"Something Nice" vs. Being Honest

 From January 16th. I'll keep the rest private for now. 

 

 Writing here still feels better since I doubt the stalkers have finished with the other blog. I'm determined not to give them any help or anything dramatic to entertain them. I'm dissecting my own attraction to having an audience and a part in the change that needs to happen, but I know I can get a report on the latest if I want to...just pushing that away as long as I can. But of course I am curious.

I got a text yesterday from one of the Board members inviting me to coffee, under the guise of social interaction. At face value, this is one of my Park Blocks neighbors wanting to catch up a little, but she is failing to acknowledge the reality that ever since she was elected to the Board, she has avoided speaking to me, numerous times. I tried to let her know right in the beginning that there was an alternate story to "support our staff" but she blanked quickly and we didn't speak of it again. I watched her submit to the charm offensive of the narcissist several times and saw the rewards she got...a mention in the minutes for knowing the stats of booth fees needed the additional category of "median" sales totals, since average was simply dividing the total by the number of sellers and wasn't very useful as a stat. She got that a few times but the last set from October did not give us the median. She also got to be one of the in-crowd and got to turn her 6-month term into another 18 months despite vote of no confidence from the membership.

So at HM, we were not in close proximity but I am right next to the office so I noticed her passing by many times and looking in the opposite direction, but I also did not seek her out and had only been polite the last few months anyway, when we were there at the end of the day as a couple of the last ones. She has tried mothering behavior to me many times and I have even told her not to mother me, as it is disrespectful behavior to me, someone who obviously does know what I am doing and doesn't need parenting. To be fair I've avoided her too, and I don't think she reads my other blog, though probably she has engaged in discussions about it at the Board, or at least gossip, level. She wrote a column to the members which was in two of the final newsletters. 

Without going back to read it again, I remember two points, one being "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," and the other saying it would be a shame if all voices were not being heard in crafting solutions to the problems facing the market. It didn't seem directly aimed at me, and in fact there are probably a number of people giving feedback to the Board at the meetings, as I was told they are regularly three hours or more. I think members are trying to engage in solutions, but I haven't gotten a full report of a Board meeting in a few months and just have the minutes to go on, obviously a very incomplete picture. 

And my position about helping this Board is that as long as they are enabling and protecting the narcissist, I won't be engaging with them, as I won't engage with her. I've had a very few private conversations with a very few Board members. I've written letters a few times, with bullying or non-empathetic non-responses. 

The person who loudly and violently bullied me on Xmas Eve also wrote in her post about the "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," trope. This is so discordant with the actual time we are living in, I wonder how they sleep at night. In the macrocosm, both of these women have no problem speaking out against the political powers, with actions and language that are not necessarily described by "nice." Maybe they do speak nicely privately with people they disagree with, and maybe they are being consistent in a way, because they can't say something nice to me so they say nothing, with the wild exception of the bullying FB post that vilified the Kareng Fund trying to punish me. 

That was a serious loss of control on that person's part, and I attribute it to a shame spiral, a trauma pattern of people who can't handle being noticed when they do something wrong or inappropriate...they get angry and defensive if you point it out, and attack you for speaking up. I've analyzed the way I spoke up, and I'm a little part sorry for it, except that I did not name the person, just reported on the behavior, and the pattern of it that she had been using to hurt and intimidate other members who had been trying to speak up and engage in their own ways. Those previous incidents were what pretty much drove volunteers from engaging, not only with the committee she chaired, but with all of the committees. Our members tend to vote with their distancing...there were only 48 voters in the last election, which was a protest vote by many, though it was spun that people just don't want to vote when there aren't any real choices. We've had elections many times when only a small number of people voted, and many when there were only as many candidates as open positions, but with this admin we have seen subtle tactics to discourage candidates and manage the elections for a "favorable" outcome, one which "supports the staff." People see that and I know people, me included, who didn't vote for the first time in decades. 

