Last week was not great

 I'm seriously disturbed about the latest actions by the power structure. It's unclear if the whole Board was involved in this or just the Chair at the direction of the GM (yes, this is backwards regarding who is the Director) but access to the Board packet was revoked except for the agenda and minutes of the last meeting. No Admin report, no Advertising update, no Member Concern letters, no Membership Report, no Committee reports, and no financial documents. I don't know if it was restricted for everyone, or just selected members, although I assume the Board members got the full packet. I'll just mention that this is the end of the digital archive I have been keeping since 2009 of the Board Packets, policy documents, and publications of the Market. I have no Secretary to appeal to in this matter. As digital archives are going to be the future of archiving, this is a loss that can not be estimated. It's tragic. 

The Bylaws state:   Section 9. Secretary: Powers and Duties. The secretary shall attend all meetings of the board of directors and shall keep and distribute or cause to be kept and distributed a true and complete record of the proceedings of those meetings. The Secretary shall give or cause to be given notice of all meetings of the directors and perform whatever additional duties the board of directors and the chairperson may from time to time prescribe.

If I were Secretary I would view this as an ethical breach of my duties and would be forced to resign, but of course I already did that and now there is no Secretary or even a designated acting Secretary. The minutes are stripped of most of the content except for the new addition of  everyone's role (such as Board member:,) and there is no discussion included of any of the issues. This creates an additional class of membership, taking away the equal members status of anyone who wants to speak at the meeting. Identifying the person's role adds (or subtracts) weight to their comments and instead of clarifying the discussion, masks the appearance of a discussion and leads to the assumption that much is being left out and dismissed.

Traditionally our minutes, like those of any membership organization, have been comprehensive and detailed to serve as an information conduit to members who for whatever reason choose not to attend the meetings, so that they can keep up with issues and be assured that points they feel should be included in the discussion are brought up. Without the discussion points, members wonder if their perspective is being considered. For instance, when the fee increase was discussed, I asked a Board member if anyone had mentioned that it was a regressive method of increase, as that is a point I always tried to make when increases were considered. Being assured that it was brought up, I had no need to communicate that perspective in person: my views were being represented. Without those discussion points, members have no idea whether or not they are being represented by those people the membership elected to serve.

Serve is an important operating word: directors and officers are elected to serve the organization and the members. Not to rule. Not to just "support staff" as the election campaign code words indicated. All of us support staff. We make the money to pay them. We carefully consider our impacts on them so that all members can be served. This is why I have never felt that everyone should be calling the office or going in person to ask all of our many questions and to get the information and details we need to feel properly led. We ask our friendly Board member representatives, we read the newsletters, we read the Board packets and we read the policies and documents supplied by the staff so that they can do their operational jobs and not be overwhelmed by having to serve individual member needs and interrupt their work with concerns that the members could satisfy themselves. Somewhere this went out the window. I submit that staff costs could be greatly reduced if members were not continually encouraged to call the office but instead be pointed to the ways they could get the needed information. 

Gatekeeping is the control tactic that withholds access to information and requires permission, insider status, or some kind of loyalty pledge to get what should be commonly shared information to all members. We need to see committee reports to know if we should go to the committee meeting or work through one if its members to share our concerns or ideas. We need the staff reports to know if our staff is doing what we need them to be doing. We absolutely need the financial data to know how healthy our organization is, as it is our money, it determines our present and future livability, and we as members are still as directly responsible for the health and legality of our organization as anyone is. Most of us take this seriously and do our share, many times more than our share. In return we expect information, and more than that, we expect trust.

Gatekeeping the Board packet in a letter just told all members that we are not trusted by the power structure to have access to information about our money, our plans, our operations, or our governance. We are not trusted. Yet we are still asked to trust, but that is just not going to be possible. Trust is continually built through openness and honesty. The letter made the thin argument that it is not required by law to share information with the members. However, we have had a 55-year agreement with our members that all information would be shared (with some small protections for legal and personnel details that should be kept confidential for reasons of respect.) Our members have been trusted for over five decades to have the best interests of Market at heart. With that trust, we are able to extend a trust relationship to our representatives, staff, and each other. That trust is now broken.

From the membership agreement we all signed:  all members have equal access to the
same benefits, rights and services. From the information for new members: Getting Involved with Your Market: Saturday Market is a Member run organization that relies on Member input for guidance and inspiration. The Board of Directors, Standards, Holiday Market, and Sustainability meet monthly, and Food Committees meet as scheduled. Market Members are always welcome to join committees or just sit in to see how the Market works behind the scenes. Committee meetings are listed in each week’s Market newsletter, and on the Market Calendar on our website.

These duties and responsibilities for members can not be done without access to the current information as previously been freely given via the Board packets, minutes, and open discussions.This action to restrict packet access is in direct violation of the principles we have operated by for 55 years.

I have invested my life in this market, with service and responsibility that has operated for the 50 years I have been involved. A list of the accomplishments I have been able to make because of the mutual trust would fill pages. Some significant ones include writing many policies and updates as Secretary, in service to the Board, launching the archives project, securing grant funds to support it, creating promotional materials, merchandise, supplying screenprinting services for many fundraising campaigns, operational needs, and extras we couldn't afford, and bringing forward Lotte's legacy and the early history that our founders recorded for us. I helped as a member of the 3-person team who negotiated with the city and architects regarding the redesign project, and took on the additional role of emailing members weekly about details they needed to know. It has been possible for me to work as unpaid staff to get us through the pandemic, the management crises after we lost our GM in 2021, and support for staff throughout our history as a Board Chair, Secretary, and regular volunteer all along. At times this was a full-time job, at no cost to the market. I have always given more than I have gained. 

I am now treated in a hostile manner by staff, fellow members, Board members and officers. The loss of the trust relationship has been more demoralizing than I can express, and if this has not happened to you, if you have not extended decades of dedicated and principled service, and then been marginalized and maligned, I am happy for you. It has been the most discouraging experience of my lifetime and I carry it every day. I resigned a year ago for ethical reasons and I have not put down responsibility and service during this year, though it has been clear that my service is unwanted and unappreciated. 

However, I do not feel I have any influence or shared respect to help correct this current crisis that is a monumental change to our membership understanding and our basis of existence as a mutual benefit organization. I implore anyone reading this to take action to convey to the Board what has just been excised in another instance of the end justifying the means. Being afraid or suspicious of one, a few, or even a group of members who hold different opinions about an issue or policy or situation can not justify taking away the access of all of us to informed participation in our organization. Punishing all for the perceived and misunderstood actions of a few is a recurring solution to problems that has crippled our organization during the current administration. 

We are in financial peril, with many members experiencing lost payments, restricted access to methods of payment, and the use of our funds for purposes in which we have no opportunity for input. In addition, members are being personally attacked with anger at committee meetings, with no intervention by the staff in the room, and via the Notice of Concern system, being disciplined in humiliating ways by staff, with membership revocation being used as a solution to members who complain or make mistakes. Our selling opportunities have been cancelled without our input.  

Our longstanding commitment to empathy and mutual trust is gone. Our members are afraid to speak up, to speak with each other, and volunteers are disappearing to the point where we will lose our committee system as well as the viability of Holiday Market. New volunteers do not bring the institutional knowledge that seasoned volunteers hold, yet such members are being pushed out as "privileged" or irrelevant while unneeded reconstructions are made of things that were not broken. 

Our organization depends on member contribution, dialogue, shared problem-solving, and trust. Ask yourself who is destroying this, and why. Please do what you can and support others who are working in the best interests of the membership.