13 Nov
2013
13 Nov
'13
1:29 a.m.
Greetings, sudo!
It has been a long time since i have visited! I hope you have all been
doing well. I am taking the time right now as the year draws to a close
to reflect on the current state of things in my world. Perhaps you will
indulge me in reading everything below. perhaps you are seeking a tl;dr
in which case i will ask you,
have you seen my folding plastic table?
have you seen my aluminum ladder?
have you seen my dreams for a shared space and a common future?
I believe I left them laying around here someplace, possibly with my
name scrawled across in marker.
The table is about 3'x6', blown plastic, folds in half. The ladder is
aluminum, 12' high or so, and quite nice. The dreams are like hair or
cuticles, forever growing back even as i try to ignore them and focus on
something tangible or 'important'.
At the beginning of this year I closed Coyote, a shared art studio and
retail space I had been managing in North Oakland. We closed in part
because of the loss of one of our founding members, who moved back east
to live closer to his family. We closed also because of a mismatch with
the neighborhood, admitting reluctantly that where we wanted to have our
art studio was not compatible with where we needed to do our retail work
- to seek customers, and build paying business. We struggled to
integrate into our neighborhood, making friends while seeking to
understand the impact of gentrification. We struggled with an
unscrupulous landlord, mounting costs and flatlining incomes, and we had
to admit that the project wasn't working in its current guise.
The upscale restaurant down the block sought our support, as we were
closing, for a 'neighborhood meeting' about crime. When I pressed the
owner (who had never before visited, in our year and a half in business)
about what their concerns were, he told me that some of their patrons
were being mugged on their way from the tony restaurant to the train
station.
I can't say that I was surprised.
I wasn't surprised that the patrons of this restaurant had been mugged.
The food is not cheap and the place is an oasis of genteel laughter in
a neighborhood more attuned to sirens, car stereos, and the stacatto
passage of these same folks in their cars on their way home to the hills.
I also wasn't surprised that the restaurant owners, after completely
ignoring the existence of their scrappy neighbors, after failing to
welcome their new peers to the block, after ignoring that small business
baksheesh of customer-trading, were still willing to hit us up to come
to their 'community' meeting and talk about how to 'stop crime'.
I ache for folks who suffer through being robbed with the threat of
violence, or with actual violence. It sucks to have something like that
happen to you.
But.
In the time that I bottomlined our business in North Oakland, we lost
about 5% of our sales income in shoplifting. This is in comparison to
basically nil in shoplifting losses in a similar store that I previously
ran in San Francisco, near haight/fillmore. What's different? Income
inequality. Sure, in a diverse place, folks of all different sorts
encounter each other, and there is a lot that is healthy about that.
In this region there do seem to be some entrenched group identities in
the culture war, and I sometimes wonder which side I am on.
I have watched friends and neighbors struggle as their food stamps are
cut. I have listened to the pained conflict that grows up in their
loving homes around money, when there is none. I wondered most
especially which side I was on after George Zimmerman was let free, and
marches passed my West Oakland house every day. I saw the notoriously
violent OPD standing between me and these marches, as if to protect me.
This more than anything else drove me to walk out my front gate and join
those marches, to show with my body where my loyalties lay.
I have watched the region that has nurtured me for the last decade sink
into an inequality that I am led to believe is as deep and deeply
entrenched (meaning the unlikelihood of people to transcend the
circumstances into which they were born) as the period that preceded the
French Revolution.
Only whose head will roll?
In the midst of these questions I was forced to confront the inadequacy
of Sudo's best and most shining efforts. It is a place where I have
made friends, many of whom stay in my orbit & community now as I
re-orient. Sudo is also the only place where my hair was ever grabbed
without my consent. It is a place where I have been accosted in a dark
hallway by someone who repeatedly demanded my attention despite my
demurrals, despite walking away. It is a place I have been yelled at in
anger, as have many others. It is a place I have feared to bring
friends. I watched a community struggle to set boundaries to protect
its members, only to founder as it seeks to define what a 'member' is
that deserves protection.
I say these things not as a condemnation of sudo, and i hope they are
not read as such. I say them as an honest person sharing some difficult
thoughts, and i remind you dear reader that we reside within a culture
that is structurally predisposed against this. It trains us to see
critique as attack, to see critical thought as a threat, instead of what
we hackers know as the fundamental strength we bring to any situation.
We can think. we can assess. we can learn and grow and change, and we
can evolve.
We are meta. We are legion, and we cannot be contained.
I read recently about this space starting in SF, and while i was
gladdened to hear about Double Union, I am extra excited to imagine
another space with such a strong commitment to inclusion.
https://github.com/wallacemax/sfhackerspace
I hope the east bay hackerspace scene continues to grow, evolve, and
flourish.
I understand sudo is changing right now as well. It is well for all
things to change, and I hope that in this case the changes lead towards
the causes of transparency in governance and inclusion for all, which i
always understood to be some of the most fundamental tenets of sudo.
be well, good luck to all, and always,
R.
13 Nov
13 Nov
8:04 a.m.
I'm not sure if I've met you (if I have, I am sorry to not put the name to
the face) - naturally I understand your deep concerns regarding feeling and
being safe in the space. I don't know who the accosting individuals were,
but I do know that there is a neighbor and landlord who rove the shared
areas in an agitated and/or deeply disturbed state who have intimidated
other members of our community. 2141 is not optimal largely for that
reason, and we are looking for something new.
- I have seen a tall aluminum ladder in sudo, in the storage area
immediately left of the door, just before the radio studio, on the
left-hand side.
- I have also seen a folding-in-half plastic table, in that it was once
brought over to the Bay Area Public School room for a sudo meeting I think
when space got tight one day - so you might check in there - normally in
BAPS there should be two tables in there, whose legs fold, but do not fold
in half. Check behind the couch / pews -
I am not sure if you are inferring a farewell to sudo by asking where your
things are, but I think it would be really tragic if someone so passionate
and articulate spun out of our communal orbit. Is there anything I or we
can do, to directly address your concerns?
Best,
David
On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 1:29 AM, rachel lyra hospodar
<rachelyra(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Greetings, sudo!
It has been a long time since i have visited! I hope you have all been
doing well. I am taking the time right now as the year draws to a close to
reflect on the current state of things in my world. Perhaps you will
indulge me in reading everything below. perhaps you are seeking a tl;dr in
which case i will ask you,
have you seen my folding plastic table?
have you seen my aluminum ladder?
have you seen my dreams for a shared space and a common future?
I believe I left them laying around here someplace, possibly with my name
scrawled across in marker.
The table is about 3'x6', blown plastic, folds in half. The ladder is
aluminum, 12' high or so, and quite nice. The dreams are like hair or
cuticles, forever growing back even as i try to ignore them and focus on
something tangible or 'important'.
At the beginning of this year I closed Coyote, a shared art studio and
retail space I had been managing in North Oakland. We closed in part
because of the loss of one of our founding members, who moved back east to
live closer to his family. We closed also because of a mismatch with the
neighborhood, admitting reluctantly that where we wanted to have our art
studio was not compatible with where we needed to do our retail work - to
seek customers, and build paying business. We struggled to integrate into
our neighborhood, making friends while seeking to understand the impact of
gentrification. We struggled with an unscrupulous landlord, mounting costs
and flatlining incomes, and we had to admit that the project wasn't working
in its current guise.
The upscale restaurant down the block sought our support, as we were
closing, for a 'neighborhood meeting' about crime. When I pressed the
owner (who had never before visited, in our year and a half in business)
about what their concerns were, he told me that some of their patrons were
being mugged on their way from the tony restaurant to the train station.
I can't say that I was surprised.
I wasn't surprised that the patrons of this restaurant had been mugged.
The food is not cheap and the place is an oasis of genteel laughter in a
neighborhood more attuned to sirens, car stereos, and the stacatto passage
of these same folks in their cars on their way home to the hills.
I also wasn't surprised that the restaurant owners, after completely
ignoring the existence of their scrappy neighbors, after failing to welcome
their new peers to the block, after ignoring that small business baksheesh
of customer-trading, were still willing to hit us up to come to their
'community' meeting and talk about how to 'stop crime'.
I ache for folks who suffer through being robbed with the threat of
violence, or with actual violence. It sucks to have something like that
happen to you.
But.
