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Accountability & Transition Process
What was on the table; where things were left
Priorities for both sessions include alignment around the following:
- impact working with SMWC has had on Bean's wellness
- updates and clarity on member transitions out of SMWC
- alignment of SMWC organizational values, needs and future capacity-planning
- alignment around grounds for repair, accountability, and future planning
Topics that may be explored for discussion, clarification, and/or accountability
- structural issues (also ableism): collective under-resourcing, not enough support for staff collective, Board members, contractors, or member-volunteers; not enough capacity for organizers to uphold formal structure and protocols; no formal integrative onboarding process; not enough organizational capacity or structure to accommodate needs of staff members (especially where staff needs are in conflict); not enough intentional space or funding for formal organizational or leadership development; not enough dedicated administrative support for org needs; lack of clear sexual violence support and intervention policies
- between Syd, Bean, Ronny: political misalignments; incongruence in prioritization and execution of organizational tasks, needs, values; Ronny and Bean experiencing the centering of thin white folks w/ upperclass backgrounds; challenges holding, delivering, integrating feedback; lack of collaboration due to capacity, tensions, lack of (and also conflicting) structural protocols; triangulation; disorganization; patterned ableism and antiblackness
- political education: need for skilling up around principled struggle, feedback, conflict, access tensions, power analysis, antiblackness, disability justice, anti-Zionism, holding activation in dialogue, antisemitism, boundaries, misogyny, misogynoir
- ableism: lack of onboarding and leadership development support; Bean not being supported in formally and informally requested time off (flexed or otherwise); over-assignment of work to Bean despite identified need for support; Bean needing accommodations that were unmet; medical barriers to driving met with skepticism; implications of Bean not being a good fit, trust-worthy or team player
- fatphobia, anti-Blackness, misogynoir: patterned processing of Bean and Phill's emotions and requests through the lens of threat, danger, overreaction / less curiosity than afforded other nonblack (and usually thin) members; incongruities in assignment of care labor
- anti-Blackness: tokenization of visibly Black members and organizers (Phill, Bean, others); multiple allegations and experiences of harm toward other black members of SMWC community by SMWC staff collective members; Black members of SMWC treated more expendably; lack of organizational support for Black and POC affinity space; staff collective pattern of siloing and segregating out of Black & less ambiguously racialized organizers
- Ronny & Syd: experiences of both over- and under-extension by multiple members of the center; blocking and/or re-routing of requests for aid / support due to budget and personal capacity constraints without alternative recourse
- interpersonally: projection, triangulation, miscommunication, withholding, relational asymmetry
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