Crisis managed, for better or for worse

 Waiting for my delivery, trying not to be completely overwhelmed with grief and worry. It's not easy, even with all my blooming fruit trees and the mostly on sun. Got to do laundry. Can't go anywhere as if I do, the delivery will arrive. Guess I could keep busy.

Need to check my tires, filled them all up yesterday but this would be the day to see if they are leaking or flat. Don't need any surprises on Saturday morning.

I'm not going to Board meetings but I guess they rallied and will work together to repair what can be repaired. Just heard rumors and read all the gushing posts from people whose faith and love was restored. Not that easy for me. I've been trying to figure out why I am so despondent, outside of the obvious reasons. It has always meant a lot to me to be one of the people who cared for Market and kept it going, so I guess I lost my sense of belonging. I don't think I am upset because I am not in control of any of it, I mean, I could probably step in if I wanted to. The new Secretary wanted to meet with me. I won't have time for that, so sent her a few documents and a long email which she said she would read next week. Dismissed and boundaried again. She may not have intended that, not knowing how many times it has happened lately, enough to be a pattern, but whatever the reason, it triggers the pattern for me and pushes me lower.

They reinstated the GM, of course, which initially shocked me but it makes sense I suppose. Why fight the members? I have never been about standing in their way. If a consensus is reached, you kind of have to go with that, even when you disagree. I've stood on the opposite side quite a few times in the last few years, so I should be more used to it. There's probably some areas in there about control and maybe even power, that I could explore. 

My Secretary job description was fascinating to revisit. I think I wrote it in 2018 or 2019 when things were going really well. I was covering so much territory with my oversight and caring, keeping us legal and functional and maintaining the governance. We slipped a long way from that, some while I was there, and a lot more while I was gone, so just a half year. Makes me feel good that I made such an important contribution, but really sad that it has not only been erased, but no one has picked up much of it. It just isn't important now, or maybe it's assumed that the staff is doing it, or responsible for it, but I will stand by the position that it was best done by members, for members. 

Membership orgs like ours are probably too archaic to live now. They erode piece by piece, with little notice, when you get authoritarian-leaning people in power. It's not exactly like the macrocosm, not even close, but things will happen...we have to make a lot of money somehow, and it might involve odd ideas like getting rid of the honor system, instituting fines, or changing the standards somehow. Standards has actually been going in the other direction, to be more strict, so that might be an interesting area to watch. We're going to lose members as costs increase, and sales tank, which I beleive they will. 

It's likely that a lot of our tourism will evaporate, as people are afraid to travel, and spending for everyone is going to be curtailed as we all lose our savings. I'm not counting on high sales. We generally have had a lot of local support, which might continue, and of course people will still want to move here so we may still get plenty of domestic tourism. Sometimes in the past it has taken economic conditions awhile to get to us, and of course every day is a different raft of shit right now, economically. 

Now that the crisis at Market is "handled" for a minute, people are turning back to arguing about other things...some want to be political this week, some don't. I've been debating taking my golden wig, on a platter or to wear, but it doesn't seem that funny. I don't have space for the platter unless I bring something to put it on. I feel like I am not going to be allowed to use the space where I put my bike and trailer, and if I can't, it has to go in my booth, as I can't risk it getting stolen. It's hard to know if rules will tighten up or loosen, but I'm in line for retaliation now and can't help but expect some. There's not much that can be taken away, and now at least my neighbor isn't mad at me, but other people are. Bullies and people with the power to hurt me. I don't really expect it to be that fun.

However, the Slug Queens will be visiting, and they mostly still love me, so I could wear the wig for them. I could put it away if it seems to be hurting sales. Guess I'll put off deciding. It doesn't weigh much, and it isn't a sign, so if people get told to not be political for the sake of everyone who might disagree, it is just Jell-O, which isn't political. And it would come with laughs, which we all do need. We need a lot of them.

So very tempted to go skating tonight. I really can't risk the physical issues though, and chance missing the market. So I won't. But I want to. My delivery might not be here by 4:30, either, which is when I would leave the house. They said before 7. I hope it is well before. I need something to go right. 

 

When Things Look Terrible, the Sun Still Comes Out Eventually

Yes, I waded back into the Members site as I decided I couldn't let someone bullying me take my voice. Since I have been constantly bullied for at least ten years I don't know why I still expect to not have it directed at me. It's a trauma thing...I keep thinking the trauma is in the past and connected with only a few individuals, but in reality I think it is a fact of life that people will bully me.

I was once told by someone trying to be kind, in his way, that I "wore humiliation." It was shocking but I've grown to accept that I am easy to humiliate, very trusting, and always expect positive experiences. So, not very realistic. I prefer to retain that trust and naivete, but it leaves me vulnerable. I don't really want to harden myself at this point in my life, but the world is just so harsh right now. I find myself feeling that I will die in a prison and all hope is lost...this is just a high degree of empathy for the people in El Salvador whose crime was having tattoos or not-white enough skin, and I am safe from that here in my kitchen, but I still feel that death sentence. I'm wondering how people without my privilege handle it without just actually dying. I feel like my heart would just stop if that happened to me.

That's a pretty extreme degree of fear, so I guess the news is working on me. I've chosen to sell on Saturday instead of rallying, despite the fact that it probably won't be a good sales day. I haven't really had any income since December (except my SS, and I'm afraid to look and see if I'm still getting it, and Jell-O shirts, which were break-even.) But I have money...I'm afraid I won't continue to have it, but I'm not broke. I'll still be triggered all day I expect, and glared at by people who don't like me, but I have been unpopular at Market before and it usually wears off over the season.

I do still have that deep loyalty to Market, despite hating everything that has transpired in the last year or two, and most of the people making those things happen. It's not particularly rational, just feelings. That's one reason I've tried to stay out of it, as I can't add anything helpful, it seems. I tried being a moderating influence but got roundly trashed for that, so I won't do that again. I know some people appreciated it, but that didn't really matter, the bullies still won. Most of the little progress made in the last few months will likely be unraveled at the Board meeting and possibly a bigger mess created. I don't know why anyone would want to volunteer if they got a clear view of all of the nuanced campaigns that are being waged in this power struggle. Anyone just trying to be helpful or maintain justice will be swept away in the deluge of false narratives and high emotions, or at least that is my prediction.

It's possible some justice will prevail, and I know a few people will fight for that, but it's gone off into the deep end and probably will flounder around for more months. I'm not planning to engage with any of it. I have a big order of shirts coming in Thursday and will just see if I can physically handle that and selling every Saturday, and whatever I can do to assist in the political world situation, which is far more threatening than the messy problems of Market. 

I'm going to turn 75 in the midst of everything, and I doubt I will want to celebrate. Maybe I'll sit on the deck in the sun if I can. For some reason of his own my son is not communicating, and I miss him, but that is up to him and whatever he needs. I don't feel close to anyone right now, which is okay, but when people talk about community and how important it will be, I get anxious. I don't trust anyone to care about me...this is the effect of bullying old people. They descend into isolation and start believing they are worthless and in the way.

I know on some level I am fighting that...I shared a Jell-O Art post today and I still have to write that glowing post about the other artists and the gallery show itself, which I do hope to do. I still have this place to write what I want and it doesn't really matter if no one reads it, I feel better when I write. I know I have a couple of readers who do love me, and that warms me up, so I can keep trying to articulate things and sort through my perspectives to make things make sense.

I'm sure it's true that action is healing so I'll so what I can. I plan to make a sign for Saturday if I can think of something that won't be added to the list of why other market members hate me, and I will probably give away or sell cheaply some bandanas and hats for people walking through before or after the rally. I wanted to make something political but I can't feel inspired with all the dysfunction pressing on me. Words seem weak. I'm guessing I will feel better after Market, though, once I prove to myself that I can do it and people want me there. Even when I feel bad I know that is still true.

Guessing I am not the only depressed person today. I suppose I would want to encourage them, so i should encourage myself. I'll get out in the shop. Having a full inventory always makes me feel satisfied. My wrist seems fine, or anyway my hands are not any more stiff than they were before I broke it. The sun coming out in a couple of days will help, and it won't rain on Saturday, so I don't have to agonize about that. As Vi would say, All will be well. I'm sure she still says that now and again.

 

It doesn't matter if you like her, it matters how well she can do the job

Had a great day yesterday, enjoying my last free Saturday for the next 9 months. I printed some bandanas, mixed inks for my upcoming big printing job, and wandered around my yard weeding and picking up sticks from all that windy weather. I stayed offline and let go of the distaste for being bullied that always threatens to overwhelm me, and prevented that from happening this time.

There's a groundswell of support for the "beloved" GM like what happened last time. I tried to moderate this emotional approach to what was a practical solution but apparently not a lot of people know the reality I experienced...at least those people are not emoting on Facey, so it seems unbalanced. I mean, I was gaslighted, manipulated, dismissed, and disregarded in various ways as an officer and longstanding, well-respected volunteer by this GM. I was volunteer of the year in 2023! All forgotten now.

I got shuffled into the delusional and pushy "elders" category, and my resentment of that doesn't matter. One of the former Board members made two or three personal, bullying comments and went off on me on her post, insisting that I didn't know anything and should not be trying to moderate. And you know what? No one asked me to do it, and with that kind of treatment, she turns out to be right...I can silence myself and did. I deleted my posts and almost all of my comments and removed my presence from the discussion. No one seems to have been willing to defend me or have noticed that I pulled away. Maybe they think someone else did it. 

It allowed me to take my life back and stop trying to give to an organization that clearly no longer values my contributions. It makes me sad, but is no longer as devastating as it was when the GM set it in motion for me. Her disregard, keeping me from doing my responsible duties as an officer, left me out of crucial decisions and prevented my input to the point where I was not valued by the majority, or even the Board itself. This disregard of the older members to favor the younger is not really the way of the world, but it became the way of the market under the Mean Girls and their accomplices.

