I was already a little nervous about my new job. I was sure I would meet new people and make friends I'd likely keep for a while. I picked a table in the lunch room and said hello to the person sitting there. As we made small-talk I mentioned that I had gotten married the previous year. "Oh congratulations!" he said, "What does your wife do?" I corrected him immediately—it was a harmless mistake. We said more about our families, where we lived; over the years we often stopped to chat whenever our paths crossed. I guess I could have considered it a microaggression then, but I don't. It was an assumption, a mistake. People make those and recover. But for whatever all that's worth, it's still a small moment I remember from my first day. Sometimes small moments foreshadow problems ahead. Thankfully, this time (and in this way), it didn't. Change one fact about me—who I had married (not a choice _I'd_ make, happy anniversary honey!)—and this story could be different. My new coworker knew I was married and assumed I was straight. If he had been right, he and I would already have something in common. I saw his question not as a slight against my marriage, but as an attempt to connect. He tried to bridge the gap between us using a commonality he assumed we shared. The conversation could have gone down a different path, too, if he asked his question in another way. It could have been a jumping-off point to reveal something true about myself, in a way I would choose to reveal it. ## when you assume... Assumptions can feel like a way to connect. They're a shortcut to understanding, especially if we guess right. But there's a risk associated with guessing wrong. I still make assumptions, of course. Sometimes I'm right. Sometimes I'm not. But a guess isn't given much appreciation even when you get it right. Guessing wrong risks denting the relationships we're trying to build. My story feels minor to me because I didn't experience that slight as part of a larger pattern. For some people, our innocent assumption is one in a series of folks getting that person's reality wrong. I worked at a restaurant in college. The night we met, the manager's wife told me that she hadn't said anything to me all shift because she thought I didn't speak English. Lots of people assume the gender of everyone they see on the street. We meet people who look like us and assume we share the same values, the same culture, the same beliefs. Zora Neale Hurston was fond of saying, "all skinfolk ain't kinfolk." As a social species, it's natural to want to find connection with the people around us. We can do that without expecting others to be the way we think they are. Assumptions can go beyond the things we say, and they can happen in many directions. We assume body language without seeking clarity. We believe that a project is going well without asking about it. We guess at intentions, at slights, at misinterpretations. We make decisions and come to conclusions without ever learning the real story. These can feel like necessary or even wise shortcuts. If we end up at the wrong destination, though, we might not even know. ## to know is better than to wonder is better than to conclude I've done a lot of work trying to unlearn the assumptions I make in my head. I accept my curiosity as natural. I also accept that I don't need to slake my curiosity with a guess—if a detail is relevant, that person may offer it. If we have some trust between us I can ask. Many people share details about their lives. Give them the space to share. Offer respectful curiosity. Think twice before telling that joke in mixed company (or any company, for some jokes). Instead of internalizing an offhand comment, approach with curiosity: something like, "what do you mean by that?" As a facilitator, I have to build trust in rooms of people I've never met. I don't always have time to get to each person at a high level of detail, but pronouns are essential to my work. During introductions, I ask people to share "the pronouns you'd like us to use for you." If I don't know, I may use a gender-neutral pronoun for someone; more often I'll just use their name. Also important: not needing to ask. We don't always need to know. Some folks don't like having to share their pronouns. Not everyone wants to explain to a stranger where they're from. I'm not owed anyone's life story. But plenty of people are willing to share. They could be offering real connection, and a chance to know someone a bit better. We don't know people's stories, not really. We can only imagine what it's like to be someone else, and we are often wrong. Despite the distance I still have to build those bridges. A world without those connections is one I don't want anyone to live in. My approach is to show respect and trust to the people I meet. Add a measure of genuine curiosity that reflects those two things. Chances are high that they'll share something that surprises me. Next week I'll be celebrating 10 years of marriage to my favorite person in the world! I'm taking a week off from _be the future_. We have a very special post planned for the following week. See you then. So You Might Join a Board..., written by Itai Jeffries and me, has a new home on Future Emergent. Itai and I wanted a friendly guide for joining or improving a board of directors. We wanted a book that was honest, funny, and informative—like asking a really knowledgeable friend. So we wrote it! We created this book especially for BIPOC, POGM, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-/no-income folks who are thinking about joining a board of directors, but the information inside is useful to pretty much everyone. We offer the book on a sliding scale so it'll never be out of reach. Get your copy now on the be the future store.

I've been so busy this month that it feels like it's almost over. Alas. Here are a few things I enjoyed reading this month. ## On Quality, by Keyana Sapp A short essay on the undefinable word "quality" and how we all still know what that means. > A good object is a fossil record of care. Thousands of small selections made by people who could tell the good facts from the bad ones and picked the good, even when not doing so was cheaper or easier. The extra ounce of brass, the second coat of lacquer and the tolerance held a hair tighter than the drawing demanded. Every one of those selections survives for exactly one reason, which is that _somebody with power over the object gave a shit._ ## Before You Decide, Decide How You'll Decide, by DeEtta Jones Y'all know I love writing and reading about decision-making. This straightforward essay shows us why it's so important to create a sandbox for each decision we make together. > Decision criteria are an agreement — the short list of standards every option gets measured against. Set them deliberately, and in advance, and the decision becomes defensible, repeatable, and shared. Leave them implicit, and something else decides for you: the loudest voice in the room, the newest worry, or simply the most polished case. ## My Corvid Friends-to-Be, by Jennifer S. Holland Most people don't think about corvids as songbirds except to hate on their singing. But corvidae is a family: from the crows in my region, to the grackles of my hometown, to the ravens of the east, and so many more. I think corvids are in the running for most intelligent beings on earth. I'm not about to get on their bad side. > Not just because they can talk, crows and their ilk, including ravens and magpies, are known to be super intelligent. From a long-term study done at the University of Washington in the 2000s, we know they recognize human faces and even remember for years the faces of those who treated them badly early on. The results were hard to dismiss: While banding birds for research, students wore a particular rubber mask that the birds learned to associate with the irritation of being caught. For years after, the banded birds would punish people in the “bad guy” mask, forming small mobs and loudly scolding, and ignore people wearing other kinds of masks. Remarkably, the offspring of those original birds learned to dislike the same masked face and would join their elders in shaming the wearer. ## Mexico City's Utopias, by Ashwin Ravikumar Jamie shared this article with me about the incredible community centers, called UTOPIAs, that dot the borough of Iztapalapa. The Units for Transformation and Organization for Inclusion and Social Harmony cost relatively nothing to run, but they exceed most people's idea of what public works could be. But why shouldn't a planetarium, a zoo—an animatronic dinosaur park??—occupy the commons? I'd suggest it's a better use of land than a golf course. > Imagine that in the poorest neighborhoods of Detroit, Atlanta, and Chicago, you could find a public park with glistening swimming pools, world-class sports and recreation facilities, and spectacular landscape architecture rather than vacant lots. If you are a single mother, rather than being forced to lug your clothes blocks away to pay to wash your clothes, you can come to a public, well-maintained, space to do your laundry for free while you eat delicious food grown at the agroecological garden nearby. Meanwhile, your children can learn how to swim, attend workshops on how to grow food in the city, hit up the planetarium to learn how Mayan Cosmology relates to the Big Bang, hang out at the skate park, or take a guitar lesson. ## Wild Oysters Make a Comeback in Maine, by Kirsten Lie-Nielsen Oysters: one of my all-time favorite proteins. They are the filter-feeding keystone of the coastal ecosystem. The most I've eaten in an evening is 52. One Maine oyster farmer in particular was in the news for not-great reasons. Perhaps, like me, you think an essay about oysters heading back home to Maine sounds like a fun read. Enjoy! > Pickers can be salty characters, some of the last true foragers of the coast. They spend long days on the mud flats at low tide, bent over holes that they dig with specialized rakes, seeking out soft-shell clams, the most commonly harvested shellfish in Maine. They often gather wild oysters too; the stationary creatures can be a relief to find as they only need to be pried off the rocks exposed at low tide, rather than dug out of the thick mud.

About a year ago I started looking at digital cameras. I describe myself as a perpetual hobbyist because I love trying out new things. I wanted to take a photography class, and the good classes near my house required a fancy camera. The hobby would've had a practical purpose. Most of the photos on be the future are ones I've taken over many years. I'm starting to feel like I've run out. It's taken me a year because I'm allergic to impulsive purchases (except for tinned fish). But the thought lingered; the tabs piled up. I wanted a camera that wasn't attached to the distraction machine in my pocket. Like a good number of Gen Zers, I've grown disenchanted by my phone's camera. It's convenient but not intentional. Or I'll go days without realizing I haven't taken any photos. My phone comes out but I'm as likely to check my email as I am to take a picture. It didn't take me long (a year lol) to realize that I didn't need to spend over a grand to buy the camera I wanted. I didn't need a fancy expensive DSLR with interchangeable lenses. A decade-old point-and-shoot gives me a camera I can bring everywhere at a fraction of the cost. I bought one about a week ago. It's so much fun to use! ## storytelling Why was a camera so important to me? Photography fixes a moment in time. Light enters the lens like a rudimentary eye. The film or digital sensor collects an imprint of the light that reaches it. But photography is not impartial—it's an art form, impressionistic. We decide what to focus on. We choose the angle, the lighting, whether we want our subjects to pose or act natural. AI smoothing and digital effects are now native to phone cameras. Before them, retouching and other analog tricks accomplished the same thing. With these tools we can even appear to edit reality itself. David Levi Strauss writes, "We manipulate images, in part, to obscure how much they are manipulating us." These manipulations are choices. Every time when we take a picture, we choose what to remember and how to remember it. ## the sum of memory Photos tell a story in ways that extend beyond the artifact itself. A collection of photos can carry memories of an entire age. They can speak to a life or a fragment of one. My archive of pictures, sorted in date stamped folders, speak volumes to me now. They tell stories of cooperation, friendship, family, distance, and solitude. Given enough time, my photos become my memories. They keep a record of days I might otherwise forget. They fix in time the people I filled my life with, the ones I spent those days with. I hope I have many memories left to make. I'm grateful to have found another small way to remember them.

Democratic decision-making puts the power of a choice into the hands of a larger group of people. Instead of having one person (or a few people) call the shots, the whole group gets to decide the best way forward. The group takes more time to ensure that everyone is up to speed on the problem. They discuss possible solutions, ask questions, refine ideas, and vote on what to do. Fist-to-five is one of the easiest ways that groups can take a democratic vote. It follows a consent-based decision model. ## what is fist to five Fist to five helps people quickly gauge how the group feels about an idea. It's flexible and low/no-cost. Votes can be asynchronous (with a set time limit) or take place when people are all together. Everyone can vote; anyone can suggest, support, or block a proposal. ## proposals Fist to five starts with a proposal, or suggestion, for what a group should do. What makes a good proposal? It's one everyone can understand. Anyone can ask clarifying questions before the first vote. Everyone, no matter how new, is eligible to vote (as long as they understand the problem and solution). Because voting is so easy, I usually discourage amendments until after the first vote. That gives the group a better sense of how close their support/opposition is to others in the group. Anyone can propose edits to a proposal. We can add them to a proposal using fist to five voting, or vote for the updated proposal itself. Changes to a proposal can happen anytime provided the group can vote for the final version. ## voting How do we vote? At Long Haul Kitchen, we vote through our signal group chats. We've had many discussions about how long to keep a vote open. We found that 24 hours gave folks time to read and ponder without delaying action on a decision. At our last meeting, a group of 6 crafted proposals and voted to send them to the larger community for a full vote. When it's time to vote, people signal their support with their digits, fingers or otherwise. > 5️⃣ - I give my **full and enthusiastic support** > 4️⃣ - **I am fine** with this proposal as-is > 3️⃣ - I don't love this proposal, but **you have my consent** to move forward > 2️⃣ - I have a **small problem** with the proposal and I will work to amend it > 1️⃣ - I have a **serious problem** with the proposal and I will work to amend it > ✊🏾 - **I can't consent** to this proposal in any form Here's what happens after the vote: * **If anyone votes for a fist, the process cannot proceed.** The group learns why the voters are blocking the proposal. They may be able to find a new approach that works better for all participants. * **If anyone votes 1 or 2, the approval is on hold until members can work out a solution.** If people are far apart on a solution, the process may take many rounds of discussion and voting. * **If everyone votes a 3 or above, the group approves the proposal.** Members can get to work on the actions they approved. ## things to consider Fist to five is a simple approach to making consent-based decisions. Decisions made this way are not always easy; there's no promise the process will be drama-free. Participants must act in good faith and with the belief that there is a way forward. Here are some things to be aware of and their potential remedies. * **People who don't understand the situation might opt out of voting.** **Remedy:** Organizers should encourage everyone in the group to stay informed and vote. Ample time for questions and discussions is important. The proposals should be easy to follow but detailed enough so we all know what will happen after the vote. * **Power dynamics skew support for a proposal.** New or junior folks may not feel comfortable sharing their concerns with proposals. This is especially true for proposals their more senior peers support. **Remedy:** consent-based voting doesn't allow for strong persuasion or coercion. When someone votes a proposal low, it's the group's job to understand their misgivings and work to fix them. * **The fist feels nuclear.** It may seem extreme to shut down a proposal completely. But believing a proposal is unworkable is a position we should be willing to take. **Remedy:** encourage people that their input matters. One person may notice an issue that others might not. Solving the problem now, before we approve a proposal, is easier than trying to fix it later. * **The proposal is too big.** Proposals can do too much, confusing voters on what they're voting for. **Remedy:** Break up a proposal into smaller proposals and let people vote on each one. * **The proposal is way too big.** A multi-page proposal feels inappropriate for fist to five. The amendment and voting process might take a long time. **Remedy:** consider a proposal to allow a smaller group to work through the details. A different voting method might also be appropriate. Fist to five is a powerful tool to help groups make decisions together. It’s easy to understand and explain. It's a more productive, and generally safer, way to use one's fist.

