[Noisebridge-discuss] Advisory about recent thefts at Noisebridge.

[Danny O'Brien]

So, I just want to point out that it's really common to lump
undesirable practices with specific nameable groups, and also to clump
together people who exhibit those undesirable tendencies into those
specific groups who aren't actually associated with them.

When we had the conversation last week with Jorgen and Warren of the
Free School, a lot of it involved unpicking exactly who was associated
with them and who wasn't (I wish you'd both come, as I specificially
tried to pull in people who were growing pissed at a "Free School"
problem).

As I said, J+W were sympathetic to the trouble some behaviour that had
happened, and wanted to work on it. Part of what came out of that is
the new Tastebridge Wednesday cooking and kitchencare class, which is
being run by a big gang of the people working on kitchen stuff right
now.

I'm pretty sure that the people people flag as "goddamn Free
Schoolers" are actually either troublesome people who have no
connection, actually kinda nice people who maybe weren't up on all the
aspects of NB until we sat them down and talked about it, troublesome
people who *are* connected with Free School,  and finally people who
are actually working on cool projects that we don't know about yet.

I've generally found that the latter is often the case -- I spent my
first few weeks last year seriously involved in NB trying to hunt down
the dirty stopouts who weren't doing cool stuff. I was convinced I
knew who these people were, only to find that almost everybody *was*
working on cool things, they just didn't know anyone else.

I still get mildly infuriated with people who just seem to be sitting
around doing nothing, until I talk to them. I also realise that I look
like I am sitting around doing nothing, until you talk to *me*. And
that I am awesome.

d.

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:26 PM, meredith scheff <satiredun at gmail.com> wrote:
> I fucking love you Rachel. Noisebridge is not a freeschool annex, IMO.
>
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:11 PM, rachel lyra hospodar <rachelyra at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I'm going to reply inline
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 8:48 AM, girlgeek <girlgeek at wt.net> wrote:
>> > Adding my 2 cents.
>> >
>> > I second the suggestion of 10AM to 10PM (or earlier) open hours -  10PM
>> > to
>> > 10AM - 'members' only please.    I put 'members' in quotes because we
>> > can be
>> > very liberal in what we consider a member for these purposes.
>> > We might consider a $5/visit donation requirement which we can  forget
>> > to
>> > ask of anyone who looks O.K.
>> > We might consider a $2/visit donation of anyone who isn't a true monthly
>> > paying member and solve some financial problems at the same time.
>>
>> all of these solutions require us to do some kind of vague but active
>> people sorting, filtering, demanding money, closing the doors or
>> kicking out of nonmembers.  i mean, what happens at 10pm?  who stands
>> up and kicks out all those people we have spent two years telling that
>> they can come in and work whenever they want?  Or do we just want to
>> kick out problem people?  i fail to see how that differs from saying
>> "let's kick out problem people" except for the second is far more
>> honest.
>>
>> > We might consider a lock on the upstairs door that opens with the same
>> > key
>> > or keypad as downstairs, but otherwise has to be opened by someone who
>> > greets - and tells strangers to go away after 10PM.
>>
>> i like this better.  i also like the keypad/simply no longer buzzing
>> people in solution, i think it's similar in effect.  I also would like
>> to propose a similar solution: a passphrase.  to get buzzed in you
>> must deliver the passphrase.  it could be distributed via wiki,
>> mailing list, whatever.  i like the password over the keypad solution
>> because i believe it has the same level of filter but more fun in
>> implementation, and less work up-front to implement it it would
>> require a greater behavioral change, but that might be a good thing.
>> training people to have a small interaction with others to allow the
>> others to enter could be a step in the right direction.
>>
>> > I like, "What are you here to work on?" as a filter of people.  We need
>> > an
>> > acceptable response for Free School people like, "I'm part of the Free
>> > School." but otherwise, anyone coming in who doesn't look right
>> > shouldn't be
>> > here without a project.
>>
>> Um, fuck the free school.  I am sure that many of them are nice people
>> but they have several spaces nearby they can use for their chanting
>> circles/massage parties/talking about hippie stuff/whatever and being
>> part of Free School is not a reason to hang out at noisebridge.
>>
>> working on creative technology projects is.
>>
>> working on creative technology projects is.
>>
>> working on creative technology projects is.
>>
>> working on creative technology projects is.
>>
>>
>> >
>> > A slightly different aspect of the problem.  Say someone unexcellent
>> > comes
>> > in.....
>> >
>> > It is only a small % of us that feel that we can ask them to leave.  We
>> > need
>> > some sort of social  ok or awareness that especially as long as this
>> > problem
>> > exists that we need to err on the side of asking people to leave, an we
>> > all
>> > need to work as a group on the problem when an unexcellent person comes
>> > in.
>> > And   it can be very difficult to get the idea across to someone crazy,
>> > stoned, or crazy stoned that they need to leave.  Remember when we asked
>> > Salvador Dali Lama to leave - daily.
>> >
>> > Avoiding theft means asking a suspected thief to leave, before they have
>> > done anything wrong.  This means that we must act on our 'bad feeling
>> > about
>> > someone'.   Are we all willing to do that?
>>
>> we must as a community come up with some tools to help us know when we
>> can and should ask people to leave, and to help us know how to do it
>> without being an asshole or unfairly targeting someone we don't know
>> or who is different from ourselves.
>>
>> R.
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>
>
>
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