I remember when I first started realizing how manipulative she is, way back at the beginning. As Board Chair at the time, she did nothing to prevent the terrible hire of an obviously incompetent man over a competent woman, which they were pushed to do for the wrong reasons by the head of the hiring committee. She heard all of my reasoning of what a disaster was about to happen and if I hadn't intervened right away to document what he was doing and not doing in order to get him out fast, that would not have happened. I was not loved for that, but I was right. Then I was working almost fulltime to help get the office back together, I was making Board packets, pulling policies out of the archives to replace the computer that failed, and in general propping things up with a mighty effort with a lot of other volunteers during a busy time when I had to neglect my own business to do that. And the narrative was spun that she saved us single-handedly and my contributions were erased. But I don't care to promote myself so I just allowed that to happen.

Then there was the question of whether or not to close on the second week of November, the week before Holiday Market started. It had never been a big moneymaker for the market, though it was a giant day for me and others of us who sold. I would sell a thousand dollars worth to people who loved he outdoor market and would miss it. I paid a percentage on that, of course, so it benefitted market in a way it wouldn't when I made the sales at HM (if I did.) Anyway, she decided to do a survey but the paper she distributed was framed overwhelmingly that if you didn't vote to close, clearly you didn't support or even care for staff. As a person who has always cared for staff, actively, I was really offended by that framing. Of course the vote passed to eliminate a selling day, without regard for the public, who had no say, and the many people who did benefit from us being open. And I think, now that it is an established practice (it was promised to be for one year only...) it has impacted October negatively as people shifted their weeks off to do HM prep from November into October. Whatever. The point is, that it was shocking that we would be manipulated like that by a GM.

I wrote a complaint and spoke with her about it. She didn't even see what she had done as manipulation. Other experiences like that she bragged about, her skills as "massaging" and "bringing people along" as she called her coercive, bullying tactics that she uses to get her way. We saw quite a lot of that at HM this year, but if you don't experience it yourself, apparently you don't believe it is happening, even though I am not the only person who has raised the alarm. So one of the reasons that she was fired is that instead of the negotiating skills we need to make arrangements with people like the farmers, the fire marshal, the fairgrounds, and the city, we have had someone who has been "massaging" them, which has included flirting, stonewalling, using them as an excuse to cover her getting her own agenda arranged, and terminating members who don't work well with her or resent being manipulated. Many of them are no longer with the market. 

I also used to represent the members and support the staff by being a partner in dealing with city issues, particularly through my Downtown Development Task Force, which evolved to be an email list with weekly updates to inform members what was happening and what to expect on a Saturday. She stopped including me in meetings with the city or construction people, stopped sending me their details, took me out of the loops so that when I did email the members, it was incomplete or inaccurate and became impossible. I realized my integrity and usefulness to the membership was not going to be protected if I continued trying to work with her on that, and I stopped. A lot of members depended on me to keep them informed in an honest way but when I saw how she treated the city managers I was unable to be honest with the members. Nobody really remembers that service I performed for about a decade until she derailed it. 

Despite having several years now to learn how to manage expenditures and income, she has not mastered financial management or reporting. She leaned so heavily on a former assistant manager and two Treasurers, to cover her inability to be a responsible financial manager, that they all quit and we are now quite a lot in the red and have to figure out how to make up that loss and prevent more of it. It was overstaffing, but no one was laid off, there was no effort to fix it while she was the GM. It was her job to do it. The current budget submitted for approval was erroneous and inadequate and sent back to the Budget Committee, who are volunteers, to try again. 

She has spent so much of her time coercing and attempting to "bring along" members who, in her reality, need "consequences" for their behaviors, that she doesn't get all of her work done. She makes procedure, and sometimes policy changes without communicating them to anyone, outside of the committees she manipulates to create what reality she wants. She gives them limited information and they do not reach out to the membership, so things are changed that potentially have debilitating effects on members. The Standards guideline change that you can have your membership terminated on the basis of four anonymous complaints is one. There are no details about the complaints, whether they can be all from one member, from staff, for one problem or many, just a clear ability of the committee or staff to terminate the membership. Those who have been victims of this new policy, which went by the Board with little discussion, are either gone or intimidated into silence for fear of getting that fourth complaint. She's not beloved to those people. 

And of course there was the nepotism of hiring her daughter and assisting her to be a fulltime employee, which was just questionable, and the false narratives that are now being pitched as real. All staff have been affected by the messiness of having personal family relationships in the workplace, and they have little opportunity to express that. I asked the Personnel Committee to try to meet with them so they'd have an opportunity to give some safe input, but I don't know if that happened. I know in the evaluation process she got some really negative evals, but I don't know if that was part of the Board's decision, or glossed over as the mean members.

One false narrative is that the Board and members don't care about the staff...just false. Another is that mean members have driven away all the employees and Board who have moved on, also not true. We have a lot of strong members who don't have good negotiating skills also, some bullies, and it has been hard to address, but when it comes from the top executive, it becomes the current reality. Now we seem to have a convoluted mess with bullies all around trying to get their demands met instead of working together to solve problems like discouraged and disempowered volunteers and our financial crisis, which no one is talking about on the Facey except one person who is being ignored. It doesn't help that she is one of the bullies and "elders" who are being sidelined by the other bullies. I have never found myself in the same category as she is and we've never agreed on anything in my memory, so it feels pretty ironic that we're kind of on the same side. She doesn't share my inability to deal with bullying though, so I hope she will be able to use those "skills" in the upcoming battle.

Because it looks like another battle is inevitable and will likely become public as the members go rogue and do what they think is best. I hope the press has the wisdom to stay out of it. Some people think it should be public...but that will be a horrifying embarrassment if the Board has to reveal all of the reasons they needed to mover her out of the position. She was never, and is not now, the professional manager we need and deserve. She created this mess with her lack of ability to support the Board, her asking them to manage things she was incapable of mangling, and her terrible way of prioritizing drama over the work in her job description. I am going to do myself a favor and stay all the way out of the meeting and whatever punishing the members think they should give to their elected Board. I kind of do want to point out to them that under the protocol she established, none of them would be able to present anything unless they submitted it in writing last Wednesday.

No one wants to hear about how these things happened before, even the recent battle that happened in 2021 when we had to let other terrible managers go. The mob attacked the Board, two of which were brand new members at their first meeting, and the mob was wrong, and the Board was right. Even some of the people who were in on it then have not seen how this is the same thing. Those managers were also well-liked, but that is just beside the point. We're a business. You either can have someone who is liked or have someone who is really going to do a good job, and sometimes they can also be liked...but one thing is more important than the other.

I only get a small number of readers now and I won't make the mistake of sharing this with any members this time. It is obvious that it no longer matters what I think, despite my long experience, my knowledge of how good managers do the job (I mean, I filled out evals for over 15 years, every year,) and all of the background issues that are not being addressed. Why do the members feel in the dark? Management failed to communicate. So many ways they could have been brought in to help with the financial situation before it became dire...selling more often, donating, fundraising. So many volunteers could have been more effective with real support from management instead of attempts to limit their participation, power, and contributions to solutions. There was so much missing from this manager. I hope people will speak up who experienced this, and know that we deserved better than someone who could charm a lot of people into supporting her and not holding her to a higher standard.

It's messy as can be now. Lots of people are chiming in to trash the working volunteers. I don't know how they think more volunteers will come forward in that atmosphere. I certainly won't. 

Communication with our membership is so important we are seeing how this is playing out right now. A few loud voices are steering a recall campaign against a new Board member who brought forward these reasons why we are being mismanaged, and her supporters are feeling silenced or not inclined to face the mob which will be out in force at the Board meeting. So many people are fighting for her that the Board may be forced to either break confidentiality to give detailed reasons, which will unnecessarily embarrass everyone concerned, or they will stick to their confidentiality and other people will yell at each other for awhile. Nobody will say that community building was one thing she also failed to do. We are as split up as can be, and everyone thinks that firing her was the worst thing that ever happened to the market. No one wants to hear how far from the truth that is. Not from me, anyway. But of course me removing myself makes them more sure they are right. Hard times.

 

Managing Distress

Doing Facebook calming duty is burning me right out. I am inclined to go back to not volunteering, so I can work, and feel peace. I don't know why people can't manage their emotions. I mean, I do know. It takes a lot of learning, as my generation wasn't taught as many skills as kids are mostly taught now. And they are scared. There's a lot of fear right now. Maybe I lost some credibility when I put on that golden wig last weekend. (that's a joke...)

Emotional damage persists and most of us tend to spread it without reflecting on reasons we might not want to escalate things, especially when we are angry. It's hard for me still to feel my stomach clenching up and my hands beginning to tremble. I mostly have learned not to immediately type something on social media, but my first reaction is to write things down, which I do here if I think they might be useful, or just in my journal if they are less organized and need more sorting out.

What I am trying to do on the Facey is try to point out some ways to move forward. A lot of people are hearing part of the story or only hearing it from people who are also mad, and in a community like ours you always  know someone who is hurting from what has happened. You generally gravitate toward the ones you care about the most, without necessarily knowing how things might actually be different from what you believe. I know I am only seeing part of the picture myself, so I'm trying to be careful.

One thing we are not addressing, and won't, is the underlying emotional landscape filled with people who are or were being misled, whether that is intentional or innocent. There are false narratives. I just pointed one out, after someone declared that the Board doesn't care about the staff and the staff knows it. That is called the member/staff divide and it does not exist. All of our members care deeply about our staff, and depend on them for all of the ways we work together to generate the income we all use to live on. Not all of our members know many of the staff, as our interactions don't always get personal. There is likely some reluctance to engage on both sides, for all kinds of reasons, but we gladly earn the money to pay them, we like to pay them well, and we are grateful to them for all that they do. 