In the time that I bottomlined our business in North Oakland, we lost
about 5% of our sales income in shoplifting. This is in comparison to
basically nil in shoplifting losses in a similar store that I previously
ran in San Francisco, near haight/fillmore. What's different? Income
inequality. Sure, in a diverse place, folks of all different sorts
encounter each other, and there is a lot that is healthy about that.
In this region there do seem to be some entrenched group identities in the
culture war, and I sometimes wonder which side I am on.
I have watched friends and neighbors struggle as their food stamps are
cut. I have listened to the pained conflict that grows up in their loving
homes around money, when there is none. I wondered most especially which
side I was on after George Zimmerman was let free, and marches passed my
West Oakland house every day. I saw the notoriously violent OPD standing
between me and these marches, as if to protect me. This more than anything
else drove me to walk out my front gate and join those marches, to show
with my body where my loyalties lay.
I have watched the region that has nurtured me for the last decade sink
into an inequality that I am led to believe is as deep and deeply
entrenched (meaning the unlikelihood of people to transcend the
circumstances into which they were born) as the period that preceded the
French Revolution.
Only whose head will roll?
In the midst of these questions I was forced to confront the inadequacy of
Sudo's best and most shining efforts. It is a place where I have made
friends, many of whom stay in my orbit & community now as I re-orient. Sudo
is also the only place where my hair was ever grabbed without my consent.
It is a place where I have been accosted in a dark hallway by someone who
repeatedly demanded my attention despite my demurrals, despite walking
away. It is a place I have been yelled at in anger, as have many others. It
is a place I have feared to bring friends. I watched a community struggle
to set boundaries to protect its members, only to founder as it seeks to
define what a 'member' is that deserves protection.
I say these things not as a condemnation of sudo, and i hope they are not
read as such. I say them as an honest person sharing some difficult
thoughts, and i remind you dear reader that we reside within a culture that
is structurally predisposed against this. It trains us to see critique as
attack, to see critical thought as a threat, instead of what we hackers
know as the fundamental strength we bring to any situation. We can think.
we can assess. we can learn and grow and change, and we can evolve.
We are meta. We are legion, and we cannot be contained.
I read recently about this space starting in SF, and while i was gladdened
to hear about Double Union, I am extra excited to imagine another space
with such a strong commitment to inclusion.
https://github.com/wallacemax/sfhackerspace
I hope the east bay hackerspace scene continues to grow, evolve, and
flourish.
I understand sudo is changing right now as well. It is well for all
things to change, and I hope that in this case the changes lead towards the
causes of transparency in governance and inclusion for all, which i always
understood to be some of the most fundamental tenets of sudo.
be well, good luck to all, and always,
R.
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
8:06 a.m.
( * "we are looking for something new" : Didn't mean to speak for the
entire group, by that I mean really that some of us are looking at new
spaces that might better accommodate all our needs)
On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 8:04 AM, David Keenan <dkeenan44(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not sure if I've met you (if I have, I am
sorry to not put the name to
the face) - naturally I understand your deep concerns regarding feeling and
being safe in the space. I don't know who the accosting individuals were,
but I do know that there is a neighbor and landlord who rove the shared
areas in an agitated and/or deeply disturbed state who have intimidated
other members of our community. 2141 is not optimal largely for that
reason, and we are looking for something new.
- I have seen a tall aluminum ladder in sudo, in the storage area
immediately left of the door, just before the radio studio, on the
left-hand side.
- I have also seen a folding-in-half plastic table, in that it was once
brought over to the Bay Area Public School room for a sudo meeting I think
when space got tight one day - so you might check in there - normally in
BAPS there should be two tables in there, whose legs fold, but do not fold
in half. Check behind the couch / pews -
I am not sure if you are inferring a farewell to sudo by asking where your
things are, but I think it would be really tragic if someone so passionate
and articulate spun out of our communal orbit. Is there anything I or we
can do, to directly address your concerns?
Best,
David
On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 1:29 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <rachelyra(a)gmail.com
wrote:
Greetings, sudo!
It has been a long time since i have visited! I hope you have all been
doing well. I am taking the time right now as the year draws to a close to
reflect on the current state of things in my world. Perhaps you will
indulge me in reading everything below. perhaps you are seeking a tl;dr in
which case i will ask you,
have you seen my folding plastic table?
have you seen my aluminum ladder?
have you seen my dreams for a shared space and a common future?
I believe I left them laying around here someplace, possibly with my name
scrawled across in marker.
The table is about 3'x6', blown plastic, folds in half. The ladder is
aluminum, 12' high or so, and quite nice. The dreams are like hair or
cuticles, forever growing back even as i try to ignore them and focus on
something tangible or 'important'.
At the beginning of this year I closed Coyote, a shared art studio and
retail space I had been managing in North Oakland. We closed in part
because of the loss of one of our founding members, who moved back east to
live closer to his family. We closed also because of a mismatch with the
neighborhood, admitting reluctantly that where we wanted to have our art
studio was not compatible with where we needed to do our retail work - to
seek customers, and build paying business. We struggled to integrate into
our neighborhood, making friends while seeking to understand the impact of
gentrification. We struggled with an unscrupulous landlord, mounting costs
and flatlining incomes, and we had to admit that the project wasn't working
in its current guise.
The upscale restaurant down the block sought our support, as we were
closing, for a 'neighborhood meeting' about crime. When I pressed the
owner (who had never before visited, in our year and a half in business)
about what their concerns were, he told me that some of their patrons were
being mugged on their way from the tony restaurant to the train station.
I can't say that I was surprised.
I wasn't surprised that the patrons of this restaurant had been mugged.
The food is not cheap and the place is an oasis of genteel laughter in a
neighborhood more attuned to sirens, car stereos, and the stacatto passage
of these same folks in their cars on their way home to the hills.
I also wasn't surprised that the restaurant owners, after completely
ignoring the existence of their scrappy neighbors, after failing to welcome
their new peers to the block, after ignoring that small business baksheesh
of customer-trading, were still willing to hit us up to come to their
'community' meeting and talk about how to 'stop crime'.
I ache for folks who suffer through being robbed with the threat of
violence, or with actual violence. It sucks to have something like that
happen to you.
But.
In the time that I bottomlined our business in North Oakland, we lost
about 5% of our sales income in shoplifting. This is in comparison to
basically nil in shoplifting losses in a similar store that I previously
ran in San Francisco, near haight/fillmore. What's different? Income
inequality. Sure, in a diverse place, folks of all different sorts
encounter each other, and there is a lot that is healthy about that.
In this region there do seem to be some entrenched group identities in
the culture war, and I sometimes wonder which side I am on.
I have watched friends and neighbors struggle as their food stamps are
cut. I have listened to the pained conflict that grows up in their loving
homes around money, when there is none. I wondered most especially which
side I was on after George Zimmerman was let free, and marches passed my
West Oakland house every day. I saw the notoriously violent OPD standing
between me and these marches, as if to protect me. This more than anything
else drove me to walk out my front gate and join those marches, to show
with my body where my loyalties lay.
I have watched the region that has nurtured me for the last decade sink
into an inequality that I am led to believe is as deep and deeply
entrenched (meaning the unlikelihood of people to transcend the
circumstances into which they were born) as the period that preceded the
French Revolution.
Only whose head will roll?
In the midst of these questions I was forced to confront the inadequacy
of Sudo's best and most shining efforts. It is a place where I have made
friends, many of whom stay in my orbit & community now as I re-orient. Sudo
is also the only place where my hair was ever grabbed without my consent.
It is a place where I have been accosted in a dark hallway by someone who
repeatedly demanded my attention despite my demurrals, despite walking
away. It is a place I have been yelled at in anger, as have many others. It
is a place I have feared to bring friends. I watched a community struggle
to set boundaries to protect its members, only to founder as it seeks to
define what a 'member' is that deserves protection.
I say these things not as a condemnation of sudo, and i hope they are not
read as such. I say them as an honest person sharing some difficult
thoughts, and i remind you dear reader that we reside within a culture that
is structurally predisposed against this. It trains us to see critique as
attack, to see critical thought as a threat, instead of what we hackers
know as the fundamental strength we bring to any situation. We can think.
we can assess. we can learn and grow and change, and we can evolve.
We are meta. We are legion, and we cannot be contained.
