Hi everyone, I live somewhere sanitary conditions imply many restrictions on gathering and organizing. I wonder how you have been organizing around the world. Where I live people are building and strengthening solidarity networks to support the most vulnerable and also fighting the fash who are showing up frequently in demonstrations and attacking activists. It also makes harder to organize unions etc… See you, rockroach
so…i got involved with one of the only orgs in my country last year and unfortunately it was not a good fit. started off pretty swell, i felt like i was welcome & contributing in helpful ways, had some really positive times with some cool folks. it was really nice to feel involved in a slightly larger level of solidarity than just my own little disjointed independent actions, and it was a nice bonus to get some social time too, as slimey pointed out!
but then a new person came in a couple months after i joined and, in my opinion, became a ‘missing stair’ type of problem that apparently everyone else was incapable of confronting. my concerns about that person’s behaviour were consistently dismissed, despite being acknowledged to me in private as a legitimate issue. ultimately i got so burnt out with being the only one willing to confront him about his behaviour that i had to reduce my time/energy spent on this org, then ended up leaving when even that was too much exposure to his behaviour for me to stomach. i felt really bad about leaving, and kinda still do, even though it was the right decision for me.
none of this is to try to scare people off about joining orgs or to badmouth this particular group. i think orgs can be fantastic and like i said, i had plenty of wonderful experiences with this group, and i wish them well. but some orgs really need to be better at addressing harmful behaviour, particularly when that behaviour is being pointed out by people from socially-marginalised communities, and particularly in the case of a low-population country with few or no accessible alternatives. i would have been happy to remain involved if they had adequately addressed this person’s behaviour and established some basic strategies for future situations. a lot of the time, people can talk shit out amongst themselves and it’s fine, but sometimes it’s helpful to have some sort of process ready to roll out for when that approach doesn’t work.
i get the solution is ‘form your own org’ but i personally don’t have the mental resources for that, so i’m just sticking to independent bursts of direct action & mutual aid when i can, will hook in with an org if the opportunity arises and they need an extra set of hands, and maybe a time will come in the future when i feel equipped to do more dedicated org stuff again.
I think that dealing with oppression inside an organization is a big deal. We have extra challenges when we try to do so in a decentralized organization. And it has been complicated for a while.
I don’t know what kind of behavior you are talking about, but if these behaviors are promoting domination and oppression it feels like the org would be legitimate to handle it. However it’s hard for people to recognize this kind of behavior and act on it. I am facing this kind of issue right now at my work place. Anyway pushing for a more inclusive organization is work, and it’s work I wouldn’t want to do alone :).
I don’t believe building your own org is always feasible as you pointed it out, so it’s not a solution, at worst it is a lazy dismissal of criticism, as in you aren’t happy make your own. As if fixing is impossible.
yeah the ‘go make your own org’ thing can often come off like ‘if you hate your job just get a new one’. it gets recommended a lot and while i think it’s important to encourage and empower people, it’s a very tough load to carry if you don’t even have enough people for a tiny local affinity group. like, i’m trying to set up a very small neighbourhood project and it’s taking ridiculously long because it’s literally just me trying to scrape together enough stuff to get it going and missing meals so i can get supplies for it. but once it’s set up i think people will help out so i’m running on optimism in the meantime!
with the guy in question, the main example was his repeated habit of suddenly dropping multiple images/videos of graphic violence (including deaths) into the chat group, then immediately logging off for a few hours. no content warning, no context, no discussion, nothing. a lot of the time he did not seem to know which country or city the images were from, yet when asked why he posted them he would say “people need to be aware of what is happening”.
i often ended up tracking down sources and finding groups we could offer support to, so people weren’t just left in a state of despair. i politely suggested that we can perhaps share links instead of bombarding raw nsfw/nsfl imagery, and add content warnings so people can make an informed decision on whether they were up to seeing those things. i even provided guidelines that journalists who regularly handle those kinds of imagery use, so people could see an evidence-based approach that could easily be applied. and i’d get a shrug in return, and/or private messages from others going “i don’t like it either but that’s just how he is”.
he also told me i was being performative for using indigenous language. i’m indigenous, so that didn’t go over too well. and yet again, nobody backed me up. that was when i finally decided to bid the org farewell.
my suspicion is that this group had become overly fixated on trying to get its numbers back up after a hiatus, and was willing to overlook a degree of crummy behaviour in order to retain someone who was determined, enthusiastic, and clearly enjoyed being active both online and on the ground. sadly i don’t think they understood enabling that degree of crummy behaviour would drive away people who also shared those positive qualities. nobody will be a perfect little angel all the time (self included!), especially when there’s stress and strong personalities and passionate feelings happening, but we don’t have to meekly accept unhealthy levels of asshattery either.
and i hope the situation in your workplace improves sooner rather than later!
there was the point on how pleasing unpleasant people is bad praxis.
And I do agree with you, if we let bad behavior go on, we will make people go away, bad orgs have high turnover rates, when people get tired for things that could be avoided they end up leaving …
We are here for a long time, sooner or later we will find people who click with us… hope you will find yours soon :)