Another of the false narratives is that there is some bad person out to ruin what we have built together. That is simply not possible. We never have a situation where everyone agrees, and we have plenty of stubborn people who insist on thinking for themselves, and will stand up for justice and truth. We actually react quite uniformly to manipulation and deceit, and sometimes that is one of the things simmering under the surface that is driving what is more diplomatically phrased. Most of us can recognize power trips and gaslighting and excuses and while we might not seem to react, we check that box in our minds and take future action carefully. We have people among us who use bullying tactics. We all need to learn more about how to identify and counter them.

And we tend to see everything down on the Park Blocks and in the LEC. We might not talk about it or let on, but we are observant. We spend all day looking closely at our customers and other members so we can refine our own actions to make ourselves more successful. When someone is doing well, we see if there is something they are doing that we can try. When they aren't, we usually have an opinion about why. And we talk to each other. We all have our networks.

So there is the public version, which is what I am trying to preserve on the Facey, and there are the many private versions, which we share in our networks. We all know things that we can't really say out loud without causing a fight. 

We're actually arguing about bullying now...it's centered on one of the Board members, mostly, who is assertive and has made a big impact by calling out some of the loose and unfortunate things that we were doing on the Board level and in general, but in my case, and others, we were bullied by the GM and some of the people aligned with her. They would deny it is bullying...this is known as DARVO, which is deny and reverse victim and offender. People like me who have trauma in our backgrounds have a broader identification of bullying than others. For me the gaslighting and manipulation with charm kinds of things are more triggering...I'm easy to manipulate so it happens rather often. Coercion, slipping things by me, setting me up...I identify these as bullying tactics while other people just use them as a way to get their needs met. For me, the toxicity was coming from the top.

The way the Committees were being used to exclude and terminate members, and keep them from actually doing things as members, was offensive. I saw more than one person be pushed out for the comfort of the people I started calling the Mean Girls. I saw a lot of control tactics being used, a lot of dismissiveness, and heard a lot of discriminatory language and just mean comments coming from a few people. I felt dismissed and disregarded rather frequently, or just bypassed and prevented from making the contributions I had formerly been welcomed to make. I'm sure this would be denied so it isn't useful to fight about it at this point. I just don't want to see a controlling, manipulative person in power again. 

We'll see how that goes. Interpretation of bullying is very personal and confusing to most people. Generally correcting a bully requires some type of assertion that also looks and feels like bullying. It's a real skill set to draw boundaries in a calm and nonviolent way, particularly with people who see calm as passive and angry as positive. For that reason I am unlikely to attend the Board meeting. 

I had to call it out, actually, the last time we had a staff transition that was unpopular. One of the people we fired/let resign manipulated a bunch of people to come and fight the Board to save his job...they were gaslit to misinterpret the Board's actions, and then he broke confidentiality to accuse the Board of things to which they could not respond without breaking confidentiality themselves. Some did. it was super difficult to calm down the crowd and convince them we would be okay, and I finally just called it bullying and inappropriate in the board room and the managers stalked out and proceeded to do some really shady actions, that we didn't find out until later. We naively extended them some kindnesses while they were essentially sabotaging our office, as we found out the next day, but it was all set aside so we could get up and running for the market in two days. We couldn't get into our database due to those actions, so we had to wing it for two weeks, but we did it, and put things back together, and righted our ship. It took a lot of volunteers and some really long hours.

So far, this is nothing like how bad that was. This is relatively orderly and I don't think there is any sabotage, hopefully, except for a nasty FB post to break the confidentiality and get the members all upset. It prevented the Board from framing things in a positive and legally responsible manner, which is still brewing on the site, so this is day two of me trying to spin things to let's fix it mode, which is getting a little more complicated. There are definitely a couple of people whom I will be trying to avoid in the future. 

But also, the good people are coming out and offering to help and I think things are going to survive the turmoil. I think it had to happen, judging by the number of members in my network who are relieved and ready for this change. As I recall it took a season or so for the atmosphere to settle the last time...the crimes were not addressed, the people involved went on to get their second chances, and only a few of us were forever changed. This could settle down faster once people are reassured that it is okay and once we get the manager we imagine. Let's hope we get that person. The uglier it gets, the less likely it will be that someone will want to step into it, so there's that concern. I wish I knew how to make that point to the people who are angry. They're angry at me now, for trying. 

Oh well. Comes with the territory. The people in my network get me. That's enough for now. 

Later: Actually after reading some hateful and humiliating comments directed to me I deleted my posts and comments. I'm back to not volunteering. They can figure it out for themselves. I'll provide archives when asked but that is it.  

Now this is the next day and I feel like I made the right decision. It's like I was never there. People call for calm are trashed, and there's a recall petition and a hope that the GM will be reinstated. A much bigger mess than expected...but for my self preservation I will have to stay out of it. I'm beyond hoping or trying to make it be the market I have given my life to support. It's not my market, and a lifetime of giving does not guarantee a thing, not even gratitude. Lesson learned. 

Don't Make it Drama

 I reviewed the Market's draft budget last night though I didn't feel ready to go to Board meetings again yet. I found it confusing and inadequate. I know the Budget Committee members know how to put one together so I am making the assumption that they are no longer doing the GM's job but letting her make the effort she has been supposed to have been making for the last two-plus years. She has not learned enough, for whatever reasons, to keep us financially solvent. Apparently we are about $40,000 in the red, though that is not an official figure. No one has actually made any official statements from the Board yet.

However, someone broke the confidentiality of the Executive Session that was held after the meeting, to announce on Facebook (on the semi-private Members page) that the GM was fired. They did not share the reasons, but in an anonymous post they scapegoated one of the diligent Board members who has been making an effort to hold leaders to account. In case you forgot, I resigned from leadership last August, although just giving up the Secretary position did not make me not a leader.

I took myself off as Admin of the FB group last December, which left four staff as admins, and at some point the new Secretary was made an admin, but she took it upon herself, after resigning her position last night, to break confidentiality too in what seemed to be an official post, except that it was not neutral, as an admin post should be. Despite my vow to stay out of volunteering, I went in to moderate, see if I could dampen the drama and quiet some fears, and have now been monitoring it for let's see, 3 hours last night and 6 so far today. I had work to do but I am not doing it. I am volunteering for the market, again. 

That comes with lots of dismissal and a bit of bullying, and a bit of praise here and there, and has been somewhat effective, but at my personal cost. I did not sleep much last night. I'm fighting anxiety and the only saving grace is that I was not in the board room trying to help make the very hard decisions that had to be made. The breaking of confidentiality and the resignations to support friendships were not professional responses to the situation and now people are dividing off and imagining that it would be possible to invite the GM back. I'm embarrassed for my organization. 

It seems we've been badly managed for so long that people don't remember what good management looks like. Some of us do. It looks like a job description (which can be found in the Policies document, I believe) which is filled by a person who can handle all of the tasks in the time frame available. Who can prioritize the things that keep the organization solidly on track. Financial accountability is right up at the top of the priorities. It's the members' money...we make it with our work while we make our livings. We pay the fees, which have to be fair and sustainable. We want the budget to be followed. If there is a shortage, we want that to be identified and rectified before it gets too big to fix. The budget shortfall should not be surprising. The fact that it is due to overstaffing should have been addressed by fewer staff. It's not that difficult for someone who is a professional manager. You do what has to be done, and you do it professionally, without drama, without pain if you can. You use your skills.

It's not a personal situation, it's a business situation. Making it all about loving someone or even liking them is a messy, inappropriate use of emotions in what has to be a practical set of solutions. The missing skills have had to be filled in by volunteers, other hired people, or left unaddressed. Member complaints have been high. Members have life situations, business concerns, and all types of complex needs, but they can't dominate the job and they have to be handled well. We are independent business owners. Some of us are very experienced and skilled. It is not required that we like the manager, just that we have confidence that they can do the job, are doing the job, and are working to make the organization thrive. 

That just wasn't happening, and there were a host of member problems that were created and not managed well, in my direct observation. I'm not going to list any...they are now in the past, and hopefully solutions have been or will be found. We have to move forward and do better. 

Some leaders have stepped aside, and others will step in. Also, doesn't have to be dramatic. You do your part if you have the energy needed, and you do your best. You work with whomever else is in the room, no matter what you think about them, their style, their skills, or whatever you think. You work together for the common good. You set aside your less productive emotions and do the work. You can have boundaries, you can enter and exit at will...you are a volunteer. 

There is a world of difference between you and someone making twice as much as you have probably ever made, in  the amount of duties, the amount of stress, the number of skills needed. It is just not comparable. We need a professional manager to run our complex, deeply cultural and extremely important organization. That is really all that is happening right now. We will find a manager more suited to our current needs. 

No drama. No intrigue. No need to air every grievance or go back over every mistake or perceived error. You won't know all of what happened. You don't actually need to know. You want to know, sure. Drama is very attractive and even addictive to some people. But personnel issues are confidential. That protects your employees, keeps them safe so they can move on, and it protects your leaders and volunteers so they can continue to work for your common good.

It just isn't that complicated. Try not to make it worse than it needs to be.

Just Deserts

 I decided to put this same post in both of my blogs tonight. I don't have all that many readers, and they all might as well know that there really aren't two separate parts of me, but rather lots of parts, all operating at the same time.

Hello, it's me. I can't sleep. I noticed, when I got up after trying to sleep for a few hours, that the lights are on in my neighbor's house, as well. I imagine there are many who cannot sleep and this isn't something new, of course. But it is dark out in the world, much darker than I, for one, am used to.