In any group of decent size, some people will be more involved than others. For years I learned and taught about communities of practice (CoPs) in public health. The principles I learned have applied to pretty much every group I've worked with since. Social theorist Étienne Wenger studied how people participate in a community of practice. These levels of participation are fluid and move from the outside in: * **Transactional** members interact with the community of practice only on occasion. They may dip into a meeting or gathering for help with a problem or to access a community-built resource. Or they may have a specific expertise that they sometimes offer the group. * **Peripheral** participants attend gatherings more often than transactional members. They will observe what happens in the group but rarely take part in the proceedings. Their frequent presence gives them familiarity with the group's activities, vocabulary, and norms. * **Active** members make up about 15-20% of the group. They contribute during meetings and events. They take part in workgroups or planning meetings. They're reliable support but rarely start new activities. * The **core** is where the leaders in the group operate. This is about 10-15% of the total membership. These folks set the group's agenda, organize events, and promote discussion. New ideas or direction often come from influential core members. This group is most responsible for the passion and energy that keeps the group running. * Much further away are the **resistors** or skeptics. These are people who aren't supportive of the group's activities or priorities. They often fade away unless their critiques find acceptance within the CoP. ## movement is good These days I'm involved with a local mutual aid group called Long Haul Kitchen. Every Sunday since 2020, our group has distributed 120 free meals to folks in Seattle's SODO and Georgetown neighborhoods. Every Thursday we fill people's propane tanks at no cost. The community shares thousands of dollars a month to pay for the services and supplies we distribute. But mutual aid runs on labor: that money is useless without people to put it to use. People will engage and disengage from a community of practice for many reasons. Movement between levels of participation is how groups sustain themselves long-term. When we make it easy to move from one level to another, we give folks a chance to step up. Even our core group members have changed over time. Some people move or move on; their lives may change in ways that mean they come around less often. Movement allows a core member to become less involved rather than leave completely. It also allows a transactional or peripheral member to become more active. I've been around long enough that I consider myself to be in the core group. Like in a strong community of practice, we need people to feel free to get more or less involved over time. How do we do that? ## creating movement **Find ways for people to stick around.** Not everyone wants to move between levels. Some folks like doing the same thing over and over. We can encourage that too. Others are waiting for an opportunity to feel more useful. Either way, we work to create a safe environment where people can feel the direct results of their actions. **Create pathways towards the core.** One member might be peripheral during the school year but more active during breaks. I started out in a regular kitchen support role. I helped out a few times before I thought about taking on the lead role. It's a big job—planning the meal, buying ingredients, and getting it all done in 3 hours. That became part of the challenge for me: "can I pull it off?" Talking with other leads I realized that many of them felt stress about the parts of the role that excited me. We have been strategizing ways to lower those barriers to move more folks to the active and core levels. We've popularized different ways to lead in the kitchen. We've split the time commitment: one person will do the shopping while the other leads. We expanded our list of pre-tested recipes for folks who worried about not making enough food. We've tested a system with two leads on a shift for a person who feels nervous about the responsibility. I look for folks who might be good at a lead role and ask if they've considered it. I learn about the hesitations they may have about stepping up. These solutions haven't led to a rapid or immediate growth of active participators. But I hope that they show a willingness to change our practices if it would better support our community. **Find ways to (temporarily) step away.** I'm not describing people that should leave for the health of the group. Instead, I'm concerned with core members who may burn out if they _can't_ disengage. Our mutual aid group is decentralized; nobody must serve a term or season. We come back because we choose to. And there's no pomp and circumstance directed at people who decide to take a less active role. We create a sense of safety by showing core members that the work will continue if they need to take a break. People are essential but not irreplaceable. But roles like the folks who manage our finances and storage space are still hard to replace. Our propane distribution team is there nearly every week. There's still work we can do to make sure those folks can take a break, too. ## people at every level How do we commit to the people, communities, and the groups we're in relation with? Even folks like me, who gravitate towards leadership, aren't leaders in every situation. Sometimes it's nice to be along for the ride without having to take the wheel. I also appreciate spaces that let folks give more when they feel safe and ready to do so. Long Haul is just one mutual aid network in Seattle. We field about a dozen community members to help out every single week. Even when participation is low, we'll make and distribute a simple meal for folks in our community. I've spoken to folks who lurked on our signal group chat for months before they signed up for their first shift. Our groups may be a community of practice, a mutual aid network, or some other configuration. Whether a member is active or peripheral, transactional or core, we're all part of that community. How we engage is as much up to us as it is to the spaces we inhabit. _If you would like to support The Long Haul Kitchen, you can visit our_ patreon_or_ send money_our way. If you're in the Seattle area and would like to help out, please_ _email me_ _!_

The masses are often overruled. How often do they act against the interests of the people they represent? Clear majorities want a decent minimum wage of $17/hour. Majorities support a host of other downright leftist policies. Most americans say government should run a universal healthcare program. These majorities often hold up across political parties and the urban/rural divide. But even with our broad support, we haven't achieved these goals yet. Why not? Our achievements, from the civil rights era to queer liberation, all came from protest. ACT UP forced drug manufacturers to lower the cost of HIV medications. They shamed the government into funding AIDS research and expanding who they studied. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was an organized boycott that lasted more than a year. It began nearly a decade before Rosa Parks' famous act of resistance. Their struggle continued until the supreme court ruled segregation on buses was unconstitutional. These victories and countless more were the result of organized mass protest. But these days we hold protests pretty often. The top five largest protests in american history were all about one guy. There are days when it feels like our protests y is that? What made t so effective? ## ACTing UP Aldyn Mckean was the cofounder of ACT UP in New York City in the 1980-1990s. His recommendations for protest are simple. > Any group that wishes to use civil disobedience or direct action to achieve change must:make absolutely clear what change is desired, usually by listing specific demands;target a group or individual with the power to bring about the desired change;design actions so that the cost of resisting change is perceived by the person/group in power to be greater than the cost of giving in. Movements in my lifetime haven't always had all three characteristics. Without them, we risk having the media mischaracterize our struggles. Or we direct our attention to people who may be sympathetic but don't see themselves as the solution. Or we show up en masse in every major city and then disperse. Mckean named two ways people can take action against those in power. Protestors can create problems for people in power that won't go away until they give in. Or they can educate the public to either embarrass people in power or threaten the power they have. I found an interview with him and Terry Gross that made me feel very old, very young, and very grateful for my activist ancestors. These tactics can shift public opinion or threaten the powerful with consequences. They are representatives of the same thing: power. We want to force (or urge) people with institutional power to take action. ## the fire next time What's missing from the above is something I bet activists didn't even think to describe. Their protests carried a sense of urgency, a feeling that this change can't wait. That may manifest as anger or sincere passion. We saw in the lessons from Montgomery an unrelenting steadfastness. We saw on the streets of New York a fight for survival against an invisible killer. We saw in movements past a persistence that may last years, decades, or even centuries. Around the world, protests still serve as a demonstration of human power. They are one way we can force people with power to change. But to be effective, we need to stand together, demand action, and refuse to let up. Mckean put it so well that I found his quote more than once while researching this essay. "Make it more costly for those in power to resist than to give in."

My colleagues and I are working with Seattle Public Utilities on a food waste study. My team conducted research to learn how people use (and don't use) the food they bring home. Another team will take the insights we made and create a campaign with them. We want to reduce how much food people waste, and encourage them to compost the food that isn't edible. The problems our respondents shared will feel familiar to most readers. People buy too much food, often more than they plan to use. A sale or bulk buy from Costco might load the cart heavier than they expected. The next thing you know, you have a huge bag of onions, or half a pint of heavy cream, or eggs that are close to expiring. Hint: might be time to make a frittata! One of my colleagues suggested a way out of this still-good food going bad in our fridges. People want to know their excess food is going to a good cause. We could start a program that picks up this food and gets it to people who could eat it. I wasn't excited about the idea based on my own experience in food banking. I didn't think food banks' existing infrastructure could handle an exchange like that. It's a lot of logistics to get food from one place to another in a safe way. I asked instead, "could we promote a neighbor to neighbor approach? something like, 'I have extra tomatoes I can't eat. I'll ask my neighbor if she wants them.'" We could cancel the refrigerated trucks waiting idle nearby. Instead, we'd encourage people to walk down the hall and ask their neighbor if they want it. Easy! Done by lunch. Well. It might be _their_ lunch now. Is it that simple, though? If I were on the receiving end of a campaign message like that, what would I do? Who would I offer my excess food to? I don't even know most of my neighbors. To many, it seems easier to imagine a complex distribution network for our leftovers than it does to talk to our neighbors. We would rather someone pick up our sad half-bag of spinach than knock on a door near our home and ask if they want it. This bring me back to some of the tension I feel when people talk about community. What does it mean to be a part of one? Are we in community just because we live near each other? Do we need more than that to consider ourselves in kinship with one another? Are things different for people who don't live in a big city like I do? My parents know all their neighbors (and like most of them). They do things for each other when someone goes out of town. People may come over for a barbecue or a backyard sit. These are things I assume only happens in a small town or a neighborhood of single-family homes. Neither of those cases will be part of my life anytime soon, nor for the many people I share a grid of streets with. So why does it feel so hard to ask a person who shares a wall with me if they want to split a jumbo box of croissants? Some ideas why: **It's hard to know who's interested in our stuff.** Lots of folks in society have an aversion to leftovers. Lots of folks, myself included, think dinner is often even better the next day. Connecting these two groups is tough as it is. At the same time, we must reject the expectation that poor folks should take what they can get. **Existing relationships aren't set up like that.** There's a huge stigma against appearing poor, much less being poor. For a lot of people, cooking still feels limited to the needs of an immediate household. When people do share food, it's likelier to be at a distance in something like a Little Free Pantry. **The hard times don't feel the same for everyone.** Economic segregation within neighborhoods has gotten worse over time. Setbacks in the economy always hit different incomes differently, and this one is no different. Some folks have great incomes, even now. They can afford everything they need. Other folks want to give the impression they’re in that first group. Credit card debt is sky high as people take out loans for takeout. The truly poor have fewer avenues into relationships with the first two groups. This makes it harder for homes with extra to share it with a household who could use it. ## talking to our neighbors I've only known a few of my neighbors in my many years as a renter. Last year, I was reading in the living room in relative silence. It was still enough that I started to hear music wafting up from the apartment below. It was exactly within the tastes I have—some synth, some dance, and the kind of plaintive indie music I love. A part of me wanted to walk downstairs or leave a note, but I never reached out. I didn't want to puncture the illusion of isolation that our homes in the city give us. But the truth is, my decision wasn't without consequence. The person downstairs moved out a month or two later; the worst case scenario was that I lost a potential friend. Beyond crying together to Sufjan Stevens albums, there are many reasons to get to know your neighbors. They're often closer than an emergency contact and could hold onto a spare key. They're a potential friend that doesn't have to travel across town to hang out. If I were to make a campaign for getting to know your neighbors, this is where I'd start. **Practice vulnerability.** A simple smile or "hey how are you?" repeated over months can go a long way. You can adapt the approach to your level of social comfort. You can leave a note instead of knocking on the door, for example. Be willing to accept rejection, too. Not everyone will respond exactly the way we hope they do, but that doesn't mean losing hope. **Break the ice.** Be the person who says hello first. Julie Beck and Becca Rashid **talked with** Pete Davis about his book, How to Talk to People. They make a good point that lots of people want to be the one who others approach. But at least half of us need to do the approaching. **Take your time.** I tell the folks I work with that they can't connect with their community only in the moment they need something. It takes a while to build trust and rapport with almost anyone. We also have to start with a genuine desire to connect. Kat Vellos says that we should try to be curious in ways that are true to us without being creepy. ## the practice of being in relation I'm still reflecting on the impulse to seek out services that take away the things we don't want. The thought that there will always be someone who will take what we're tired of can excuse our drive to consume. But we can't remove the friction out of every inconvenience. It's worth taking the time to be part of a neighborhood or community rather than just living in it. I doubt it's a coincidence that people feel so disconnected from each other. To some extent, many of us have lost the need to be close to the people around us. Society insists we only need help from our closest friends or immediate families, but that isn't true. Communities don't end at our front door. That's where they begin.

If you haven't heard about the Prairieland defendants, these are 9 protestors convicted for protesting at an ICE detention center in Texas. You can read about their protest, the grisly sentencing, and one protestor's conviction over being in a book club. These folks are in prison for protesting the injustices they see in their community. If you are able, their supporters ask us to send letters of support to these brave folks. Click here to find contact information for each person. Please also review the guidelines for what's acceptable to send. There are also links to send money to their commissary accounts. The sun is finally shining here in Seattle. Temperatures are hovering in my favorite range: chilly in the morning, warm (but not too hot) during the day, and cool at night. I'm taking a short break while I recharge my writing battery. I'm hoping the charger is solar powered. ## Stop Asking People to Think Like Planners, by Charles Marohn Community engagement can be hard to get right for exactly the reasons in this essay. We often ask for ideas from people who may not think that way. I've waited an hour for a bus, but I don't know enough about the bus system to know how to fix my grumbling. Are more buses the right answer when budgets are tight? Do I know about the intersection several miles away that buses take forever to get through? Gather people's problems, come up with solutions, then work through them together. That will produce real and effective results. > It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. > > That statement is often misunderstood as an argument against listening to customers. It isn't. Apple listened obsessively to customers. What [Steve] Jobs understood was that customers experience frustrations, desires, and obstacles. They do not necessarily experience solutions. ## Lost Recipes, by Abe Beame This article writes about american culture told through the pages of hip-hop magazines. These magazines covered musicians and issues that mainstream media never touched. Archivists and historians are working to preserve these stories now at risk of being lost forever. > “Oftentimes, when we're thinking about American journalism, we're thinking about Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, or Gay Talese, and they’re important. But we also need to think about Mimi Valdés and Bönz Malone and Bobbito Garcia,” Gates told me. “Hip-hop journalism was responsible for talking about American culture in a way that no one else was at the time. In a _Source_ magazine in ’92, you could read about Palestine, you could read about Nelson Mandela being freed, you could read about a new demo tape on the way from a guy named Biggie Smalls. It showed a people's history of alternative culture that you're not getting from the mainstream publications.” ## Calvin and Hobbes and the Price of Integrity, by Matthew Morgan Ever wonder why there were no Hobbes dolls to keep the stuffed Garfields of the world company? It turns out that Bill Watterson made sure it would never happen. His righteous crusade, defending art against cheap commercialization, seemed quaint three decades ago. But in a world where art is both disposable content and IP, maybe he was onto something. > "For Watterson, craft has never been a side dish to the main course. It’s inextricable from the truths he wants to express and the meaning he hopes his work might have for its readers. It’s his belief that half a century ago, the best comics were more than amusing to look at; they were beautiful and undoubtedly counted as capital-A Art. Here in the mid-nineties, he 'can’t think of a single strip today that comes close to that standard of craftsmanship'." ## All Hail the Cheese Enchilada, by Amy McCarthy Is there any dish more perfect than the cheese enchilada? You can dress up an enchilada with all kinds of fillings and it will be delicious. But nothing beats a real Tex-Mex cheese enchilada: a melted river of cheese wrapped in a corn tortilla drenched in chili sauce, topped with raw onion and baked. This is still the only way I like eating raw onion. My mouth watered while reading this deep dive into one of my favorite dishes. > "When I have been away from Texas for more than about 48 hours, I start to crave a cheese enchilada. It’s not that they don’t exist in other places — of course they do, incredible Mexican food exists all over the country — it’s just that there’s no need for me to go in search of a great cheese enchilada when I am anywhere else, no reason to search for sand when I live in a vast desert dotted with more Tex-Mex temples than I can count. As a (mostly) lifelong Texan, that’s always what I come back home to, whether or not I’ve actually left the Lone Star State."