I read recently about this space starting in SF, and while i was
gladdened to hear about Double Union, I am extra excited to imagine another
space with such a strong commitment to inclusion.
https://github.com/wallacemax/sfhackerspace
I hope the east bay hackerspace scene continues to grow, evolve, and
flourish.
I understand sudo is changing right now as well. It is well for all
things to change, and I hope that in this case the changes lead towards the
causes of transparency in governance and inclusion for all, which i always
understood to be some of the most fundamental tenets of sudo.
be well, good luck to all, and always,
R.
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
11:48 p.m.
Rachel,
Thank you for this message. I want to take your points about taking this
difficult information responsibly, which as you say is difficult because we
are"structurally predisposed against this". So I wont say "that was a
one-off", but only mean to hear what your experience was, which as I
understand it was threatening at times. That makes me feel a bit sad due to
powerlessness to change something that I feel I couldn't control, and so
seem to lose you - I valued your participation.
Take care,
Max
On 13 November 2013 08:04, David Keenan <dkeenan44(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not sure if I've met you (if I have, I am
sorry to not put the name to
the face) - naturally I understand your deep concerns regarding feeling and
being safe in the space. I don't know who the accosting individuals were,
but I do know that there is a neighbor and landlord who rove the shared
areas in an agitated and/or deeply disturbed state who have intimidated
other members of our community. 2141 is not optimal largely for that
reason, and we are looking for something new.
- I have seen a tall aluminum ladder in sudo, in the storage area
immediately left of the door, just before the radio studio, on the
left-hand side.
- I have also seen a folding-in-half plastic table, in that it was once
brought over to the Bay Area Public School room for a sudo meeting I think
when space got tight one day - so you might check in there - normally in
BAPS there should be two tables in there, whose legs fold, but do not fold
in half. Check behind the couch / pews -
I am not sure if you are inferring a farewell to sudo by asking where your
things are, but I think it would be really tragic if someone so passionate
and articulate spun out of our communal orbit. Is there anything I or we
can do, to directly address your concerns?
Best,
David
On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 1:29 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <rachelyra(a)gmail.com
wrote:
Greetings, sudo!
It has been a long time since i have visited! I hope you have all been
doing well. I am taking the time right now as the year draws to a close to
reflect on the current state of things in my world. Perhaps you will
indulge me in reading everything below. perhaps you are seeking a tl;dr in
which case i will ask you,
have you seen my folding plastic table?
have you seen my aluminum ladder?
have you seen my dreams for a shared space and a common future?
I believe I left them laying around here someplace, possibly with my name
scrawled across in marker.
The table is about 3'x6', blown plastic, folds in half. The ladder is
aluminum, 12' high or so, and quite nice. The dreams are like hair or
cuticles, forever growing back even as i try to ignore them and focus on
something tangible or 'important'.
At the beginning of this year I closed Coyote, a shared art studio and
retail space I had been managing in North Oakland. We closed in part
because of the loss of one of our founding members, who moved back east to
live closer to his family. We closed also because of a mismatch with the
neighborhood, admitting reluctantly that where we wanted to have our art
studio was not compatible with where we needed to do our retail work - to
seek customers, and build paying business. We struggled to integrate into
our neighborhood, making friends while seeking to understand the impact of
gentrification. We struggled with an unscrupulous landlord, mounting costs
and flatlining incomes, and we had to admit that the project wasn't working
in its current guise.
The upscale restaurant down the block sought our support, as we were
closing, for a 'neighborhood meeting' about crime. When I pressed the
owner (who had never before visited, in our year and a half in business)
about what their concerns were, he told me that some of their patrons were
being mugged on their way from the tony restaurant to the train station.
I can't say that I was surprised.
I wasn't surprised that the patrons of this restaurant had been mugged.
The food is not cheap and the place is an oasis of genteel laughter in a
neighborhood more attuned to sirens, car stereos, and the stacatto passage
of these same folks in their cars on their way home to the hills.
I also wasn't surprised that the restaurant owners, after completely
ignoring the existence of their scrappy neighbors, after failing to welcome
their new peers to the block, after ignoring that small business baksheesh
of customer-trading, were still willing to hit us up to come to their
'community' meeting and talk about how to 'stop crime'.
I ache for folks who suffer through being robbed with the threat of
violence, or with actual violence. It sucks to have something like that
happen to you.
But.
In the time that I bottomlined our business in North Oakland, we lost
about 5% of our sales income in shoplifting. This is in comparison to
basically nil in shoplifting losses in a similar store that I previously
ran in San Francisco, near haight/fillmore. What's different? Income
inequality. Sure, in a diverse place, folks of all different sorts
encounter each other, and there is a lot that is healthy about that.
In this region there do seem to be some entrenched group identities in
the culture war, and I sometimes wonder which side I am on.
I have watched friends and neighbors struggle as their food stamps are
cut. I have listened to the pained conflict that grows up in their loving
homes around money, when there is none. I wondered most especially which
side I was on after George Zimmerman was let free, and marches passed my
West Oakland house every day. I saw the notoriously violent OPD standing
between me and these marches, as if to protect me. This more than anything
else drove me to walk out my front gate and join those marches, to show
with my body where my loyalties lay.
I have watched the region that has nurtured me for the last decade sink
into an inequality that I am led to believe is as deep and deeply
entrenched (meaning the unlikelihood of people to transcend the
circumstances into which they were born) as the period that preceded the
French Revolution.
Only whose head will roll?
In the midst of these questions I was forced to confront the inadequacy
of Sudo's best and most shining efforts. It is a place where I have made
friends, many of whom stay in my orbit & community now as I re-orient. Sudo
is also the only place where my hair was ever grabbed without my consent.
It is a place where I have been accosted in a dark hallway by someone who
repeatedly demanded my attention despite my demurrals, despite walking
away. It is a place I have been yelled at in anger, as have many others. It
is a place I have feared to bring friends. I watched a community struggle
to set boundaries to protect its members, only to founder as it seeks to
define what a 'member' is that deserves protection.
I say these things not as a condemnation of sudo, and i hope they are not
read as such. I say them as an honest person sharing some difficult
thoughts, and i remind you dear reader that we reside within a culture that
is structurally predisposed against this. It trains us to see critique as
attack, to see critical thought as a threat, instead of what we hackers
know as the fundamental strength we bring to any situation. We can think.
we can assess. we can learn and grow and change, and we can evolve.
We are meta. We are legion, and we cannot be contained.
I read recently about this space starting in SF, and while i was
gladdened to hear about Double Union, I am extra excited to imagine another
space with such a strong commitment to inclusion.
https://github.com/wallacemax/sfhackerspace
I hope the east bay hackerspace scene continues to grow, evolve, and
flourish.
I understand sudo is changing right now as well. It is well for all
things to change, and I hope that in this case the changes lead towards the
causes of transparency in governance and inclusion for all, which i always
understood to be some of the most fundamental tenets of sudo.
be well, good luck to all, and always,
R.
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
18 Nov
18 Nov
10:01 a.m.
Hi david, thanks for your response! I will come by this week and retrieve
my objects.
I am inferring a sort of farewell to Sudo, as I haven't been by in some
time and I find within myself a resistance to doing so. I don't mean to
impugn the best efforts of the many folks who work hard to continually feed
& grow this community. There are a lot of awesome things about Sudo, and
even though i have to break up with you I know we'll each go on to find the
happiness, with others, that we both deserve.
I don't want to spend a bunch of time detailing negative things, naming
names and rehashing past events that I am not seeking resolution for. The
folks who touched and accosted me that I mentioned in particular, are not
landlord George or neighbor Timon, even though they both do yell a lot in a
manner that I find wildly inappropriate. My concerns about people and
culture are not so limited in scope here.
Perhaps the other email I just sent to the list will help to illustrate
another cultural divide I feel exists between where I stand, and Sudo room.
I think that an organization like this, forming in the time and place that
it has, bears a great burden of responsibility towards the city & cultures
around it. I make no commentary on where each of you are on this journey.
Here is an anecdote about my relationship with Oakland.
I live right by West Oakland Bart. The house is owned by nameless Chinese
investors who bought it with cash after it was foreclosed on during the
single biggest extraction of wealth from the Black American community,
ever. Management is handled by a local company who routinely break the law.
