[Noisebridge-discuss] Incidents Tuesday and Wednesday

[Liz Henry]

Hey there Noisebridgers,

I'm going to keep this as short as possible... and mostly in passive 
voice. Apparently last night a bunch of people ended up asking Wish to 
leave the space because she was being disruptive and yelling at people. 
  And she did leave.  Tonight there was a similar situation where some 
kind of confrontation developed, and many people got together to ask her 
to leave -- specifically because of her being confrontational with them. 
  She refused to leave and said she would accuse people of assaulting 
her, and laid on the floor.

After some discussion and a space of 10 minutes or more of giving her a 
chance to agree to leave, a person called the police non-emergency 
number. When the police came, Wish said she was having an epileptic 
seizure and her arm was broken. Some paramedics came from a firetruck 
(also in non-emergency mode) and lifted her out of the space to take her 
to Kaiser hospital. Danny and I came down to the space in response to 
the Noisebridge 311 number being called at 11pm. When we got there 
everything was pretty calm; there were many people in the space working 
and hacking, and a core of maybe 10 people observing as Wish got carried 
out by the paramedics in a chair. The police and firemen seemed kind and 
to understand the situation.

Afterwards a bunch of us sat in a circle for an impromptu meeting and 
discussed what had happened and how it might have gone differently or 
better. No one felt that there could have been much alternative to it 
coming down to physically removing Wish from Noisebridge. It was 
suggested that maybe calling the 311 earlier or calling medical 
personnel first before police might have felt less hideous but things 
would have turned out the same way anyway.

Thanks to all the people who dealt with the situation so effectively and 
supportively for each other, talking about what to do, and doing it.

Summary: If a crowd of people ask you to leave Noisebridge because of 
your behavior, and especially if no one at all is defending your right 
to be there, you should leave.   There are many possible avenues to come 
back, such as talking to people outside of the space, emailing, IRC, or 
asking to raise the topic at Tuesday night meeting.



Cheers,

Liz




-- 

------------------------
Liz Henry
liz at bookmaniac.org
http://bookmaniac.org

"Without models, it's hard to work; without a context, difficult to
evaluate; without peers, nearly impossible to speak." -- Joanna Russ