That post about toxic activists and trainspotting

[sabotabby]

As promised/threatened, I want to start a discussion about dealing with people in activist organizations and communities that make life difficult for everyone. It's not, of course, just about activists. Toxic individuals surface in every community. In my second home, geekdom, there's just as much if not more problems in this regard. But activism is a space where your sole purpose in functioning as a community is about making the world a better place, and thus it's doubly frustrating when someone's behaviour or person interferes with that.

Our troubled hypothetical activist group is above ground and not engaged in any sort of illegal or clandestine activities, but is nevertheless monitored with intermittent interest by the authorities. It is a small group, with no controls right now on membership because it's trying to grow and reach a wide audience. It doesn't operate on consensus, but votes only happen after long periods of protracted, often pointless discussion.

In an attempt to avoid singling out any one group, cause, or individual, I'm just going to go ahead and use the names of aliens from Babylon 5 to talk about the kinds of tensions that arise.



The group's primary goal is liberating the Narn home world from Centauri oppression. It operates well away from any direct conflict or violence (say, on a space station somewhere) and so there's not much it can do beyond vague awareness raising and campaigns. Lately, even that has been derailed by internecine conflicts. At the centre of these conflicts are the following individuals:

1. Andilo is a Centauri who claims to be progressive, but doesn't quite agree with the group's cause. Several of the Narn members have complained that he's racist; he throws the same accusation right back at the group, suggesting that in the future, it should concentrate less on this one issue and more about issues elsewhere in the galaxy, like the much worse oppression on Drazi, which he accuses the group of not taking seriously enough. Some people in the group feel that he might have only joined to inform to the police or to derail the group's work.

2. Maruelia is also a Centauri, and has been with the group forever. Unfortunately, the older she gets and the more she's persecuted by other Centauri for her unconventional beliefs, the more she's prone to making racist and poorly researched statements about the Centauri and other races. She believes, and spreads, everything she reads on e-mail, including forwards from racist organizations. She's nice enough on a one-on-one basis but many of the group's members worry about her making these statements in public, especially to the media. No one wants to be the one to confront her on her beliefs because her contributions in the past have been valuable, and because she's a sweet old lady.

3. Ha'Rok, a Narn, is a new member, and is very young and enthusiastic. He has a strong emotional and personal connection to the issues, but not a lot of facts at his disposal. At demonstrations, press conferences, and meetings alike, he can always be heard shouting out slogans (some of which are flat-out embarrassing), often drowning out less assertive members who are trying to communicate their message. No one wants him to feel silenced—especially since he does have a personal connection—but his behaviour alienates people who otherwise might be sympathetic, especially women.

4. Everyone likes Mi'Ra and her activist cred is impeccable. But she's addicted to process. Every meeting must start with an emotional check-in and her strict adherence to proper procedures and language makes the meetings last twice as long as they would otherwise. It's great that she's so committed to making the group a safe space, but it's at the point where the focus on process means that very little gets accomplished at the meetings.

5. Phubar is dealing with unaddressed mental health issues. He's solid on the Centauri-Narn issue, but he often goes on rants about unrelated things, disappears for long periods of time, and starts conflicts with other members. No one believes that he should be coerced into treatment, but everyone in the group is increasingly worried about him.

6. Zubar and Kota, both well-respected activists, get drunk at a party. Zubar sexually assaults Kota. He's kicked out of the group, but some of the other members still keep in contact with him. Kota asks—first politely, then less politely—that everyone break off all ties with Zubar.

7. Bamaka is a member of a larger organization. She brings this group's papers to every meeting and constantly talks about them and their work. Some members suspect that she isn't all that interested in the Centauri-Narn issue and is just using the group as a space for recruiting.

I'm pretty sure there are other scenarios; feel free to throw out your own along with actual solutions.

On a quasi-related note, interesting discussion about Readercon and what happens when someone you like does awful things.