The word "accountability" has many definitions that seem to mean roughly the same thing. If I knock your cupcake off the table, I should answer for the harm I've caused. The least I can do is apologize, notice what I've done and acknowledge the fact. But for me, accountability is also a reckoning with the consequences of my actions. When we seek accountability from others, we want them to right their wrongs. We want justice, whatever that means to us. Accountability shows up in so many places that I have been wondering what it means deep down. Why are calls for it so prevalent? Is it standing in for something else, something that we really want? ## doing what you said you’d do Accountability takes many forms in the workplace. Lily Zheng says it's how organizations and their leaders are "held to task" for doing what they say they'll do. A quick online search led me to so many good-advice folks who promised to break it down for me. Accountability in these guides tilted towards managers holding their employees accountable. Some writers offered 5 easy steps for accountability. Others, 10. Still others said we could demand accountability from our colleagues with 7 steps, or 3 steps. But even when it's not sanctioned, accountability often flows in both directions. The work of a team, organization, or collective asks us to be accountable to each other. Taking on too much might mean burnout or actions we forget to take. Doing something wrong means delaying the next step while we redo that work. We can promise organizational change or better wages, but people will know if we don't deliver. The basic steps of accountability are the same: 1. Agree on the expectations we have for each other 2. Deliver on those expectations 3. If that doesn't happen, settle the consequences The 10-step process is this but padded out. One of the steps in that guide was, "Thunderbolts!" Choose your own adventure, I guess. ## accountability is not punishment Accountability often stands in for more appropriate words. We may call it justice, but that's another word that's twisted into different meanings. Kate McCord's Harm and Accountability Conversation Seed Packet (pdf) describes another example. She reminds us that people say accountability when they mean punishment. Those aren't the same thing. Accountability acknowledges harm and the impact it's had. It tries to make right what went wrong. Punishment is more about replying to harm with harm. It can mean revoking a person's freedom (jail) or causing them to suffer (also jail). There's often little to no expectation of repair. Punishment is often carried out by someone other than the person they harmed. "Being punished only means we have to endure the punishment." ## accountability is personal We call for accountability when we feel wronged on a personal or even a systemic level. People within a movement may call for repair when someone acts against our shared values. Communities demand action when their elected officials fail them. In Accounting for Violence, Danielle Sered wrote these 5 key elements of accountability: * acknowledging one’s responsibility for one’s actions; * acknowledging the impact of one’s actions on others; * expressing genuine remorse; * taking actions to repair the harm to the degree possible; and * no longer committing similar harm. Sered suggests that in true accountability, a person must hold on to their agency and dignity. It's not possible to force someone to be accountable for their actions. We can't shame someone into remorse for their actions. Who else has ever had to give a playground apology through gritted teeth? It probably feels even worse when it's a kid who has to do it. I find Sered's framework so universal because of how linked accountability is to harm. Accounting for Violence is a handbook that offers us a way out of systems of carceral punishment. More than that, it's a guide on how we could transform our whole society. We could all learn new ways of acknowledging and attempting repair for the harm we cause each other. Experiencing harm, committing harm, is personal! It can have an impact on us even when the harm isn't physical. Remedying that harm shouldn't feel impossible or terrifying. Mia Mingus offered a perspective on this that I loved. "What if our own accountability wasn’t something we ran from, but something we ran towards and desired, appreciated, held as sacred?" Instead of nursing old wounds, or avoiding the ones we gave to others, we could give each other the closure we seek? ## what we mean to each other Accountability is at its core about relationships. People are people. We mess up. We stumble onward. A missed chance to repair harm risks the long-term relationships we have with each other. Trust is so hard to rebuild. Accountability is another word for respect. Through it we show people who we really are, good or bad. We show what matters to us and who matters to us. The seed of this essay began with a screenshot of a TikTok I found (cursed statement). The author wrote, > "True accountability does not seek punishment but healing, and it does not exist without care—care for ourselves, care for those impacted, and care for the futures we are building together. Even when self-love feels out of reach, we move toward accountability with the belief that everyone is capable of growth, worthy of dignity, and deserving of a future rooted in justice and healing, even ourselves.” Accountability is not a solo project. The person harmed and the person held to account must come to the table. All sides must commit to repair. Through accountability, all sides heal.

A while ago I completed the Decision Making Intensive workshop by AORTA. Making a decision as a group often takes incredible patience and no small amount of skill. I've been in groups that stumble to a resolution even where our values and goals are well-aligned. AORTA's five-week course could have gone even longer for all the insight they had to share with us. Their process is perfect for a linear thinker like me. A facilitator would guide the group through each step of the process. Skipping a step or trying to do two steps at once will make everything harder. I'll try to summarize the democratic decision making process they shared with us. They offer a free zine if you want a bit more detail about each step. 1. **Identify and learn about the problem.** All participants should understand exactly what we're trying to solve for. What do we want to be different after we make a decision? 2. **Generate possible options.** The group should come up with many ideas to solve our problem. There are no wrong answers here! In a true brainstorm, we save our edits and critiques for later. 3. **Identify constraints and criteria.** Where are our limits? What can't we do, whether for time or resource reasons? AORTA recommends swapping steps 2 and 3 if your constraints are significant. 4. **Narrow down options.** Apply the limitations the group generated and compare them to their ideas. What's out because the ideas aren't possible? What do we think about what's left? 5. **Officially make the decision.** With the information we have, what's the best course of action? The group can decide from the options according to whatever process they use. That could be majority voting, consensus, fist to five, dictatorial rule, what have you. 6. **Take action.** Success in this process is simple. The decision works if people inside and out of the group are clear on who made the decision and how they made it. Then, we carry out what the group decides! As you might imagine, this straightforward process is not always straightforward! Here are a few lessons I found useful for a successful resolution. ## there’s a Step 0 How do we know we're making the right decisions? What if we shouldn't be letting an autocratic dictator decide for us? AORTA encourages us to consider a few parameters before we begin. * **Impact:** How many people will this decision affect? How long will the effects last? How much is at stake? * **Complexity:** Going into this, how much do we all disagree? Do people feel safe to disagree? Are we starting angry? * **Preparedness:** Are we all informed enough to decide? Are we good at deciding together or is this our first real attempt? * **Logistics:** How much time do we have before we must make a decision? Can we afford to be methodical? Are we sure our voting method/dictator of choice is the right one for this decision? A lot of these questions boil down to "have we thought this through before we begin?" If the vibes are off, the process may falter. Answers to these questions help set the stage for a decision that people will respect. ## strong decisions need the right conditions The training encouraged us to challenge our beliefs about how we make good decisions. These ideas can feel virtuous but they can also cause unintentional harm. **The people most impacted shouldn't always be the sole deciders.** This was a challenge to the advice process I mentioned in previous posts. People closest to a problem can still misunderstand it. They may lack context or don't have the skills or resources to carry out the decision they make. Instead, the whole group should decide the best way forward. **There are many ways to make a decision.** Consensus doesn't always lead to the best outcomes. A hierarchy can make reasoned and broadly popular choices. Uneven power dynamics can still tamper with how a group makes a "fair" decision. Seeing these approaches as beyond reproach makes it hard to see when the scales have tipped. ## facilitation is a role Facilitators do more than keep the process on track or on time. AORTA believes a facilitator's greatest contribution is discernment. The facilitator structures complex decisions into manageable pieces. They monitor group morale and lay out the stakes of each step. A process with no facilitator, or an unclear one, can easily fall off the rails. Too many people claiming the role can have the same effect. That also means we need some agreement before we can step in to lead the process. Facilitators can offer proposals on how to proceed and see how the group responds. ## decisions, decisions Some decisions do indeed come easy. We all have a set of values and priorities that we use to make sense of the world and our place in it. But there may be times when we have many equally-good paths before us. In these times, may we understand the problem, weigh all our options, and take action together.

Today marks Juneteenth, the day when enslaved African Americans in Texas became free. The Emancipation Proclamation was 2.5 years old when it reached Galveston, Texas in 1965. Slaveowners in the state already knew, of course. Jordan Smith reports they forced in at least 150,000 enslaved folks in those 2.5 years. All this came decades after Texas itself went to war with Mexico to protect its own slaveholders. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, and Texas declared its independence in 1835. But 30 years later, the enslaved people of Texas finally broke the bonds of chattel slavery. We've celebrated Juneteenth every year since. My ancestors (not even distant ones) lived during segregation and Jim Crow. Some of them took part in other civil rights struggles. These causes are, ultimately, linked. Lilla Watson put it best when she said, "If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” We celebrate Juneteenth as a rare step towards the total liberation of all people who call this country home. Today the project of our collective liberation is not finished. Though the struggle continues, we mark our progress with joy. I sometimes wonder: what happens when we're done? It feels like we're still a very long way off from the imagined utopias of pop culture like Star Trek. The future that feels so rational and bright is still crafted by present-day minds. But the time we spend on imagination is never wasted. I find that it's essential to deciding where we want to go. ## what does utopia mean? To me, it means everyone has their basic needs met. A person may want for whatever but need nothing. The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement is a self-governance organization in Sri Lanka. They offer material support and conflict resolution to people in villages across the country. Founder A.T. Ariyaratne led research in more than 600 villages to create a list of people's 10 basic needs. Sarvodaya organizes this list from most to least important, but all 10 needs are essential for well-being. 1. Clean environment 2. Adequate supply of water 3. Clothing 4. Nutritious food 5. Shelter 6. Health care 7. Communication 8. Fuel and lighting (energy) 9. Access to education 10. Cultural and spiritual performance Sounds simple, right? The aforementioned Star Trek nerds (guilty) might describe this condition as _post-scarcity_. In the galactic UN called the Federation, everyone has what they need. Money is no longer an issue for anyone. Nobody hoards wealth. It doesn't even figure into most people's daily lives! In a utopia we could easily meet all the needs above. What might people still argue about? get __be the future__ in your inbox subscribe today **Logistical struggles.** How do we share the resources that we all need to survive? What do we produce and where does it need to go? What does power and agency feel like in a world like this? Are services centralized in the style of an empire? Are we arranged in highly-connected bureaucratic city-states? Is there a massive entity like Sarvodaya that distributes resources to far-flung villages? **Principled struggles.** What is a struggle when we're all on the same side? Activist groups during the civil rights era all had the same ultimate goal. Their success was the product of hours of debate, discussion, and conflict. Members articulated their passions, fears, and hopes through connection with each other. adrienne maree brown describes the concept she learned as principled struggle. Quoting N'Tanya Lee, she writes, > "[I]n struggle that is principled, we struggle for the sake of building deeper unity, that we are honest and direct while holding compassion, that we each take responsibility for our own feelings and actions, and seek deeper understanding by asking questions and reading a text (such as an article or proposal) before we launch our counter argument." No matter our experiences, there will always be things we don't know. The universality of utopia asks us to consider the perspectives and wisdom of others. Principled struggle offers us a way to do so. **Struggles against greed and chaos.** As I was imagining a list of utopian problems, I kept coming back to these. I'm a product of my surroundings. Society birthed its first trillionaire this week, and he's unfortunately a violence-fueling insufferable racist. It's hard to imagine a utopia when all that some people want is a utopia of one. These future-folks will deal with similar people, too. We already have bigots who insist the social progress we made has gone too far. We see in the present day how easy it is to subvert institutions. We need safeguards, not just written into rules or laws, but into the values we hold as a people. ## utopia found It's possible that utopia is less a destination than a perpetual journey. For as long as we exist as humans we will be as fallible as we are brilliant. I hope that principled struggle is where we spend most of our time. But the 10 basic needs above are so tangible it's maddening. We already produce enough resources for everyone on earth to live in comfort. If scarcity is manufactured, the obstacle we face is not material but societal. More people than ever are waking up to the true conditions of the world around them. Our liberation remains bound together. Utopia, or something like it, could arrive tomorrow. Can we find the courage enough to demand it? So You Might Join a Board..., written by Itai Jeffries and me, is out now. This book is for BIPOC, POGM, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-/no-income folks who are thinking about joining a board of directors. Itai and I are promoting this book entirely through word of mouth. We could really use your help getting the word out. If you have clients, friends, colleagues, family members who would be interested in this book, please send them the link. You can even buy it for them and send it as a gift! If you find the resource useful and have a newsletter or similar outlet, I'd really appreciate a shout-out with a link to our store page. ****People in one or more of our priority groups can use the discount code POWER at checkout to buy this book for $0.99. People at an organization with an annual budget of less than $500,000 can now use code BOARD to buy this book for just $39.****