I'm not naive. I've been a radical thinker from an early age, and I pay attention. I care about justice. I care about things that are life-affirming, both concrete and abstract things, and these are some times when it is impossible to rest easy. I knew the future would not be pretty, but I did fail to prepare for how fast and how hard it would come down on us.

I have this little thing I do, that I've done for almost 40 years, called the Jell-O Art Show. I write about it in my other blog, Gelatinaceae, which gets a lot more readers than this one does, because it is about art, and joy. Jell-O Art is a particularly joyful art form, silly, beautiful, awkward, glorious, and many times, jiggly and slippery and super uncooperative. It's the reason I call myself an artist, when in my profession I am a crafter, a production worker, a screenprinter and not all that skilled of one, despite doing it for my whole working life. I'm self-taught, so I'm just a worker. I like work and I am diligent, and I've done well with it in a limited and sustainable way.

But Jell-O Art is different. Producing and being in the Jell-O Art show engages all of me. Over the years I learned how to be an artist, how to imagine and conceptualize, how to find the deeper levels, how to put my whole self in and shake myself about. Every year I spend the three winter months of January through March working more or less full time on the Jell-O Art Show. Not only do I work out some kind of personal piece, which is an expression of something about my life or self, but I have been lucky enough to work with a very dear group of people called the Radar Angels. 

The individual Angels have come and go, and while there are still a few of us from the beginning in the late 70s and early 80s, it's an ever-changing group. We work in a process that is purely collaborative, with everyone pooling their talents to make something out of what we all bring. We brainstorm for a few weeks about what we want our show to be about. We throw out tons of ideas, and gradually we coalesce into something we all agree we want to say, using parody songs and a type of melodrama that is generally only a little bit serious. 

You can go to my other blog for about 15 or so years of what that has been about. In 2012 I was crowned as the Queen of Jell-O Art in recognition of how seriously I take Jell-O, and how important it is to me, and that just fueled this deeper appreciation I have for it and brought me into the role of bringing that passion and creative force to the public in the form of the show.

Now I generally write the bones of the script, which we develop together, and we choose the songs to fit and write our lines and pick our characters and figure out our costumes and I make a lot of the props and set pieces and we all work for the last few weeks to pull it all together to present it. This Saturday is when we will be doing it. 

Because these times have been so dark, and we are all of a mind about them, we did something we have always made ourselves avoid for the most part: we got political. We had to. Three of us even decided to play a few of the current archvillains of our times. We chose three out of the many, many that we could have chosen, and for each of us, it is not easy to do. We don't want to come on stage as racists, nazis, psychopaths and evil men. We don't even want to play men! This year in a weird twist, all of our actors are women, and all of our characters are men. At least they start out as men.

One of the themes we wanted to work on was gender...we wanted to explore honoring multiple genders and the fluidity of them, to have a world where that was open for people to be free about it, and make out statement of acceptance of it, but as the show developed we kind of stopped thinking about it. We just acted like people...as if gender didn't even exist. It just occurred to me tonight that we did that. It's a metaphor really, that if there was that openness (WHICH THERE IS!) everyone would live like that.

So that's operating. And in coming on stage, generally, we Angels feel loved. Our audience is the best. They always approve of whatever we do, our mostly amateur singing and presentation, our ridiculous costumes, our dumb jokes and sometimes stale humor. Our obvious theme is always Jell-O saves the world, no matter how much we try to say something else. It just comes out like that. 

But this time, Jell-O is a very weak weapon against the world. We are coming on stage to be hated, the three of us who are playing the billionaires. Really hated. We hate ourselves even. Yet we will sing and dance and pretend at the end that we are transformed and we hope to leave the audience feeling loved and ourselves, at least as the people we really are, back to feeling loved.

There is not any hope that the characters will be loved, no matter how much they are transformed, because no, they will not get what they deserve, they will not be stopped or even aware of our little play and our sad and profound comedy. We will have our little moments of joy, our escape, but it will not be fully satisfying when we walk off the stage and back into the dark world we are living through.

That's life I suppose. As an old person, when I look back at the brief times when things were going well and the culture was opening and affirming, it was never that for everyone. Black people were still being killed by the police and racists, different people of all kinds were still being othered, poor people were still being starved and caused to suffer and being deprived of their humanity. It has never been a pretty world, except of course for the birds and trees and flowing waters and incredible kindnesses and soft hearts and all that everyone attempts to create and hold sacred for themselves and each other.

It's enough to keep you up late every night, isn't it? It's enough to make you dissolve in wonder for your whole life, and then when you get old, like I have, it's enough to make you weep for the wasted moments and lost opportunities and very short time left to have some more. 

This is my late night Jell-O Art world, friends. Maybe I can sleep now. Maybe I have had enough, for now. I am pretty sure the light will come back in the morning, for me to work some more. I will never lose hope.

Dang

 Well, it finally came out that Market may be in pretty large red budget territory. This is exactly why we always hired with financial management right at the top of our ideal candidate qualities. This, sadly, is something I saw coming and warned people about.

Back in the 80s, we went for a couple of years without a Treasurer, which is a volunteer position that needs some expertise. When we got one, he told us we were $25,000 in the red, which back then, was huge. The manager team at the time threw up their hands and said they were just not that good with the money part. They'd been overspending.

So we all pitched in, cut the entertainment and promotions budgets in half, fired the GM, and kept the AM for continuity. We had fundraisers, we put together a cookbook of market recipes, we sought donations and grants, and we did that for a couple of years. We did end up firing that AM later as well, but for other reasons, and she had hired a financially smart AM by then, who despite being deceived when hired, said she would give us a year and got our budget back on track. That was when we instituted a membership fee, (only $5 at the time) and I'm guessing we also raised whatever other fees we could, but that was in a recession and after a devastating fire in which we lost nearly all of our accumulated infrastructure, and in a time when the weather was terrible and member numbers were falling. 

One of the things that helped us was moving to the Park Blocks, but right now our options are more limited. We got some improvements there over the winter but they also took away the coverings that had been helpful to the people whose spaces were under them, so probably no net gain there this time.

No one resigned from the Board back then, as far as I know, and I was Chair, so it was really hard. I was in my early 20s and didn't know much. People helped me learn, and I made some mistakes, but I rose to the challenge with the others and pulled in whatever friends and acquaintances I had in the community. Everybody helped.

Obviously with four people resigning from the Board and all new officers as well (except our overwhelmed but excellent Vice Chair who is in the burnout stage at the end of her 3-year commitment) we have a new, inexperienced team of leaders and they will need a lot of help. It's that kind of an opportunity to fix some of the things that caused this.

It's not personal, but we have to fire the GM who failed to do the financial management we needed. For whatever reasons, it's on her. And, we can't afford two office assistants and never could. Time to fix that mistake as well. So we will go from 6 in the office to 3. Make the AM the interim GM and do a hiring process with financial accountability at the top of the list again. Cut the entertainment and promotions budgets, cut whatever can be cut. Since we just had fee increases, do not make the mistake of putting this on the members, who did not cause the problem. Many of us are struggling and that is going to continue with this crazy economic situation the government is putting us into. It's on the members to fix it, so we need encouragement and care and support in order to do that.

However, it is really important to do this in the least dramatic way possible. Offer to let the GM resign rather than being fired, and avoid publicly trashing anyone who participated in the lack of oversight or whatever happened. Volunteers were never supposed to be in full charge of the spending, and giving the raises and promotions that happened was done without full disclosure because the spending was not being properly tracked at the management level. It was not the job of volunteers. They did their best. The budget was sound, except for the things that couldn't be planned for, like weather, the effect of dropping the November markets (fewer members now sell in October) and the dissatisfaction that drove away members and volunteers because of other aspects of management.

Obviously it is time to stop trying to kick members out or punish them for whatever...just stop. We will have to pull together hard to get through this. Do not take money out of savings to fix this hole and go on thinking we can do business as usual. This will be viewed as corrupt and will do more damage.

I have said many times that I have retired from volunteering and I absolutely need to stick to that. I know getting back in now will perpetuate the concept that a few strong people will fix things and keep us going and that is just a sacrifice of our personal lives and I just will not and can not do that at my age. I am so sorry. It is very hard for me to say no when there is a need. 

There are plenty of people who can fix this. Sure it will be hard, but it is not unprecedented. We have always been on a financial edge for all of our existence. We don't want to make it impossible for people to participate while other people get to cruise along. Hardship or opportunity need to be equally shared.

And hardest of all, we need transparency now. Admit mistakes were made, because as James Baldwin said, not everything that is faced can be solved, but nothing can be solved unless it is faced. To get people to care enough to pitch in, it has to be an atmosphere of safety and honesty. No one can be protected or coddled while other people continue to give more than they want to. Just say the truth. Don't make it personal. Don't accept or make excuses. It's not brutal honesty, it's just honesty. It can come with compassion.

If people were hired who didn't have skills, don't do that again. Move forward more sensibly. If, when making a decision, you don't feel right, think again. Make it feel right. When I was Chair, we actually began operating with consensus, so that we had to get everyone on board to make decisions. I'm not saying we can go to real consensus, but make sure we are still in consensus-seeking mode, to avoid bullying or dominant behaviors which are part of what got us to this point.

While this is a crisis, it is not going to kill the organization. There are plenty of options for getting back on solid ground. There are professional managers out there who would love this challenge. We have smart financially savvy members who can lead us back to solvency. We have smart and experienced members who can help us reconstruct strong governance. We can do this. 

