2 Jan
2024
2 Jan
'24
9:17 a.m.
I can’t opine on the specifics because I wasn’t present, but it all sounds
pretty familiar. I'll say that Yar has been a consistent voice of reason in
my time here, so I hope even if folks disagree with her they'll keep her
track record of good judgement in mind. Taylor, I think your observations
sound very, very, sensible.
*I would like to submit a proposal: I think Sudo Room should hold elections
for a "board of responsibility and limited power" in late February.*
Our meetings are frequently long, disorganized, and acrimonious. We have no
meaningful systems of accountability. We experience the same challenges
with effectively organizing ourselves and finding consensus again and again
and again. And I think in this context, we should go back to basics.
Most organizations use variations on the same structures: a few people are
selected by the collective to assume the primary responsibility for key
functions like running meetings, maintaining infrastructure, providing a
key contact for member concerns and arbitrating disputes and allegations of
violations of a code of conduct. I think it's somewhat quixotic that we as
a group persist in using unconventional tools that have consistently failed
us (catastrophically, imo) in our attempts to execute Sudo Room's statement
of purpose.
I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm not
proposing that we discard our ideals of horizontal power distribution. I
think the elephant in the room is that we don't have a horizontal power
structure. A few people hold the power to assert their will unilaterally,
and most people only have enough power to derail a meeting, but not enough
to bring it back on track. Perhaps if we rebuild trust and teach more
people how to make themselves heard, a board will become unnecessary and we
can effectively execute the vision that we're unsuccessfully trying to
execute now. But I think it is long, long past time to actually make
substantive changes to how we operate, and agreeing to have a consistent
meeting chair and a membership coordinator, etc. selected by the collective
sounds to me like simple common sense.
*This proposal is now open for discussion at tomorrow's meeting (Weds. 1/3)
and ongoing discussion and revision. If there is no block, it becomes
eligible to be accepted at our February meeting on Weds. Feb. 7.*
Cheers,
*Andrew R Gross, (he/him)*
412.657.5332 - shrad.org <http://www.shrad.org>
On Fri, Dec 29, 2023 at 6:46 PM Taylor Alexander via sudo-discuss <
sudo-discuss(a)sudoroom.org> wrote:
I thought the people concerned were concerned due to a
perceived
association with People's Programs and a desire to have a more private
discussion with only Sudo members. (however no one had a problem when our
friend from CCL dropped in)
I disagreed with this concern because of her association with Omni Commons.
At the same time, I do think that spending 40 minutes talking about it
makes us look bad (editing my text to not say "like clowns"). I can see how
it could be perceived as racist, and moreover I could see how spending 40
minutes on it makes us look generally disorganized and overly focused on
kicking a brown person out of our meeting.
I want to affirm what Yar says that we exist in community with these
people, and we do need to be mindful of how we are perceived. I want to
encourage everyone to trust new people first, and only question that trust
when we are given a clear reason not to trust that individual.
On Thu, Dec 28, 2023 at 4:10 PM Jemma Love via sudo-discuss <
sudo-discuss(a)sudoroom.org> wrote:
Hello Yar,
Your message seems like an escalation of a situation from last night that
we dealt with in the meeting. It was not everyone against any one
individual, and we openly discussed members concerns there in the meeting.
It's true we spent longer than we should have and there may be aspects of
racism attached to that. However, my intentions from here on out are to
deescalate those situations. This message is the exact opposite of that and
I do not appreciate it. You have been an issue in discussing many of the
topics we need to within sudoroom on several instances. Please, I ask you
to focus on deescalation and that you also take into account that several
people took a multitude of stances. Your message damages the good work that
was done last night.
Emails like this do no one any favors and hold us back from having the
difficult discussions that we need to have at this point.
Once again, please consider how your actions are affecting these
conversations. How your presence is affecting our ability to move forward
openly and honestly. Please focus on deescalation.
All the best,
Jemma
On Thu, Dec 28, 2023 at 3:41 PM Yardena Cohen via sudo-discuss <
sudo-discuss(a)sudoroom.org> wrote:
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At last night's sudoroom meeting, we were
joined by omni's development
director. We spent the first 45 minutes arguing over whether to kick her
out of the meeting, because some anonymous person raised an anonymous
concern.
What was the concern? Because her family members had worked with
People's Programs. And because last time she raised a point about racial
equity and someone felt that she was accusing people of racism.
It's incredible to me that people don't see how racist this is. How are
you going to move to a community and then treat someone with SUSPICION for
having personal ties to other people who grew up here???
No matter what you think of PP's politics on their blog and twitter, you
have to accept that this group mostly grew up in Oakland, and people are
going to know each other. Local ties and allegiances and face to face
interactions are always going to be a counter force against Internet
abstractions. That's one of the beautiful things about having a local
community.
Someone literally offered this heuristic: we should only have people in
the meeting who are "more connected to sudoroom than people programs".
Really think about what this means. A decision making process needs to
prioritize the voices of people whose allegiance is predetermined because
they didn't grow up here?? And exclude everyone else?
I must beg this community to stop falling into these kinds of patterns
of fear and insularity which DIRECTLY perpetuate white supremacy. At this
point I don't care what anybody's intention was. It was an incredibly
damaging path for sudoroom to be taken down.
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