RantWoman
is reformatting and reprinting an article about a recent safety and security
audit from the Meeting Newsletter. Then
RantWoman will weigh in further.
With
that as an intro, the newsletter article with further comments interspersed [in
square brackets]
A
CULTURE OF FEAR AND CONTROL
Mackenzie
Barton-Rowledge
I
am deeply disturbed by the “Security Assessment Report” and related plans
brought to January’s business meeting.
[RantWoman:
Speaking as someone who does resource development for many nonprofit activities,
sometimes one receives such gifts as are offered. RantWoman agrees: members of other
committees might have had things to contribute to the process of doing the
report if Facilities committee had sought such input while the assessment was
occurring, but the report is not a terrible place to start. The document is
quite off-putting and includes some hypotheticals that seem beside the point to
RantWoman. As an aside, re emergency
plans, RantWoman would be interested to hear where Facilities committee has
interacted at all with previous disaster preparedness conversations and ARE
sessions around Meeting, many of which are written up in one or another of RantWoman’s
blogs.
[RantWoman
would start from a different perspective about how to use UFM’s space in the
changing neighborhood. But Meeting has been muddling around about some of these
questions since 2010 and the end of the Year of Discernment; perhaps they fall
under the purview of what RantWoman sees as ongoing work about campus
discernment but RantWoman’s input is clearly not wanted right now and
RantWoman is not as patient as might be
desired when people who do not get around on and experience the community of
people flows on the bus just pronounce conversations about transportation
changes “unnecessary detail.” ]
The
author continues: I think they contribute to a culture of fear and control,
instead of a culture of community care, agency, and safety. We have internalized
this (American, colonial, white supremacist) reliance on fear and control to
the point where our UFM leadership didn’t think that these security
recommendations needed input from the Meeting.
[To
be honest, RantWoman thinks you are discounting community members’ real
experience and frustrations related to many changes outside of UFM. The changes outside of UFM are too massive and
consequential to more than nip at in this post. But reality can be encapsulated
as follows from a recent RantWoman tweet. “The Nav Team Sucks. Lack of
affordable housing and case management sucks. But please do not discount the
experience of a blind accessibility lead at a major downtown employer who is
tired of tripping over people’s tents, many inhabited by other people with disabilities,
every day on his way to work.]
[The
recommendations come from a report which I believe Meeting received FOR FREE. If
Meeting paid for the report, RantWoman would like to hear that someone shopped
around but if the report was done for free, RantWoman would recommend showing
the value of it as an in-kind donation on our records just so Friends have some
idea about the dollar value of such services. Meeting is free to accept or
reject all the recommendations. I believe the POINT of a threshing session is
to hear Friends’ feedback and priorities. RantWoman offers further commentaries
below in addition to previous offerings https://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2020/02/ministry-of-observing-and-prayer.html
]
The
author continues: Police and prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba explains: “The
prison and the police are in our heads and hearts, therefore this system is
naturalized in a way that makes it almost impossible for folks to step back and
think that it wasn’t always like this. How did people manage before? [Before? There were a LOT of really shitty
awful prisons “before.” Some early Quakers spent a lot of time in some of them.
That is part of how Quakers became associated with prison reform though today
Quakers hold a range of views, something that might have become apparent in
Meeting’s discussion of the new youth jail.]
How
might we look into the future and imagine something different? […] I think we
can’t underestimate the fact that we think these institutions keep us secure.
“Security
and safety aren’t the same thing. Security is a function of the weaponized
state that is using guns, weapons, fear and other things to ‘make us secure,’
right? All the horrible things are supposed to be kept at bay by these tools, even
though we know that horrible things continue to happen all the time with these
things in place—and that these very tools and the corresponding institutions
are reproducing the violence and horror they are supposed to contain.”
To
me, safety means that each person’s divine humanity is respected, cherished,
and nurtured. As Quakers, we uphold a testimony of nonviolence that challenges
us to not react out of fear, nor try to use force to control someone else, but instead
to build skills, healthy relationships, and practices of caring for one another
because we know that these are the things that will decrease the amount of harm
in the world.
[So,
um, if RantWoman would describe lots of
turn down RantWoman’s offers of help and never ever try to work with RantWoman
and get up and start to walk out of the room when RantWoman needs to speak of
something to do with disability as, say, isolate and marginalize” could Friends
MAYBE think of a large number of options to reduce harm and support community
learning for everyone?]
Nonviolence
is one path to safety. Of course, there is nothing that can be done to
guarantee everyone’s safety and security 100% of the time. Many things are out
of our control. However, we can build a community where we have the skills to
take care of one another when threats or harm happen. That means investing in
us, not in threatening signs or panic buttons to call gun-toting, racist and
classist cops.
[Do
UFM staff get a voice in this pronouncement? RantWoman agrees it might be
possible to brainstorm some other responses besides calling the cops but as a
believer in labor rights and treating our staff well, we need not to discount
their concerns. PS. RantWoman rides the bus. RantWoman FULLY supports bus drivers
having panic buttons; RantWoman also tries to document both appropriate and crap
behavior by all involved when incidents occur.]