Comments

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

I pretty much stopped being an "activist" because activists are generally terrible and unproductive. Most people are terrible and most are unproductive but at least I can choose to not be around 30 terrible people at once when I am trying to be productive. My solution has been to take direct action by volunteering with the oppressed group I care about. So I guess in this situation I would just go to Narn for a while and I don't know give some Narnians tutoring so they can pass their OWLs

[sabotabby]

I suppose that's largely what I've been doing too. I show up to demos and things but I can't be arsed with meetings and belonging to groups.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Zoe has been a stalwart of the collective for years. She has rescued it from extinction by being more prepared to work on it than anyone else. She knows all the ins and outs of how the system works - hell, she wrote most of the FAQs. Unfortunately, her closeness to the functioning of the collective means she's far too emotionally invested in it and gets progressively more irritable in person, especially when she perceives others as not pulling their weight or following procedure. The other anarchists in the collective resent Zoe taking on what they see as a boss role, and goodwill goes down, so people get flakier. Zoe picks up the slack, and gets grumpier and more tightly involved as a result. Everyone is irritated by her; nobody feels able to tell her to let go even though her mental health is clearly deteriorating, because the collective would totter without her.

[sabotabby]

Oh, good one. I've been on both sides of it.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

This one is close to the one I would have proposed, too, with a couple of twists (forgive me but I've never watched B5, so I'll have to use other pseudonyms; also, keep in mind these aren't anarchists, but socialists, so fewer complications with process, which can be both good and bad):

Instead of Zoe, we've got Leon and Ilya and Friedrich. They are approximately that old -- well, they're in their sixties, and veterans of the 1960s. All white males. They view themselves as this historic (the LOCAL historic) leaders of a small socialist group, in one of its branches. They are boring as FUCK. They get feminism in theory, but not reality. They alienate every young new member ever, such that those people do not stick around. They mean well. They are manic activists because now they're RETIRED and have all the time in the world. Among them, Leon feels that he is crucial to the branch and must be on every steering committee ever. I think he hasn't NOT been on the SC for something like fifteen years. How is it possible not to overthrow this triumvirate? Yet they're not evil, or cops, or stupid, or psychotic. They're just boring, alienating blowhards. What to do?

[sabotabby]

Oh, yes, I've seen this one too, albeit in anarchist groups. But it's still a problem even absent the anarchist/liberal/all-must-get-along issue, because they're not doing anything actively wrong.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

And we have achieved ice pick icon!!!

[sabotabby]

I don't get enough opportunity to use the ice pick icon now that the only moderation I need to do is spam removal. I mourn the death of debate, civil or not, on LJ.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

[...]they're not doing anything actively wrong.

I feel this point deserves some discussion. True, they're not intending harm. But just as you wouldn't have an electrician perform open heart surgery, in much the same way you wouldn't put a person in charge of a group when that person was unsuited to leading that group*.

Sabotage through incompetence, no matter how well-meaning, is still sabotage. If the recruitment of new members is among the group's primary goals and the "alienating blowhards" are making this difficult or even impossible, then to me the question transitions from whether to remove them from positions of authority to how to do so with minimum trauma to all involved.


*well OK, plenty of people would, and have, but that doesn't make it a good idea

[90pointmetaphor.livejournal.com]

Also, since they're retired, they think that 2pm on a weekday or 9am on a Sunday is a great time for group meetings and are baffled when others don't agree.

[ironed_orchid]

YES!

I have been trying to get to some [non-activist] activities in my new city, and they are all on at stupid times.

OK, so 2-4pm on Saturday might not seem like a stupid time, but I am invariably at work on a Saturday.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Zoe needs to find other high-performing activists like her, whether by convincing them to join her group, or by joining theirs. Everyone will be happier as a result.

Alternative: Zoe seeks out an understudy as someone to soak up the organizing knowledge from her. It won't help her depleting energy but will help her mental health, and the understudy will learn tons.

Zoe doesn't need these do-nothings who resent her heavy work without recognizing it. Her activism will be amplified and her mental health bettered if she works with other effective people.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

I think these are all good suggestions, particularly the part about having an understudy. I'm no longer an active part of the collective, but years later, the Zoe issue is still there - and people still resent her. The thing is, there's no gatekeeping or way to filter out lazy activists, or indeed established way to deal with more toxic people. Neither do I see Zoe moving on from that collective any time soon. It's limped on for a lot of years, though, so let's hope it will keep going for some more.