They were excited to rent to my friend who has a lucrative software job,
and I live in the basement like some sort of loony art nut add-on. It's
pretty sweet if I don't think about that whole foreclosure thing or the
fact that the lease is written in such a way to be able to kick us out
whenever they want. I also don't think too much about the white friend who
bought a house down the street, who lamented how he couldn't buy this one
because the Chinese offered cash. He and I both deserve places to live,
after all.
After George Zimmerman was freed, marches went past my house every day.
These were 'neighborhood' folks, a word many often use as a euphemism for
black. The marchers were overwhelmingly African-American. In a nation
marked by endemic and enduring anti-black racism and a constant narrative
of black violence and crime, in a city with a provedly violent and racist
police force, at a time with high tensions and no relief valve, I think the
racial makeup of a group performing political protest is an interesting
piece of data.
I stood in my front yard, behind the stout gate that came with the place,
looking at the backs of phalanxes of mostly white officers who were
flanking this spontaneous-seeming march. I wondered what would happen if I
joined it. I felt so much anger around that verdict! It was not an angry
crowd but a solemn one, but still I wondered how anger might manifest to
others. But I looked at the police, between me and that march, and I knew
I was on the wrong side. Whatever might happen within that crowd, they were
speaking opposition and for my voice to be counted I had to join them.
I opened my gate and went outside. I pushed past the police.
I joined my community.
R.
On Nov 13, 2013 8:04 AM, "David Keenan" <dkeenan44(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not sure if I've met you (if I have, I am
sorry to not put the name to
the face) - naturally I understand your deep concerns regarding feeling and
being safe in the space. I don't know who the accosting individuals were,
but I do know that there is a neighbor and landlord who rove the shared
areas in an agitated and/or deeply disturbed state who have intimidated
other members of our community. 2141 is not optimal largely for that
reason, and we are looking for something new.
- I have seen a tall aluminum ladder in sudo, in the storage area
immediately left of the door, just before the radio studio, on the
left-hand side.
- I have also seen a folding-in-half plastic table, in that it was once
brought over to the Bay Area Public School room for a sudo meeting I think
when space got tight one day - so you might check in there - normally in
BAPS there should be two tables in there, whose legs fold, but do not fold
in half. Check behind the couch / pews -
I am not sure if you are inferring a farewell to sudo by asking where your
things are, but I think it would be really tragic if someone so passionate
and articulate spun out of our communal orbit. Is there anything I or we
can do, to directly address your concerns?
Best,
David
On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 1:29 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <rachelyra(a)gmail.com
wrote:
Greetings, sudo!
It has been a long time since i have visited! I hope you have all been
doing well. I am taking the time right now as the year draws to a close to
reflect on the current state of things in my world. Perhaps you will
indulge me in reading everything below. perhaps you are seeking a tl;dr in
which case i will ask you,
have you seen my folding plastic table?
have you seen my aluminum ladder?
have you seen my dreams for a shared space and a common future?
I believe I left them laying around here someplace, possibly with my name
scrawled across in marker.
The table is about 3'x6', blown plastic, folds in half. The ladder is
aluminum, 12' high or so, and quite nice. The dreams are like hair or
cuticles, forever growing back even as i try to ignore them and focus on
something tangible or 'important'.
At the beginning of this year I closed Coyote, a shared art studio and
retail space I had been managing in North Oakland. We closed in part
because of the loss of one of our founding members, who moved back east to
live closer to his family. We closed also because of a mismatch with the
neighborhood, admitting reluctantly that where we wanted to have our art
studio was not compatible with where we needed to do our retail work - to
seek customers, and build paying business. We struggled to integrate into
our neighborhood, making friends while seeking to understand the impact of
gentrification. We struggled with an unscrupulous landlord, mounting costs
and flatlining incomes, and we had to admit that the project wasn't working
in its current guise.
The upscale restaurant down the block sought our support, as we were
closing, for a 'neighborhood meeting' about crime. When I pressed the
owner (who had never before visited, in our year and a half in business)
about what their concerns were, he told me that some of their patrons were
being mugged on their way from the tony restaurant to the train station.
I can't say that I was surprised.
I wasn't surprised that the patrons of this restaurant had been mugged.
The food is not cheap and the place is an oasis of genteel laughter in a
neighborhood more attuned to sirens, car stereos, and the stacatto passage
of these same folks in their cars on their way home to the hills.
I also wasn't surprised that the restaurant owners, after completely
ignoring the existence of their scrappy neighbors, after failing to welcome
their new peers to the block, after ignoring that small business baksheesh
of customer-trading, were still willing to hit us up to come to their
'community' meeting and talk about how to 'stop crime'.
I ache for folks who suffer through being robbed with the threat of
violence, or with actual violence. It sucks to have something like that
happen to you.
But.
In the time that I bottomlined our business in North Oakland, we lost
about 5% of our sales income in shoplifting. This is in comparison to
basically nil in shoplifting losses in a similar store that I previously
ran in San Francisco, near haight/fillmore. What's different? Income
inequality. Sure, in a diverse place, folks of all different sorts
encounter each other, and there is a lot that is healthy about that.
In this region there do seem to be some entrenched group identities in
the culture war, and I sometimes wonder which side I am on.
I have watched friends and neighbors struggle as their food stamps are
cut. I have listened to the pained conflict that grows up in their loving
homes around money, when there is none. I wondered most especially which
side I was on after George Zimmerman was let free, and marches passed my
West Oakland house every day. I saw the notoriously violent OPD standing
between me and these marches, as if to protect me. This more than anything
else drove me to walk out my front gate and join those marches, to show
with my body where my loyalties lay.
I have watched the region that has nurtured me for the last decade sink
into an inequality that I am led to believe is as deep and deeply
entrenched (meaning the unlikelihood of people to transcend the
circumstances into which they were born) as the period that preceded the
French Revolution.
Only whose head will roll?
In the midst of these questions I was forced to confront the inadequacy
of Sudo's best and most shining efforts. It is a place where I have made
friends, many of whom stay in my orbit & community now as I re-orient. Sudo
is also the only place where my hair was ever grabbed without my consent.
It is a place where I have been accosted in a dark hallway by someone who
repeatedly demanded my attention despite my demurrals, despite walking
away. It is a place I have been yelled at in anger, as have many others. It
is a place I have feared to bring friends. I watched a community struggle
to set boundaries to protect its members, only to founder as it seeks to
define what a 'member' is that deserves protection.
I say these things not as a condemnation of sudo, and i hope they are not
read as such. I say them as an honest person sharing some difficult
thoughts, and i remind you dear reader that we reside within a culture that
is structurally predisposed against this. It trains us to see critique as
attack, to see critical thought as a threat, instead of what we hackers
know as the fundamental strength we bring to any situation. We can think.
we can assess. we can learn and grow and change, and we can evolve.
We are meta. We are legion, and we cannot be contained.
I read recently about this space starting in SF, and while i was
gladdened to hear about Double Union, I am extra excited to imagine another
space with such a strong commitment to inclusion.
https://github.com/wallacemax/sfhackerspace
I hope the east bay hackerspace scene continues to grow, evolve, and
flourish.
I understand sudo is changing right now as well. It is well for all
things to change, and I hope that in this case the changes lead towards the
causes of transparency in governance and inclusion for all, which i always
understood to be some of the most fundamental tenets of sudo.
be well, good luck to all, and always,
R.
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
12:17 p.m.
Hi Rachel,
That's a beautiful story about joining the Trayvon march. I marched through
west oakland the night of the verdict, and the next, and the next. Watching
people come out of their houses to join in, walking off the courts and
playing fields to join, was a pretty awesome thing.
For the record since I guess we are naming names, the neighbor with the
menacing demeanor I was referring to was Robert with the dog, not Timon,
but whatevs.
I'll look for your other email you mention, too.
best,
David
On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:01 AM, rachel lyra hospodar
<rachelyra(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Hi david, thanks for your response! I will come by
this week and retrieve
my objects.
I am inferring a sort of farewell to Sudo, as I haven't been by in some
time and I find within myself a resistance to doing so. I don't mean to
impugn the best efforts of the many folks who work hard to continually feed
& grow this community. There are a lot of awesome things about Sudo, and
even though i have to break up with you I know we'll each go on to find the
happiness, with others, that we both deserve.