_this is a collaborative post: concepts and words by jeaux carroll and josh martinez._ * * * (josh)_It's Saturday morning. I'm heating up tortillas on the comal I've carried with me for years. I hear the sound of fat from the tortilla sizzling against the hot cast iron surface. As the fat renders it heats the moisture between layers in the dough. The tortilla begins to puff in places as the space between those layers fills with steam. Rings of char begin to form on the outer layer where it makes the most contact with the pan. Wafts of steam rise as the smell of warm tortillas fills the house._ _I handle each disc with a deftness that comes from years of practice. My hands have cooked thousands of tortillas on this comal or one just like it. The practice is all muscle memory by now but still takes some focus. My fingers slide, pinch, and flip each tortilla ripe with a heat that scalds but no longer burns._ ## friction as time What is friction? To some, it means unplanned interruptions or breaks in a routine that slow down a day. Friction could mean interactions with other people, such as a neighbor, barista, or cashier. Imagine standing at the register when you fumble for your debit card. In that small moment, you might remember an item you forgot to buy. You might process the total and think about how much you have left in the account before rent is due. You might realize that you left your card in your other bag. Or you can skip all that, retrieve your phone from its pocket, and tap to pay. Simple, frictioness, forgettable, easy. A minute wasted in line is a minute we could be spending on whatever it is we should be doing instead. Companies today hate friction. Friction is a scourge on a business' profit margins. It's an unwanted delay in an already hectic schedule. It's a process we can optimize to save a fraction of a second. Most of us are grateful for conveniences that keep our busy lives afloat. We order takeout when we're too tired to cook. We video chat with friends on the other side of the country. We (jeaux and josh) wrote this essay with digital conveniences that we can't ignore. Zoom calls reduced the friction that clay tablets or even mailed letters would have had on our essay. There are many reasons why we make these conveniences a feature in our lives. But like any panacea, we can’t apply it everywhere and not expect it to have consequences. In a world hell-bent on rushing, friction gives us time to slow down before we crash. (jeaux) _During high school I was very resistant to friction. I found little value in homework or attending classes just because people expected me to. Teachers had expectations and I was hell bent to subvert them. This is how I ended high school with a 2.1 GPA._ _Fast forward 8 years, and I found myself wanting to learn again. My previous experience with learning convinced me that I would fail. I decided to take the chance anyways and engage with learning through the lens of curiosity. This is how I landed in a beginners French class with my instructor Lucile. Lucile welcomed us into French through the lens of curiosity. It wasn’t just grammar and vocab sheets, rules and regulations, it was real conversations. We would talk about what we were watching on TV or things we had done throughout the week that we liked. This second language became a playground of experimentation where we could make mistakes. As a class, we played together to understand our new language._ _Lucile was patient and kind. She would always stress the importance of embracing not knowing. Lucile helped me find comfort in being bad at something with a group of friends who were also terrible at the new language. She transformed the humiliation ritual of being uninformed into a celebration of curiosity. It became a journey we were going on together. During a one-on-one, she asked me to explain my opinions on flying cars. It wasn’t because I needed to know the words, but because it was fun exercise to put together creatively bad sentences. Through these exercises in nonsense, I began to find ways to welcome the whimsey. French transformed from just a language to an experience in my everyday life._ ## why is friction beneficial? Learning is one of these necessary frictions we find ourselves in. Whether it’s math, science or language—we all have to go through a process of friction to get to a place of knowing. These moments can often be annoying, tedious, and a place of struggle. Like with many things in life, we transform friction when we acknowledge it and take control. People engage in these small frictions all the time to make life a more enjoyable experience. Some people take ten minutes to make a pour-over coffee that’s just to their liking. Others will go out of their way to a specialty store to get a specific ingredient for their favorite dish. People sitting in traffic may take the time to call a loved one or rock out to their favorite music. In these small moments we take control of friction and acknowledge the value it adds to our life. One transformative thing about friction is that it helps us invite others in. Together, we can learn something new or connect over shared experiences. What might happen when we invite a friend to go grocery shopping with us? As we walk up and down the aisles we may see items we both like, or we reach for things the other has never noticed. We may learn of new foods, recipes we want to try, and the likes or dislikes of our friends. Grocery shopping can take longer when we rely on another person, but doing so can deepen our bonds. By inviting people into friction, we engage with it as a place for curiosity. This helps us learn more about ourselves, our preferences, and what we have in common. * * * (josh) _I pick jeaux up from the airport for a weekend visit to Seattle. We've been friends online for years but have never met in person. I planned to take them on an errand to the nursery that takes care of my bonsai when I'm out of town. The air is cool as the sun peeks through a sky full of clouds. I drive them to a coffee shop I know about in White Center, one of my favorite neighborhoods in the Seattle area. We talk about the unique coffee flavors the shop offers. They have cardamom syrup! That’s so cool. We chat and get to know each other, filling in details we hadn’t shared before. Drinks complete, I drive us to a nearby ATM to get cash for the nursery. It's at the bank that my car's battery dies._ (jeaux) _It becomes obvious what the issue is when josh tries to start the car. A call to AAA confirms it will take at least an hour to get help. We debate what to do for a moment and decide to explore White Center on foot while we wait. Seeing the neighborhood on foot changes our relationship with it as we walk. We notice a giant orange mural adorned with dark blue flowers on the side of josh’s favorite Salvadorean restaurant. We pass by a neighborhood bar covered in beige siding. After coming from Colorado in one of the driest winters it’s ever seen, I obsess over how lush and green everything is here. And finally, we stumble upon an auto store and decide to find out if they can jump the car._ _Inside we’re met by a store manager who is full of life and energy. She talks us through all the different options for getting the car started. We see all the marvels that a modern auto store can contain! It’s striking how much the people here want to help us to get back on our journey. We share laughs over the misery of car troubles and learn about people we’ve never met in our life. In the end, we leave the store with a portable car jumper and the decision to go to Costco for our new battery._ _Back on the road, I can’t help but joke about how I’ve always wanted to see what an auto store in Washington looked like. As we approach the sprawling tan structure that is a Costco warehouse, josh joins in asking if this Costco is different from the ones in Colorado. Shockingly, they are! We park and waltz in to get ourselves the new battery. With it procured, we open the hood and get started. As we work together to change the battery, I can’t help but notice how nice it is to be laughing over a stressful situation._ (josh) _With a fresh battery installed, we resume our original journey. We leave the city and drive into the suburbs of Seattle. It takes three highways of different sizes and configurations to get there. We pause at traffic lights and sit in traffic that moves like a lazy river. But with all the morning's activity behind us, the drive is a kind of relief. Pulling into the nursery parking lot is like arriving at a cool oasis. We greet the owners and they invite us to tour their space. Atop every surface is a bonsai, whether decades old or a sapling just starting out. The low rumble of cars and trucks outside feels far away. We walk down every aisle of the greenhouse, admiring each tree in its small ornate pot. We ogle the massive trees in miniature marked 'not for sale.' Soon enough, we thank the owners and begin the return trip._ _I remind myself of something I learned as a young traveler. A trip is more memorable when something small goes wrong. If we had taken the easy route, we would've had less to talk about. No time to fill. Less to laugh about and bond over. It wouldn't have been the same morning at all, would it?_ ## friction is a choice What do we lose when we glide through life? What's at the destination that's so worth rushing to? Choosing friction is an opportunity to customize the experiences we have. Instead of grumbling through friction, what if we enjoyed—or even savored—it? When we accept that it's a part of life, we can discern the frictions that add meaning or richness to it. Most people don't have the luxury of embracing every friction. Convenience might be what gets the family fed before bedtime. A virtual option for a meeting might be the only way someone could attend. But opening our lives to some friction isn't about making those lives harder. Instead, it's a way of bringing intention into a day that might breeze by without it.

Last Saturday was a thrilling day! Memorial Day weekend marked the first of the summer's Bicycle Weekends. Each weekend until Labor Day, the gorgeous Lake Washington Boulevard closes to cars. Pretty much everything and everyone but cars are free to cruise the 4-mile road along the lake. Local access is still allowed: emergency and delivery vehicles can pass through the barriers. Even the parking lots and boat ramps are still accessible by cars. But the experience is still one that's worth enjoying. The road's dramatic curves are like the ones in car commercials—in fact, one filmed here last year. And people drive fast here! At least two vehicles have driven into the lake this year. No racetrack, this is a park-lined street with single-family homes that are breathtakingly expensive. In Seattle, we joke about how to calculate the price of houses: if you see water, add a zero to the end. On this stretch of the Mount Baker neighborhood, it's safe to double that number, too. I rode with about 200 people, including Mayor Katie Wilson, to the north end of the closed road. She rode an e-bike with her daughter on a little bicycle seat trailer hitched to the back. I started out with a crowd from my neighborhood and folks joined us at stops along the way. There were a few speeches and a ribbon cutting. About two dozen rude and rowdy protestors showed up to protest the event. But after all that, the crowd dispersed to bike the boulevard. Adults and children alike rode with little fear of our greatest predator (cars). From one end to the other, people on bikes, wheelchairs, strollers, rollerblades, and even on foot, enjoyed the open road. ## finally: a _good_ tradition This year, Bicycle Weekends covers 15 weekends in the summer, including holidays. The event began as Bicycle Sundays back in 1968. Greg Johnston at the Seattle P.I. interviewed Larry Sunblad from Seattle Parks and Recreation. "The bicyclists at that time came to us saying, 'Why can't there be a time for us to use this area. Look how scenic and flat it is.'" But the intentions for this road actually began around 1903. Then, Seattle City Engineer RH Thomson designed the road to be a cinder path for bicycles. One segment of this road was the first street the City ever paved. And soon enough, the boulevard's users expanded to include carriages and, yes, cars. In the first few months of Covid-19, the city closed the road for the entire summer. By fall, the city began to reopen the street full-time to cars. Bicycle Weekends returned to just a handful of them during the summer. The protestors held signs expressing their displeasure at losing this road. Some called it an equity issue. Some made sarcastic (I hope) signs that said we were "othering" cars. One asshole held a sign that said "bikes will not replace us," a slogan also seen at that hate rally in North Carolina. Mayor Wilson gave the last speech of the morning before we set off for the ride. She addressed the protestors who jeered us riders and all three speakers that day. > "I'm someone who has very often been on the protesting side of things, so I just want to say to you, your experiences matter, your voices matter. I will continue to hear from you. And I just want to acknowledge that when we make decisions like this, about how we're using our right of way and our public space, these are hard decisions, right, because we can't use our space for everything all the time, and so I just want to acknowledge that, and we're going to be monitoring how this works over the course of this year, and we will continue to talk to you, talk with you in the months ahead.” I'm so used to decisions that feel capricious. Out of my hands. I'm used to struggles where we speak up and protest and fight, only to lose behind closed doors. But here was a decision, made with public input for and against. Heard fairly. Not withdrawn at the slightest provocation. Not a decision made in advance of a process. ## designing participation around impact alone I'm still thinking this part through. I've written about the advice process with an abandon that I would describe as joyful. It's a decision-making process that's pretty simple. When we have to solve a problem, the most impacted (people closest to the problem) should get to decide how to solve it. They must first consult with anyone affected by the problem or those who have expertise to share. It's brilliant until you start to use it. The "most impacted" question has lingered on my mind for years. I've tried and failed to solve it in my implementations. The advice process fails again on Lake Washington Boulevard. One could argue that the people "closest to the problem" were the ones who lived on this street. In the decision-making workshop I'm attending, the instructors at AORTA addressed this head-on. In their mind, holding power also means holding risk and responsibility. They say, “designing participation around impact alone can produce decisions that feel 'legitimate' but aren't grounded and can actually disempower the people impacted.” I'm still working on an essay about how I'd restructure the advice process for group decisions. But for now, it is clear that impact alone can't be the only basis for deciding how we make decisions. A city is an ecosystem with long tendrils. The choices we make today will span decades or even centuries. ## this is my city too Seattle is changing as a city. It's growing in ways that so many other cities would welcome. But it doesn't always grow for the benefit of everyone who lives here. This is a problem we can solve as a collective. We can consider people's individual experiences and ground them in the contexts of the larger community. For too long it has felt like the city has given first preference to the wealthy homeowners in Seattle. The people who fight against new housing proclaim themselves multi-generational Seattleites. But those aren't the only residents in the area. People are going to move here no matter how many homes (or how few) we build. In fact, there are many more of us here than there have ever been. Power and responsibility belong to all of us. We solve the risks together. Last Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people rode our bikes on a beautiful road we all pay to maintain. I was on a bicycle I love that I've ridden for almost two decades. I cruised down a quiet street that was free of road noise and exhaust. I heard only the murmur of people around me, the laughter of children, and the swaying of trees. I felt the cool wind of the lake blowing against my face. In the city where I've lived for more than a decade, I have rarely felt so free. Why would I keep that feeling all to myself?

Going down a youtube rabbit hole one night, I found myself pricing solar panels. Not to buy, of course. I was only browsing. I didn't add anything to my cart. I don't even have a roof I can use! But without an inverter, I can buy an apartment-sized solar panel for a couple hundred bucks. I have a window that faces west, but I have no idea how much juice I could generate. A personal solar panel might not make a dent in our usage, but it would be something, right? Would that be worthwhile? There are so many ways we could be supporting each other, supporting our communities. But before I got in too deep, I felt like I was crossing a line. Governments have access to much more capital than I do. They own public lands, or at least one more roof, than I myself control. I began to wonder if "I'm doing my part" carried equal weight and meaning that "I'm going it on my own" does. I can't power a city on my own. Given my solar panel capacity, I can't even cover my own home's usage. Some houses can, and do, of course. Solar panels in Puerto Rico are a more reliable source of power than the corrupt power company that owns their grid. But for the most part, and for most people, we cannot go it alone. Some actions we can only take as a community or larger. I'm reminded of a speech Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City gave this week. He announced the site of the city's first municipal grocery store to open in 90 years. He pledges to open 5 municipal grocery stores in his first term in office. Mamdani's speech reminds us that a government can be more than a burden on our lives. It can be a force for good. "It's not just that government can help, it's that government must help, and our government will help." ## the homestead and the village As conservative values ascended, women influencers began promoting "simpler" ways of life. Sometimes known as "tradwives," these women lure people into a fantasy of olden times. They sell an image of women who stay home, run a farm, and raise a litter of children. The unseen wealth of their husbands fueled a lie that women can have it all if they do it all. But no one person can take care of the animals and harvest the fields and raise the family or whatever. It isn't realistic that a family, even a large one, can do it all alone forever. Even the origins of homesteading come from the prejudiced u.s. government. They enticed families to steal unceded Native land so long as the family "improved" it by settling on it. Ganga Devi Braun writes about this and the desire to live in spaces more rustic than modern society. But she rejects the struggle to live in self-sufficient nuclear family units. To her, the ideal unit isn't one family going it alone. Instead, it's a village of people surviving and supporting each other. She writes, > “Unlike homesteading, villaging is not about independence—it’s about interdependence. It’s about weaving networks of care, regenerating the commons, and recognizing that resilience doesn’t come from doing everything alone but from being in deep relationship with land and people.” These relationships, she argues, are what people are longing for. Sahaj Kaur Kohli builds on these ideas in an essay of her own. "We keep saying we’re lonely," she writes, "but what many of us are really grieving is the absence of a village. Not just people around us, but people who know us, hold us, remember us, and show up when we don’t know how to ask." The Mayor of New York is reviving an old idea of the role a government can play in people's lives. The concept of villaging, too, revives the idea of what community once meant to people. The root of these practices are closer to Native ways of life than colonial ones. One of my favorite video games is Stardew Valley, where the player moves to a seaside hamlet to start a new life. The quintessential cozy game set in the pacific northwest is a video game example of a true village. But we can have that same feeling in communities where we live now. Kohli argues that we don't need acres of land to build the relationships at the heart of villaging. The practices of reciprocity and shared responsibility can take place anywhere. Any group that sees one person's success as bound with the success of others is creating a commons. ## links between We'll never be self-sufficient, not completely, no matter how much food we grow or cows we milk. Struggling to live in our modern society isn't an individual failure. It's a collective one. Any of us with a wad of cash could buy a solar panel and try to exit the grid. But it takes a village, or more, to invest in a solar power plant. We build communities. We exist in them. We don't need to fight them. We need to deepen our investment. There's no value in being self-sufficient beyond stubborn pride. We need each other. There's no escaping that.

