It's Not Just Business

I was planning to write today about consensus, but the Market lost one of our family, and that tiger of grief has been unleashed in me. It's no wonder we avoid these feelings, the paralysis and the way the light changes around us, rendering us not sure how to move and in which direction. Trying to imagine even a tiny part of what Jack's parents and his brother are going through just makes me dissolve in tears.

And this is true for any of us, since we have all lost someone and will lose more. With such a large and caring family, we lose people frequently. Somehow it seems more cruel in the winter, more devastating, and one of the kids we raised together, feeding them rice and eggs, hot cocoa with whipped cream, well, it's too much.

Yet this is what we are here doing, living and working together, and making it past these challenges. They remain fresh, even when the names fade some, the stories, seldom told, stay in us. The bike trailer on the rainy night, the bleachers that collapsed, and now the sea we all come from. It seems too heavy to get through sometimes, but remember, there will also be light.

And it puts this recent situation with the farmers in perspective. We can't be fighting. We can't let our emotions get caught up in things as trivial as booth placement and traffic patterns. We must learn to make our way in cooperation from the beginning, through the process to the end. Because we are all fragile and human and we will all trip and fall at some point. Let's not be responsible for tripping others if we can possibly help it.

This week I had a dream in which I had to jump into a bus and drive it. I didn't know how to drive a bus, hate to drive anyway, but somehow managed to get it around the block and back to its parking spot. Mainly I was thinking, "It's not my job to drive this bus!"

It's not my job to be the driver of this situation regarding the 8th St. closure, but there is an important role I have chosen and I will see it through. This job is to remind us how to stay down in our hearts and shine a light on what is important.

I went to a wonderful little panel discussion this week at the Lane County Historical Museum. My well-spoken friend Connie was on the panel, with Skeeter, and Caroline Estes, who is one of the founders of Alpha Farm and probably the person responsible for the health and growth of the consensus process in our area. In every organization where we have used consensus and consensus-seeking, her name is mentioned. She has trained thousands of people, and told us a story about how she once had 600 people show up for a training. They dove in and learned it.

When I was Board Chair of SM in the 80's, we used consensus quite thoroughly. When my son was in Family School and Patterson and Spencer Butte, and South, even our Site Councils used consensus- seeking. It comes from the Quaker tradition, and is quite basic. Every participant has a piece of the truth, and through patient honesty, the truth emerges and elegant decisions are made. There is no real voting, no majority domination, and things like blocking and going away mad are extremely rare. Even though we do vote and use a modified Robert's Rules of Order system at our meetings today, we generally reach consensus before voting. I can't remember a time at a market meeting where we had a split vote, though I remember several painful ones at the LCFM table.

Carolyn, in her seventies now, glows with an inner power, since she has seen these agreements grow so many, many times. It inspired me just to see her and think about how much this kind of thinking has influenced and eased my life. The coolest part was a young person who was there for advice for the many groups of young activists she was part of.

Amazingly, there was a big piece of consensus that I had forgotten, but if you read my last post you can see that it was there, just not consciously. This piece is called Principles of Unity.

This is where consensus begins. The group must first establish the common ground, the principles of unity that brought them together in the first place, and the ones that must be kept in mind in order to make a decision that will best serve everyone. I stated in my last entry that at SM we share equality and the desire to thrive. I've been trying to think about what else we could start with. My imaginary meeting of the two organizations would start with a group exercise where we write up on the board the small number of principles that would guide our discussion and round out our decision.

It's not my place to make these up. They belong to the two groups. But the bus is being driven by the wrong people, people who are not even in either group, so I am taking the wheel here and will try to at least establish some ground for my own group, the Saturday Market.

We kind of know this already: we are all in this together, and we want to be good neighbors, friends, and to support each other. We want the best for each other. Can we agree on that? Then the discussion will soon be over, because the street closure will not be the best for each other. Five thousand cars use that street in a typical day. It makes no sense to divert those 5000 people away from the market and replace them with a few select booths. That is just not going to be an improvement, and it seems easy enough to see.

We value hard work. There are so many dedicated, tireless people on both sides of our street. None of us has time or the bodily strength to waste our efforts. We have invested our whole lives in these mutual strivings to make our lives better and share ourselves with others. Let us honor ourselves, our people.

Communication is the only way we are going to get along. I spent the last two years slowly making connections, person by person, while I sat at the farmers' table taking minutes, sold at their Tuesday Market, and shopped on Saturdays for my food while running my own booth by the fountain. I've always been there at some level, but in recent years I really committed to it. I tried to get to know each farmer, bringing all my roles and experiences as a Market elder with me, tried to increase mutual respect, and tried to listen carefully to their concerns and convey ours. It was an unofficial liason role that I took on with trepidation and in which I felt actual fear several times. It scares me what people are willing to do to destroy the commonality and drive wedges between us.

We sing a little song, it's stupid, but "The farmers and the hippies should be friends". I mean, organic food, locally grown beans and corn, edamame? We are the market for the farmers market. We so need each other. Over the years I made signs, tote bags, and t-shirts for the farmers. We always have been able to fill our mutual needs by crossing the street. We have 30 years of mutual history, more in some cases. There is no way we can let that be destroyed by what amount to outside agitators, people who are not stakeholders trying to impose their grand, misguided plans on us. Their intentions may be good, but we are the ones who will live the reality, and they will remain spectators. They can't be at the wheel.

We cannot allow our distress to get in the way of the big picture, what we are doing down there, have been doing, and will be doing, if we don't mess it up. We can't afford the resentment that causes us to boycott each other. It's petty, it's coming from the wrong spirit, it's coming from hurt feelings, and leaving more hurt feelings in its wake.

Let us sit down together, soon, and find our common ground. Let's rest on the several feet of topsoil under our concrete and remember our roots and cooling shade and tender, unfolding flowers and make this thing work better. It has to. We have to.

Life is short, so damn cruel, we are so fragile. I will not always be here to drive this bus, nor will you. Let's remember the rules and keep within the lines. It's so much more than commerce, so much more than the money.

I trust that this will be the week when this problem is solved. We don't have time to fight. We are in the business of living, and we need healing, and growth. Spring is about to burst! Let's be the nurturing forces that we are, and bloom together in all our glory.

I'm sending all my strength to my family to see us through this hard time. I see you here with me, and I know we will find our consensus, stand together, and live through this stormy weather. It's not stupid to reach down into our hippie tradition, which comes from deep in our human experience, and bring forth our strengths.

We are the same. Let's work together.