[akisawana.livejournal.com]

Alice is very concerned about everyone's feelings and insists that everyone be included, even the people we don't really like. Deciding on what to do and how to get it done takes three times as long because she insists everyone be in perfect accord with everyone else. This leads to burnout and people just agreeing to whatever just to get it over with.

Bob, in response to Alice, pushes for streamlining the process: simple majority votes, time limits, and such. For small things, (his definition of small), he makes the decision himself in the name of the group.

Wanda brings a different perspective to the group. She feels singled out by Alice and ignored by Bob.

[sabotabby]

Gah. I want to get rid of both of these people and let Wanda run things.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Death to consensus decision-making. Or its presence in collectives larger than 5 people, anyway.

Come on people, don't just provide scenarios, provide solutions.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

There's a good essay called "Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts" that talks about some of these kinds of dynamics, as they appear in feminist communities.

[sabotabby]

Grrr, TPL only has it in reference. Apparently a trip to Merril is required, not like that's ever a bad thing.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness is always a good go-to essay on this.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

So there's been a bunch of describing, but not much about dealing with.

Also, holy cow, so much Palestine activism. Might as well not have bothered with B5 and made things clearer :P

I don't know if I'm naïve, but it seems to me that the key to getting things done is to not encumber oneself with people who get in the way of getting things done. In most of the cases here, the problems arise because people are tolerating non-performance, because they don't want to speak and deal with the problem. People have to accept that disagreement is essential to organizational growth. Debate clarifies things. Dialogue is productive.

There are governance problems in my housing coöp and some people have been trying to deal with them, but they've been so clumsy about it that I have provided only minimal support by attending GMMs so that my vote could count, and share a word of wisdom here or there, because otherwise I'm going to do everything, and I don't have the time/emotional energy. Just this week we had a special GMM because one of my allies decided all by herself that she knew how she would turn around the bad governance on Rent-geared-to-income tenants (RGI), and her attempt flopped in such a miserable way that any further attempt to re-open the issue is probably going to be boo'ed out of the room.

My own fault here was that I didn't tell her that her case wasn't rock solid, and I signed her requisition for a special GMM anyway. I should have withheld my signature and explained why.

Regarding process, well, people can use the process to demolish the process. If it's a democratic decision, and the majority agree to make the process lighter, what are they waiting for?

There can be a governance meeting once in a blue moon to review the main principles of the organization, both to state what the organization is for/against, and what the terms of engagement are, with a three strikes policy for people violating the latter. (There should be unanimity on the former, otherwise the group has larger problems that it needs to deal with first.)

At the aforementioned GMM, one member on my side of The Struggle became very disruptive, hectoring people, cutting the current speaker off, snickering, etc. The moderator stated a three strikes policy, and she was still very lenient about it, but eventually the member had to be kicked out. The moderator, instead of asking the person to remove themselves, asked the whole group if they would vote on removing the person. An overwhelming majority voted to kick the person out, and then the member didn't have a choice.

Anyway, I think having clear membership rules is a huge help. The group can always use the threat of kicking someone out as social coercion to get a member to shape up.

[sabotabby]

Also, holy cow, so much Palestine activism. Might as well not have bothered with B5 and made things clearer :P

LOL, well, I was trying to be vague. I've seen the same tensions between, say, white and POC activists in anti-racist groups. Some of the examples I gave are actually not from Palestine activism, but in the interests of keeping the same scenario—well. Personality problems are personality problems.

There can be a governance meeting once in a blue moon to review the main principles of the organization, both to state what the organization is for/against, and what the terms of engagement are, with a three strikes policy for people violating the latter. (There should be unanimity on the former, otherwise the group has larger problems that it needs to deal with first.)

I think it's these sorts of meetings (visioning!) that I've actually found most alienating. Probably because they don't happen once in a blue moon, but tend to bleed into every single meeting.