Perhaps you've heard of the american workplace? Success in that world is all about fitting in. Some of the ways I've fit in include dressing the part by matching the clothing standards of my peers. I've also practiced code switching, or altering my speech to sound more like my coworkers. Most of us are familiar with the ways that our jobs encourages conforming to the norms around us. The same is true to a huge extent in the society around us. Even being a noncomformist is conforming, as my dad liked to tell me in my rebellious teenage years. But I think that the value of code switching is also a symptom of a larger problem. Professionalism, and fitting in, puts many of us in a box that doesn't fit. I started my own company in part because it gave me the freedom to choose the peers and clients I worked with. I find myself code switching less often. When I do code switch, it's by choice. It can make my work easier at times without feeling like it's necessary to succeed. I've written about professionalism on here before. Using "y'all" in client emails and writing my name in lowercase aren't affects I do for my job. Instead, they're things I do all the time that I also have the freedom to do at work. I have a septum piercing and still manage to get all my work done. If you didn't know I had a septum piercing, that's my sign to update my headshots (and we should work together again soon!). But at many workplaces, visible piercings don't fit their standards of professionalism. Even if it doesn't have an impact on the work I can do, it does impact how people perceive my adherence to company norms. ## what professionalism serves Professionalism is how an organization communicates the norms that exist within a group. It's how they express in-group culture, whether it's suits and ties or industry jargon. What many organizations define as professional is often rooted in white dominant culture. American workplaces often put strict emphasis on these and other norms: * Dress codes that enforce gender roles * Dress codes that communicate wealth or status * Grooming standards that exclude natural hairstyles like dreadlocks, twists, and braids * Punctuality and timeliness * English dominance and speaking without an accent or noticeable dialect * Conflict avoidance * Indirect or passive communication styles * Deference to people in positions of authority * Adherence to Christian holidays and principles of faith People who understand these unspoken norms or rules use this knowledge as a way "in" to the group. Unspoken norms put people who don't know these norms into an out-group, making them an "other" in the org. People in the out-group will face rejection for poor "culture fit." They often feel pressure to conform or lose out on advancement opportunities. Professionalism standards don't typically apply to people in power in the same ways. There are often no consequences for violating company norms. Imagine a manager who abuses or harasses their employees. Or a boss who is free to come in late but penalizes staff when they do. Violating norms as a person in hierarchy doesn't even guarantee that they will change. Instead, it maintains a system of selective standards, an in-group within an in-group. Conforming to these norms, as an other, is its own catch-22. When we conform to these harmful norms, practices, and policies, we makes them harder to change. In this way, marginalized people help uphold the status quo. Through our actions we show these standards can and should be upheld even when they harm us. We imply that there's nothing wrong with these norms and that there's no need to question them. But many times in my career someone has changed a preexisting process or norm just by asking, "why?" Steven Thrasher is the author of The Overseer Class, my next beach read. He writes that people from marginalized groups often enforce norms against others in their own group. He asks us to think of Black cops and Latine ICE agents as examples of this. People who uphold the oppression of people who look like them. People who may feel like they have something to prove. In his words, this juxtaposition is intentional. It helps us rein in "our imagination about the scope of what's possible." The same is true when we code switch or take similar actions that seem harmless or unavoidable. When we accept the norms of what is professional, we justify excluding people who can't or don't go along with them. ## what could professionalism mean without white dominant culture? Professionalism itself doesn't have to be a bad thing. We don't need a homogenous culture to do great work together. Here are a few ideas: * Showing respect to peers who deserve it, in ways they recognize as respect * Being kind to people who deserve it * Being transparent about motives or desired outcomes * Doing what we say we’ll do * Leaving space for other people to fill * Sharing the values that motivate us as individuals, not the values an in-group says we should have The norms of modern professionalism don't serve us. They deserve our reevaluation and replacement. Let's focus on creating norms that actually matter to how we live and work and relate to each other.

Every day, the actions we take begin as decisions. Before we can do something, we have to decide to do it. These days it feels like someone else makes the decision for us. Actions are the result of the choices people in power make. Organizations and coalitions are full of people with their own ideas and perspectives. Actions happen because of the decisions they make—but those don't always come easy. In most places, there's an instinct to grab for the low-hanging fruit. People also call this choice "moving the needle" or "getting a quick win." But often these are actions that someone thinks is doable in the current conditions. They're ideas that are popular (if absent details) or will meet little resistance. Or these actions may be nothing more than what people in power want to do (or feel they should do). Action is often the reason that people join coalitions in the first place. We can pool our resources and connections when we work together. We can elect new decision-makers into office. We can make real change—the kind of change we want to happen. But we all know of an elected official who promises something they can't or won't deliver on. I keep hearing about Trump voters who thought, as President, he'd bring down the price of gas. They seem to be coming around to the idea that he's not going to deliver that to them. The ones who wanted more racism and oligarchy, on the other hand... ## coalitions and power I see groups go for the lowest-hanging fruit all the time. It's better than nothing, right? We could still have nothing. But I doubt that these groups don't know where the fruit is on the tree. Instead, a nonprofit's funding comes with the expectation to do the most with what little they get. Funders are driving this pressure to get the biggest bang for an ever-shrinking buck. They're part of a system that incentivizes helping people who need the least help. Coalitions often form from smaller groups that come in with their own priorities. Sometimes these movements are unlikely coalitions of people who want similar goals. It's tempting to go for a quick win that solidifies the movement and galvanizes the public. But those quick wins can take the same amount of time to achieve. Compromises can meet as much resistance as the bigger gambles would have. And within those coalitions, decision-makers won't make equal progress on everyone's goals. Instead, decision-makers often choose options that are: * aligned with their own goals * are politically safe * are easy to achieve Still, some people will support the work of a coalition even if their own goals aren't met. Who loses out when the coalition chooses the popular path over the righteous ones? **People who are more "extreme" in the mind of leadership.** LGBTQ+ groups like the (new) Mattachine Society chose to gain support by appearing respectable. Leaders there ousted its communist founders to escape FBI scrutiny. It didn't work, and queer folks who did not conform to those standards were cast out anyway. LGB groups are still trying to win acceptance by excluding trans and gender non-conforming folks. **People without decision-making power (direct or influential).** The power of a coalition is that even small groups of people grow their power when they come together. But the smallest voices in that group can still face exclusion when getting their needs met. I've seen this to be true for leftists who support Democrats in elections. Those officials demand our votes while still trying to win points by rejecting us. Barney Frank is on his deathbed telling Democrats that "the left" is ruining the party! **People who have their rights taken from them.** Politicians are diluting our voices in their race to extreme-gerrymander the country. Gerrymandering splits communities to dilute their power for the benefit of others. People incarcerated in prisons aren't allowed to vote at all. Imagine if the people in detention could still cast a ballot. Do you think conditions in these concentration camps would be this bad? Officials are free to make whatever decision they want when we lose the power to challenge them. I try to keep in mind that people are not powerless for no reason. In american society, white supremacists work to strip non-white people of their power. Segregation, curfews, poll taxes, ID requirements, harassment, and intimidation all play a part. This has been true throughout our history and continues today. The electoral college and even the Senate is another example. Congress rushed to add western states to create more Republican senators. It's wild to think we could have had only one Dakota. ## harvesting new fruit I'm not opposed to easy wins. But I think we could choose more thoughtful wins. What are we missing because of our own biases and preferences? Could we play the long game if it meant more satisfying victories? I am attending AORTA's Decision Making Intensive workshop series. I'm learning a lot even in the first week. They teach that decisions that move too fast or with too little planning often lead to bad outcomes. People consolidate power to tip the scales, breezing past disagreement. When we're all bringing priorities to the table, how can we make sure each gets a fair hearing? **Treat every priority seriously.** That doesn't mean giving lip service to ideas that are offensive or even unrealistic. Instead: be honest about what you think is possible, but also accept that you could be wrong. Public sentiment can change at a surprising pace. Instead of saying no first, take the time to discuss all issues. **Scope out a rough process to achieve what each constituent group wants to achieve.** What steps would we need to take to make each policy goal a reality? Imagine a stepwise approach to achieve each goal. I once had a fantastic idea for how we could make food free for everyone in america. Unfortunately, one of the steps was to nationalize all the food pantries in the country. Sad to say, that wasn't even the wildest step. **Focus on the next realistic step.** If we moved forward on this agenda, what would we need to do next? A childcare-for-all campaign might need a budget analyst to figure out how to find it. We may need to increase public support through a broad campaign. We could host community conversations to build support for the idea. Whatever it is, everyone should know what the next step would be. We should be able to weigh in on its likelihood to reach the outcome we want. **No closed doors.** Advocates should be part of the decision-making process. No one leader or subgroup should make priorities on behalf of the entire coalition. Instead, the coalition itself should review the steps for each goal. Confirm they're realistic. This is a good time to say I also needed help from the supreme court :( to make my free-food-for-all plan work. Even if the plan seems unrealistic, smaller incremental steps could be easier lifts. ## seeing the forest Who do we mean when we describe "low-hanging fruit?" These are people who are closest to getting what they need. I'm thinking of people near the border of a catchment area. Or people with a chronic illness with few complications. Of course these people deserve care. But those who are higher up on that tree could use help, too. They're also a part of our society. Rarely do we ever scope and fund programs so that these folks can reap the benefits we give everyone else. The folks at the top of tree stay disenfranchised. Decision-makers have already made the choice that they're unreachable. We don't have to make the same choice. We can't avoid the hard wins forever.

This year has been busy. How busy? I was introducing myself on a call last week and realized I missed my own business anniversary by a few weeks. Future Emergent is now 4 years (and 1 month) old today! It feels wild. It feels right. In the past year I... **Wrote a book.** Itai and I wrote exactly the book we both wish we had read earlier in our careers. Years ago, my friend Christina told me to start working on passive income streams. I may not have gotten the "income" part down yet for _this_ particular project, but I've got the spirit! I know it'll continue to open doors I'm not yet aware of. I'm so proud of how it turned out. **Collaborated a _lot_. **All my projects in the past year were in partnership with at least one other person. Most of the contacts I made in year 4 began with a friend saying, "you know who you should meet..." I love working with other people. This year showed me in many ways that it's possible to work with friends and be friends with colleagues. In year 5, I'm looking forward to at least doubling the number of karaoke circles I'm in! **Partnered with community.** I've called Seattle my home for more than a decade now. It's thrilling to have worked with so many folks in the area who are making positive change. I did a lot of engagement and facilitation projects in the past year. I also helped launch strategic plans for two local community-based organizations. ## reviewing my goals from year 3 These are the goals I set for myself around this time last year. How'd I do? Pretty good! **Job stability.** This was a great year for Future Emergent. I wanted to take on longer-term projects to help balance out the ones I was doing in under a year. I started and completed a healthy number of 8-12 month projects. I also signed on to two multi-year projects that I'll be working in some capacity through 2028. I still need to hustle to keep my short-project stream going, but it's fun to see work take place on a longer time scale. Updating my logo wall recently was another confidence booster. **Learn and grow into project administration.** I'm still working on this one. I wanted to take the lead on more projects as a Prime this year. None of these projects ended up panning out, though there's a chance they might come back in late 2026. That said, I took on more responsibilities I could call prime-_lite_. Room to grow here, but progress for sure. **Offer strategic planning again.** Done! I wanted to come back to strategic planning because of how much I love doing it. I signed on to two successful projects and learned a lot in the process. They didn't always go according to plan, but what does? I'll be on the lookout for more strategic plan work in year 5. Know anyone who's been thinking about strategic planning for their organization? This is a great time to reach out. ## goals for year 5 Honestly, that sentence is still wild to me. Half a decade! This is going to be a big year, I can feel it. **Launch a cooperative.** This is the year I said I'd do it. Of course, back then it was a pipe dream inside a larger pipe dream. Last week I gathered folks to talk more about what a cooperative consulting firm could do. We're meeting again later this month. It feels realistic, finally, to think about launching this year. If I'm off by a few months, so what? I have the luxury of enough time to do it well. **Get better at proposal writing.** I love to write, but proposals are a different beast. I'm good but not great at it. I've been getting more experience lately, but I want more opportunities to apply to. I want to get better at this particular skill. That also means finding advantages and linking up with the experts I need to be successful. **Network, network, and network some more.** Pretty much every industry is in some kind of turmoil right now. Funds are drying up in some areas but everyone in every field has problems they need to solve. A major advantage in winning projects is having someone who knows you and will vouch for your work. In the past few years I've connected with some cool, interesting, and passionate people. I want to keep expanding that circle. ## glancing at the mirror This annual post has become so important to me. There's a lot on the horizon that I'm looking forward to. I appreciate taking the time to observe how far I've come on the goals I set for myself. I've checked off a lot of what I set out to do each year. It's also funny, in the way that the past burns a little less over time, to reflect on the things that used to worry me. I still have plenty to occupy my mind, but at least the anxieties are new! I'm so grateful to everyone I'm in community with. Thank you for sticking around. So You Might Join a Board..., written by Itai Jeffries and me, is out now. This book is for BIPOC, POGM, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-/no-income folks who are thinking about joining a board of directors. Itai and I are promoting this book entirely through word of mouth. We could really use your help getting the word out. If you have clients, friends, colleagues, family members who would be interested in this book, please send them the link. You can even buy it for them and send it as a gift! If you find the resource useful and have a newsletter or similar outlet, I'd really appreciate a shout-out with a link to our store page. ****People in one or more of these groups can use the discount code POWER at checkout to buy this book for $1. People at an organization with an annual budget of less than $500,000 can now use code BOARD to buy this book for just $40.****

