[sudo-discuss] Ladders, tables, and other horizontal surfaces

[David Keenan]

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 at 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 at lists.sudoroom.org
> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sudoroom.org/pipermail/sudo-discuss/attachments/20131113/99b5b79c/attachment.html>