Rise up and keep your ethics clean and your hearts open and learn to work strongly together. We are already on the path to fixing this. Trust is going to matter, so do the things needed to build trust. Be firm. Be strong. Give yourselves credit for all the things you have done right and are doing right and as well as you can. Stay positive. 

I'm willing to be a cheering member from the sidelines, it seems. It does really matter that we turn this around. Let's go.

 

Working through

 Of course even as I wrote the post about the Market I was working on the ways I would forgive and move forward through my disappointment to get back to support and love for the organization. I knew it might take awhile but that when I see someone or something needing support, my empathy would be there.

Living with the truth is hard. Much of it is subjective. Rarely is it an absolute. Things that are bad have good wrapped inside somewhere, usually. Mostly people need the chance to learn and to have patience extended to them while they do that. Everyone needs some kind of help.

One of our skilled members came out of retirement and offered to support the Board while they learn how to manage their challenges. I'm pleased that she did, even though I don't have the energy to pitch in and help this time. I don't, and never did, want the organization to fail to right itself. I've been there while we faced, as a group, some awful and discouraging situations. Looking back, I often wanted to not be there, to not be one of the ones capable of doing the work, and to not feel compelled to stick with it.

Something in me never let me walk away before. Maybe it was that people were depending on me, and needed my skills. Maybe it fed my ego or my sense of belonging, probably it fit well with my alignment of productivity with self-esteem. For whatever reasons, I was never able to turn my back and let others carry the load.

I think it is my age that is allowing me to do that now, the knowledge that as I turn 75 I don't have much time left. I have a lot to do with that little bit of time. I haven't written my books, my research isn't organized enough to be useful, and my property and house are getting a little beyond me. I decided I had to prioritize myself. I'm having to remind myself frequently that I made that choice, and I want to honor it. I am not guaranteed the time and capability to accomplish the things on my personal list.

I feel the draw of pitching back in every day. Right now I am overachieving the goals and tasks I set for the Jell-O Art Show, which is a week from Saturday. I'm making it through the list, but it is still long an I may not be able to do all of the things I want to do. I work all day every day on it. It's fun, though exhausting, and I am anxious all of the time. It's not for money. It's all about art, and right now, it is all about saving my life from the excruciating political situation that our evil leaders are putting the world through. 

The grief over setting back our world's peoples to the degree we are seeing is consuming. I won't live long enough to see these many broken promises put back together. It is devastating every day. It will cost lives, probably some close to me. It is so much bigger than anything going on in my microcosm.

In the past it has been my solace that I could keep my smaller world sweet and organized and the dissonance of the larger world didn't have so much discouraging power over me. That is true while I work on Jell-O for 10 more days. But I am not sure what I will do after that. 

I will work, as I still have an overwhelming amount of things on my other lists, and I will try to maintain some joy in there to sustain me. Spring and summer will help. Maybe the political fights will begin to turn in the sunnier directions as well. A lot of people are working on that. I still have hope, and I won't stop hoping.

I hope Market will find a way through this hard time as well. I'll find some ways to support, I expect. I don't want to hurt it more. It's not the hardest time we've had, by far. Some of the changes we will make will bring lasting good, that's certain. I guess what I wanted to come here to say tonight was that I still care, and can feel the forgiveness and compassion coming back. It didn't take as long as I thought it might. As I adjust to my new, non-leader role, I'm planning to forgive myself for what I'm not willing to do, as well as what I've not done as well as I might have. I'm going to forgive all of us. It's the smallest thing to start with, and will make way for the bigger things. Eventually all will be well again. Or well enough. 

Rescinded!

 Just a quick post to report that the Market Board did the right thing and rescinded the termination of Tia Maria's Pizzeria. She will be back in the Food Court!

I know this was hard on a lot of people but one thing we learned is that volunteers need a lot of support. Some things got set up to support the Board in learning more about how to do their jobs and things should improve.

It's not like everything got fixed, but it's some steps in the right direction.

Now I have to be productive! You may not know that I am a Jell-O artist and that the Jell-O Art Show is happening for the 35th (?) time on March 22 at Maude Kerns Art Center. It is something like the world has never seen. It's the Greatest Show on Earth! You will want to be there, particularly around 7:00 pm when the Radar Angels take the stage.

We always seem to channel the zeitgeist and surprise even ourselves. Hope to see you there! You can keep up with Jell-O Art on my other blog, Gelatinaceae.blogspot 

Never heard of Jell-O Art? Take a look. 

Power to the Members

 This is the absolute worst time for anyone in a power position in our community to do anything but support and strengthen the organization they are working with. Authoritarianism is naked and clearly being seen as the fear-based posturing that it is. Collaboration, cooperation, and right livelihood is the most important thing in the minds of most of the country and most of our community. Nobody at the top is safe from the community forum for justice.

Back in December when I heard about the termination of Tia Maria Pizzaria, I was shocked and horrified, even though I had seen it coming and witnessed much of the targeting and misrepresentation that was being shoved in her direction. I have known Sarah for ten years, and her partner Richard his whole life. I've been a leader and important member of the Saturday Market community for 50 years now. Fifty years of work, dedication, and patient untangling of the messes we get ourselves in, which have been many, and which apparently have not taught us anything that sticks. Edit: the Board voted on March 5th to rescind the termination!

Back in July I was blocked from participation in the mediation that was supposed to solve the problems. I advocated for it, as I thought some historical perspective about our values would help. We have always tried to "keep everyone in the basket." We support our members while they learn and grow, we mentor them for success, and we rarely give up on them. Even when they really lose it, we graciously find a way to let them keep making their living among us and make whatever changes or amends are needed for us all to work together. We don't all get along. We sometimes go years avoiding each other while we work through our inconvenient differences. And we try not to make them public. I thought with the support of the mediators, the right actions would be found, and I think they would have, but that didn't happen.

So I wrote a blog post in December about my anger, but I took it down as I realized how triggered I was and how being more rational would help avoid blowing things up. My motive was partly selfish...I knew how things were likely to play out for market and I didn't want to fix them this time. I am tired of being the person who always comes up with the strength and vision needed to keep us on track. I used to have more help with it, but people have retired and been pushed out and I felt alone. I resigned as Secretary, an important officer position, so I wouldn't be held responsible for the decisions and actions I could see were fixed in some people's minds already. I didn't make a big statement at the time. Mostly I needed to remove myself from the manipulation that was happening to me, the withholding of information, the misrepresentations, and the many dismissals I was feeling for me personally. I couldn't operate with integrity, and wasn't being treated as a leader for the first time. I had to do a lot of processing just to not hate the org that is my lifeline.

Frankly, I didn't think this time it was fixable, after I witnessed the lying, gaslighting, and misrepresentation involved in the termination and other situations that were happening between staff and members. I knew what I saw, and I know how it works in our organization. The members have the power. When they want something different, they will make that happen.

I have tried to lead from the middle. I will support the status quo, as long as I am not morally compromised, but when I see that the membership has decided, I would never stand in the way and try to defend something not defensible. Right now we are at that point, where the Board did something not defensible, prodded by the inexpert leadership, and they don't seem to see the big picture.

We are headed into an economic collapse, recession, and today the tariffs take effect while our safety net is being shredded. To think that our little happy event every week will not be affected is crazy. All of our costs will be going up. We have many, many members who were already struggling to maintain their lives, buy gas, supplies, pay rent, all of those things. Market is their lifeline. Some of us can manage the increased costs, but many will not be able to. They will have to quit, move, cut spending, not volunteer, or manage their mental health rather than make money in a craft or food business like the ones we have. We are not essential as far as consuming goes. What makes us that is our social capital.

We may get a flood of new members, who will all need all kinds of support while they learn how to succeed in our world, which is not easy. Customers could disappear. Veterans, retired people, students, so many of our regular customers might have to pull back and won't have disposable income. More people will need us, but it won't just make more money for us. It will increase all of our costs. 

One thing that we take for granted is the goodwill that we have earned over the 55 years of trying to do our best. We have been honored as an org that cares about our community, has the best values, is working for a better world, and can be counted on. When this public finds out that the pizza booth is gone, they will ask questions. What will the answers be? Did she commit a crime? Were there health department violations that were dangerous? She did not even violate policies. She was targeted and harassed for two years instead of  getting the mentoring she deserved as a new food booth. She showed great courage as she took the stand that she had free will, free speech, and the right to resist control and domination tactics. She did not do anything that would be considered a crime, and there really were not any serious issues. I have seen the "evidence."

Many of us saw this happening and were quiet about it, not knowing if we had all the facts. Even the Board who made the decision never met with her, never heard her side of any of it. Some did not even know her, at all, but just believed what they were told by a manipulative and deceptive power structure. 

Now we have the facts, and the Board was wrong. They have so far refused to reverse the decision, as the GM has threatened and manipulated them. They are fearful and confused, but they are acting as their own worst enemy.

I've worked with probably 20 managers over the years, and been involved in at least four times when we had to fire or accept the resignation of ones who just couldn't do the job. There were lots of reasons, but some of them were social. Playing favorites, lying to the Board, being less than transparent and wielding power inappropriately were some of them. When they lost the members' trust, it was over for them. We are there.

This will be public, and if we lose the trust of the community, we can fail. We could lose our market, and this isn't hyperbole. We've watched the erosion of values and trust at OCF, and although you may not see it from the outside, there has been enormous cost. Many professional and valuable volunteers have stepped away, permanently. This is happening to Market. 

I gave and gave. I never charged full value for my services, which were varied. I promoted the market always, went on TV, worked on the archives, applied for and got grants, assisted staff in so many ways, but I am not doing those things now. I know of others doing the same reversal. I am honest, so I would not consider working the honor system by not paying my full fees, but not everyone has that red line. People who are struggling to survive might not pay that full percentage, especially if their income goes down and they can't buy food and gas after putting in a full day's work. We have our ways of "quiet quitting" and we make moral choices without telling anyone. We may just pay the minimum when previously we included contributions or supported the Kareng Fund. We may only come once a month to save on gas, childcare, and other costs. 