I don't want to spend a bunch of time detailing negative things, naming
names and rehashing past events that I am not seeking resolution for. The
folks who touched and accosted me that I mentioned in particular, are not
landlord George or neighbor Timon, even though they both do yell a lot in a
manner that I find wildly inappropriate. My concerns about people and
culture are not so limited in scope here.
Perhaps the other email I just sent to the list will help to illustrate
another cultural divide I feel exists between where I stand, and Sudo room.
I think that an organization like this, forming in the time and place that
it has, bears a great burden of responsibility towards the city & cultures
around it. I make no commentary on where each of you are on this journey.
Here is an anecdote about my relationship with Oakland.
I live right by West Oakland Bart. The house is owned by nameless Chinese
investors who bought it with cash after it was foreclosed on during the
single biggest extraction of wealth from the Black American community,
ever. Management is handled by a local company who routinely break the law.
They were excited to rent to my friend who has a lucrative software job,
and I live in the basement like some sort of loony art nut add-on. It's
pretty sweet if I don't think about that whole foreclosure thing or the
fact that the lease is written in such a way to be able to kick us out
whenever they want. I also don't think too much about the white friend who
bought a house down the street, who lamented how he couldn't buy this one
because the Chinese offered cash. He and I both deserve places to live,
after all.
After George Zimmerman was freed, marches went past my house every day.
These were 'neighborhood' folks, a word many often use as a euphemism for
black. The marchers were overwhelmingly African-American. In a nation
marked by endemic and enduring anti-black racism and a constant narrative
of black violence and crime, in a city with a provedly violent and racist
police force, at a time with high tensions and no relief valve, I think the
racial makeup of a group performing political protest is an interesting
piece of data.
I stood in my front yard, behind the stout gate that came with the place,
looking at the backs of phalanxes of mostly white officers who were
flanking this spontaneous-seeming march. I wondered what would happen if I
joined it. I felt so much anger around that verdict! It was not an angry
crowd but a solemn one, but still I wondered how anger might manifest to
others. But I looked at the police, between me and that march, and I knew
I was on the wrong side. Whatever might happen within that crowd, they were
speaking opposition and for my voice to be counted I had to join them.
I opened my gate and went outside. I pushed past the police.
I joined my community.
R.
On Nov 13, 2013 8:04 AM, "David Keenan" <dkeenan44(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure if I've met you (if I have, I am sorry to not put the name
> to the face) - naturally I understand your deep concerns regarding feeling
> and being safe in the space. I don't know who the accosting individuals
> were, but I do know that there is a neighbor and landlord who rove the
> shared areas in an agitated and/or deeply disturbed state who have
> intimidated other members of our community. 2141 is not optimal largely for
> that reason, and we are looking for something new.
>
> - I have seen a tall aluminum ladder in sudo, in the storage area
> immediately left of the door, just before the radio studio, on the
> left-hand side.
>
> - I have also seen a folding-in-half plastic table, in that it was once
> brought over to the Bay Area Public School room for a sudo meeting I think
> when space got tight one day - so you might check in there - normally in
> BAPS there should be two tables in there, whose legs fold, but do not fold
> in half. Check behind the couch / pews -
>
> I am not sure if you are inferring a farewell to sudo by asking where
> your things are, but I think it would be really tragic if someone so
> passionate and articulate spun out of our communal orbit. Is there anything
> I or we can do, to directly address your concerns?
>
> Best,
> David
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 1:29 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <
> rachelyra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Greetings, sudo!
>>
>> It has been a long time since i have visited! I hope you have all been
>> doing well. I am taking the time right now as the year draws to a close to
>> reflect on the current state of things in my world. Perhaps you will
>> indulge me in reading everything below. perhaps you are seeking a tl;dr in
>> which case i will ask you,
>> have you seen my folding plastic table?
>> have you seen my aluminum ladder?
>> have you seen my dreams for a shared space and a common future?
>>
>> I believe I left them laying around here someplace, possibly with my
>> name scrawled across in marker.
>>
>> The table is about 3'x6', blown plastic, folds in half. The ladder is
>> aluminum, 12' high or so, and quite nice. The dreams are like hair or
>> cuticles, forever growing back even as i try to ignore them and focus on
>> something tangible or 'important'.
>>
>> At the beginning of this year I closed Coyote, a shared art studio and
>> retail space I had been managing in North Oakland. We closed in part
>> because of the loss of one of our founding members, who moved back east to
>> live closer to his family. We closed also because of a mismatch with the
>> neighborhood, admitting reluctantly that where we wanted to have our art
>> studio was not compatible with where we needed to do our retail work - to
>> seek customers, and build paying business. We struggled to integrate into
>> our neighborhood, making friends while seeking to understand the impact of
>> gentrification. We struggled with an unscrupulous landlord, mounting costs
>> and flatlining incomes, and we had to admit that the project wasn't working
>> in its current guise.
>>
>> The upscale restaurant down the block sought our support, as we were
>> closing, for a 'neighborhood meeting' about crime. When I pressed the
>> owner (who had never before visited, in our year and a half in business)
>> about what their concerns were, he told me that some of their patrons were
>> being mugged on their way from the tony restaurant to the train station.
>>
>> I can't say that I was surprised.
>>
>> I wasn't surprised that the patrons of this restaurant had been mugged.
>> The food is not cheap and the place is an oasis of genteel laughter in a
>> neighborhood more attuned to sirens, car stereos, and the stacatto passage
>> of these same folks in their cars on their way home to the hills.
>>
>> I also wasn't surprised that the restaurant owners, after completely
>> ignoring the existence of their scrappy neighbors, after failing to welcome
>> their new peers to the block, after ignoring that small business baksheesh
>> of customer-trading, were still willing to hit us up to come to their
>> 'community' meeting and talk about how to 'stop crime'.
>>
>> I ache for folks who suffer through being robbed with the threat of
>> violence, or with actual violence. It sucks to have something like that
>> happen to you.
>>
>> But.
>>
>> In the time that I bottomlined our business in North Oakland, we lost
>> about 5% of our sales income in shoplifting. This is in comparison to
>> basically nil in shoplifting losses in a similar store that I previously
>> ran in San Francisco, near haight/fillmore. What's different? Income
>> inequality. Sure, in a diverse place, folks of all different sorts
>> encounter each other, and there is a lot that is healthy about that.
>>
>> In this region there do seem to be some entrenched group identities in
>> the culture war, and I sometimes wonder which side I am on.
>>
>> I have watched friends and neighbors struggle as their food stamps are
>> cut. I have listened to the pained conflict that grows up in their loving
>> homes around money, when there is none. I wondered most especially which
>> side I was on after George Zimmerman was let free, and marches passed my
>> West Oakland house every day. I saw the notoriously violent OPD standing
>> between me and these marches, as if to protect me. This more than anything
>> else drove me to walk out my front gate and join those marches, to show
>> with my body where my loyalties lay.
>>
>> I have watched the region that has nurtured me for the last decade sink
>> into an inequality that I am led to believe is as deep and deeply
>> entrenched (meaning the unlikelihood of people to transcend the
>> circumstances into which they were born) as the period that preceded the
>> French Revolution.
>>
>> Only whose head will roll?
>>
>> In the midst of these questions I was forced to confront the inadequacy
>> of Sudo's best and most shining efforts. It is a place where I have made
>> friends, many of whom stay in my orbit & community now as I re-orient. Sudo
>> is also the only place where my hair was ever grabbed without my consent.
>> It is a place where I have been accosted in a dark hallway by someone who
>> repeatedly demanded my attention despite my demurrals, despite walking
>> away. It is a place I have been yelled at in anger, as have many others. It
>> is a place I have feared to bring friends. I watched a community struggle
>> to set boundaries to protect its members, only to founder as it seeks to
>> define what a 'member' is that deserves protection.
>>
>> I say these things not as a condemnation of sudo, and i hope they are
>> not read as such. I say them as an honest person sharing some difficult
>> thoughts, and i remind you dear reader that we reside within a culture that
>> is structurally predisposed against this. It trains us to see critique as
>> attack, to see critical thought as a threat, instead of what we hackers
>> know as the fundamental strength we bring to any situation. We can think.
>> we can assess. we can learn and grow and change, and we can evolve.
>>
>> We are meta. We are legion, and we cannot be contained.
