Anger, Fear & Democracy

Probably the angriest I’ve been in many years, was when I felt like I had to defend the integrity of my Burning Man camp. I’m not done apologizing to folks for how I did this (I truly was misguided) – yet I also found it instructive. If what pulls us to anger is defending what matters to us… then we all must be feeling like a lot of what matters to us has been under threat recently.

I certainly have. Every time I look at the news, there seems to be another threat to our democracy. There seems to be another threat to the rights, respect, and/or quality of life of average Americans. Even knowing that my news feeds have learned that anger keeps people engaged so they can show them more ads… is the news inventing these things for us to be angry about? I don’t think that’s exactly the case.

I’ve been thinking about how our history determines our future, in the sense of our politics. For me, the way to go about ending homelessness in my region is to bring together a wide array of people in the community and unite them around the common goal of ending homelessness. However, what I’m just wrapping my head around is that a lot of these people (even if I’m just meeting them for the first time) have bad blood already. They are nursing slights, hurts, upset and offense from previous attempts to make headway on homelessness in our region. So far I’ve been adept at getting these folks in the same room at the same time, but how do I help them to forgive each other? Or, at the very least, be open enough to working together again? How do I help these folks leave the hurt of yesterday behind, so that it doesn’t become the hurt of tomorrow as well?

Probably a lot of these folks felt like they had to defend what really mattered to them, from each other. Probably a lot of these folks felt like their ideals were under attack. I was in a conflict resolution training recently, and the trainer wrote that the Conflict Cycle starts with some sort of event, and then someone perceives negative intent behind that event. They act on that perception, and then people react to them. Then there is another event… and we are now in an ongoing cycle of conflict. Hence, the name. What struck me differently this time around was that someone has to perceive negative intent. I know that happens a lot in our community – people perceive negative intent pretty regularly.

One could argue that trait actually varies significantly across our political spectrum. That people on the right perceive negative intent from anyone who isn’t on the political right, and those on the political left perceive negative intent even from their own allies. Not sure how true this is, but a take to ponder further.

I think we need to stop thinking about Democracy as if we are done improving it. I fear that, in America, we’ve gotten so accustomed to revering the constitution and the founding fathers that we’ve forgotten that we can actually make our democracy better. And by better, I mean more effective at embodying the will of Americans.

An idea that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind is the idea of neighborhood representation. This is the idea that every neighborhood would elect someone to represent them to every elected official and government institution. The goal being that no one in America would be more than one degree of separation from someone who has the power to set policy and address their concerns about government. Of everyone reading this, how many of us have that experience now? I’m guessing it’s very few. Because of the nature of my work, I know quite a few elected folks in my region… and in my experience that is really rare. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that conspiracy theories and distrust of government is so high when so many of us are disconnected from the process and the outcomes of the process.

I also think we need to break up our two big parties. I have heard the “big tent” argument from Democrats, and I think we’ve all discovered that our current political climate would be much better if we had 4 to 6 viable political parties in this country instead of two. This would mean breaking down all of the institutional advantages that the Democrats and Republicans have, while making it real easy to start a new party and removing the barriers to running for office. It would probably mean completely undoing our primary system, and scrapping the electoral college. If we had an assortment of parties, we could avoid a situation in which extremists take over one of the two major ones. It is also much more difficult to paint anyone that isn’t in your party as wrong, evil, not a patriot, etc… especially if each party has to partner with others to get anything done.

These are just my ideas, but we need to have more. How else can we make the structure of our democracy more conducive to actual democracy? I think if we are unwilling to make our democracy more effective, we provide ammunition to the people in the world that argue that democracy is too chaotic. That the best governments are autocracies, dictatorships, or worse.

I do believe that it is a human right to have a say in how your government operates. I do also think that democracy has to be a lifestyle, a way of life. It is not sustainable to live our lives as little dictators who vote occasionally on who will dictate over us. I think that means working to achieve buy in, consensus, and agreement in all aspects of life. At work, at play, in our families, and in our communities. That means not forcing our desired policy outcomes on people.

That also means seeking out accountability. It is only the un-democratic who avoid accountability. If we seek out accountability, we are willing to own that we have messed up. We are willing to grow. If we avoid hearing that we are wrong or that we did something that is not okay… we are just going to continue doing those things, but in more sneaky ways.

We are also going to avoid holding our political leaders accountable when they do things that are wrong, because we don’t want to be held accountable ourselves. We become enablers.

The political discourse in America does feel like it can be broken down around accountability right now. The left seems to want to hold everyone accountable, the right seems to want to avoid accountability entirely – and to say “we’re not that bad, the left does the same bad stuff we do!” Of course, there are certainly people on the left side of the political spectrum who want to avoid accountability. It is an impulse we all must get over, after all.