No one is required to support the market. They do it because they believe in us. They trust us. When that is gone, it may never come back. When this makes it to the general knowledge of the community, it could hurt us in ways we won't even realize. Throwing more of the members money at promotions, staff salaries, or feel good social media posts will just ring even more hollow. 

I'm not going to protect the Market like I used to. The people who did this have to reach within and think again at all that they are responsible for. They did this wrong, it was a mistake, and it is time to make it right. 

Reinstate Sarah Marie Jones, and stop all punitive actions directed at all members. Put any drive for strict compliance on hold as we hang on and try to navigate a changed world. We need each other. Take another look at things like "consequences" and start treating the members like the independent, capable business owners we are. We have to work together, or we will sink.

History and the Present of Awareness

 Yes, everything is really crazy out there and people are just trying to maintain some kind of equilibrium and I am no exception. I'm over-consuming news and newsletters I subscribed to, thinking I may get off FB, but that's pretty hard and I am no really close to it yet. I'm not too interested in adding another platform like Bluesky, since I already spend way too much time sitting here at my old laptop.

I am feeling vulnerable all the time so can't really handle many challenges and keep putting off even the seemingly simple things like driving and purchasing things. My vacuum cleaner is broken (I do have a shop vac I could bring in if it were really important) and I've been telling myself to get a new one for a couple of years, but now I don't want to accidentally buy a maga one so am putting it off until at least the economic shutdown day is over. Like apparently a lot of people, I put a hold on discretionary spending when things started to get wild. I might need every penny.

Of course I am not a consumer of much at all, so it isn't hard. I buy food. I use the library and the Little Free Libraries and read things online, though I still get the RG for archiving purposes, even though it is a crazy waste of money. I had to buy things like a new kitchen faucet and new hasps for my shed as someone broke in and stole my little old Burley trailer and my bicycle pump (to fill up the flat tires, duh.) It was over 35 years old but in good shape and I miss it, but I was astonished to see that they did not take my bike, or my big trailer, and I speculated that they had some kind of compassion for me. Probably they just did not want to take anything that could be easily traced. I would recognize the Burley, but couldn't prove anything, so I just let it go and thought about protectionary measures to take. I took some. 

I have always insisted on feeling safe in my home and that involves some denial, but this political situation is going to touch all of us so my anxiety is worse. At least I have tamped down parts of it by withdrawing from volunteering for the most part, and am just giving my time away to the Kareng Fund and the Jell-O Art Show at present. Feels better. Jell-O is the only fun thing in my life really, besides birding and gardening, and it's full on right now. Going to work on the script after this...loosening up my creativity.

Still working on learning how to be better at anti-racism and taking down White Supremacy Culture and it's getting easier to deal with the feelings that always come up. Once I realized that my dad was most certainly more racist than it appeared: he signed a deed with a covenant to get our house in 1956, and we have a photo of him with a soapbox racer he built that sure looks like it has a KKK symbol on it (from like 1934?). I remember him saying things that would definitely sound racist now but he died in 1970 so a lot of what we heard was just Nixon-era bs. But, racist. My Mom was less so, but those times were just shrouded in it. There was one of the last recorded lynchings of the time right near where we lived, in a place I walked by hundreds of times. We knew nothing about it, but it occurred to me recently that probably all of the Black people in the area knew all about it. It has been recognized officially with a sign now so if I ever go back there I will search it out. 

We have plenty here in Eugene of course, in history and in the present, so it's vitally important to keep dissecting it and working on it. I was a tiny bit successful in the pandemic getting groups to at least talk about it, but naturally was shut down repeatedly by other white people who needed to exercise their right to comfort. To me it is important to keep those tenets of WSC in front of mind because they don't just operate in racial situations, they operate in us all of the time. 

They're not easy to deconstruct. Professionalism is one that seems quite confusing, but it is a gatekeeping tactic to exclude anyone who doesn't have higher education or familiarity with the operating rules of whatever group we are in. You criticize their inability to grasp your unwritten rules about conduct, communication, whatever. You insist it is a universal expectation everyone shares, but guess what? You have no idea about all that you are assuming and the restrictions you are putting on their behaviors and words. There is a lot of catering to that one in my world. Also Worship of the Written Word. I am immersed in that one. You can pick up on it when you hear certain people labeled as "articulate" as if that were an innate quality that only certain people have somehow earned or been born with, and others have achieved despite it not being natural to them. Like a badge of honor...or supremacy. 

There's a lot to be worked on and it's a lifetime activity. It's okay to not be perfect at it (Perfectionalism) but there are so many resources it's not okay to not be working on it. Especially right now when "our" country just took a Nazi turn that exposes that we have always been on this exclusionary and sick course. It's less hidden but privilege is always operating and that is sadly part of why I can feel safe, except for being old, and being a woman, which are also strengths I can draw on when I am not afraid. I can still lead, and I still have contributions to make. My fear is hurting the community when I don't operate despite it. Courage is for everyone.

Here's a great distillation and discussion of the fifteen tenets of WSC:  White Supremacy Culture

Reread it often. I get something new out of it every time I dig in. My family on our last zoom started asking me about some things I was doing in DC in 1969 when I was a student and my roommate was the daughter of a high-powered lawyer. They were defending the Chicago Eight and Black Panthers and I actually got to meet and hang out with some of those heroes, even though I was super naive and not even 20 and not educated about it in the least. I made some dumb mistakes but when I look back, I didn't reject any of them of fear them, and in fact I developed this other attitude, which is still racist, but in a different way. I was really attracted to them, fascinated, and wanted their approval. I'm sure this is a common interaction for many Black people and no doubt highly irritating and I still feel it all the time. There's some jealousy in there, since Black culture is so much more developed than my European American one, and I feel the same about Jewish culture. My roommate was also one of the first Jewish people I had ever met...I went to a pretty segregated school system in a suburb in Delaware (yes, my family has met Biden et al) and we just lived in our little (albeit painful) bubble. My dad worked for duPont and had some type of mental illness medicated with alcohol so we had a bit of a fraught childhood. But when I was 19 and 20 I was launched out into the bigger world where I became a political radical and never looked back. Raised Catholic too. Had so many confusing things operating. 

It's not ever really going to be sorted out, no matter how much I write about it or the years of therapy it took just to have a somewhat positive outlook, but I like learning and working on things and just keep journaling and trying. Sadly a lot of it was traumatic so it's hard to revisit. I even threw away most of my first journal so I can't factcheck myself. I had forgotten a lot of details but my little sister happened to be visiting me for the weekend when we had dinner at the Mayflower Hotel with some of these important people (and no doubt many more I did not recognize) and we got chased by the mounted cops who erupted from behind the Washington monument at the demo the next or previous day. She was only fourteen at the time...mostly I remember being horrified that I had endangered her. Guess we learned a lot that weekend.

Lots of things. I don't really enjoy going back over them and can't really read other narratives of that time without huge discomfort, but someday I will do some research and see what I can document. There could have been photos of that dinner. There are also people I could contact if I want to.

But anyway, here it is the end almost of Black History Month and next one is Women's, right? More. those liberation movements were effective and that's one reason we have this current backlash, which is a mild term for this insanity we are going through. I still feel like I can read my way out of it. I hope that is a little bit true. I know I will be asked to do a lot more though, by my conscience if nothing else. I will try. I will keep trying as long as I live, and that is not nothing.

The Curse of Interesting Times

Oh my gosh, things are wild. Everyone knew it would be bad, but of course not this bad! In my life there is plenty of microcosm/macrocosm stuff happening at the same time, which is just extra frightening, but also helpful.

It's not that hard to feel it when your free speech rights are threatened. Attempts are being made to keep me from having contact with other members of my organization, specifically the Board. We watched this at OCF, when instead of each individual Board member's email being available, it changed to a gatekeeping email that was controlled by the ED. As far as I know, no policy was written that said members could not contact their Board members, it just became less open and transparent and the members had less access. If they could get those emails, they still had access, but they were controlled to one step away. Seemed benign enough but it wasn't. It was part of a control structure designed to shift freedom to a smaller group of members, and take it away from the larger group. The same justification was used as what's happening now: the members are "mean" and staff needs to be protected from them. Do you know anyone who is mean? Okay, maybe a couple of people, but is the problem they don't feel their needs are being addressed? Listen to what they are saying without just dismissing them.

 I've been receiving emails telling me to stop emailing a list of members that includes the Board, which are vaguely threatening. I know there is not policy. I know I have free speech rights. I know as keeper of the archives that I have lots of  resources that members and Board members need. After 50 years I know what is good and not for my member organization. I know gatekeeping is a bullying tactic to control free speech. So yeah, that is happening. I'm mostly ignoring it. I've been pressured to allow "facilitation" of my archiving project, that I stepped up to do about ten years ago, and have invested hundreds of hours in, plus my own money. I don't need anyone controlling it. Volunteers like me do big things when they are supported, not controlled. I've expressed what I need in support, but it hasn't materialized. When I share materials, I am questioned as to my "authority" regarding the materials. Are they "official"? Um, what does that mean? It's a surprising definition that is new, referring to the higher level of control over member-generated materials. Now they have to go through the gatekeeping system to be shared.

