Follow Through One Thing at a Time

 Just a short post to let people know I told OCF Craft Committee I will resign after the November meeting. I committed to finishing the Permanent Placement and Guideline Change processes and we have one more Town Hall. The relief is real.

My reasons are not that I got tired of being bullied by one member of the committee after ten years of it, or that I am tired of advocating for crafters and trying to make our experience work better. I hope the committee continues to deal with the bullying and of course the work will continue to advocate for crafters.

My main reason is that over the twelve years I have been taking on and doing too many tasks. I started out just thinking I would take minutes, but the number of tasks now fills two pages. I hope other members pick up those tasks, as I still think they are all important.

A bonus is that now I will not be spending my volunteer time supporting people I do not want to support. There are a lot more bullies in the org than the one I have been dealing with...it's a whole political party of them. Two are up for election, and one, in particular should not be in power in any organization. I have the receipts of his actual criminal actions. He lies, and denies, and uses all the bullying tactics as well as taking credit for whatever remains of the diversity efforts he ransacked and destroyed, driving many fine people out of the organization. He has created a little  cult of bullies who go around the internet telling his false narratives over and over until they become the stories. That in itself is criminal.

I am grateful that Jon Silvermoon, Ann Rodgers, (who are both up for re-election) and Lisa Parker, sue theolass, and Paxton Hoag and George Braddock continue to try to do the right thing in the face of these continual assaults against the truth, right action, and progress. I still watch the Board meetings and still support change in the organization, I just no longer believe much change will happen until the bullies are out of power. 

Even if that happens, and it might, with Saskia Whitson and Cassie Esposito running, I can't support the rest of the misrepresentation of the truth that I've witnessed over the last year and a half. There's little accountability and there was a subtle shift from the responsibilities of paid staff onto the committee I served on...all of a sudden we were going to have to fix the internet, the artisan directory database, and do all the communication necessary to assist the boothpeople in this cultural shift from a personal approach to a more efficient, online interface for registration and problem-solving. Sorry, but volunteering is supposed to be voluntary. Staff is supposed to support, not shift paid work to unpaid.

I went to Charlie Ruff many years ago when Square first appeared on the stage and advised him that crafters were going to come with the expectation that they'd use the internet to process their credit card sales. He knew nothing about it at the time and didn't even believe me I don't think, but the lack of action on prioritizing artisan access to the internet is a big problem still. I am not going to help work on that anymore. I know how negotiations work...if the COWS didn't happen it was because the priority wasn't in place yet. 

And I saw all the promotional material, interviews with newspapers, local TV and online. I saw how many times the crafts were promoted. It was missing, or a few times, included in the single word ART. I'm still offended that no accountability was taken, and our committee was guilted at our meeting. I prefer honesty and accepting feedback with humility and not defensiveness and deflection. 

So for my own peace, I will step down from my responsibility for working on any of those problems. I am grateful to my committee members and hope that they are not feeling deserted as they continue to wrestle with those things. I did a lot of good work but can't continue.

There's a lot more going on in my thoughts, but that's really it for now. It might be the last day of sunshine and I have been loving being outdoors getting the houses and yard ready for rain and colder temps. I love summer. I will miss it. But I have a lot to do indoors, too, including boxing up a lot of papers. It's going to feel good to clear away some duties.