The conference session started like so many before them. A panel at the front of the room, four chairs that faced dozens of them. And in each of those seats sat a white guy. The picture is becoming familiar, I think. During the introductions, one of the speakers acknowledged as much. "We're a panel of white guys," he said. "We need to recognize that we still have work to do. We shouldn't be the only ones in these seats." I'm grateful that the entire day of speakers didn't all look like that panel. At least since 2020, more speakers are aware that it's a privilege to have your field recognize you as an expert. They also seem to be aware that no industry is a true meritocracy. But action remains the hardest nut to crack. Announcing inequality, calling it wrong, while you carry on as normal, is not the end goal of equality. What is he going to do about it? More to the point, what are _we_ going to do about it? Before people announced their privilege in public, we knew it was there. Hosting an all-white, all-men panel of speakers is more than bad optics. Attendees miss out on the worldviews and perspectives that we have to share. Solutions that should get purchase in these spaces spread more through word of mouth. We should have the power and influence to bring needed change to our own communities. We can do something about this. We can do something else. ## stop investing in old structures It was my choice to go to the conference. But I didn’t have to. I value the connections I made that day. But they’re not the only connections I could have found. Conversing and commiserating with other BIPOC folks is normal for me. But those of us who are there may be fitting ourselves to the space, not the other way around. These spaces could be transforming to accommodate us. How will we in the global majority recognize our own tokenism even in spaces we want to be in? What about in spaces that might enrich us in some way? Or enrich our social or professional networks? The real question here begins with this: many of us have spent years vying for a seat at the table. What if the table sucks? People are starting to notice the conditions of the world around us are not right. Meaningful change means leaving these conditions. I grow more convinced, year after year, that we cannot repair or reform systems designed to cause us harm. We have to stop powering the old ways of being. We have to be willing to step away from what's not working. Both of these things may feel like a sacrifice at first. I hope the mindful pruning of our garden will give more light to the plants that will fill the empty space. Develop and expand on the standards you hold for the spaces you're in. For me, I want to take a step back from building professional circles within whiteness. I don't want to be the only person in any room who looks or thinks like me. I've spent a lot of time being "the only." I have had successes transforming that into "one of a handful." But those efforts were hard-won. My struggles didn't do enough to change the systems and structures around me. With more effort made outside of those systems of oppression, what else could I have achieved? ## create something new What would it look like to collaborate on something else? Years later, I am still charmed by concepts like generative refusal. This is a concept I learned from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and reference all the time. She writes that large mobilizations, like the one at Standing Rock, "create zones – albeit often temporary, that perform decolonial life based on deep, shared, reciprocal relationality. Collective spaces where Indigenous peoples live their own visions of self determination and freedom, perhaps imperfectly and briefly, are tremendous manifestations of Indigenous alternatives to the colonial state and everything it employs." We don't have to play rigged games. We can choose to invest our time and energy in fairer ones. Many people outside of white dominant culture treat relationships in a different way. These relationships emphasize reciprocity over transactions. We can also make meaning outside of spaces that say we don't matter. In my example above, it might mean creating a conference that centers what we find important. Mutual aid in a broad sense means we help each other achieve our goals and meet our respective needs. The Tapestry Institute describes knowledge as, "something that emerges from reciprocal relationships." They contrast that with the Western view that knowledge is the product of one person's mind. Knowledge at a conference flows in one direction, from the speaker to the listener. Reciprocity might look like a sharing circle where knowledge flows in all directions. A space for practitioners to share what they know doesn't have to mean a panel of "experts." What if we didn't prioritize people's experience in that way? What if we could show people we value them without asking them to lecture us? ## create something we don't have the words for yet I've spent weeks thinking about this section. Some people think that progress means putting more diverse faces in the same old machine. I don't want people of color to drive the systems that oppress us. I want to liberate all people from those systems. Thinking about my first example, is it enough simply to recreate the conference structure? The insider connections, the same people speaking every year. Is that the best we can do? One reason I'm pursuing a cooperative is because I don't want to continue the same practices that once held me down. I'm sure there's a comparative example in your own professional lives. I'm convinced that we have to take approaches far outside of the norms of dominant culture. How do we create new ways of being that we can’t yet comprehend? I used to think this was impossibly daunting, like the inverse of "don't think of an elephant." More like, "imagine an animal that doesn't exist and that you can't define by comparing it to any other animal." Don't worry: we don't have to—we can't—do that alone. Plenty of people have been drawing on their own history and imagining the future. Mariame Kaba writes about this in Abolition is About Making Things, an essay of hers I keep coming back to: "[I]magining is not a solitary project or an individual action; it’s a collective practice. We have to struggle for different visions of society together. We need different words, alternate ways of thinking and of being." Within the struggle we can begin with what we value. I'm reminded of how Priya Parker recommends we plans events: focus on how we want people to _feel_. Start with those feelings and what you all hold close to your hearts. Build something new from there. I'm grateful to the people who are already thinking about frameworks like these. Scott Nakagawa has a new essay titled, "What Happens If We Win?" He writes that we can't wait for the dominant society to fall before we figure out what to do next. "The resistance must begin reconstruction planning now, not after victory, not during transition, but now, while there’s time to think, negotiate, and prepare." ## taking a different path Many of us have spent our careers trying to bend white dominant culture in a different direction. What I know is that dominant culture is resistant to and even aggressive towards change. This makes any change, no matter how necessary or overdue, hard to achieve. I fear the changes we make will be far too meager and take far too long for the time we spent trying to balance the scales. I don't plan to attend that conference again next year. I won't know if that same panel, or another panel, of white guys will get up to preach to the rest of the room. I won't know if they make a perfunctory acknowledgement, gesturing at their own whiteness. When we create a new world beyond them, they'll understand who inhabits the relics. Why are we still fighting for a seat at the table? Let's join the people dancing outside.

Assuming our various wars haven't escalated, I will be on vacation when this post comes out. Here are a few things I've read recently. ## Catching Feelings, by Amanda Manitach Cool article about the Georgetown Steam Plant and Marcellus Bonow-Manier, its artist in residence. I have fond memories from college wandering the ancient science building on campus. Each floor had a distinct smell, one from all the fruit flies we raised, and the labs had mercury traps in the sinks. I'm excited to see what the steam plant has in store for us. > As he makes his way through the plant, he clutches a compact Ricoh GR digital camera. Its screen is fully busted, he explains, so he can't see the picture in frame before shooting it, nor review the images until he uploads them. That's why it's his favorite. When something catches his attention-the traces of a note scribbled on the wall, a patch of paint peeling off steel, a bird's bones crumpled on a window sill-he shoots. Sometimes it's just a frisson in the air that coaxes him to take a picture, like a divining rod for 21st-century spirit photography. The results are, in his words, "some really weird, bizarre, crazy photos." ## Sam Altman and Aaron Swartz Saw the Future, by David Moore I've been long-reading this (different) article about Sam Altman in the New Yorker. I learned that Altman and civil rights activist / tech genius Aaron Swartz were in the same cohort. Swartz downloaded millions of files from JSTOR, facing 35 years in prison for doing so. Altman became a billionaire running a business that harvests orders of magnitude more copyrighted material. Seeing them together feels like one of those moments where two futures diverged. Doesn't feel like we got the good path, does it? > In November Sam Altman was briefly fired from OpenAI, in part for lying to the company’s board, before quickly returning in response to pressure from employees and investors. As the tech industry watched, agog, Altman completed his jettisoning of OpenAI’s much-touted commitment to safety in A.I. in favor of billions in investment. > > Aaron Swartz was threatened with decades in jail for accessing (not disseminating) information; Sam Altman, whose company has accessed—and openly monetized—orders of magnitude more information than Swartz, has polluted and then regurgitated that information to the public, and gathered endless cash reserves from investors with which to fend off lawsuits challenging its commercial ambitions. > > Swartz, the tenacious open-source programmer and champion of open access to publicly-funded research; Altman, who has increasingly closed off access to information about his A.I. model. > > Swartz, who helped defeat the SOPA/PIPA internet censorship bills; Altman, whose company is bankrolled by Microsoft, which in 2011-2012 supported the restrictive “internet blacklist” bill, PIPA. Swartz, who drew attention to institutional corruption, who co-founded progressive advocacy groups that are still active on behalf of the open web; Altman, who has taken on the role of A.I. evangelist and counts the right-wing libertarian megadonor Peter Thiel among his mentors. ## Mexistentialism, by Carlos Alberto Sánchez Mexistentialism was a new concept to me before I read this essay. Sánchez distills the philosophy into three words: _Nada es seguro_. Nothing is certain. Objectivity is imperialism because it's impossible. Nobody has remove from the world around them. > Thinking of my father is one reason why I think it’s important to read Mexistentialism _now_ , or to read it _in times of crisis_. When we do, not only are we gifted with vocabulary that can help us articulate our current crisis – words like accidentality, _zozobra_ , _nepantla_ and _relajo_ – but it helps us understand how our crises and our philosophies are intimately tied to one another, how historical trauma shapes or informs our perspectives, and why our perspectives matter in the first place. After all, there is a reason why my father thinks that ‘nothing is certain’, and it has nothing to do with something he’s read or something someone’s told him. It has everything to do with the life he’s lived. ## NASA’s Artemis II Crew Beams Official Moon Flyby Photos to Earth, by Jessica Taveau I didn't think a moon flyby, not even a visit, would capture so many imaginations. It's been surreal to see the images coming back from the Artemis II crew this week. We're contemplating nuclear annihilation while witnessing how very small we all are. It feels like we're at another path diverging. I hope we choose the right one. > Our four Artemis II astronauts — Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy — took humanity on an incredible journey around the Moon and brought back images so exquisite and brimming with science, they will inspire generations to come,” said Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. See you next week! So You Might Join a Board..., written by Itai Jeffries and me, is out now. This book is for BIPOC, POGM, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-/no-income folks who are thinking about joining a board of directors. ****Please tell your friends and colleagues to pick up a copy!**** People in one or more of these groups can use the discount code ****POWER**** at checkout to buy this book for $1. People who want to change their board at an organization with an annual budget of less than $500,000 can now use code ****BOARD**** to buy this book for just $40.

We're a little over 6 years(!) since the first documented american case of covid. There is no way to convey how many changes to our world trickled out of that one event. A significant one, for many of us, is the way covid changed how we work. The nonprofit where I worked had a single zoom license only a few months before the pandemic hit. Soon, all our meetings were taking place online. I stopped going into the office altogether. It began to feel needless, the hours people spent commuting, when we could do great work at our own kitchen tables. This was work that at one time could only take place in an office. Now it’s possible to do it from anywhere with an internet connection. But it didn't take long before businesses began their return to office policies. After months of doing it all in a nice shirt and sweatpants, the orders came to drive or transit back in. Not everyone could return to work, though. Some people bought or rented homes far outside cities they didn't imagine ever commuting to. The working world has long excluded people with disabilities or mobility issues. Some people weren't lucky enough to live near transit good enough to get them to their office jobs. If we all started meeting in person again, we'd be leaving some of our new colleagues behind. I work from home because I want to. In fact, I left a job in part because they insisted I return to the office. At the same time, I _like_ working in an office. I like the energy of people working in space together. We each build personal connections, even capital, when we meet with our coworkers in person. But there are reasons why people don’t go to the office. Knowing all this, I can hold two truths. 1. There is something valuable about in-person work that makes it worth doing. 2. Not everyone can work in person, and we shouldn't punish them for that fact. I'll assume the push to return workers to offices is more than bailing out people who over-invested in real estate. Here are my ideas to make remote meetings as fulfilling as working in person. ## create a level working field In meetings, it's often one poor sap who has to keep an eye on the online folks. This means that everyone who connects to the video chat has to look at Phil's nostrils while he makes a point. Instead... * Ask everyone who attends in person to log in to the meeting with their own computers. In-person attendees should join with video on but audio muted. Leave a computer unmuted in the center of the room or place microphones at both ends. This will limit audio feedback and ensure everyone is well-heard. * Monitoring the chat is everyone's responsibility. If someone online raises their hand, anyone in the room should feel responsible to call attention to it. * When collecting input from the room, leave space for people online. Ask folks for their thoughts at the beginning and ending of every feedback period. * Assign 1-2 people per meeting to be the avatar for the person/people online. These folks will pair up with one online user or have them join a small-group meeting. Rotate this role every 20-30 minutes like you would a language interpreter. This ensures nobody feels like we're keeping them from fully participating all day. ## unstructured time I argue that the time spent between meetings is at least as valuable as the time spent in meetings. This is how we build connections with each other that don't revolve around business. * Open the virtual room 5-10 minutes before the start of the meeting. Leave recording or transcript features off until the meeting officially starts. * Getting right to business at the start of a meeting rarely happens in person. Build time for friendly interactions into your online meetings, too. ## encourage online/offline participation People online often feel neglected or even ignored during hybrid meetings. This can cause online participants to disengage or contribute less than people in the room. * Invest in a video/projection system so that everyone in the room can see the people online. * Reimagine your in-person movement activities. One example: instead of easel paper, project an empty presentation slide onto a wall. In-person participants can add sticky notes to the wall. Online folks can add colored rectangles to the same wall. ## acknowledge lag Limitations of technology can also create a divide between in-person and online folks. We need to acknowledge and account for it. * Give everyone time to compose their thoughts before speaking. Schedule a moment of silent reflection or journaling after you ask each question. Paste your questions into the chat while you ask them. * If we use a slide deck, share that with online participants. This allows them to see people in the room without having the whole screen taken up by what we share. I facilitated a retreat several months ago that we designed to be only in-person. We had one person dialing in from out of town. A heavy rainstorm hit the morning of our session. The one virtual attendee we had planned turned into two, then four, then eight. We soon had as many people online as we did in person. We missed out on the contributions that our online folks could have shared. They felt cut out from the interactive pieces of our agenda. There was little I could do that day that I hadn't already tried. But I left the retreat confident that it could have gone better. Virtual meetings are no longer optional. They're not a nice-to-have for people who can't meet in person. We have to accept that we may never meet some of our coworkers without a screen between us. They are just as vital to our future success; we exclude them at our own risk. So You Might Join a Board..., written by Itai Jeffries and me, is out now. This book is for BIPOC, POGM, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-/no-income folks who are thinking about joining a board of directors. This book is now on sale! People in one or more of these groups can use the discount code ****POWER**** at checkout to buy this book for ****$1****. People who want to change their board at an organization with an annual budget of less than $500,000 can use code ****BOARD**** to buy this book for ****$40****.

