After the third weekend

In many ways, Holiday Market brings out the best of our members. In general, we are not competitive, each of us wishing for the success of all of us, the positive experiences of our visitors, the warmth of whatever season each of us is experiencing. We are mostly a beautiful group of generous, creative artisans and people who embrace the joy and ease we all want in life. We delight in each other. We truly work for a mutual benefit as our legal status describes us. I'm not just being ridiculously positive...I am in my 50th season of being a market member and I have known this week after week, in all of the random conversations and friendships developed over the years.  

At Holiday Market, the greater ease of not being impacted minute by minute by the weather allows us to visit more with our booth neighbors and share more of who we are in our larger lives. We talk about our families, our health, our discoveries of what has worked to solve our problems, our hopes, dreams and what we like to eat. We are having fairly intimate relationships all day every day, and sharing those with our customers too, who respond with their own amazing stories and reflections. I used to write about this a lot when things were better internally with the market. It's about life, loss, building and taking apart the lovely silk of our tapestry. 

But now the false narratives being spread by those in power who don't love us are causing rifts and damage that will take a long time to repair. We are told our members are "mean" and all of our staff who have left have gone because of that. We are told to praise staff and support them but nothing is said about our support for our fellow members, our mutual appreciation network that is so important. The latest false narrative I heard this weekend was that our financial troubles are caused by members who abuse the honor system by not paying their fair fees. So anyone who reports low earnings is dishonest and a liar and cheat. Confidential information is being shared about some who are suspected of this. Well, honor is personal and everyone does get a choice about how honorable and honest they are, but we have definitely seen in that area and in all areas, people support the market in direct relation to how they feel they are being supported.

I'm a goody-goody and I can afford to pay honest fees, and always have. If I sell after I pay, I make it up the following week. However, I have pulled all of my extra support, such as the donations I have regularly made, my at-cost deals for printing services, my secretarial duties which at times amounted to doing the work of staff as a volunteer. Sometimes it was an insane amount of time invested, like during the last two staffing crises when I was essentially the unpaid assistant manager and my job of overseeing the organization became the hands-on doing of the tasks. When I felt supportive of what was being done, I made those sacrifices of my time (which amounted to not working on my own business and life) because my skills were needed and I enjoyed being part of things, making my contributions. 

At times I was trapped into it, but set aside my reluctance and did my duty. My real Duty of Loyalty and Care is to the organization, regardless of my official title or lack of one, as I have the real need to make a living and the emotional need to make sure the legacy of what has come before is protected and shepherded into the future. So many thousands of people need the market, not just the artisans and musicians, but the greater community and the city itself. We are an important tourist destination and gathering place for every kind of human activity that happens in a society. We are each an essential part of the fabric.

So to have the message go out that we don't care about honor and honesty is rough. What I see is that people have to go home with something for their long day and if they have to make a choice about life costs and fair fees, they sometimes rationalize. Maybe they'll make it up in better times. Maybe they'll do some labor instead of giving money. Maybe they are in survival mode or are staving off suicidal ideation and just have to pay that electric bill, and are out of options. We have always said that is why we are open on days that are not necessarily profitable for the market. We know there are people who need that $30 they make or that encouragement to keep going. We have always been as compassionate as possible about keeping people in the community and helping them survive, even if they might not be as nice and loving about it in return as we want them to be. It's a lot of humans, and not everyone is at their best every Saturday or Sunday. Things are going on we know nothing about for them.

So to have a narcissist in charge is super challenging. Narcissists always put themselves first. Their needs transcend your needs and they must have control to an excessive degree, so they have no problem making things all about them. Every week in the newsletter you can feel the slant, and the absence of all of us. At the committee and other meetings the agendas are driven, sometimes secretly, by the needs and desires of the narcissist. Gaslighting and outright lies are common to frame things in the way the narcissist has strategized to get their short and long-term goals met. You might get what you need, but you will likely have to jump through some at times humiliating hoops. You can ask, but it is clearly the whim of the person in power whether or not your requests will have importance. We've seen that over and over and I hear many reports firsthand about these hoops, many of which I have experienced until I started acting like a grey rock when they came my way. I had to work hard to separate and refuse to engage with the narcissistic demands. I have to avoid a lot of subtle things that are supposed to drag me back into supplying emotional gratification for a person who enjoys running control trips on others and delights in seeing people struggle.

