[Noisebridge-discuss] Incidents Tuesday and Wednesday

[rachel lyra hospodar]

hi liz!

(tl;dr i saw the whites of their eyes, a call to arms, it gets all ranty
towards the end)

Thanks for the updates!  I was part of the group that asked Wish to
leave Tuesday night.  It is kind of affirming to hear that she was so
problematic the next night.  Even though a bunch of us in the space
agreed that she was likely schizophrenic, and not really at noisebridge
out of a desire to hack, and wildly counterproductive, and completely
intractable, it was still really hard to cross that psychological
boundary of asking someone to leave BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T THERE TO HACK.

It's something we need to get better at.

There is no panacea solution for Noisebridge's people problems, but I
would venture a guess that people actually reading messages are not part
of the problem.  Ergo, *YOU* are part of the solution, and if you are
not doing that much about it then you are part of the reason that we are
slowly being overrun by hippies, loonies, and hangers-on.

It is really hard to distinguish between hackers and crazy people by any
normal metric, but we have to increase the strength of our immune system
or noisebridge is gonna end up like a greyhound bus terminal with free
wireless.

DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT you motherfuckers! Talk to strangers and be RUDE
to them if you do not like them. BE a white blood cell.  FOR SERIOUS!

R.

On 9/29/2011 12:33 AM, Liz Henry wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> 
>