14 Sep
2013
14 Sep
'13
9:20 a.m.
wow, i love this list...
thank you sooooo much for speaking up, patrick and marina; it isn't
negative to be honest. yes, we want to celebrate that the foundations of
sudo room resist sexism and value "diversity" (no small thing!)... but yes
we have to do more, we always have to do more.
as white individuals we need to take responsibility to educate ourselves
and listen to people's experiences without defense. as organizations...
well, it's very slippery because groups of white people are actually the
foundation of racial oppression. people are killed, neighborhoods
destroyed, land + animals + environment ruined so that white people can be
together. how does a group of mostly white people challenge their own
entitlement to exist --- especially when dealing with their own legal,
economic, and group oppression (heterosexism, ableism, transphobia, ageism)
issues?
not trying to paint a bleak picture. absolutely there are things we can and
must do. but along the way we need to be doing the difficult work of
changing our own minds, and seeing that even the mechanisms we use for
anti-oppression work can be riddled with the language and thought process
and values of the oppressor. example: the term "women of color" (which
along w/ "people of color" i probly use too much) was originally a
political designation (see video <http://youtu.be/82vl34mi4Iw> and learn!)
and is now being used far too often as a racial descriptor.
okay i think about this stuff all day every day. many more thoughts on
this. so happy to see the discussion here.
as far as ideas on what to do, here is a list i worked on for BACE (bay
area community exchange). i feel hypocritical in sharing this because we
haven't been doing any of these things as an organization. i do still feel
very strongly that this is the direction we need to go.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15nxepE-LC_UUfoa-hViPTO7sxBBVsOHYxvVp29N…
-amber
On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Patrick Schmidt
<psbschmidt(a)googlemail.com>wrote;wrote:
Hi all,
the person that I talked about reached out to me and I am now
convinced he does not have negative intentions. It was a
misunderstanding and maybe I was too sensitive or primed.
The incident back then was a comment made over the list which
triggered the girl,
it was a statement in which the person identified with the suppressive
culture.
When I was young I also made many sarcastic comments to point out the
crazy mind beliefs and social norms we have in our strange societies.
But we do not have to identify with this strange culture, which is
unsustainable and cuts down the rainforest, the lungs of our planet
(we vote with our dollar and even if we do not have rainforest here in
the US, the brazilians are cutting down the forest to plant GMO
monoculture soy to feed the cows for the cattle for american and
european markets)
Just last week I had the epiphany that it maybe more useful that
instead of identifying with the sick society, the male energies
cutting down the forest, we should identify and focus on the female
energies regrowing.
Second epiphany I had that instead of complaining and trying to raise
awareness about the toxic foods that are so popular in this society
and even conscious and smart people eat,
it is much better to focus on providing non toxic mother earth foods
from the countryside hackers, the organic farmers, who love what they
do and treat mother earth well.
I am sure that we could make connections with farmers from the farmers
market who donate food to us on a regular basis and we help them with
homepages/media.
We are givig birth to a new society all together,
for the first time we can make it right, a society where the female
spirit are not suppressed,
a society celebrating diversity, peace and abundance, access of
knowledge and ressources and empowerment for all.
After all mother earth provides enough food and shelter for all,
scarcity is man made and artificial.
I will reach out to the girl, even if I think I never talked to her in
person,
and maybe we can make her come back.
p.s. sudo room feels like family to me, last friday late at night we
had a cuddle puddle, we formed an amoeba organism together and evolved
to a mushroom, we sang together and beat boxed, and we are part of the
peace and love movement.
I see a positive future for Sudoroom and opening up and diversifying
more will bring many new perspectives which will enrich the whole
community, looking forward :)
2013/9/13, Marina Kukso <marina.kukso(a)gmail.com>om>:
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thank you patrick for bringing up the current
status of our efforts at
creating an inclusive space. i basically ask myself these kinds of
questions constantly (performing constant temperature check of things
like
"how boys-clubbish does sudo feel right
now?" and "if i were a person of
color, would i feel alienated if i walked in right now having never been
here before?" "is this a place where a non-gender-normative person would
feel comfortable being themselves without having to answer for who they
are?", etc.).
so, i agree with you that we are not living up to the standards that
we've
set for inclusivity. while we are doing a better
job than many other
hackerspaces, in my mind, if we do not reflect the community of Oakland
in
our diversity, then we have room for
improvement.
*so everyone, what are the conditions that contribute to us currently not
meeting our inclusivity goals and what can we do to start meeting them?*
*what
can we all be doing to make the space more inclusive and welcoming?*
- marina
ps - i wanted to share with everyone some inspiration for the kind of
sudo
room that i'd like to see. it's a
creative/hackspace in chattanooga
that's
run by a library that was basically given over to
innovation-oriented
folks
to run carte blanche. i think that it is a space
with more or less
complete
community ownership (meaning that it's not
seen as fringe or niche...it's
seen like the library.."a place where everyone just goes")..that would be
pretty cool @_@
about the space: http://4thfloor.chattlibrary.org/
really interesting news piece about how it happened:
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/aug/11/rock-star-librarians/?entert…
pps - i agree with patrick that we have a lot of positive feminist
energy.
we work very hard at this and although there are
still times when things
are boys-clubbish and there are barely any women in the space, i feel
that
our community overall is invested in ensuring
that we have a space where
women have an expectation that they will be treated as humans (an
expectation that many women don't have in many places in the world!). my
perspective is that this commitment from the community is what it really
takes to solve problems of inclusion because it means that we have a
number
of people who are invested in coming up with
solutions when things are
exclusive. now how to maintain this and make it better and expand it for
everyone :)
On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 8:02 AM, Patrick Schmidt
<psbschmidt(a)googlemail.com>wrote;wrote:
> Sorry for being negative but I am not sure that it is all so positive.
> There is one person who has a very negative aura, always talks about
> negative things,
> at least one coder girl of colour stopped coming because of him. ( I
> should have spoken up much earlier).
> I feel very unsafe around that person. Nevertheless on Art Murmur's
> friday I wanted
> to overcome my fear and went and tried to talk to him, he was playing
> with a knife
> (made me unconfortable and I had the vision that he would stab me, so
> i mentioned that to ridiculize my own fear), but then he started to
> talk about very negative things again,
> I do not even remember what it was, I just left that conversation.
>
> I have seen people of colour who randomly walked in at art murmurs
> where we had the doors open to the street, walk out again as soon as
> they saw that we are mostly white folks up there.
>
> Yes, Sudoroom is amazing, lots of feminin energy and mostly I feel safe,
> Sudokids did rock a lot and one time we had black kids, white
> kids,southamerican kids, arabic kids and asian kids all together and
> it is wonderful,
> but still I think we have a lot of work to do to open up more,
diversify,
and make
sure the hacker movement and empowerment is not only for the
traditionally privilleged.
I am not looking to have a confrontation with that person, i already
forgave and released,
I will just try to shine my light and if it comes to that try to help
that person overcome his negativity and fear.
2013/9/12, Romy Snowyla <romy(a)snowyla.com>om>:
It is so awesome to see Sudoroom as a pinnacle of
cultural diversity.
There
is no tokenism here or random Asian women shoved
into showcase roles.
It
is
truly a place where open minded people mix freely
showing their
diversity
and superiority to any capital it's systems and stick it to the man
Rock on!!!
Sent from my iPhone
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