[Noisebridge-discuss] microscope has been found

[Just Duncan]

I am greatly relieved to hear this news, though it is both disappointing
and disturbing that the concern is still over Jay being "wronged".  No one
seems to understand how utterly terrified I was, then living on the street,
of this incredibly adept & manipulative   psychotic sociopath who heard
voices and threatened to kill also living in that world.

Yet, despite my fear of him, despite  VERY intense pressure by people at
Noisebridge to say with absolute certainty that I saw things I had no clear
memory of seeing, I persevered in holding my moral compass true.  I refused
to bear false witness, did not pick a microscope out of pictures as one I'd
seen, and did not lie.  My recorded statement given to Danny bears this
out.  Yet, even that wasn't enough, as *I* was then accused of stealing the
microscope  in order to frame Jay.

I personally paid for this in terms of my reputation & character at
Noisebridge more than people are willing to acknowledge, yet I bear no ill
will to anyone.  I really appreciate Danny's reminder as it is a good one,
but Jay is by far from the only victim.  Noisebridge is the far greater one.

I am thankful for those few who stood by me and for those who taught me to
have the strength and character to simply "do the right thing," whether
popular or not.  For whether liked or disliked, whether on a wet cardboard
box or a comfy safe warm dry bed, I know myself and what is right.  It
starts as a habit and ends as character.

Peace and thank you-  Duncan

On Dec 5, 2011, at 6:09 AM, Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 2:56 AM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:

> a while ago it seemed that a certain person had stolen it, because someone
> thought they had seen that person selling a microscope on the street and
> we noticed it was missing.  It seems that person must have been selling a
> different stolen microscope, because it apparently wasn't this one.
>

I appreciate you posting this, when you could have also just not said
anything publicly on the list. But I don't think you're being entirely
honest with yourself or others when you give that as the most likely
conclusion.

I think being suddenly vague about who it was that was accused and  who did
the accusing, and then concluding that, well, heck, the only explanation
must be that the possibly-imaginary microscope must have been stolen from
someone *else*, is just compounding the earlier error. We have to be as
honest as we can with ourselves.

Here's how I would describe what happened:

"a while ago a lot of us believed that Jay had stolen it, because Duncan
thought they had seen that person selling something from Noisebridge on the
street and
we noticed the microscope was missing.  We screwed up, probably because
lots of us were
mad at Jay for another reason entirely."

If we're not honest about the mistakes we made, we're going to risk
repeating them. People find themselves mobbing someone they don't like or
who did something wrong with lots of extra accusations, and talking
themselves into believing the worst of them.

I'm personally trying to work myself up to apologizing to Jay -- we all
have his email address.

We should also talk about this at the meeting. Some of our systems for
preventing this kind of mistake worked, and some of them didn't, and we can
always improve them.

d.

-jake
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