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.