A glaring weakness that is showing up for me recently is that I do not seem to have the patience to see where folks are coming from… or at least not as much as I used to. Whereas in the past I would be more understanding of people and their behavior, I am now much quicker to assume bad intentions. Or to just be angry with people. I do think that a big part of this for me has been Donald Trump. Being bombarded every day by clearly negative intentions from him and his allies makes it hard to have patience for anyone who resembles that sort of thinking. Covid added a layer of stress to that. So did the fires locally.

But another thing that I think robbed me of my patience has been starting a new homeless services agency. For me, that made every day high stakes. Will what I do today lead us to get a contract? Will I miss something that will endanger our financial stability? Am I working too slow? Am I too aggressive? Am I not aggressive enough? Will any of our program participants die? Will I assemble a team that works well together? How do I do everything while being a husband and a father, and having friends and a life? Did I miss something that is going to have catastrophic consequences? Will the people in the rest of my life be able to adjust to how different my life is? Will the powerful people in my community work with me or shut me out?

Will I get vilified by other service providers? Will I get vilified in the press? Will I get stabbed in the back (metaphorically)? Will I get stabbed in the front (metaphorically)? Will I be able to maintain any semblance of health while doing this? How much time with my family am I willing to miss? How much time with friends? Will I make a fool of myself? Will I let down my funders? Will I have to fire people I really care about? Will this adventure destroy relationships I have with people? Will I make myself unemployable and broke? Will my family leave me? Will I die early from the stress of doing all of this? Am I doing so much that something is going to inevitably come crashing down?

Am I going to be the focus of a targeted attack?

These are the worries that I haven’t been allowing space for on this journey so far. But there is a saying that I know to be true; what you resist persists. Being unwilling to air these fears out has meant that they have not gone away. Maybe writing them all now will start me on the process of re-balancing myself. Will I even remember what it feels like to have a strong emotional equilibrium?

Regardless, there are things that I have learned on this journey. The most valuable thing, I believe, is that I am as capable as I believed I was. I yet may be even more capable. Knowing that has changed my life irrevocably. Knowing that has caused me to consider what bigger differences I can make in this world. Given all the stress, frustration and fear… I find myself saying “What else can I do?”

Goodbye, Sinéad

I wasn’t a fan of Sinéad O’Connor’s music. At least, not at the height of her fame. I haven’t caught up on her stuff from later in her life. But her spirit spoke to me, even though I was just a kid when I became aware of her and she was out of the zeitgeist before I had any sort of maturity.

If you had asked me just a few months ago what I truly remember about her, it would have been “Nothing Compares 2 U” and that she tore up a picture of the Pope on SNL. I remember, when she did that, being puzzled. It was such a bold statement to make without any context.

Yet even with that little knowledge I knew she was a kindred spirit. I knew that there was something special about Sinéad. That she would speak truth to power. That she would say what was real. That she would not be cowed by the thought that there are some things that you just do not say. And that she would say and do those things regardless of the personal cost to her.

I think that most of us, often, think that we would be that way given the circumstance. But how many people truly have been, and had the public stage? How many people were saying what she was saying in public in the early 1990’s? How many people are even saying it today?

Tonight I watched this interview that she did with Arsenio Hall in 1991 (it’s 20 minutes long but it is worth it, folks). My eyes welled up watching this, because she is such a gem. She is saying things, in 1991 when she was 24, that we now all openly acknowledge are true today. And her spirit, her attitude, is seemingly irrepressible. Yet it was repressed.

I saw this tweet tonight. Yes, I’m still calling them tweets (suck it Elon).

“what she could have been if the world wasn’t so ugly, misogynist and cruel to her.” That hurt to read. Because it’s true. And it’s been true, not just for her but for so many of the best women in our world for centuries. It’s been true for enough women that I have known personally that it brought them all to the forefront of my mind.

I know we, as a culture, have let ourselves get in the habit of judging women who do not conform. Who are messy, who are loud, who don’t reign their sexuality in, who are up front, who are confrontational, who do not brook bullshit. But we need them.

Sinéad had the temerity to say that the music industry was more motivated by profit than by truth or art, in 1991, on national tv. She said that men were shit, in that same interview, at a time when that was just not something that was openly said. When she tore up the photo of the Pope on SNL, she was protesting the wide ranging abuse in the church – an issue that wouldn’t become well known in the US for years after. I hope no one reading this thinks cancel-culture is new, because after that she was effectively cancelled worldwide.

We need to make room for the wild women in our lives, or we are going to keep putting them into the ground too young and too soon. We need to make room for the women who challenge our ideas and our notions, at all levels.

I had the luck of listening to this story of Sinéad’s life just a couple of weeks ago. It said much more than I have the words for right now. What’s sad for me, thinking of that story, is how it ended on a hopeful note. Hoping to see what the next chapter in Sinéad’s life will be. We will never know.