The Board is struggling because of inadequate training materials and neutral information providers to be able to make sensible, informed decisions. The erosion of member rights that started in about 2015-2016 has gradually led us to a place where members do not know what their rights are, and are afraid to speak up. The procedures that are in place direct them to contact the staff or Board Chair but if they do not feel safe or confident that their concerns will be addressed, they have no other options unless they are free to contact other members. Members being sanctioned for speaking to other members is happening. Letters are being withheld from Board members or delayed from being addressed unless they are edited, or they're just not being shared in an attempt to marginalize the input of particular members. Vague terms are used such as "protocol," "improper" and "inappropriate" which are subjective and meant to intimidate. I'm not having it.

People just not accepting unfair practices are popping up all over, and in the macrocosm, of course, it is obvious what the threats are and how serious they are. Will enough people in the microcosm see and hear what is happening and stop the direction of the oppression of members? A few are seeing it, and more are feeling it, though they are still fearful of being sanctioned.

With the new rule that a member's rights can be terminated with only four anonymous complaints, all members are at risk. The rule does not specify a timeframe...over years, in one year, in a lifetime? Can all of the complaints come from one person? Do they have to be a member, too? If three people sign on, is that three complaints, or still just one? Can staff use it as a tool to ban members they dislike for various reasons? What happens if you don't comply? I don't think I have to answer these questions. I've seen many, many instances where a member gets more than four complaints. The people who made and sold the sand-filled animals got regular complaints filed against them and went into Standards to prove they made them, more than four times. Jewelers often file complaints when they see the many violations possible in the world of jewelry. Anonymous complaints are necessary, in some cases, but they are also dangerous. Not everyone is on the same ethical page.

I know at least two members who got the book thrown at them for not being satisfied with staff actions regarding a load-in problem caused by staff. A number of us witnessed the incidents and the conflicting narratives that were pushed that resulted in the suspension of longstanding practices and nothing created to solve the problems. Members were just pressured not to talk about it to each other. A false narrative was pushed by a misled Board member and the Board took responsibility for crafting a solution for an operational problem that is not one they need to be asked to solve. They do policy. Staff does operations. I watched all of it, and I understand what was underneath it, but that does not make it right and it was handled really badly.

It's shocking to me every time that manipulation and gaslighting prevents the transmission of our huge treasury of institutional knowledge. I've been keeping extensive archives since 2009 when I came back to the minutes-recording task. As Secretary for 15 years I tried hard to make sure every piece of business or culture was retained for the public record and archival use of members and the public. Our history is the city's history, even the state's. Saturday Market is for everyone, for the community, and not just the community of members. We can have two community members on our Board...they don't even have to be paying members. We have always tried hard to be open and inclusive to the maximum degree.

It's complex how we do that, of course. We don't necessarily benefit from news coverage of our internal struggles, so we tend to try to handle them internally. It isn't ideal when our members get frustrated and think going to the media or City Council will help them get their needs met. But if we are not open to our members and dedicated to making sure their needs are met, they will go public. 

In the recent case of the harassment and termination of a member, who runs a highly popular and productive food booth, it started because she was just not having it when the coercive gaslighting and manipulative tactics began. Many of us with histories of being bullied have quick and decisive self-protection mechanisms in place, and we have learned to refuse bullying. We recognize the tactics right away. We draw our boundaries. Instead of the mentoring and organizational support for a new food booth, she was subjected to control and domination tactics designed to force her to comply to new regulations and procedures that members had not had input into, except a select few who were convinced it was the right thing to do. I protested at that time, as an officer, that our history showed that this was a bad idea, and that there would never be 100% compliance from our members on any kind of decree from the top. I know us. We've always been anti-authoritarian and it's a good thing.

But then a little campaign was begun to push out the elders from leadership roles. A letter was put out by one member that said all the old people should get out of the way and let the younger people lead. There were only five or six older people in leadership roles, and we knew we were the targets. Of those people, there is now only one left on a committee, and none in leadership roles. In subtle ways we were hustled out. Everyone was gaslighted to think this was a natural process and not one of coercion. Sorry, I saw it and felt it. I stayed in as long as I could but it was stifling and people stopped listening to me. I tried to sit aside and let some terrible decisions go by, sometimes speaking from the minority, sometimes objecting to the tactics. It didn't work, and the personal cost was high. I resigned last fall from my leadership roles and have now resigned from contracting, (recording and screenprinting services) and most of all, I have resigned from doing the staff's work for them.

I spent countless hours doing tasks that were in the job descriptions of staff, trying to hand them back with the transmission of why they were historically done in certain ways, and set good examples of how to do them well. I wrote several complicated grant applications (dozens of hours) to assist staff in bringing in needed income. I attempted to launch a merch program which failed. I proposed a community event to strengthen our alliances with other nonprofits and city agencies and community partners, but it was handed to a tiny committee to organize without sufficient organizational event management. It didn't have the desired effects. I had to give up being the liaison between members and staff and the city in construction projects as I was cut out of getting direct information from the city and when I gave out the information I did have, to members, I played the fool when it was incorrect and inadequate. The whole loss of spaces to the storm drains was mishandled by both the city and two sets of managers, and all I could do was apologize to the membership and end my role.

Step by step I pulled out and put up my boundaries to the manipulation and coercive tactics. I tried to keep a low profile and not blow things up in a destructive way. I kept my justifications private and allowed others to collect their own experiences and data. But then when the terminations started to be inevitable, I had to start giving archival information for the common good.

I was astonished to see how much things have eroded since only 2021 and 2022. I feel compelled to help despite my better judgement. I refuse to engage directly in power struggles with a bully, but I have experienced retaliation and expect more. I am a resource for the organization, and anyone who knows how I have operated in the 50 years I've been a member can see how useful I have been.

I lead from the middle. I am committed to allowing consensus, truth and honest actions to proceed, even when I don't agree with them. I gave up on the cancelling of the November market, as I was in the minority after a managed campaign to eliminate it. It hurt the bottom line, as no one attended much in November and now people are taking their vacation month in October so that month has become less profitable. I knew that building up the member numbers without having enough access for them on regular Saturdays was going to create a large body of minimally committed members who would get discouraged and go away. I know why we don't budget for growth, as it is a mixed blessing. I know all about what staffing levels should be, how nepotism hurts the other staff, how to avoid a staff/member opposition. I know how members react to tightening of standards and policies unless they are given chances, lots of chances, to give input and speak about their needs. We have always worked hard to improve member services, access, community building, and diversity in every way we can see to do it. And we have always depended heavily on the volunteer participation to do it, welcoming disagreement while we built consensus in order to find the "elegant solution" in the middle of the round table.

We've just been going in the wrong direction with the wrong leadership for the times. The macrocosm is speaking directly to us and we had better listen. We have a lot at risk. During recessions and times of job loss, we get more members who can be desperate to make a living. It's not the time to be quibbling over perfect compliance to controlling rules and policies and procedures. It's time to be working in honest good faith to stay out ahead of our developing problems and be ready for change.

We stand for excellent values and the larger community depends on us. We are the community gathering and the business incubator and the joy in the center of town. So much depends on  the health of our tiny little nonprofit. We must hold ourselves to the highest standards of behavior, compassion, empathy, and right action. We must have better leadership that understands who we are, and how we got that way.

So don't let our Rubio take over our archives, or our Musk take over our finances. Don't let our Bondi restrict our freedom of speech. Let's be careful with our precious organization that so many of us depend on for our future and present lives. Listen to your elders. Open yourself to bringing the energy and new ways of thinking along into the traditional structure for the best of all worlds. Please.

Flooding the zone

 We're all going to have to keep reminding ourselves all of the things we learned about bullying in the last go-round. Their tactics are very identifiable so don't let yourself get buried in reaction if you can help it. Go back and refresh yourself on things like DARVO and co-dependence. When there is a controller there is a complier. Maybe don't be either of those.

I read that as many as 40% of people are authoritarian-leaning...they like being controlling or controlled by other people, stronger, smarter people they think. I'd guess they don't even recognize some of it, since it feels normal to them. One thing I learned about predatory people is that their sycophants cozy right up to them because it feels safer there. When you are looking out at and pointing to the same victims, you feel less likely to be a victim yourself. Of course it is an illusion of safety, not real safety.

You aren't respected by the oppressor, you're convenient to be used to add legitimacy or help them be respected. As a person who was subject to tyrant behavior since birth, I am pretty easy to manipulate, so have learned many ways to identify my emotions around it and work hard to not submit. Many times I have recognized it but gone along anyway for various reasons...I actually agreed with what they wanted, or it was easier, or I didn't want to get boxed in or out by giving a non-compliant response. I'm not proud of that survival behavior, but if I walked out of every situation where attempts to coerce me into compliance were used, I'd have nothing at this point...it has happened so often.

There's just a  high level of cultural support for dominant and coercive behaviors. Mostly people avoid confrontation so often the bullies win. Very often. It is also true that people who speak out against them are not supported. It scares other people off, seems too passionate and idealistic, and the person speaking out is marginalized. As an old white lady I now get marginalized a lot. It's really easy to say things like "Is she all right? She must be going through something. She is too intense to be rational about this. Maybe she's just paranoid." I hear that even from people who think of themselves as my friends.

Of course a lot of people are feeling not listened to at this point. Anything I say seems suspect under that kind of scrutiny...but people, that is blaming the victim. If I react to bullying tactics by speaking forcefully myself, the proper response ought to be asking questions, if needed, validating that there might be truth in my position, at least listening respectfully. But in my microcosm, I just brought down more control tactics on me. There's a gatekeeping going on to protect the bully, so my influence is set aside as if I were just irrational or too soft. I was told that I "always choose the underdog." 

I do care a lot about justice. I also care that in situations that are difficult, that we keep our minds open to all of the input before making a decision, and we listen to everyone with respect. Keep in mind that if you find someone annoying, that is on you, as you are the person having that reaction. What they are doing or saying annoys you. If you find them difficult in some way, you are the person having the difficulty. Your first reaction should be figuring out ways to increase your knowledge and skills so you can listen to them without having your emotional reactions that lead you to marginalize them.

