16 Oct
2014
16 Oct
'14
12:58 p.m.
On Thursday, October 16, 2014, Scott Nanos <scott.nanos(a)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(a)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