Talk:Safety

An Open Comment to John Ford, in response to his public blog:
So the authorities have made use of the excuse that Occupy camps are dirty (and basically admitted that it was just an excuse!!) — and you want us to engage in their rhetoric, to be as scared as they want us to be, at the expense of our principles.

Your devotion to camp maintenance and safety has repeatedly come into direct conflict with the movement’s devotion to principles of consensus and horizontal democracy. To get your point across, you consistently interrupt general assemblies, you shut people down, you yell at them or walk away from them. You bring so much negativity and aggression into every public discussion, it is bizarre that you are a key member of the Safety team. And yet when you’ve talked about what it means to be a member of the OB Community (when we’ve considered kicking someone out of camp or removing a tent), I’ve often heard you ask “does he even go to GAs?” — so, the rules of consensus process and community work might apply for everyone else, just not you. You see how you are parodying the process, to use your favorite words. You claim the issues that you care about to be emergencies, which makes other issues the rest of the community cares about unworthy of attention – you hold us hostage while you yell at us in general assembly.

I am calling you out on your state-of-emergency tactics. We are not in an emergency situation – we will not give into the discourse of fear. We’re here for the long run, we are building an ideal community, an intentional community, out of fragile alliances. The very ones I’ve seen you threaten or even destroy when you’ve appeared in a meeting or a general assembly to yell down at us, to shut somebody down, and to walk away without being held accountable. John, every bit of impatience is actually about power — not about inclusion, not about horizontal democracy — not even about labor-ocracy. because the people who have to work harder, after the big guys go in with the guns showing everybody how OB gets shit done, the people who have to talk to every single person shell-shocked after you storm off, that’ll be me, Alex, Duncan, Mike… you create this work for us, whereas we could be doing much more useful things if you weren’t so sloppy, so careless about people (as sloppy with people as you are strict and unerring about camp maintenance!!). If you waited and thought things through and talked to the people involved in the situation. If you saw your role as Safety means defending the processes we’ve set up at camp, defending against anger. You stomp all over “the process” because you like to get things done, you shit on the GA and the proposals and quorum and we end up with this joke of an “eviction plan” that Alex, tall Mike, – notice, not you – have to fix up afterward by mediating the conflicts that ensue, by continuing the census even though tents are being removed without any inquiries, and planning in nightly “Community Planning” meetings even though there are people who haven’t read a single one of the proposals removing tents at will because they look dirty. i am holding you accountable for encouraging this Safety team to be just like the old one: power-hungry macho guys excited about having radios and maglights. Outside of that, what kind of Safety are they? would you trust them to show up for you? Since you shit on the process (=make a protocol, approve it at GA, publicize it), the new guys never learn it, they never get any training – why would they listen to me, when I’m the only one telling them “you should have signed out on the radio and given it to someone else when you went off-shift,” “you shouldn’t be here with your 7 other Safety friends, creating a crowd situation when we’re trying to control one,” “I know John doesn’t look like he’s mediating a conflict when he’s yelling into some kid’s face about how filthy he is, but you, you new Safety guys, you have to be nonviolent, calm, concerned.” All you did was give them mag lights and to make them dependent on him — nobody can make decisions unless John’s there, nobody knows exactly what’s going on because screw incident reports, so i guess we just have to ask Nelson or John. The point of having more Safety people, as you’ve directly told me, is so that they could be your “eyes.” The point of my being there is, apparently, so that i can be a secretary. So even though Safety ought to get its mandate to enforce camp rules from its identification with the principles of the community, from its teamwork, under your guidance it has become about following the bully’s orders, because somehow we’ve all made you indispensable.

Whereas the true leader would empower other people to handle difficult situations — and that calls for protocol, for training. I’ve been thinking for some time about how you weaken people. And this blog post has convinced me of it: you make people fear for their safety, you make them relinquish the values which they’ve built up at Dewey Square (horizontal democracy, which demands endless patience and dialogue). Instead, you offer a state of emergency, and you are the only one with the answers. You’ll yell them at us through a bullhorn.

I am holding you accountable for disrupting yet another moment of great potential for the OB community – the OB Summit is at 2-5pm tomorrow (Saturday) and yet you’ve declared a camp-wide cleanup that is sure to divest vital energy from this event – an event in which campers and commuters will have a chance to mend some of the rifts that have formed in the movement. People have been working on this event for weeks. You – you’re just going to apply the bullhorn.

John, I have not lost all respect for you, mostly because I’m creating an unfair situation, I’m confronting you online right now instead of in person (because I’m really sick!!! sorry!!). And also — because I trust that you’re too smart not to understand how much harm you bring to the community, along with the good that you bring. Please, stop, please, slow down. Learn the language we are teaching to each other here: the language of consensus, which involves hearing each other out, encouraging each other and enabling each other, rather than frightening each other and yelling and ordering.

I’ve also seen you do this one-on-one with people. I mean I’ve seen you mediate (about as many conflicts as you’ve started!) and encourage, and I don’t understand why you can’t bring that positive energy you have in individual conversations into a conversation with the collective. Why can’t you bring the patience you have for individual people to a general assembly? Why is it that while you are obsessed with the short term goals, the long term ones – such as creating a community based on direct, horizontal democracy where everyone’s voice is heard – don’t seem to interest you? I challenge you to evolve in your strategies. I challenge you to become a true member of the community by adopting its values. Do not become a leader in a group that calls itself “leaderless leaders” – especially not by convincing us that we should be scared of the authorities calling us dirty.

-Anna.