I’m tired. I’m tired of admirable people getting the shaft in our world. Yet, all I can do this time is say goodbye.

What’s Going On

Hey all, I haven’t been posting much recently. So I thought I’d give you all a rundown of what has been going on in my little corner of the world. Ready? Let’s go:

-First and foremost, my daughter has been acting. I’m amazed and truly proud with how hard she is working on her acting. Her most prolific commercial so far has been a commercial for KiwiCo, a monthly STEM box for kids, that she did the entire voiceover for (you can also see a still of her towards the end of the commercial). The YouTube link is here, and you can see it on Instagram here. She also appeared in a couple other KiwiCo commercials that are harder to link to, this one and this one. Those are google drive links, so they may not work for all of you. She has signed with an agency now (scroll to the bottom and look for Ember M), and we’re really excited to see what is next for her on this journey.

-We did take some great family photos, that you can see on my wife’s instagram. Big thanks to Tiffany for being our family photographer all these years!

-At work, we did the Severe Weather Shelters for the city and county of Santa Cruz during the storms of January, February and March of this year. Here is our brief listing of the program on our website, and one announcement from when we were activated. You can read about the shelter itself here.

-That lead to a great profile of our organization, here.

-Part of what we’ve embraced at our organization is that the general public needs to be educated about the realities of homelessness so that we all can be advocating for effective funding levels and policy from our elected officials. In that light, we’ve started a series of videos to educate folks on the realities of homelessness. Here they are so far:
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4

or just go to tiktok to see them all.

-Oh, we’re part of a fundraiser this weekend as well! Check that out here.

-Because we think that ending homelessness is going to take a broad community effort, we recently had a Community Meeting to bring people together who care about this issue. If you would like to come to future community meetings, contact us here.

-Of course, donations of all sizes make so much of our work possible. Go here to donate to all of our efforts!

-If you want to follow The Free Guide on social media, you can find us on facebook, twitter, instagram, and tiktok.

I think this is all the updates, for now. I find that most of my self expression in life is showing up in my work, so I don’t feel like I have a lot of opinions to share with you all right now. Though they are still there… you’ll know if things are going well in my world if I get another blog out in the next month about my thoughts about democracy 😛

Sending love to all of you out there!

Let’s Re-Claim “Woke”

It’s about respect, not about censorship

I’m going to posit a new working definition of the word Woke.

Woke: Respecting the history and life experience of historically marginalized people and treating historically marginalized people with dignity.

Hopefully that’s a pretty straightforward definition for most of you. Because if that definition stands, then the opposite is also true.

Anti-Woke: Disrespecting the history and life experience of historically marginalized people and treating historically marginalized people without dignity.

I think that second definition is more useful. Sure, you can be anti-woke. Sure, you can disrespect marginalized people – but if you are disrespecting marginalized people get the f**k out of the public square and come back when you have calmed down and can behave with dignity and respect again. This doesn’t require the government to step in. It doesn’t require arguments about the first amendment. It requires adults to step in when someone has lost their head and setting them straight. And if you refuse to show marginalized people respect and dignity? Then we all know who you are and what you are about.

But, if you aren’t able to respect or dignify marginalized people… move out of the United States. Because this country is filled with folks who have historically been marginalized, daily life is going to be rough for you. Move away. This country is the land of the free and the home of the brave. If you aren’t brave enough to show people basic respect, you aren’t brave enough to be an American. You are too fragile to be American.

…

This brings me to a fundamental misunderstanding of humanity in our modern social media platforms. Facebook figured out that posts that elicit anger get more interactions, keeping more people on their platform longer. They didn’t realize that the anger is people’s innate instinct to reign in people who are being assholes. So the more they boosted asshole content, the more people felt the need to reign it in. Why does this matter? Because if you are going to facilitate the public square, you need to actually facilitate it. If someone is showing up and getting everyone to yell at them, it’s time to remove them and take some time to get their head straight. Not encourage their asshole behavior. When you do that, when you let regular people see that no one is going to stop the assholes, then you give the space over to the assholes. Without regulation, bad actors do whatever they want. You have now ceded your public square to the worst of us. Whatever discussions that educate, provoke the intellect, create friendly and loving connections, and stir the soul have now taken a back seat to assholes yelling.

Facebook and Twitter (every other social media platform seems to aspire to be them) have created a public square and signed up to be the facilitators. They seem not to realize, though, that the role of the facilitator is the most important role in the public square. If people can’t trust the facilitator to facilitate fairly and to make sure the public square is a safe place to be, they will leave. Twitter, at this moment, seems to be wrapped up in thinking they have to enforce everyone’s first amendment rights. But Twitter has no obligation to let everyone speak whatever they want on their platform. In fact, the opposite is true. If they allow everyone to say whatever, then the entire place will devolve into bots and assholes yelling at each other. Twitter, if it wants to maintain it’s user base, needs to let it’s users know that they can safely be there. So far, it has failed to do so. The first amendment only applies to the US Government. Twitter is not the government.