At the beginning of the year I got an email asking me to "join" an exciting new political action committee. They meant "donate to" but I knew that request would come later in the email. This bold (and unsolicited) endeavor invited me to rise up! For moderation! For too long, the message claimed, Seattle's politics have rocked between two extremes. But now we finally have a chance to stand up for what's right: the middle. “We believe collaboration and dialogue beat purity tests and echo chambers every time,” the email said. In a followup email, the PAC's founder wrote: > "In simple terms, moderate is rational. It means starting with evidence, tradeoffs, and limits, not ideology. Moderates believe progress comes from testing ideas, fixing what doesn’t work and scaling up what does, rather than jumping to moral certainty or sweeping solutions. We believe in working within constitutional boundaries toward incremental reform. We favor pluralism, rather than purity and wisdom over outrage." Right off the bat: moderates can't claim the concept of scientific inquiry solely for themselves. Who doesn't take in the evidence around them to make the decisions they think are right? There are also plenty of qualifiers in the sentences above. Staying within _constitutional boundaries_. Choosing only _incremental reforms_. They will fix what "doesn't work" without explaining how or why they should be the ones to do so. They don't ask who has tried to fix things in the past and what (or whom) kept them from succeeding. They don't consider why we should be forever duty-bound to a centuries-old document written by slaveholders. This PAC isn't the only entity that claims a centrist righteousness. Third-party presidential candidates often put themselves between the parties' two extremes. Bill Clinton may have risen to the white house with his centrist Third Way-inspired campaign. Democrats in red states often push a moderate approach to governance. When two people argue about something, someone will stand between them and claim to be right. ## who's in the middle? Moderates pride themselves on having a flexible ideology. But it can be hard to know what about their views will flex and what won't. They express being open to idea and dialogue, but that can come with unspoken constraints. What is and isn't off the table? The decisions they make are rational in their minds. But even people we disagree with consider themselves to be rational. Each of us, not just moderates, filter what we perceive through the values we hold. Moderates claim that neither side of an issue is "right"—the truth must lie somewhere between. It's convenient to believe that the best course of action is one that neither extreme wants. They push compromises where neither side gets what they want. Only the moderate does. By staking themselves somewhere along a spectrum, they get to decide what is the middle. But the middle ground isn't fixed. The Overton window is malleable to public pressure and shifts often. Sometimes that's for no reason, other times it's because of heavy lobbying and ad buys. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. had this to say about moderates: > "First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." The appeal of moderation comes down to one thing: power. Moderates are rational. They with cooler heads get to decide what doesn't affect them. Moderates are neutral. They seek to "moderate" the gulf between the oppressor and the oppressed. But moderates aren't neutral. They have biases and privileges like we all do. They choose this power because they can dictate terms that benefit them the most and harm them the least. To paraphrase Dr. King, moderates can say they agree with you and still act against you. As I like to say, racist folks in the south will tell you if they're racist. Everywhere else, you have to figure it out on your own. What the moderate doesn't seem to want is a true discourse of ideas. Instead they crave the position of correctness. While those of us slug it out with our ideas and hopes and dreams and visions, the moderate rests. They "hear" ideas that align with their own sense of morality. Then they declare a winner. ## you're not a moderate I don’t believe people can "be" moderates. There is no clear middle between two extremes. The extremes aren't fixed. They're limited to our own worldviews and thoughts about an issue. No matter what position we hold, it isn't a moderate one any more than it's a natural one. We all have skin in the game. We all have a point of view. Moderates can't call themselves the only rational thinkers across the entire political spectrum. Moderates in the halls of congress face huge public opposition. We see what one party is trying to get away with. We can't meet with compromise the destination they want to take us to. If you consider yourself a person whose politics straddle two extremes, decide where you stand. Describe your values, what you believe in, what you want the world to be like. Be honest about your goals and the experiences that shape them. Claim your positions without claiming the higher ground by default. Most of us believe we’re being rational. Almost all of us consider evidence, tradeoffs, and limits. But we’re not politicians. We don’t need to take a middle road with our opinions. If you have something to say, say it. But don’t call it the moderate position. And don’t expect everyone else to agree that it’s moderate. “Moderate” is as vague a description as “liberal” or “right-wing” is. That’s because the values underneath each of those descriptions change. Humans are malleable, persuadable, even when we think we’re not. Garfield teaches us that no one is immune from propaganda! I too make decisions intending to be rational and thoughtful. I agree that collaboration and dialogue are essential to whatever we do together. But I'm not a moderate. Nobody is. So You Might Join a Board..., written by Itai Jeffries and me, is out now. This book is for BIPOC, POGM, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-/no-income folks who are thinking about joining a board of directors. ****People in one or more of these groups can use the discount code POWER at checkout to buy this book for $1. People who want to change their board at an organization with an annual budget of less than $500,000 can use code BOARD to buy this book for $50.****

Humans have told stories to each other for as long as there have been stories to tell. Stories predate language, even humans, appearing on caves, as shadows, or in gestures by a fire. The human mind is great at receiving stories, too. A handful of words in a brutal, inefficient language, can still conjure pictures in our minds. Stories have power even in the modern world. Beyond creative works like films, novels, or poetry, we use our stories to inspire and persuade. In the working world, we use stories to make data tangible and meaningful. We frame people's personal narratives through the hardships they've faced. Service providers tell people's stories in an arc familiar to epic poems. They faced hardship, they overcame, they succeeded, they thrived. Organizations often use these stories to describe a program and the impact it's had. Numbers are great when they're large. "Oh wow, we helped 1 million puppy children." or "These puppy children earned 300,000 bones for their families." But for most people the numbers are meaningless. What's the context? A former employer claimed to distribute millions of pounds of food each year. But what kind of food was it? Was some of it rotten? Were some of those pounds industrial-sized cans of baby corn? While numbers are great, they don't convey impact like a person's story does. Donors know this too. Storytelling activates a person's imagination in ways that dry reports can't do alone. A person in need makes a compelling recipient of a donor's so-called largesse. Donating to an organization, not a person, is a request to keep doing whatever work they were doing. Stories can also come at a cost. I've written before about how hard it is to unlace the trauma in some people's stories. Beyond that, a person's story as told by a nonprofit rarely brings them a direct benefit. It's sometimes twisted or repackaged into a different story altogether. That story's loyalty risks lying more with the donor class, less with the person who lived it. ## how do we know? We're now decades out from the era that coined the term "poverty porn." What has changed since then? I am in the business of telling other people's stories. I run focus groups and listening sessions to hear what real people have to say. Here are some of the things I try to watch out for. What's our editorial bias here? * What development process do stories go through? * Who is the primary audience for the story that we're telling? * If we use a storytelling template, how was it made? * What role does the original storyteller play in its retelling? What's the goal of this story? * Are we shaping it for donor impact or community benefit? * How did we choose this story to tell? * Are we describing a person's own agency in their story, or are we the heroes? Are we treating these stories with care? * Do we have metrics around story generation? * What does one individual story mean to us? * For how long will we use a person's story or likeness? ## making better stories How can we tell people's stories without bringing more harm to them? It comes down to agency. Who has it? Who gets the final word on how we portray the stories we tell? Is the storyteller better off having told us that story? What else can we do to limit the negative impacts we may have on a person? **Help people tell their stories in their own way.** People with limited power face exploitation when they have no other options available. Our noble intentions aren't enough to continue that exploitation for our own gain. **Include storytellers in the full development process.** Describe the goal of your stories to people you're soliciting stories from. Explain how you plan to use the stories. People's experiences are unique—we don't have the right to tell their story in perpetuity. Set a length of time that you want to share their story. **Include storytellers in your profit sharing.** Compensate them according to the amount of time you'll use their story and the income you will earn from it. **Challenge the systems that created the conditions your storytellers endure.** Instead of manipulating a person's story, add context to their experience. Explain to your audience the change we need to keep others from going through what they went through. I see storytelling as a collaborative process. The people who interact with us are more than outputs. Their lives extend well beyond that of a recipient of our services. In systems of justice, we see community action as peers supporting peers. A thin line often separates the person offering a service and the person receiving them. But everyone deserves respect. No story is worth more than the person who lives to tell it. __So You Might Join a Board...__, written by Itai Jeffries and me, is out now. This book is for BIPOC, POGM, LGBTQIA+, and/or low-/no-income folks who are thinking about joining a board of directors. People in one or more of these groups can use the discount code ****POWER**** at checkout to buy this book for $1. People who want to change their board at an organization with an annual budget of less than $500,000 can use code ****BOARD**** to buy this book for $50.

I went to portland (the oregon one) by train a couple weekends ago. I had a fantastic time exploring the city and spending time with friends. I ate some pretty great food and spent too much money on obscure magazines! Some time in the days after we returned I came down with a cold. In 2026 I'm grateful that it was just a cold. The recovery is typical but I forget every time how to treat them. I only remember the adage that doesn't even seem to be true. Is it, "feed a fever and starve a cold?" Or, "starve a fever and feed a cold?" Either way, I opted for tea, soups, and a lot of rest. Every night I went to bed expecting to wake up feeling a little better. It's only a cold, right? People used to go back to work the day after their fever broke. But every morning I woke up feeling about the same or a little worse, even. I felt great enough Tuesday night (after my husband caught the cold from me) to make us a pot of ramen. But by Wednesday morning I had a splitting headache and a sore throat again. Last week I read about Kansas invalidating the IDs of 300 trans residents. Elected officials there passed a law invalidating the licenses of people who changed the gender marker on their ID. The governor vetoed the law. But the majority of their state house and senate overruled her. And last week the state sent 300 trans people a letter about the new law. It takes effect immediately. There was no grace period. Anyone affected would have to get to the DMV, sometimes hours away, some risking a drive on an invalid license. They'd have to pay for a new license even if their old one hadn't expired. One trans woman never changed the gender marker on her ID and it was still invalidated. This is horrifying. It's panicking. There are lawsuits of course. But until they resolve, trans Kansans must either break the law or detransition on government documents. Following the law means making oneself vulnerable to transphobia or facing people who don't believe the new ID is legitimate. This new law in Kansas merely continues a steady unwinding of rights that belong to trans people. Elected officials like Gavin Newsom want to convince us that we will win again. We only have to give up the people who matter to us. He wants his party to be "culturally normal." As if the people who hate us will stop when they get a win. As if we don't seek solidarity to stand unified against oppression. Many of us know, by instinct these days, that progress isn't linear. We can plug away at something for years before the dam breaks, metaphoric or otherwise. Fighting for human and civil rights doesn't work like a project plan. We may be able to check off accomplishments (right to vote). But it's harder to mark public sentiment (willingness to let people vote). I see the winds shifting in strange ways. People who oppose the war in Iran is leagues higher than people who opposed the war in Iraq when I was a kid. Or even the war in Iraq when I was an adult. Public sentiment against ICE has turned against it in part because of who's in charge of the agency (or _was_, ha ha). But we don't really know what will make a difference. Keeping score or marking tallies doesn't work. Widespread change can happen at any time. It may never happen. We don't know what will galvanize the people we need to join us in change. I hope I will be even closer to well when I publish this essay than I am while I'm writing it. Every day this week I woke up expecting to have arrived safely at my destination. But I _was_ healing. It's hard to notice progress when we're busy counting days. If there's anything I can hold onto as time marches on, it's that.

