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

[Max Klein]

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 at 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 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.
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>
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