But yeah, it's largely a refusal to deal with the issues. Especially in small groups trying to grow, where you don't want to lose anyone.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

I would argue that having clarity of criteria would attract a different type of people, who get a sense of what they're getting into, also what they're /not/ getting into...

Yeah, my point was in part to keep the visioning separate from the operations; otherwise if you change the vision regularly everyone has to re-adjust to a new reality all the time and that's alienating.

[sabotabby]

I was hoping someone would appreciate it.

A dude I know does this in class (with Star Trek) because it's dangerous to talk about Palestine and Israel.

[ironed_orchid]

I also loved, even though I parsed Narn as Palestine.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

The point is not to hide Narn as Palestine, it's just to have plausible deniability if a bonehead student (or their parents) complains, anyway. :)

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

activism is a space where your sole purpose in functioning as a community is about making the world a better place, and thus it's doubly frustrating when someone's behaviour or person interferes with that

It's not just that the behavior interferes with it, it's that the behavior directly perpetuates the power relations that are purportedly opposed by the activist grouping. I'm sure there's some similarly toxic shit that goes on in Tea Party groups and makes it more difficult for them to function, but at least there it's not seasoned with a generous soupçon of hypocrisy.

If I can ever figure out a way to write about the far left in such a way as to not sound like an anti-communist, there's my novel.

[sabotabby]

If I could write comedy at all, I'd write about the far left. It would be a very bleak sort of comedy.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Warren Beatty did it pretty good in Reds. Granted, you could read that movie as anti-Communist as Reagan probably did, but at heart it's about people who had radical ideas about changing society, saw them put into action in Russia and then started to realize that making speeches was a lot easier than actually running things (but it ends with the death of the main character before the Communists started killing each other for their lack of ideological impurity.)

Of course, I'm more inclined to love the anti-Communist writings of George Orwell since they are from a socialist perspective and the Communists were fucking evil at one point (as opposed to now when they are just useless)

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

"it's that the behavior directly perpetuates the power relations that are purportedly opposed by the activist grouping"

I just watched Land and Freedom again a few nights ago, that was good. Maybe you need protagonists who are part of more than one group to demonstrate the good and the bad? (or rather, this kind of bad, and that other kind of bad)?

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

A certain peace organization has a governing board and paid staff (each of which nominally operates by consensus), and a lot of very active volunteers with considerable responsibiltiies.

One volunteer, we shall call him Fred, has done a heck of a lot of work, for example organizing a major protest event, but has a huge ego, a prickly temper and an aggressive manner. He has driven away at least one other long-term and 'high-level' volunteer, and some of the staff have found it increasingly difficult to work with. Now, his conflict with one female staff member - highly effective, very nice and easy to work with, and very popular with the volunteers - has reached the point where she feels she can no longer come into the office while she is around, and has gone on sick leave.

The matter has gone to the governing board, who are reluctant, however, to take firm action, preferring to seek dialogue and compromise.

(The solution we applied was that a whole bunch of the volunteers went to the GB and made it very clear that we wanted this guy out and that if the GB didn't take firm action then there would be serious problems. The GB came round and Fred was, effectively, purged.)

I could go on and on with this particular organization, whose identity you will not find it hard to deduce.

I think a willingness to purge is extremely necessary in general (though obviously it should not be a first resort).

[sabotabby]

I could go on and on with this particular organization, whose identity you will not find it hard to deduce.

It sounds like it. Yikes.

[begundan.livejournal.com]

0. The fraction defined by dividing the amount of intra-group drama by the amount of measurable bettering of the outside world is well over 9000 due to the denominator's miniscule value. Bamaka raises the issue and no one want to be friends with her anymore.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Restating the possible problems:

1) The drama comes from unresolved personal dynamics.
2) Partial birth. The group objectives and/or methods are so poorly defined, conflict comes from people not even understanding why they're there.

Solutions:

1) More people need to be purged, unless they resolve their problems NOW
2) A new foundation meeting needs to be held, which could lead to the group splitting up in two if no agreement has been found.

Come on people, you've been invited to state problems *and* solutions.