We
know how to do this.
We
have already been doing it! We had a solid relationship with Stanley before he
passed that made UFM safer. We responded beautifully to angry Holocaust-deniers,
keeping our people and our building from being harmed. We collectively manage (RantWoman’s)
physical intrusions without threatening her with violence.
[Really?
Manage? Do you notice ANYTHING in
minutes reflecting awareness of reasonable accommodations issues or specific accommodations
that have been tried and not worked? What kind of standards of ministry or mental health
awareness do YOU observe in the entire community ganging up blaming all its
problems on one especially vulnerable member? Perhaps you have not noticed
language in the weekly bulletin or the cops driving by when RantWoman comes to
pray nearby. RantWoman has noticed! RantWoman has multiple emails and comment
from a Meeting leader asserting she has no right to speak in Business Meeting
about a Friend who has been physically and verbally abusive to her. Can anyone imagine how all these circumstances
might NOT add up to safety and security? I mean it’s awesome to think about the
larger community too, and RantWoman is thinking back to her own vehement young
adulthood, thinking about how to season the fire of new quakers and hold
Friends accountable to living up to our
testimonies with regard to long-seasoned advocates. Please someone explain how
threatening to call the cops on RantWoman for, please excuse RantWoman’s
fixation on the point, daring to speak up about disability gives anyone any
credibility when asking Meeting to think about scenarios other than the
approaches outlined in the security report]
We
paint over racist graffiti. We could also do better. We could educate ourselves
(more) about de-escalation. We could decide to give anyone in the community a
place to pee without having to make a purchase or risk arrest. We could provide
a safe option for needle disposal, so that nobody needs to choose between
putting their used needles on the ground in plain sight or endangering city
workers by putting it in a trash can. We could spend time building
relationships with our housed and unhoused neighbors—for example, we could
invite them to our potlucks! And instead of threatening to call the cops on trespassers,
a sign could ask passersby to help keep our children safe and our property
(Duwamish land? red-lined property?) clean, and offer whatever we can in
return. There are
nearly infinite options that don’t look like cages and cops
and
threats and the exclusion of vulnerable people.
This
doesn’t mean there is never room for locks or motion- activated
lights.[RantWoman notes with appreciation conversation about research noting the existence of solar-powered motion-detector lights. RantWoman has no further info about motion-detector lights.] But we need to act with integrity, from love instead
of fear.
Editors’ Note: On February 9, from 9:30AM to 10:30AM in the Social
Hall, ARE will host a threshing session on issues raised in the UFM
meetinghouse security assessment report. We encourage interested readers
to attend, ask questions and share their thoughts. We also welcome
additional contributions on this topic.
[RantWoman: this threshing session did not
occur and RantWoman will be interested to hear what comes of it. RantWoman
continues to promise to be true to her Light about many matters but is
completely unable to predict what being tru to her Light will look like in any
given situation. RantWoman has enough experience with a sense of having
contributed something important that others built on in some moments that
RantWoman has to trust her Light.]
RantWoman
apologizes but she is going to frame safety and security in considerably
broader terms than either the safety and security report or the newsletter
article. RantWoman is NOT going to apologize if this evening’s offerings read
more like a tantrum than a security report, but RantWoman hopes readers can
extract points to work on.
RantWoman
herself has been having a dialogue with God. RantWoman has many times just
relied on God in moments where, as many people with disabilities can attest,
one is called to be places where one is either explicitly or implicitly not
wanted. As a reminder, God keeps sending people with disabilities to live among
us and recommending we all try to get along. Query for the “how can we achieve
greater safety through love?” thoughts below: how might thinking about
disability help inform actions to make our campus both safer and more welcoming?
Cue
Dial-a-Tirade: does anyone remember a great moment in Meeting for Business when
RantWoman had the temerity to ask about wheelchair accessibility for a new
tenant’s services. RantWoman’s sense of safety while asking honest questions
and security would be greatly enhanced by Friends willing to have further
conversation about that issue and different thoughts that rise. Oh, but we MUST
go to lunch and then do everything we can to prevent RantWoman from sharing her
thoughts and questions in community fora!
Silencing anyone? Gatekeeping?
How
might it matter for UFM security if more members of the community were informed
about what social services there are or are not around the U district. What
might Friends be led to do to expand the availability of public toilets after
business hours in our part of the U District?
In
the next decades, Seattle is set to grow dramatically. Is it really necessary
to shuffle longtime Friends away to make
room for nebulous newcomers? What wisdom and seasoning might there be among the
dynamic interactions?
God
notwithstanding, RantWoman would find it frighteningly easy to label her
offerings “A culture of silencing, gatekeeping, and gaslighting,” not a
situation RantWoman really wants to try to draw people into. RantWoman is also clear to insert a number of
comments and to ask readers to hold many things in the Light. In particular
RantWoman has NO CALL to go away but is sincerely seeking paths both to deal
with impinging realities and for MANY people to do better than massive screwups.