If you haven't interacted with a narcissist you maybe won't recognize the clear habits and tactics of this personality disorder. It seems sadly true that it takes personal experience with manipulation for someone to recognize it, to develop that spidey sense in their bodies when they feel humiliated or lied to or managed in those ways. More and more people are feeling it, but it is hard to admit when you are a victim, and much easier to believe the charm offensives, the pretension and to believe the lies in the  house of cards built by someone acting in their own self-interest. Do some research.

They always have to be right, and if you challenge them, they have ways to reframe, outright lie, or give excuses to what you have questioned. They don't admit mistakes, but cover them up with some effort to fix what they broke and take credit for the triumph. They will extend their self-interest to seem to include others, but it depends on the loyalty and gullibility of those people whether or not they get the benefits of the insiders. There is an inner circle and you feel special when you are invited into it. There are rewards and gifts and what seems like generosity and self-sacrifice, but there is always a motive to it. It took me a long while to identify some of the physical "tells" of the interactions. They will appear to listen as they delve into your personal history and vulnerabilities, and appear to share stories that elevate your compassion for them. They count on your empathy and will cry, appear to suffer, and plead for your help. The thing is, you have to comply. If you refuse, they get demanding, mean, and will retaliate. To be safe with a predator, you either have to get up close and help them attack their prey, protect them from accountability, or disengage completely, at which point they will spread false information about you to undermine whatever personal power you have.

After I withdrew my support and starting working against this power structure, there has been a lot of gossip and effort to portray me and this writing as just complaining, negativity, and the ranting of a disaffected old person who is slipping. I've been warned to stop writing here, something I have been doing for over 15 years and something I have every right to do. The one rule I have with my personal nonfiction writing is to tell the truth. This is what a writer does. This is a sacred activity that the world depends on, a form of communication that takes an important role in uncovering deception and bad will and holds people feet to the fire. 

At the same time, as it is personal, it is my truth. I don't feel compelled to make anyone believe it, though I tried a few times to educate people in the power structure about the ways they were being pushed to do things that were not ethical and were destroying what we have built with the market. They have mostly chosen to kill the messenger and bully me in some cases, so there are a few people I won't engage with now about their roles, or in some cases, at all. But many of them are still friends, and we interact on those levels with our longterm relationships in mind. The narcissist won't be in power forever. I've worked with maybe 20 managers over the five decades. We've had a range. The poor ones drove people to leave in frustration, and some come back when they see the changes of better ones. 

In 1989 when Bill was hired, we had about 350 members as some, like me, had stepped back from participating with the team that ended up unintentionally losing $4500 of our dollars to some really terrible financial procedures. By 1994, with Bill in charge, we had 800 members. There was a time we discovered we were $25,000 in the red and the managers threw up their hands and said they just weren't good with the money. We liked them, but we fired them. We fired people for playing favorites, for just not being skilled enough to do the job, and for stealing from us. It happens. We have some weak systems a good manager fixes and a bad manager takes advantage of. We're pretty easy to manipulate. We operate with a lot of trust.

Our city has seen some shocking mismanagement, like the embezzlements from the Weekly, Homes for Good, and OUR credit union in the past. It happens all the time. Every time there are people who are shocked, who trusted those people, who thought they were nice, good and caring people with the common good at heart. This is the modus operandi. This is how it works. You don't have evidence until you look for it. You have to convince a lot of people, and yourself, that what you are sensing is valid.

People ask me why I don't take what I am saying to The Weekly or somewhere that can help us. I chose when I resigned not to blow things up completely, but I may have made the wrong choice. I didn't think it would take this long for the truth to come out of what we are most likely experiencing, and some of us are absolutely experiencing. Anecdotal evidence is mounting of people whose money has been mishandled, or have not gotten the services they are paying for. One person I know has not been listed as selling for three weeks now, despite repeated efforts to make that happen. The database rebuild is not working as promised, hasn't fixed what was broken, and will not address some of the biggest issues we have in our structure. Our savings are soon going to be more than halved after decades of not touching them. I feel our very mutual benefit nonprofit structure is a target, to take away the power of the members. Membership organizations are messy, sometimes chaotic, and hard to control. This is intolerable to the narcissitic personality. I am chilled by something she said to me when she was taking over: "I can't wait to get my hands on this organization and start making changes." 

I sure wish I had known what that would look like. I've always said one person could not kill the market, and I still believe that, but I failed to realize how one person could convince a lot of people to help them do it. I've always believed in us with my whole heart. I guess I was just too generous in my definition of "us."