I'm pretty done trying with quite a few of the people in the power structures that I have to interact within. I'd rather not hold any power if I have to cozy up to people with domination tendencies. I have pulled back and let go and it has been interesting. At first it felt devastating as I realized how few choices I had in the matter. The many ways my work was discarded and destroyed were sad, and happened fast. Things I had tried to keep in place to moderate how people used power were gone, and then even used against me in some sick Darvo ploys. 

My basic feeling is that you can't control other people and you shouldn't be trying to. You can attempt to gain their cooperation, if they are willing, through negotiation and discussion, through group process that is allowed to flow and be faulty until the elegant solutions are found. That is what we used to do. In recent times, control has descended and you can put it in the framework of white supremacy culture if you want...it fits. Even though it doesn't seem to be racial or about the usual categories of disenfranchised, it is still the same tenets. 

Right to comfort, defensiveness, either/or thinking, sense of urgency, quantity over quality, only one right way, power hoarding. There are more. How many of us take a look at the tenets of WSC and look within to see which ones we have internalized? Not enough of us to make a difference, it seems. It's hard to do! We've been internalizing these things our whole lives. 

I never recognized any of these things as a child, with a racist alcoholic father and a coerced mother. We were all afraid of my dad, with good reason. We of course thought things really were our faults. Overcoming these things takes a lifetime, but periodically we get glimmers of insight, and it's our main job to follow through on them and take a deeper look into what is bringing them to light. What just happened? It wasn't random. It's possible it wasn't even about you!

Of course right now the shock and awe is working and we are all cringing from at least some of it. This will not be a good time to make decisions or progress on the more subtle microcosm problems. No one is going to have the energy for it. But I hope, somehow, people in power start to recognize their motives and see who they are not supporting by trying for more control. It's not all about people who are obviously struggling or marginalized. It's about the systems we are using out of habit and "good intentions" to keep this WSC in place. We're so used to it, it feels safe and normal. 

We didn't work hard enough on it so far, despite all the marching and sharing and liking we did on social media. Not enough of us did the inner work. We're in big fucking trouble and nobody is safe until all of us are safe. Listen to the people who have done the work, search them out, read those long essays and think as hard as you can about the darkness we promote because it is what we have learned to do.

I'm getting ready to get off social media, so started a couple of things. I tried to delete some of my photos from FB, but guess what, you can't! Those photos don't belong to you. I went through all of the setting things I could understand and tried to download them, but that didn't work, even when I "got permission" to do so. I can try again. I also started clicking the "x" on every ad in my feed. At first they increased so that every other post in my feed was an ad, increasingly irrelevant. I am trying to stop feeding the algorithm, but I don't have the knowledge to know effective ways. It's going to be all or nothing with FB, so I'll be choosing nothing pretty soon. 

Giving up my power with the two main organizations I'm in has been fascinating. It has opened up a much better way for me to interact, as "just a member" who has to be taken at my word. I now have no say in any of it, and whatever I do say is set aside. Now that I'm not cozied up with my manipulators, I'm not important enough to them to hear much of anything from them, which is a big relief. I don't matter. It might just be my way to survival, and my ticket to deeper work on how to sit next to the other people who don't matter in more effective ways. Because guess what? When you let go of the power, you can see it. People at the top of the hierarchy don't even see the hierarchy. They are busy congratulating themselves on how effective and useful they are.

Maybe take a look at the other side of "useful" and see how you are being used. It's not a pretty sight.

Just Don't Comply in Advance

 And don't follow illegal orders.

I'm trying to restore my sense of peace and safety in this new year but it hasn't quite gotten there yet. It's not a simple thing to do, considering the political situation and how the culture has changed in response. The authoritarian attitudes and skills of predatory people have become much more the norm than is healthy or acceptable so I don't expect the rest of my years to feel great. If nothing else, the climate situation is a constant threat.

Getting rid of disturbing or demanding people, groups, or activities only helps a little...ignorance isn't bliss. I really don't do well with this freezing fog, either. Maybe when the sun comes out I'll get back to pruning and yardwork, which I enjoy and generally can do no matter the weather. Once I get out there it's always fun. 

My wrist injury is in the past, but as a cautionary tale I hope it always resonates. I bought a sturdy stepstool for my kitchen. It has helped with a cleaning project that I have possibly not done in the twenty years I have lived here...cleaning behind the stove. I built these cute cabinets around my little stove but accessing them is tough and it's been on my list for a long time to pull the stove out and clean everything. I had some of my jar collection back there and probably need to get rid of it, but I'm not quite ready. I feel like glass jars might become an endangered consumer item...I suspect most jars and bottles used today are lined with plastic to make them lighter and cheaper, if the products haven't gone all the way to plastic.Of course I won't get rid of canning jars.

I have this odd earthquake preparation habit that makes me keep things that aren't immediately useful and jars are among those. Food storage will probably need to increase in the recovery period for such a disaster and I have lots of water stored too. I hesitated to put any water behind the stove, because if the jugs break, it will be hard to clean up, but maybe they won't break. I put a few there because I also have to do my preparation for being an old lady and that means removing things I can trip over like water jugs. Haven't gone full on there because I love my throw rugs. Maybe I've had all the broken heels I'm going to have in my lifetime.

Lifetime...it seems way too short now. I still have a lot to do and the will to do it is less...I want more reading time and less work. But I also need to be productive so I keep trying to get interested in my projects. I got out my house and neighborhood research but had to put it away as I just can't do it now. It's Jell-O Art Season and that's going to start taking a lot of my time. That's a lot of fun, but also work, and I need to feel some passion about it for maximum art value. I made some pieces to get started but it wasn't enough fun.

Succeeded in finding a nurse practitioner who will take my new advantage plan but don't have an appointment until August, which is fine actually. I don't want to go to any appointments for a long time.

Today is my third session at trying to write this...had a lot of distressing communications to deal with but I finally just drew the self-preservation line. Adrenaline is my main negative health consequence of this life I have created and accepted...and that damage is cumulative. I don't even want to know what my insides look like, my brain and heart. Caring too much is a type of disease I guess. We have to release ourselves from it to restore.

But I think a lot about the 15 characteristics of white supremacy culture and I think Right to Comfort is one of the main ones I have to fight against. Thinking we can just sit in the rose garden and be served in so many ways is deep within most of us without our direct knowledge. Why should we have to grapple with these complex issues we didn't create? Can we really have any influence? Obviously we see that we are still operating in strengthening them if we don't fight. Complicity, white innocence, allowing ourselves to be soothed into believing that we won't be directly affected...easy ways out. Not watching the inauguration will have little effect...and if you look at the DC march happening today, you can see that it is not very multicultural. The votes taken in November show that a lot of people hung back and let this happen. It's not going to be easy to recover from this election. People who will be directly affected are convinced that the majority did not care. Actually the majority probably does care...but we have gotten to a place where the majority is not in charge. So if we care, we have got to get a lot louder, and a zillion times more inclusive.

Looking at my microcosm and seeing how the majority is disenfranchised has been daunting...I'm not afraid to analyze my own complicity even though I can't take any of it back. I tried to go along so that things could rebuild without more struggle but that sadly did not help. My reluctance to keep speaking up did not protect me from damage and it allowed the authoritarian influences to strengthen. Institutional memory is imperfectly carried in fewer people as time goes on and there has been a direct and effective campaign to push the lessons of the past aside and insist that "this is the way we're doing it now." It's pretty frightening to see what we've lost. I don't know anyone who was afraid to speak up during previous management structures and now nearly everyone is. Communications are minimal and dripping with control and dismissiveness. Bringing the problems is now the crime and solving them is just not a priority. We're headed for much harder times and I'm expecting the burden to be heavy.

Fortunately I know my worth, finally, as I approach age 75. I have skills and the means to support myself and thrive at least physically, if I'm careful and diligent. I see now that I can't count on it as heavily as I thought I could...OCF pass costs rose 50% over just the last few years...that won't stop. All of our fees at SM went up last year and it wasn't enough...will the people doing the financial work have better solutions than more increases? The results of that for both organizations will be decreases in membership and the positive regard of members for the needs of the organizations. We expect good management that honors our needs. Whether we're members just starting out or those facing the diminishing of our capabilities, the majority of us have limited resources and other options besides those two selling opportunites. Not recording and analyzing our member trends leaves the orgs without the knowledge and tools to prevent the erosion that we've seen before. Quitting or quiet quitting is already happening. People are afraid to speak up and think that they're the only ones having problems, so solutions are way out of reach. First you have to acknowledge the problem, right?

But I stepped out of leadership so these solutions are in other hands now. All of the institutional knowledge I carry is not going to be accessed and freely given as it has been for the last couple of decades. WSC does not really honor the wisdom of the elders...individualism convinces people they don't need history or the community to do what they see as applying their skills to the issues. When the skills are domination and control, I feel like this is ignoring the social progress that the larger, multicultural society has made over the last forty or so years. Progressivism is out...fear is in charge. 

It takes inner strength to get through times like these. I'm trying to build more of that and see trends rather than believe the presentations. I've seen bad leaders before. We've always been able to move past them with common values, common sense, and speaking truth. It's harder, but it's not yet impossible.

Democracy dies in darkness though. Secrecy is not going to be a good plan. We can all continue to demand transparency, details, discussion. Keep looking for the win-win solutions instead of the win-destroy solutions. I do not want to be on the winning side when the fights are not fair. I'm embracing my strength as a loser and someone who will be vulnerable to marginalizing. I hope I'll be speaking up. 

I hope you will be too.