>>
>> I read recently about this space starting in SF, and while i was
>> gladdened to hear about Double Union, I am extra excited to imagine another
>> space with such a strong commitment to inclusion.
>> https://github.com/wallacemax/sfhackerspace
>>
>> I hope the east bay hackerspace scene continues to grow, evolve, and
>> flourish.
>>
>> I understand sudo is changing right now as well. It is well for all
>> things to change, and I hope that in this case the changes lead towards the
>> causes of transparency in governance and inclusion for all, which i always
>> understood to be some of the most fundamental tenets of sudo.
>>
>> be well, good luck to all, and always,
>> R.
>> _______________________________________________
>> sudo-discuss mailing list
>> sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> sudo-discuss mailing list
> sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>
>
1:35 p.m.
It's good to know if there is a neighbor that a lot of people are having
scary interactions with. I have heard a lot of communities talk about how
to balance 'not talking trash' with 'naming names' as a way to balance
the
safety of all. There is no absolute solution. In a diverse community some
members may have radically different experiences interacting with different
neighbors and it is good to share them. Sometimes I learn that someone who
was nice to me was mean to my friends, and then I have a decision to make.
Without that information I don't have the option of supporting that friend.
The other email I mention was in response to gtwog's comment about crime,
to which rhodey had also responded.
Thanks for sharing your experience around the community response to the
Zimmerman verdict. I also distinctly remember that there were a very few
vanguard anarchists holding up signs advocating violence, but most everyone
else had an entirely different and unified agenda. It was heartbreaking to
be in that march, affirming and rejuvenating but solemn as all get out. In
the moment it was easy for many of us to see that marching was the right
thing to do. But in the weeks, months, and years that follow, how do we
work within our own lives to subvert the status quo? Do we? How do we
prevent more senseless killings, like those of Renisha McBride and Trayvon
Martin and so many others? We can.
I believe that the demonizing of criminal actors plays an insidious part in
reinforcing amerika's modern apartheid state, and while we are encouraging
open and inclusive space we need to work constantly to create an
environment that does not perpetuate toxic horrors like racial segregation
and class war.
We need to work constantly towards this, and create an environment where we
call each other out. We need to be open to critique.
R.
On Nov 18, 2013 12:17 PM, "David Keenan" <dkeenan44(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Rachel,
That's a beautiful story about joining the Trayvon march. I marched
through west oakland the night of the verdict, and the next, and the next.
Watching people come out of their houses to join in, walking off the courts
and playing fields to join, was a pretty awesome thing.
For the record since I guess we are naming names, the neighbor with the
menacing demeanor I was referring to was Robert with the dog, not Timon,
but whatevs.
I'll look for your other email you mention, too.
best,
David
On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:01 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <
rachelyra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi david, thanks for your response! I will come
by this week and retrieve
my objects.
I am inferring a sort of farewell to Sudo, as I haven't been by in some
time and I find within myself a resistance to doing so. I don't mean to
impugn the best efforts of the many folks who work hard to continually feed
& grow this community. There are a lot of awesome things about Sudo, and
even though i have to break up with you I know we'll each go on to find the
happiness, with others, that we both deserve.
I don't want to spend a bunch of time detailing negative things, naming
names and rehashing past events that I am not seeking resolution for. The
folks who touched and accosted me that I mentioned in particular, are not
landlord George or neighbor Timon, even though they both do yell a lot in a
manner that I find wildly inappropriate. My concerns about people and
culture are not so limited in scope here.
Perhaps the other email I just sent to the list will help to illustrate
another cultural divide I feel exists between where I stand, and Sudo room.
I think that an organization like this, forming in the time and place that
it has, bears a great burden of responsibility towards the city & cultures
around it. I make no commentary on where each of you are on this journey.
Here is an anecdote about my relationship with Oakland.
I live right by West Oakland Bart. The house is owned by nameless Chinese
investors who bought it with cash after it was foreclosed on during the
single biggest extraction of wealth from the Black American community,
ever. Management is handled by a local company who routinely break the law.
They were excited to rent to my friend who has a lucrative software job,
and I live in the basement like some sort of loony art nut add-on. It's
pretty sweet if I don't think about that whole foreclosure thing or the
fact that the lease is written in such a way to be able to kick us out
whenever they want. I also don't think too much about the white friend who
bought a house down the street, who lamented how he couldn't buy this one
because the Chinese offered cash. He and I both deserve places to live,
after all.
After George Zimmerman was freed, marches went past my house every day.
These were 'neighborhood' folks, a word many often use as a euphemism for
black. The marchers were overwhelmingly African-American. In a nation
marked by endemic and enduring anti-black racism and a constant narrative
of black violence and crime, in a city with a provedly violent and racist
police force, at a time with high tensions and no relief valve, I think the
racial makeup of a group performing political protest is an interesting
piece of data.
I stood in my front yard, behind the stout gate that came with the place,
looking at the backs of phalanxes of mostly white officers who were
flanking this spontaneous-seeming march. I wondered what would happen if I
joined it. I felt so much anger around that verdict! It was not an angry
crowd but a solemn one, but still I wondered how anger might manifest to
others. But I looked at the police, between me and that march, and I knew
I was on the wrong side. Whatever might happen within that crowd, they were
speaking opposition and for my voice to be counted I had to join them.
I opened my gate and went outside. I pushed past the police.
I joined my community.
R.
On Nov 13, 2013 8:04 AM, "David Keenan" <dkeenan44(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure if I've met you (if I have, I am sorry to not put the name
> to the face) - naturally I understand your deep concerns regarding feeling
> and being safe in the space. I don't know who the accosting individuals
> were, but I do know that there is a neighbor and landlord who rove the
> shared areas in an agitated and/or deeply disturbed state who have
> intimidated other members of our community. 2141 is not optimal largely for
> that reason, and we are looking for something new.
>
> - I have seen a tall aluminum ladder in sudo, in the storage area
> immediately left of the door, just before the radio studio, on the
> left-hand side.
>
> - I have also seen a folding-in-half plastic table, in that it was once
> brought over to the Bay Area Public School room for a sudo meeting I think
> when space got tight one day - so you might check in there - normally in
> BAPS there should be two tables in there, whose legs fold, but do not fold
> in half. Check behind the couch / pews -
>
> I am not sure if you are inferring a farewell to sudo by asking where
> your things are, but I think it would be really tragic if someone so
> passionate and articulate spun out of our communal orbit. Is there anything
> I or we can do, to directly address your concerns?
>
> Best,
> David
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 1:29 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <
> rachelyra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Greetings, sudo!
>>
>> It has been a long time since i have visited! I hope you have all been
>> doing well. I am taking the time right now as the year draws to a close to
>> reflect on the current state of things in my world. Perhaps you will
>> indulge me in reading everything below. perhaps you are seeking a tl;dr in
>> which case i will ask you,
>> have you seen my folding plastic table?
>> have you seen my aluminum ladder?
>> have you seen my dreams for a shared space and a common future?
>>
>> I believe I left them laying around here someplace, possibly with my
>> name scrawled across in marker.
>>
>> The table is about 3'x6', blown plastic, folds in half. The ladder is
>> aluminum, 12' high or so, and quite nice. The dreams are like hair or
>> cuticles, forever growing back even as i try to ignore them and focus on
>> something tangible or 'important'.
>>
>> At the beginning of this year I closed Coyote, a shared art studio and
>> retail space I had been managing in North Oakland. We closed in part
>> because of the loss of one of our founding members, who moved back east to
>> live closer to his family. We closed also because of a mismatch with the
>> neighborhood, admitting reluctantly that where we wanted to have our art
>> studio was not compatible with where we needed to do our retail work - to
>> seek customers, and build paying business. We struggled to integrate into
>> our neighborhood, making friends while seeking to understand the impact of
>> gentrification. We struggled with an unscrupulous landlord, mounting costs
>> and flatlining incomes, and we had to admit that the project wasn't working
>> in its current guise.
>>
>> The upscale restaurant down the block sought our support, as we were
>> closing, for a 'neighborhood meeting' about crime. When I pressed the
>> owner (who had never before visited, in our year and a half in business)
>> about what their concerns were, he told me that some of their patrons were
>> being mugged on their way from the tony restaurant to the train station.
>>
>> I can't say that I was surprised.
>>
>> I wasn't surprised that the patrons of this restaurant had been mugged.
