[sudo-discuss] Pinnacle of cultural diversity

[Marina Kukso]

thank you patrick for bringing up the current status of our efforts at
creating an inclusive space. i basically ask myself these kinds of
questions constantly (performing constant temperature check of things like
"how boys-clubbish does sudo feel right now?" and "if i were a person of
color, would i feel alienated if i walked in right now having never been
here before?" "is this a place where a non-gender-normative person would
feel comfortable being themselves without having to answer for who they
are?", etc.).

so, i agree with you that we are not living up to the standards that we've
set for inclusivity. while we are doing a better job than many other
hackerspaces, in my mind, if we do not reflect the community of Oakland in
our diversity, then we have room for improvement.

*so everyone, what are the conditions that contribute to us currently not
meeting our inclusivity goals and what can we do to start meeting them?* *what
can we all be doing to make the space more inclusive and welcoming?*

- marina

ps - i wanted to share with everyone some inspiration for the kind of sudo
room that i'd like to see. it's a creative/hackspace in chattanooga that's
run by a library that was basically given over to innovation-oriented folks
to run carte blanche. i think that it is a space with more or less complete
community ownership (meaning that it's not seen as fringe or niche...it's
seen like the library.."a place where everyone just goes")..that would be
pretty cool @_@

about the space: http://4thfloor.chattlibrary.org/
really interesting news piece about how it happened:
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/aug/11/rock-star-librarians/?entertainment

pps - i agree with patrick that we have a lot of positive feminist energy.
we work very hard at this and although there are still times when things
are boys-clubbish and there are barely any women in the space, i feel that
our community overall is invested in ensuring that we have a space where
women have an expectation that they will be treated as humans (an
expectation that many women don't have in many places in the world!). my
perspective is that this commitment from the community is what it really
takes to solve problems of inclusion because it means that we have a number
of people who are invested in coming up with solutions when things are
exclusive. now how to maintain this and make it better and expand it for
everyone :)


On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 8:02 AM, Patrick Schmidt
<psbschmidt at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Sorry for being negative but I am not sure that it is all so positive.
> There is one person who has a very negative aura, always talks about
> negative things,
> at least one coder girl of colour stopped coming because of him. ( I
> should have spoken up much earlier).
> I feel very unsafe around that person. Nevertheless on Art Murmur's
> friday I wanted
> to overcome my fear and went and tried to talk to him, he was playing
> with a knife
> (made me unconfortable and I had the vision that he would stab me, so
> i mentioned that to ridiculize my own fear), but then he started to
> talk about very negative things again,
> I do not even remember what it was, I just left that conversation.
>
> I have seen people of colour who randomly walked in at art murmurs
> where we had the doors open to the street, walk out again as soon as
> they saw that we are mostly white folks up there.
>
> Yes, Sudoroom is amazing, lots of feminin energy and mostly I feel safe,
> Sudokids did rock a lot and one time we had black kids, white
> kids,southamerican kids, arabic kids and asian kids all together and
> it is wonderful,
> but still I think we have a lot of work to do to open up more, diversify,
> and make sure the hacker movement and empowerment is not only for the
> traditionally privilleged.
>
> I am not looking to have a confrontation with that person, i already
> forgave and released,
> I will just try to shine my light and if it comes to that try to help
> that person overcome his negativity and fear.
>
>
>
> 2013/9/12, Romy Snowyla <romy at snowyla.com>:
> > It is so awesome to see Sudoroom as a pinnacle of cultural diversity.
> There
> > is no tokenism here or random Asian women shoved into showcase roles. It
> is
> > truly a place where open minded people mix freely showing their diversity
> > and superiority to any capital it's systems and stick it to the man
> >
> > Rock on!!!
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> > _______________________________________________
> > sudo-discuss mailing list
> > sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
> > http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
> >
> _______________________________________________
> 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/20130913/5947ba5d/attachment.html>