I have one goal when I write: I want people to understand me. Understanding each other is at the heart of communication. This is why I write in plain language. Plain language is not prose without flourish. It doesn't have to mean boring sentences. Writing in plain language is not for everyone. It doesn't work for every single form of writing. But when we use plain language, a much larger group of people will understand what we write. They won't have to go back and re-read sentences or even entire paragraphs to know what you were trying to say. Here's why I love plain language. Plain language is accessible and inclusive. It's true, plain language is a big help for people who have trouble reading long sentences. But plain language benefits everyone! In academic and business settings, there's pressure to write in sophisticated, detailed sentences. Even people in those fields appreciate a sentence that is easy to read. Plain language is also easier to translate or interpret. Each sentence contains a single concept or idea. Plain language is clear, concise, and direct. Meandering prose is hard for most people to read. I don't want anyone to get lost in my sentences (though they can get lost in my dazzling eyes). Plain language helps us break up a long sentence into two distinct thoughts. The reader can understand one sentence before moving on to the next. Plain language forces the writer to gather their thoughts first. Minds are streams of consciousness. We can start one thought and end up somewhere completely different. Instead, plain language asks us to review our words and strip out what doesn't matter. If I don't know what I'm going to say, I put the work of understanding on my reader. They might miss the point I'm trying to make. They might move on or even skim my message in search of something that makes sense. ## how to write in plain language Plain language grew in popularity after 2010. That's the year congress passed a law that requires it for all government documents. Digital.gov has a comprehensive plain language guide. They named these five principles for writing in plain language: * Have a topic sentence. Good opening sentences help organize the structure of writing. * Use the active voice. Active voice helps the message stay clear and easy-to-read. * Organize the information. Prepare readers for what to expect. Summarize lengthy documents up-front. * Use tables where appropriate. These can be effective for more than just showing numerical data. * Use lists. They can help you convey detailed information quickly without overloading your readers. I want to expand on their guidance with examples of my own. **Active voice goes beyond readability.** It can also add accountability and ownership to a message. I wrote about this in my essay _hide and seek_. When we use active voice, "we put ourselves, our perspective, our interpretation, out in the open." **Anyone can write shorter sentences.** It doesn't hurt to break up a long train of thought. Long sentences can make the reader tired. Try breaking a long sentence into two sentences. Only rarely do we lose the impact of a long sentence when we read it as two shorter ones. **Think through what you have to say.** What is valuable in your message? What feeling should the reader have? What information do you want them to leave with? **Try using a plain language editor.** I've been using the app Hemingway for almost 10 years. The web version has an AI feature now so I'm not linking to it anymore. My writing has changed a lot since I started using this app. The editor can be distracting for some folks but you can toggle it off if you like. There are so many plain language guides out there. I also found ones tailored specifically to academia and business. It's worth looking into guides specific to your industry. ## downsides Plain language isn't for everyone nor every situation. Here are a few drawbacks to plain language. **It's probably not for art.** Writing, especially poetry, can have a rhythm or structure to it. The pace, spacing, and word choice are usually part of an artist's intent. Plain language may not be for them. I have come to see plain language rules like the boundaries of a sandbox. It's its own style of writing, like a haiku or sonnet. **It takes some getting used to.** Sometimes I have to think hard about what I want to say and how I want to say it in plain language. It can take more time to write something, especially when it's new to us. **It can feel blunt or impersonal.** Some workplace cultures expect us to use the flowery language of business when we write. Others find it useful to dress up or hide the true meaning of their message. In a culture like that, plain language may read to some folks as brusque or even rude. I compensate for this by using exclamation points! **It can feel less smart.** Many of my colleagues as a consultant are new to working with me. Will people think less of me if I don't write like someone with a master's or doctoral degree? That's up to them. I may not write like a person expects me to, but they will understand what I'm writing. That's what matters most to me. ## set a goal For _be the future_ I strive to write at or below an 8th grade reading level. I also have a rule not to rewrite direct quotes even when they're wordy. Instead, I'll try to summarize the meaning of the quote into plain language. This way I honor the writer's words without leaving my readers behind. ## give it a try Take an email or essay that you’ve written recently. Drop it into a plain language editor. What grade level is it at? How many complex sentences did it find? Work through the editor to lower the reading level of the piece. Remove the complex sentences. Now, compare your writing, pre-plain language and after. Which one is easier to read? Were you still able to convey what you wanted to say? ## making it plain Plain language is my favorite style of writing. I can still be wordy sometimes. I can still be misunderstood. But by writing in plain language, I show my reader that I care about their experience. I'm writing for more than an audience of myself. 📖 My new book is the lengthiest experience I've had writing in plain language. We write about complex board of director topics like governance and fiduciary responsibility. Distilling those concepts into readable sentences was a fun and exciting challenge. It's full of information but still clocks in at a 7th grade reading level! __So you might join a board...__ is out now.

I've been thinking about them this year. I'm sure you know whom. Chances are, you've been thinking about them too. Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres died at a hospital in Conroe, Texas after living in a concentration camp for six weeks. Geraldo Lunas Campos died by homicide in another concentration camp in El Paso, Texas. ICE claimed he tried to die by suicide, but the autopsy and witnesses confirm that his captors killed him. Víctor Manuel Díaz died in that same camp less than two weeks later. His family disputes ICE's claims that he died by suicide, too. Parady La died at a hopital in Philadelphia still under custody. He suffered from drug withdrawal in Philadelphia's concentration camp while his organs failed. Renee Nicole Good was leaving the scene of an ICE abduction near her home when they murdered her. The day before, Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz died of heart failure in custody weeks after ICE kidnapped him. Heber Sánchez Domínguez died at a concentration camp in Georgia. It's possible he died by suicide but we don't know for sure. Alex Pretti was helping a fallen protestor when agents surrounded, beat, and shot him to death. I'm grateful to Melissa Hellmann at the Guardian for bearing witness to the people we've lost. She and many others have kept each of these names alive. Their lives held significance and value beyond their early deaths. Indeed, those 8 people could have been any of us. Our oppressors don't care who we are. They believe that people who aren't white don't belong here. They believe that anyone white who stands against them are traitors to their race. It's unfortunate but true that we probably know two of these names best. I wish our society treated every life as having equal worth and value. Of course there's a racial component to that. The u.s. media never gave the same fair coverage to the war in Palestine that they gave the war in Ukraine. But these people and many more, 32 last year alone, died unjustly. Each loss is senseless and unnecessary. This year, yes, but for every year since its founding, the united states has had a propensity for violence. With that, I realize, comes a numbness. A challenge for me is to keep from internalizing that numbness myself. I've been getting up early to read Ruth Wilson Gilmore's book Abolition Geography. Gilmore collected essays, speeches, and interviews over three decades of her work. If you're not familiar with the author, check out this interview with Sonali Kolhatkar. Or try the popular account Ruth Wilson Gilmore Girls (yep). Released in 2022, Gilmore's essays will feel relevant for as long as we throw people into cages. In one chapter, Gilmore writes, > “In my view, the founding moments of US nationalism, well-rehearsed in mainstream histories, are foundational to both state and culture. First, the United States was “conceived in slavery” and christened by genocide. These early practices established high expectations of state aggression against enemies of the national purpose—such as revolutionary slaves and indigenous peoples—and served as the crucible for development of a military culture that valorized armed men in uniform as the nation’s true sacrificial subjects.” Gilmore argues that before it was even born, the culture of the u.s. was state aggression. The police and the military operate within that culture. Most people don't even notice it. Unless (until) you're the target of that aggression it feels like the radio. It's on in the background while we go about our lives at home and work. Agencies like ICE further weaponize that culture. They do their horrible work in outfits that look like what the police and american military wear. The Minnesota National Guard now wear vests so they don't look as much like ICE agents. But the focus—the target—of that aggression isn't fixed. It can change at any time to suit any purpose. This force might feel restrained with another president in office. But that's only because someone else is now in the crosshairs. This is the landscape we live in. Change here is possible, even critical, but it won't be easy. Against the terror in our world, we can be steadfast and resolute, like a stone resists a river. Or we can be persistent and overwhelming, like the same river against the stone. I heard Ruth Wilson Gilmore speak at a conference a few years ago. She said, “There are more of us than there are of them. Our job is to find more us.” Whatever we resist, we must resist together. I hope I live a long life. But I also make that same wish for the people I defend. We all deserve a life of comfort, of safety, of belonging. Where I differ from my enemies is that they want that kind of life only for themselves. They will exploit, imprison, burn out, and even kill a person who they feel is a threat to their own comfort. There is no reform capable of controlling this violence. Training only produces more efficient killers. It only makes people's deaths more high-resolution. I'm still reading Abolition Geography so I'm sure I'll have more to say soon. People who are wiser and more experienced than me have put great thought into what might come next. They've been working on these issues for decades, even centuries. I see my role, in part, is to draw from their wisdom and incorporate it into my own. My role as a descendant is to bear witness and keep standing up. I hope we continue to stand together. I hope we can find more us. If you missed last week's post, my friend Itai and I wrote a book together, So You Might Join a Board. It's for anyone considering service on an organization's board of directors. We wrote it for our fellow BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, POGM, and/or poor folks. If you're in one or more of these categories, it's super cheap. Find it at our store.

<p>More than a year ago, I approached my friend <a href="https://emerging-equity.com/">Itai</a> with an idea. I had sought their advice a few months earlier about a board I was planning to join. Our initial conversation had gone so well that I asked them to write an essay with me. We decided to write a guide for folks like us who were considering board service but didn’t know who or what to ask. The more we talked, the more we realized we had so much information to share that it wouldn't fit in a single post. At our very first meeting we outlined who this book was for:</p><p>Folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Color, or People of the Global Majority</p><ul><li>LGBTQIA+ folks </li><li>Poor folks</li></ul><p>We gathered the sum of our experiences from serving on and working with boards of directors. We spent months in collaboration to write and revise our advice. We hired an incredible illustrator (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/trae.drew.that/">Trae Middlebrooks</a>) and asked colleagues with board experience to review our manuscript. </p><p><strong>And then we published our book!</strong> <a href="https://bethefuture.gumroad.com/l/board"><em>Buy </em>So you might join a board...<em> on gumroad</em></a><em>.</em></p><p>We want everyone, especially folks in our priority audience, to read this. We hope the book finds a second audience among board members who want to know how their boards can be more welcoming. It can help them think about the answers that any prospective board member might need to know.</p><p>We priced this book for large nonprofits and institutions who can afford our advice. But organizations with small budgets can use the discount code <strong>BOARD</strong> to buy the book for $50. Our primary audience, who we want more than anything to read this book, can use discount code <strong>POWER</strong> to buy it for $1. We offer these codes on the honor system for folks who can use them. And if our lowest price is a hardship for you (or you don’t have the means to buy online), please email <a href="mailto:store@bethefuture.space" rel="noreferrer">store@bethefuture.space</a> for a <strong>free copy</strong>, <u>no questions asked</u>.</p><p><a href="https://bethefuture.gumroad.com/l/board">Check the book out on gumroad</a>. If you'd like to read before you share, I've excerpted our introduction below:</p><h2 id="introduction-for-so-you-might-join-a-board">introduction for <a href="https://bethefuture.gumroad.com/l/board?ref=bethefuture.space"><em>So you might join a board...</em></a></h2><p>Organizations rely on their board of directors to provide governance and financial oversight. The law requires nonprofits to have a board of directors to ensure they act in the best interests of the community. When done well, a board of directors is a group of folks with a diverse set of skills, backgrounds, and experiences. But like many of society’s spaces, most boards are <a href="https://nonprofitquarterly.org/nonprofit-boards-remain-overwhelmingly-white-heres-how-to-change-that/">monocultural</a> by design, built to serve the needs of a fraction of the community. A board can include members who don’t know much about the communities their nonprofit serves. We're grateful to know that many organizations are working to change that. They know that a board of directors should be full of folks who reflect the nonprofit and its community. <strong>That might be where you come in…</strong></p><p>This guide is for people who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC). You may be thinking about joining a board or someone is recruiting you into one. This guide is also for folks who identify as LGBTQ+ or queer. It's for poor folks or people who don't have an absurd amount of wealth. It's definitely for people who are any combination of the above!</p><p>We have both joined and served on boards of directors. They have recruited us for our skills, for our identity, our background, and our values. We've accepted these invitations and we've declined them. We've served on boards and resigned from them. We've found deep joy in guiding the work of an organization that acts in the service of their values. We’ve gained valuable learning experiences and deeper insights into an organization, its industry, and the communities they support.</p><h3 id="why-we-need-allies">Why We Need Allies</h3><p>Today, we're living in an era of american technofascist rule. If we're very lucky, you could be reading this at a time when those threats are over. But for now, many of our community members face unwanted levels of hostile visibility. People who are Black, Latine, and/or trans are fighting for their causes in spite of this attention.</p><p>This is a great time for cis and white allies to join the boards of trans- and immigrant-supporting orgs. People with these identities risk arrest, kidnapping, or worse. If you're a trans person considering service on a trans-supporting nonprofit board, please do! They definitely need that. But we can't ignore the risks that trans people and immigrants face. We need people who will be safe stepping forward—taking the heat without taking the reins.</p><p>Joining a board of directors is a great way, but not the only way, to support an organization's work. It can be so exciting to give back to a nonprofit that's helped you, your family, friends, or community. The roles board members play will look different depending on the board and organization. Nonprofits are far from being the only form of activism and civic service. But they provide safety nets for communities, the arts,<br />and critically important causes. These organizations face intense challenges that this moment in our history requires. They need new perspectives and skillsets to help overcome them.</p><p>Contributing in a mission-driven way can be deeply rewarding. Folks we know who have served on a board of directors have developed friendships that extended past the conference table. They’ve steered a floundering organization in a new direction or towards greater sustainability. They’ve felt more connected to people in and outside their communities. We want everyone to seek these rewards. We also want people to have a holistic idea of the common requirements, challenges, and risks. Not everyone is aware of the liability that may come with service on a board. Once you're on the board, you're on the hook for the fiscal responsibility and oversight that comes from it. You may also face dynamics that can produce stress and are not a great fit for everyone. We offer this guide in the hopes that it will help you decide if joining a board is right for you.</p><p><a href="https://bethefuture.gumroad.com/l/board"><em>Buy </em>So you might join a board...<em> on gumroad</em></a><em>.</em></p><p>Do you know anyone who might benefit from reading? Please share with them this email/page or the link above! We need all the word of mouth advertising we can get.</p>

<p>I'm delaying this week's essay in solidarity with our neighbors in Minneapolis. Activists there called for a <a href="https://nationalshutdown.org/">nationwide strike</a> on January 30. <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ice-protests-nationwide-shutdown-january-30-11424186">They've asked folks</a> not to work, shop, or go to school today.</p><p>Much of what is happening at the national level is an escalation of the harms that leaders have brought to many u.s. residents. The widespread abuse is an escalation of <a href="https://truthout.org/articles/ice-and-the-israeli-military-are-2-sides-of-the-same-coin-we-must-resist-both/">tactics</a> that people in power tested in apartheid states worldwide. Mass protests are one of the ways that we can demand real change—not just a return to the status quo. To start, we need to defund and dismantle the entire Department of Homeland Security.</p><p>If you have the ability to join this shutdown today, please do so. Take care.</p>

the AI policy at Future Emergent

hey! can you believe this reality we're having?

taking the present for granted

we will always be here

understanding AI and what it can't do

thinking about cyclone ditmah and world AIDS day

why is trust so easy to lose? what can we do about that?

finding focus in a scattered world

making the connections we need

opening the door to a door factory

showing respect for the long struggle

they couldn't even save themselves

building a system where everyone is a pharaoh

get in, we're making sense of tax law

i'm really burning through my hyphen budget on this series

we'll all make out like bandits