What
can go better?
When
screw-ups, massive colossal large-scale screw-ups occur, what are options to do
better?
Hint:
despite the zillions of “Shut UP” messages RantWoman hears about her blog,
RantWoman HOPES she is conveying very clearly both things that DO NOT WORK and
people should be embarrassed about as well as MANY things RantWoman is deeply
grateful for. RantWoman would VERY MUCH appreciate hearing feedback about this.
RantWoman realizes her blog is a TOUGH read a lot of the time and maybe
RantWoman can go pull threads, but….
If
Meeting for Business makes a BAD decision or maybe two or three or several or
seventeen, what paths are there to change decisions?
RantWoman
at this point is choosing to interpret every single NO she hears as “no, we are
not serious about reasonable accommodations. We are NOT serious about dealing
with disability or we want to talk about it in reference to everyone except
RantWoman. We will find procedural way after procedural way to keep kicking the
problem down the road.
RantWoman
is hearing: We will assign a “Care and Accountability Committee” that had to be
reminded MULTIPLE times not to schedule meetings they wanted RantWoman at
without consulting RantWoman. They had to be firmly told that RantWoman will not
meet in places that are physically inaccessible to people she might choose to
have present. Blindness means a LOT of
new terminology in RantWoman’s life. RantWoman came away from meeting after
meeting of the Care and Accountability committee with the sense that committee
members’ eyes just completely glazed over. RantWoman found this frustrating for
one thing because other members of the community understand the issues just
fine The committee somehow thinks care and accountability can happen without
dealing with disability—or, if they themselves cannot for whatever reason do
what is needed to seek help from the wider community.
RantWoman
is hearing We are not serious about a committee to work on this until we throw
RantWoman out of Meeting first and tell her in multiple voices that she has no
right even to object. We are so busy
doing other Quaker stuff that we get to send a message that would be entirely
unacceptable in work life: Oh we want to postpone dealing with reasonable
accommodations requests for a whole year.
RantWoman
hears we don’t care whether RantWoman cares about people she might prefer to
see and walk alongside while they are alive, but oh isn’t it a giant
humanitarian gesture to let RantWoman come to memorials? Then we will expect RantWoman to be grateful
for separate and unequal worship opportunities.
RantWoman
hears We are so afraid of RantWoman that we cannot even list her name on the
committee roster for the Ad Hoc Committee on disabilities. We are not serious
about dealing with ableism as a community so we are going to ask someone who
already fights a lot of ableism to fight round after round of ableism on the
committee. At the moment RantWoman has in mind the Worship and Ministry
guidelines which RantWoman can only, testimony on integrity here, sign onto if
there can be conversations about reasonable accommodations and issues that come
up all the time due to blindness. Also, “well, I am only available…”News Flash:
everyone has time limitations and RantWoman is blind all the time so what can
Friends learn to make RantWoman feel safe and listened to more of the time?
RantWoman
is hearing from the current clerk “You are not welcome here” in a voice that
does not sound to RantWoman like spirit-led discernment. Sorry, to reiterate:
why do you think you are in control of God?
Then
we will discount RantWoman’s experience as a blind person in multiple kinds of
meetings, suggest a different blind person who has different experiences of
blindness should be the authority about what works for RantWoman, pronounce
upon observations without talking through the elements of business Meeting and
what works or does not work. And then our clerk trainers will send a message
that looks to RantWoman like continuing to discriminate is entirely acceptable
and we will train 50 new clerks around NPYM in the thought that dealing with
blind person in Meetings issues is optional.
RantWoman
is presently in dialogue with the article’s author about many matters related
to ableism and disability. If one is going to wave around words like ableism
and classism, is one prepared to examine one’s own behaviors and attitudes? If
the words gaslighting and gatekeeping come up, is it reasonable to ask how to
share the burden, whether someone else in the community can better help do what
is needed?
Please
bear with RantWoman’s need to try to create mental space for new light or not
even necessarily NEW Light but also Light that has been blazing for a long time.
Long ago in a Meeting not very far away, RantWoman needed FOR ACCESSIBILITY
REASONS to have a ministry of doing Sudoku in Meeting for worship. RantWoman
survived two detached retinas and came away with a brain that wanted to see
better than the eyes could see. This gave RantWoman headaches, headaches from
focus issues that RantWoman was able to manage by doing Sudoku up close during
Meeting for Worship.
RantWoman
knows from a much esteemed car ride conversation, some Friends were not
bothered in the least. This behavior drove other Friends AROUND THE BEND. One
Friend in particular voiced the thought “I don’t like it (and therefore it
should disappear.) SORRY, not sorry. RantWoman did not have at the time and
does not to this day have a God as personal butler model of Divine presence.
None of us is required to LIKE everything that comes our way. RantWoman has a
versatile God who gets things done all kinds of ways and generally gives us all
many different paths to learn to COPE. Is there anything about these reflections that
suggests things Friends might let go of and still feel safe and cared for in
our changing neighborhood?
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