do my elaborate set-up that works so well for me. I can do a lot with my displays, sell to the early customers who don't know we open at 10, and in general, I benefit greatly from the fantastic space I worked to get. I got lucky that the person who had it retired and I had the points to get it. New members rarely get a chance at the best spaces. But we need to open up that opportunity because we lose members who know what success feels like, and a 20-minute set-up and an out-of-traffic space is not going to get them there in a satisfying way. We need to design more turnover into our reserve system, not less. Our policies favor the privileged. See it, say it, change it. Not for your benefit, but for the benefit of others.

There's more of course. There's a letter saying we are in some kind of "new era"when the experienced people, who have been willing to chair committees and do the heavy lifting, need to be forced to step aside through term limits. It's targeted at the 5 or 6 of us who are in those positions, all of which come up for election every January and for which any person can be nominated and elected. It's a solution in search of the problem to match it, and the letter basically said "this is going to hurt some feelings but I am going to go ahead and try to make it happen anyway." It's one of the more distressing things on my list of very distressing trends in our community. I have to assume I am one of the people targeted. 

Participatory decision-making is a craft. It takes years to learn to do it well and a serious mix of skills and qualities to use it and make sure others do as well. Our committee chairs are generally good at it. Pushing them out will destroy our committee system, as conveniently, with term limits, once the new people push out the experienced ones, term limits will push them out too, and then we will really face the actual problem we have now, which is simply we need more volunteers who are dedicated and capable and willing of doing the heavy lifting. Or we can also work at making those lifts less daunting. Do more mentoring and work-sharing and bringing people in who can commit. But longer commitments will still be required. To sustain our community we need to carry forward all that we have learned, and have the wisdom and courage to continue using it, at least the parts that work. 

We have a pretty large body of community-held experience, wisdom, and lessons learned through trial and error. Plenty of error, lots of trials. We regularly re-invent policies if no one knows what is already in place. We've done well at documenting our policies, but the work that we did to get there is in our memories, those of us who did that work. Pushing us from participating is just not going to help our organization. We've already seen three of the six people resign, and the rest of us are on the verge of it. The new era of doing things like the downtown developments, the Holiday Market, the Budget, the Standards deliberations, without us, scares me. I dispute the necessity or wisdom of the whole effort. I don't know of any volunteer who has stepped up and been discouraged, unless they came in with an unworkable agenda and tried to impose it on what was already happening. We are open to change and willing to hear all informed and sensible arguments for improvement. We can work with any problematic individuals on the actual problems without throwing them out, dismissing their vast contributions with a mean gesture veiled in bullshit language. The last person who talked about the New Era was George Bush the Elder, and you saw how well that went.

I don't know when service became power-seeking. It isn't about power for me. It's about the duties of care and loyalty for the organization I invest my time and energy in. It's about real equity and fairness for me, and improvement, and staying in the maelstrom of the current times when attitudes and how we treat each other, and communicate about it, must evolve, and are evolving. I will never subscribe to the myth that old is bad and young or new is good. It's doublespeak. Good is good. The common good is what we should strive for. Even it if is not our good, specifically. We serve the common good.

I pay that extra tax, for being successful, by giving my time and money and support and love and sleepless nights, to my organization in gratitude for the opportunities I am given. I feel I have created a lovely balance and can continue for the rest of my life. Pushing me out is not something I will just submit to quietly. Term limit me off Downtown Developments and you have no task force to liaison between members, staff and the city. Push me out as Secretary, that's easy. Just elect someone else in January. You know I will train and mentor them and continue to support them as I just move into the other free things I do for Market, like the archiving. The ballots are secret, so I won't even know if you vote for me or the new person. Just step up and use the process we have in place and not this passive-aggressive framing of "this is going to hurt but it will be the best thing for you." Fuck that. 

And don't you dare say this is not about me. This is about my teams, the ones we have been depending on all this time. Without these leaders we would not have gotten through the pandemic or all the subsequent struggles, and those of the past decades which were no less stressful. Add up the number of sleepless nights for your leaders and weigh them against your own. How much sleep are you willing to give to your organization that sustains and nurtures you? Maybe that is the measure we use to evaluate dedication. How much has it hurt? How many have you hurt? What's your balance?

How much do we actually come from selflessness to support the common good? Is that the Golden Ruler of evaluation? What will we give? How will our gifts be valued? Let's do better.