I've written before about this message which devalues the members and portrays us as mean people who do not help and value our staff members, as a false narrative spread by the liar in charge. She is good at seeding these narratives which could be true, but only pull out a tiny part of our social culture and current dynamics and make that the main story. We saw that in spades in the KLCC interview. I had a lot of issues with that spun-out snapshot of a market that is limited and all about the narcissist and her friends, but one of them is that historical details and tales about our culture were falsified and now exist in the public record as what she wants the world to know about our organization. 

Sometimes these things are exacerbated by the media representatives not really understanding us at our best, but that is the job of those who speak for us to get it out there how we are at our best. Not to feature a person as a "ball-breaker," as what does that say about our artisans? Nothing endearing. Not to spin the tale of our problems hiring a good GM. That stuff is confidential to begin with, and the interview revealed the corruption of that last "hiring" and between the lines of that story is a humiliating and sad story about our sometimes weak and unprofessional leadership. I mean, that stuff comes out in the archives, but it is not promotional to make that the public story. And I've already written about how it trashed our relationship with the city. 

But what I really found the most objectionable about the recent communications was the quote from Thumper the rabbit from the 50's Disney movie Bambi. Your mother, and mine, used to repeat that at us, trying to get us not to fight with our siblings or say mean things as kids. Disney narratives are not adult narratives. The mother burns up in a fire (not many Disney mothers live) and the too-young Bambi has to step up to do their own protection in a mean world. Disney is not and never was a progressive reality we should emulate. Do some critical analysis, people. Being nice and not saying something to avoid hurting feelings is a dodge we use to protect the right of comfort that is part of the white supremacy culture. How can you not know this now? 

As a twenty-some, I had lots of thoughts about the word "nice" and how it limits behavior and hides the truth and I really thought that was far in my past, so it made me laugh that this is what is thrown at me and others who care enough about the situation we're in to be honest about the sources of it. You can't just be nice in this complex world. It is not going to effect change. EVERYONE can see this in the macrocosm, but these people are still using it to make the microcosm dysfunctional. I'm way beyond that. Truth is far, far more desirable than niceness and you can watch tons of films with that message, films that were not made by Disney seventy-five years ago. 

So no, I will not be going to coffee with this person, even though at face value she could have just wanted to connect. What I heard, in the background, was the narcissist sending a flying monkey to see if I could be fooled into helping them solve these problems they created. She let it slip when she asked/told me about my HM experience. Was it good for me, didn't the wider aisles and the Atrium "seem to help?"

Nope. I liked the wider aisles in some places, but my sales were down 15% and I got bullied brutally. No, it was not a good HM for me. Did she want to talk about the bullying, send me some empathy from the Board, or engage in solution discussions? If so, she didn't mention those things. Either they didn't mean anything to her, or she wanted to wrap them in some friendship cotton so she could try to bring me in. I'm sure I'm paranoid about this, but we aren't friends. We barely speak at market, and I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she needs social interaction in the offseason, but trying to get it from me is extremely sus. 

I'm having plenty of social interaction, more than I want. I'm very busy with the Jell-O Art Show, getting my stock filled in, and getting ready for surgery. I didn't tell her why I said no, being "nice" and not questioning why she was coming to me. I know how to be polite. I thanked her for asking.

But that was a big hell no that needed writing about. Now if I could only get back to doing it in a more public way...still feeling bullied, so it may be awhile. I heard the bully resigned from leading the committee she was on, but I don't know if that was in a huff, on the advice of the Board, or her own realization that she did damage. I fear for the subtle damage it did to the Kareng Fund, after two years of microagressions from the narcissist. There are over two hundred artisans who have benefited from our work as a nonprofit that supports people who need it. That attack was criminal. I don't believe there was any apology tendered for that, which as Secretary I would probably have heard about. Doesn't matter anyway. The damage can't be undone. We just have to keep moving forward. But to shred a safety net at a time like this shows some people really have their heads in the sand. I don't want to play in that sandbox.