>> The food is not cheap and the place is an oasis of genteel laughter in a
>> neighborhood more attuned to sirens, car stereos, and the stacatto passage
>> of these same folks in their cars on their way home to the hills.
>>
>> I also wasn't surprised that the restaurant owners, after completely
>> ignoring the existence of their scrappy neighbors, after failing to welcome
>> their new peers to the block, after ignoring that small business baksheesh
>> of customer-trading, were still willing to hit us up to come to their
>> 'community' meeting and talk about how to 'stop crime'.
>>
>> I ache for folks who suffer through being robbed with the threat of
>> violence, or with actual violence. It sucks to have something like that
>> happen to you.
>>
>> But.
>>
>> In the time that I bottomlined our business in North Oakland, we lost
>> about 5% of our sales income in shoplifting. This is in comparison to
>> basically nil in shoplifting losses in a similar store that I previously
>> ran in San Francisco, near haight/fillmore. What's different? Income
>> inequality. Sure, in a diverse place, folks of all different sorts
>> encounter each other, and there is a lot that is healthy about that.
>>
>> In this region there do seem to be some entrenched group identities in
>> the culture war, and I sometimes wonder which side I am on.
>>
>> I have watched friends and neighbors struggle as their food stamps are
>> cut. I have listened to the pained conflict that grows up in their loving
>> homes around money, when there is none. I wondered most especially which
>> side I was on after George Zimmerman was let free, and marches passed my
>> West Oakland house every day. I saw the notoriously violent OPD standing
>> between me and these marches, as if to protect me. This more than anything
>> else drove me to walk out my front gate and join those marches, to show
>> with my body where my loyalties lay.
>>
>> I have watched the region that has nurtured me for the last decade sink
>> into an inequality that I am led to believe is as deep and deeply
>> entrenched (meaning the unlikelihood of people to transcend the
>> circumstances into which they were born) as the period that preceded the
>> French Revolution.
>>
>> Only whose head will roll?
>>
>> In the midst of these questions I was forced to confront the inadequacy
>> of Sudo's best and most shining efforts. It is a place where I have made
>> friends, many of whom stay in my orbit & community now as I re-orient. Sudo
>> is also the only place where my hair was ever grabbed without my consent.
>> It is a place where I have been accosted in a dark hallway by someone who
>> repeatedly demanded my attention despite my demurrals, despite walking
>> away. It is a place I have been yelled at in anger, as have many others. It
>> is a place I have feared to bring friends. I watched a community struggle
>> to set boundaries to protect its members, only to founder as it seeks to
>> define what a 'member' is that deserves protection.
>>
>> I say these things not as a condemnation of sudo, and i hope they are
>> not read as such. I say them as an honest person sharing some difficult
>> thoughts, and i remind you dear reader that we reside within a culture that
>> is structurally predisposed against this. It trains us to see critique as
>> attack, to see critical thought as a threat, instead of what we hackers
>> know as the fundamental strength we bring to any situation. We can think.
>> we can assess. we can learn and grow and change, and we can evolve.
>>
>> We are meta. We are legion, and we cannot be contained.
>>
>> I read recently about this space starting in SF, and while i was
>> gladdened to hear about Double Union, I am extra excited to imagine another
>> space with such a strong commitment to inclusion.
>> https://github.com/wallacemax/sfhackerspace
>>
>> I hope the east bay hackerspace scene continues to grow, evolve, and
>> flourish.
>>
>> I understand sudo is changing right now as well. It is well for all
>> things to change, and I hope that in this case the changes lead towards the
>> causes of transparency in governance and inclusion for all, which i always
>> understood to be some of the most fundamental tenets of sudo.
>>
>> be well, good luck to all, and always,
>> R.
>> _______________________________________________
>> sudo-discuss mailing list
>> sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> sudo-discuss mailing list
> sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>
>
_______________________________________________
sudo-discuss mailing list
sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org
http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
7:51 p.m.
Dear Rachel,
It is nice to hear from you and your farewell makes me sad as well.
You and me have similar motives,
My agenda was always to help Sudo open up to the community.
And for this I always brought my diverse friends.
It makes me sad that something made you fear to bring your friends,
But I can understand, especially in the beginning of sudo, we had this hard
grip
Of divisive and regulative spirits, but this is long gone.
A lot has changed since you don't come anymore, Sudo DID change socially
And we are as diverse as never before.
I wonder what triggered you to write the email.
Just in case it was a certain person contacting you and talking about a
divided community,
About Jenny and Mark conspiring for getting a grant and to have a non
profit,
Then I would love to speak up.
In any case, I hope you think about it, I hope you stick around, bring your
friends,
And help plant the seeds for a better future.
Much love,
Patrick
Am Dienstag, 19. November 2013 schrieb rachel lyra hospodar <
rachelyra(a)gmail.com>gt;:
It's good to know if there is a neighbor that a
lot of people are having
scary interactions with. I have heard a lot of communities
talk about how
to balance 'not talking trash' with 'naming names' as a way to balance
the
safety of all. There is no absolute solution. In a diverse community some
members may have radically different experiences interacting with different
neighbors and it is good to share them. Sometimes I learn that someone who
was nice to me was mean to my friends, and then I have a decision to make.
Without that information I don't have the option of supporting that friend.
The other email I mention was in response to gtwog's comment about crime,
to
which rhodey had also responded.
Thanks for sharing your experience around the community response to the
Zimmerman
verdict. I also distinctly remember that there were a very few
vanguard anarchists holding up signs advocating violence, but most everyone
else had an entirely different and unified agenda. It was heartbreaking to
be in that march, affirming and rejuvenating but solemn as all get out. In
the moment it was easy for many of us to see that marching was the right
thing to do. But in the weeks, months, and years that follow, how do we
work within our own lives to subvert the status quo? Do we? How do we
prevent more senseless killings, like those of Renisha McBride and Trayvon
Martin and so many others? We can.
I believe that the demonizing of criminal actors plays an insidious part
in
reinforcing amerika's modern apartheid state, and while we are
encouraging open and inclusive space we need to work constantly to create
an environment that does not perpetuate toxic horrors like racial
segregation and class war.
We need to work constantly towards this, and create an environment where
we call
each other out. We need to be open to critique.
R.
On Nov 18, 2013 12:17 PM, "David Keenan" <dkeenan44(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Rachel,
That's a beautiful story about joining the Trayvon march. I marched
through
west oakland the night of the verdict, and the next, and the next.
Watching people come out of their houses to join in, walking off the courts
and playing fields to join, was a pretty awesome thing.
For the record since I guess we are naming names, the
neighbor with the
menacing demeanor I was referring to was Robert with the dog, not
Timon,
but whatevs.
I'll look for your other email you mention, too.
best,
David
On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:01 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <
rachelyra(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi david, thanks for your response! I will come by this week and retrieve
my
objects.
I am inferring a sort of farewell to Sudo, as I haven't been by in some
time
and I find within myself a resistance to doing so. I don't mean to
impugn the best efforts of the many folks who work hard to continually feed
& grow this community. There are a lot of awesome things about Sudo, and
even though i have to break up with you I know we'll each go on to find the
happiness, with others, that we both deserve.
I don't want to spend a bunch of time detailing negative things, naming
names
and rehashing past events that I am not seeking resolution for. The
folks who touched and accosted me that I mentioned in particular, are not
landlord George or neighbor Timon, even though they both do yell a lot in a
manner that I find wildly inappropriate. My concerns about people and
culture are not so limited in scope here.
Perhaps the other email I just sent to the list will help to illustrate
another
cultural divide I feel exists between where I stand, and Sudo room.
I think that an organization like this, forming in the time and place that
it has, bears a great burden of responsibility towards the city & cultures
around it. I make no commentary on where each of you are on this journey.
Here is an anecdote about my relationship with Oakland.
I live right by West Oakland Bart. The house is owned by nameless Chinese
investors
who bought it with cash after it was foreclosed on during the
single biggest extraction of wealth from the Black American community,
ever. Management is handled by a local company who routinely break the law.
They were excited to rent to my friend who has a lucrative software job,
and I live in the basement like some sort of loony art nut add-on. It's
pretty sweet if I don't think about that whole foreclosure thing or the
fact that the lease is written in such a way to be able to kick us out
whenever they want. I also don't think too much about the white friend who
bought a house down the street, who lamented how he couldn't buy this one
because the Chinese offered cash. He and I both deserve places to live,
after all.
