I wanna keep this short and communicate more in-person (I agree the emails can be overwhelming).

I just want to say that I FULLY support and love the Wellness Collective!! I am so impressed by all of the incredible work that has gone into organizing and putting forth these proposals. I have no doubt that the Omni community really wants to see this project succeed beyond anyone's wildest imagination. 

We're also very overwhelmed with all of the intersecting questions and concerns that are arising around multiple concurrent proposals. We're really trying incredibly hard to ensure that the whole community has the ability to thrive. That involves asking and being open to receiving lots of questions.

Please don't interpret these questions as a lack of support but rather in response to what we have already learned, over these few short months trying to figure out how to share space not just with each other but with the larger community. Poor Gabriella's been through months of back and forth!! 

There's no question that this is all very stressful!! I am really hopeful that we can all learn better, healthier ways of doing all of this work.

I love you all very much and can't wait to have Backspace up and running at the Omni! 

<3

N

 

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Sara Larsen <saralarsenyoga@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Yar,

Thanks so much for your email. I hope my email didn't sound like I think anyone at the omni is acting in bad faith, because I don't. Everyone is working hard to pull pieces together in a complex situation.

I agree it's a complicated fog. My email was sent in the spirit of openness, honesty and I hope, healing. I took a risk in saying a lot of what I said in the hopes that others will also express the underlying feelings coming up around this project. Dealing openly with these things is one of the ways we can keep

the culture of the Omni healthy.

Yar, I appreciate your work as well, which I know is vast and not always easy!

Re: my email about Scott's suggestion - I really just wanted to point out that we had already suggested what he suggested, and it was not a new idea. In my opinion, however, it is a good idea. My take away from that BAPS mtg was that BAPS members were not ready to commit then or likely later to this idea. I was encouraged to move forward with backspace on our own, which is what I brought back to Backspace and is what we did. 

BAPS has since changed their idea and relationship to space due to a push forward from some members who are worried about not having space. This is in progress. But that change happened AFTER our meeting and after backspace had taken the advice to move on. Being members of both groups at this time is challenging for me, for obvious reasons.

Backspace's rush is that we need space to open so that we can make money so that we can pay rent and utilities to the Omni. If we can't do that, my guess is that we will have to disband and then the Omni would lose another member group, which I and I think no one else would like to see happen.

Xo

On Thursday, October 16, 2014, yar <yardenack@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, October 16, 2014, Scott Nanos <scott.nanos@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Crazy idea but I'm also a little worried that BAPS and commons
>> Wg don't have the labor power to handle all this commoning (pragmatically
>> speaking, in the form of scheduling and organizing)...
>>
>> What if Baps, backspace, and commons wg all teamed up on these common
>> spaces, granting *x* amount of privileged hours in specific areas for
>> collectives?

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 8:18 AM, Sara Larsen <saralarsenyoga@gmail.com> wrote:
> However, I feel like your suggestion is exactly what I was trying to move
> forward with the BAPS backspace proposal that BAPS recently voted against
> moving forward with!

Is that what happened? I didn't go to every single meeting but my
understanding was that BAPS were still open to it but needed more time
to talk about it and make up their minds, and Backspace just doesn't
want to wait any longer. It seemed (from the outside) like this
urgency and time pressure for Backspace was the biggest reason why
things didn't work out that way.

It's not that I blame you. I can imagine how frustrating it is to try
to organize a bunch of skeptical bodyworkers to do their work at Omni,
this weird building full of construction debris, contentious politics,
dysfunctional processes and so on. Trying to create a wellness
collective at Omni at this time is an ambitious goal and I fully
recognize and respect all the emotional labor that I've seen you and
other Backspace folks put into it, Sara, and I want it to succeed too.
I think the new energy and people you guys bring in will be an
especially valuable thing for all of us and our communities.

I only hope that you can try not to blame the rest of us either for
the difficult situation. We've all been working very hard with what we
have. I feel like we're reaching at each other through a fog of fear,
uncertainty and doubt, trying to make high-stakes decisions that might
affect us all years into the future, when we only have a few months or
even weeks of experience being in some of our spaces and learning to
know and trust all the people.

There are so many rooms with different names. It's been 24 hours since
your proposal and it's taken us this long just to be sure exactly
which rooms you're talking about. There's confusion over what
commoning means (the commons wg only started meeting 2 weeks ago),
what scheduling will feel like (we're still developing the calendar
system), what the rooms will look and feel like, whether people will
clean up their messes like they say they will, and any number of
hypothetical scarcities and disasters that we have no idea if the
future might bring.

It's not your fault, it's not anybody else's fault either. I really
hope the confusion isn't interpreted as bad faith or a lack of
support. We all need to get better at that, of course, but also get
better at forgiving each others' mistakes, in the spirit of jubilee.

Sorry for the rant, but thanks for listening. <3

--

Let us be together,
Let us eat together,
Let us be vital together,
Let us be radiating truth,
radiating the light of life,
Never shall we denounce anyone,
never entertain negativity.                                          -- The Upanishads