If you actually value conversations that help people to change how they view the world, you have to ensure that they are experiencing psychological safety. What is psychological safety?

For those of you who need a url, check out this url: https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/what-is-psychological-safety-at-work/

If you are a free speech absolutist, then you aren’t going to stop people from being punished, humiliated, or shouted down for sharing their ideas. Eventually, you are going to cede your entire space to the yellers – because people who want to do other things aren’t going to hang out in your space.

So how do you reign in assholes without making them feel like they are being targeted for their deeply held beliefs? That’s a hard thing to do. It takes a combination of skills and abilities – and even the people who are good at it are continually bumping up against new challenges in that endeavor. But we have no evidence that people who write code for a living are especially skilled in that work.

Of course, all that I’m talking about unfolds over time. We’re seeing the decline of facebook because they have demonstrated their inability to facilitate effectively. Twitter claims that they are doing well… but we’ll see the reality as the months and years play out.

In the meantime, folks, let’s keep showing people dignity and respect.

Writing through Writer’s Block

Ok, ok. So for years I’ve said (mostly to myself) that I don’t get writer’s block. But here I am, stuck with it for months now. But if I don’t get writer’s block…? I’ve always felt that the thing to do with writer’s block is to write exactly what you are thinking. That is what I’ve been reluctant to do, and that’s why I’ve been stuck. So here are the things on my mind…

Seeing Elon Musk out himself as intellectually vapid with fascist leanings in his take over of Twitter has been something. I mean, being a native of Silicon Valley, I’ve known about his shortcomings for a long time. But to see someone completely expose himself on a worldwide scale so quickly… I did not think he would do so much obviously dumb stuff so fast.

Being a burner, I’ll never forget Elon criticizing someone by saying that they have “never been to Burning Man.” Well, now it’s clear to me that Elon managed to insulate himself so much from the experience that he didn’t learn some of the fundamental things that people learn for themselves when they go to Burning Man; namely, a commitment to community. Elon, at this moment, seems to be most interested in self aggrandizement. Just as the shine is coming off of another self aggrandizer in America (Trump), Elon shows up to take his place.

I’ve said (to myself) for a while now, American culture has a fetish for achievement. But it’s shiny “look at how perfect I am!” achievement, not the achievement that comes from hard work, failure, and mistakes. So people like Musk, like Trump, spit-shine their failures and manage to actually accomplish very little – all while claiming that they can do anything. With enough money, you can make any mistake look like a success. Musk and Trump had enough money from the beginning.

I’m sure part of my reluctance to write about my true feelings about the world is that I am now the Executive Director of an organization. I haven’t wanted my thoughts to be construed as the official statements of the organization that I have built. So I’ve said nothing…

Which is not healthy. And the truth is, is that I have always kept a bright big line between what I say and do in a professional capacity and what I don’t. Writing this blog gives me clarity. Writing this blog is about the thoughts that I am thinking. My work is not about that.

So, what else is on my mind? I’m pretty darn proud of my oldest daughter these days. Why is enough for a whole blog itself… so keep your eye out for that. You may have a hint if you follow my wife on facebook, though.

So, the fight to maintain democracy goes on in America. This is something that deserves a lot more writing from me, since it’s something that’s on my mind a lot – but I’ll collect my thoughts before I publish them.

Meanwhile, I think I’ve said what I need to say today.

Free Guide Fundraiser 11/5

Raising money for the services at the Veterans Village of Ben Lomond

Hey all, just want to let you know that my organization – The Free Guide – is having it’s first fundraiser this Saturday, November 5th. You can check out the details on Eventbrite. Below are the posters:

Press on RV Safe Parking and Homelessness

Had a brief segment on KSBW

Got a good write up in the Santa Cruz Sentinel

If you noticed that the article in the Sentinel said that our wait list was 37, while the KSBW segment said that our wait list is nearly 50 – it’s because our list grew quite a bit in just two days.

Also gave my perspective on the shutdown of the Footbridge Services Center

Paid The Cost Podcast

Had an incredible conversation with Nativo on his Paid the Cost podcast at the end of August, about homelessness and my life in general. Here is the link to the episode itself.

Also, Alejandro (here’s his Instagram) made this incredible image of me, hearkening back to when I did outreach with people who are homeless and handed out cookies as part of that outreach…

On KSQD talking about Homelessness in Santa Cruz

I made an appearance on community radio

In case you want to hear me on the panel with a couple of homeless activists, (including Reggie from Santa Cruz Cares) hosted by Ami Chen Mills, talking about the current homeless situation in Santa Cruz – here is the youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiJOP0MbSPA