After George Zimmerman was freed, marches went past my house every day.
These were
'neighborhood' folks, a word many often use as a euphemism for
black. The marchers were overwhelmingly African-American. In a nation
marked by endemic and enduring anti-black racism and a constant narrative
of black violence and crime, in a city with a provedly violent and racist
police force, at a time with high tensions and no relief valve, I think the
racial makeup of a group performing political protest is an interesting
piece of data.
I stood in my front yard, behind the stout gate that came with the place,
looking
at the backs of phalanxes of mostly white officers who were
flanking this spontaneous-seeming march. I wondered what would happen if I
joined it. I felt so much anger around that verdict! It was not an angry
crowd but a solemn one, but still I wondered how anger might manifest to
others. But I looked at the police, between me and that march, and I knew
I was on the wrong side. Whatever might happen within that crowd, they were
speaking opposition and for my voice to be counted I had to join them.
I opened my gate and went outside. I pushed past the police.
I joined my community.
R.
On Nov 13, 2013 8:04 AM, "David Keenan" <
19 Nov
19 Nov
10:08 a.m.
Patrick, I applaud the positive intention that is obvious behind your email
but I am kind of disappointed by its assertions, that I somehow have
incorrectly assessed what type of environment I might feel comfortable in.
You exhort me to 'think about it' ignoring the clear evidence that I have
thought about it, extensively, as I would hope my long and carefully
thought out messages would indicate. I can easily imagine how your
enthusiasm would occlude for you the paternalism in your words.
I don't think it would be appropriate for me to get too deeply involved in
whatever conflicts are happening at Sudo now, as I haven't been around
much. I have been clear and open about naming names when I felt that it was
appropriate to do so.
Perhaps you might ask yourself why you are more curious about the identity
of 'a certain person' prompting me to, what, speak my mind? ...than you are
about the identities of the people who touched me without my permission or
made me feel unsafe.
I read your comment 'we are as diverse as never before' to rather miss my
point, as I would hope that the critical examination of sudo's position
within the greater context of Oakland would not stop upon achieving some
sort of 'diversity' level. Diversity in what dimension? (That's a
rhetorical question.) There are an infinite array of "other"s and until we
are within a society that does not exotify, demonize, ostracize, and demean
the other there will always be more work to do.
R.
On Nov 18, 2013 7:51 PM, "Patrick Schmidt" <psbschmidt(a)googlemail.com>
wrote:
Dear Rachel,
It is nice to hear from you and your farewell makes me sad as well.
You and me have similar motives,
My agenda was always to help Sudo open up to the community.
And for this I always brought my diverse friends.
It makes me sad that something made you fear to bring your friends,
But I can understand, especially in the beginning of sudo, we had this
hard grip
Of divisive and regulative spirits, but this is long gone.
A lot has changed since you don't come anymore, Sudo DID change socially
And we are as diverse as never before.
I wonder what triggered you to write the email.
Just in case it was a certain person contacting you and talking about a
divided community,
About Jenny and Mark conspiring for getting a grant and to have a non
profit,
Then I would love to speak up.
In any case, I hope you think about it, I hope you stick around, bring
your friends,
And help plant the seeds for a better future.
Much love,
Patrick
Am Dienstag, 19. November 2013 schrieb rachel lyra hospodar <
rachelyra(a)gmail.com>gt;:
It's good to know if there is a neighbor that
a lot of people are having
scary interactions with. I have heard a lot of
communities talk about how
to balance 'not talking trash' with 'naming names' as a way to balance
the
safety of all. There is no absolute solution. In a diverse community some
members may have radically different experiences interacting with different
neighbors and it is good to share them. Sometimes I learn that someone who
was nice to me was mean to my friends, and then I have a decision to make.
Without that information I don't have the option of supporting that friend.
The other email I mention was in response to gtwog's comment about
crime, to
which rhodey had also responded.
Thanks for sharing your experience around the community response to the
Zimmerman
verdict. I also distinctly remember that there were a very few
vanguard anarchists holding up signs advocating violence, but most everyone
else had an entirely different and unified agenda. It was heartbreaking to
be in that march, affirming and rejuvenating but solemn as all get out. In
the moment it was easy for many of us to see that marching was the right
thing to do. But in the weeks, months, and years that follow, how do we
work within our own lives to subvert the status quo? Do we? How do we
prevent more senseless killings, like those of Renisha McBride and Trayvon
Martin and so many others? We can.
I believe that the demonizing of criminal actors plays an insidious part
in
reinforcing amerika's modern apartheid state, and while we are
encouraging open and inclusive space we need to work constantly to create
an environment that does not perpetuate toxic horrors like racial
segregation and class war.
We need to work constantly towards this, and create an environment where
we call
each other out. We need to be open to critique.
R.
On Nov 18, 2013 12:17 PM, "David Keenan" <dkeenan44(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Rachel,
That's a beautiful story about joining the Trayvon march. I marched
through
west oakland the night of the verdict, and the next, and the next.
Watching people come out of their houses to join in, walking off the courts
and playing fields to join, was a pretty awesome thing.
For the record since I guess we are naming names,
the neighbor with the
menacing demeanor I was referring to was Robert with the dog,
not Timon,
but whatevs.
I'll look for your other email you mention,
too.
best,
David
On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 10:01 AM, rachel lyra hospodar <
rachelyra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi david, thanks for your response! I will come by this week and
retrieve my
objects.
I am inferring a sort of farewell to Sudo, as I haven't been by in some
time
and I find within myself a resistance to doing so. I don't mean to
impugn the best efforts of the many folks who work hard to continually feed
& grow this community. There are a lot of awesome things about Sudo, and
even though i have to break up with you I know we'll each go on to find the
happiness, with others, that we both deserve.
I don't want to spend a bunch of time detailing negative things, naming
names
and rehashing past events that I am not seeking resolution for. The
folks who touched and accosted me that I mentioned in particular, are not
landlord George or neighbor Timon, even though they both do yell a lot in a
manner that I find wildly inappropriate. My concerns about people and
culture are not so limited in scope here.
Perhaps the other email I just sent to the list will help to illustrate
another
cultural divide I feel exists between where I stand, and Sudo room.
I think that an organization like this, forming in the time and place that
it has, bears a great burden of responsibility towards the city & cultures
around it. I make no commentary on where each of you are on this journey.
Here is an anecdote about my relationship with Oakland.
I live right by West Oakland Bart. The house is owned by nameless
Chinese
investors who bought it with cash after it was foreclosed on during
the single biggest extraction of wealth from the Black American community,
ever. Management is handled by a local company who routinely break the law.
They were excited to rent to my friend who has a lucrative software job,
and I live in the basement like some sort of loony art nut add-on. It's
pretty sweet if I don't think about that whole foreclosure thing or the
fact that the lease is written in such a way to be able to kick us out
whenever they want. I also don't think too much about the white friend who
bought a house down the street, who lamented how he couldn't buy this one
because the Chinese offered cash. He and I both deserve places to live,
after all.
After George Zimmerman was freed, marches went past my house every day.
These were
'neighborhood' folks, a word many often use as a euphemism for
black. The marchers were overwhelmingly African-American. In a nation
marked by endemic and enduring anti-black racism and a constant narrative
of black violence and crime, in a city with a provedly violent and racist
police force, at a time with high tensions and no relief valve, I think the
racial makeup of a group performing political protest is an interesting
piece of data.
I stood in my front yard, behind the stout gate that came with the
place, looking
at the backs of phalanxes of mostly white officers who were
flanking this spontaneous-seeming march. I wondered what would happen if I
joined it. I felt so much anger around that verdict! It was not an angry
crowd but a solemn one, but still I wondered how anger might manifest to
others. But I looked at the police, between me and that march, and I knew
I was on the wrong side. Whatever might happen within that crowd, they were
speaking opposition and for my voice to be counted I had to join them.
>
> I opened my gate and went outside. I pushed past the police.
>
> I joined my community.
>
> R.
>
> On Nov 13, 2013 8:04 AM, "David Keenan" <
3848
days inactive
3854
days old
8 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
David Keenan -
Max Klein -
Patrick Schmidt -
rachel lyra hospodar