Thread by @socialistdogmom

while “retreat” is often used to mean an all day work session on something like the budget, it appears this time “city council retreat” means the worst, silliest kind of waste of time — ice breakers and trust building exercises

i’m about to bring you blow by blow coverage of an agonizing eight hour meeting. hold onto your hats, friends
charlottesville.org/home/showdocum…

it’s gonna be a long day - from here to the planning commission work session, then the civilian review board meeting. but this should be the last meeting marathon of 2018.

we’ve got four of five councilors (where’s mike?), acting city manager mike murphy, assistant city manager leslie beauregard, police chief brackney, and a few other city staffers at the table. getting underway now.

incredibly cruel of the facilitator to make the observers in the room introduce themselves, too 😂

the facilitator introduces the ground rules, starting with confidentiality. the problem is that this is a public meeting... there can be no expectation of confidentiality here. the facilitator seems disappointed with that response.

as far as ground rules that don’t break the law: focus on strengths, no put downs, take risks, take care of yourself, and be respectful
(he just asked me what i was typing & i had to explain what live tweeting is)

interesting insight from kathy galvin - as councilors, they meet each other as competitors (during the election) & then suddenly find themselves seated at the table as collaborators.

the meeting facilitator is a pastor & family systems therapist. this is very much like a dysfunctional family. maybe he can help heal some of the rifts we see so clearly on the dais.

we’re still working through the “movie clip,” which is a clip from an episode of adam ruins everything about the backfire effect - the emotional response & resistance to being proven wrong about something.
the day has barely begun and we’re 40+ minutes behind scheduOi1o

nikuyah is telling a very different version than what i remember of an event from last night’s council meeting. she says she “didn’t take it personally” when ms rosia rebuked her for calling her out. i need to see if the tape caught the face she made during that exchange.

(she took it incredibly personally.)

councilors are now discussing whether they are tortoises, hares, or thoroughbreds. kathy admits she is a tortoise. many at the table view themselves as thoroughbreds.

councilors are agreeing that this work takes a lot from them, not just in terms of time. between closed session & the public meeting, they met for 8 hours yesterday. wes says he got home close to 1am last night & was right back here at 8:30am today.

the hypothetical scenario the facilitator presents for this exercise is confronting a colleague at a pharmaceutical company about a harmful drug. nikuyah says first of all, she would never find herself working at a pharmaceutical company. good answer.

this exercise started with a problematic premise but is revealing a lot about kathy & mike who both gave weak, waffling answers about valuing their relationship with the hypothetical colleague over the POTENTIAL HARM OF DISTRIBUTING A DANGEROUS DRUG.

interim city manager mike murphy says the rational thing, finally. leslie says the important thing here is not saving the friendship, but addressing the real potential for harm.

it’s amazing that even in this exaggeratedly high stakes example, kathy, mike, and heather’s extreme conflict avoidance shines through like a fucking lighthouse. hurt feelings are not more important than people’s lives.

heather is really weighing the importance of confrontation vs care in this hypothetical scenario in which a close friend is a pharmaceutical company employee who is pushing a dangerous drug.
what’s the conflict here? how is this even a decision?

oh i just realized “carefronting” is a made up work for confronting people but in a caring way.
the ABCs of carefronting are Admonish, Be wary, and Confront
(the powerpoint was not updated from its last use in a ministry setting so there are some issues on this slide)

chief brackney says she stands in the back of council meetings & hears “nothing but malicious gossip.” 😒

i wonder who the police chief is referring to when she says “some people” benefit from this “malicious gossip” that helps them “remain relevant.”

nikuyah speaking some truth now about how the idea of what is civil is very much from a white male perspective & a lot of the friction we’re experiencing is people being forced to confront that.

heather says she doesn’t like the word “civility,” but that everyone shares the same desire to be respected.
(since when do you hate your favorite word, heather?)

wes says he doesn’t believe anyone in the room is, personally, a white supremacist but that there are members of the public who feel that by their actions they as a body have upheld white supremacy.
(this is a measured and mostly fair statement)

wes says many people feel the only way they can be heard is by yelling. nikuyah says that’s the stage of grief many people are in - anger.

she says people are coming to council trying to get answers to questions about issues that affect their lives. not getting those answers is not a good feeling. she recounts an experience she had speaking at a council meeting in 2012 and the frustration she felt then.

“you have to demonstrate that something is different for such a long time before people will acknowledge it,” says mike murphy. he says the city has to PROVE to its residents that it has changed & that can take a very long time before people trust them.

we’re back to defining “carefronting” - check your motives, combine care & confrontation, caringly confront, and correct in love.
that list is... a meaningless jumble of all the same wor4b95

nikuyah started to say something personal, but the facilitator interrupted her & brought the story back to himself. wes says he wants to hear nikuyah, that the facilitator has created a safe space for them to share & he wants to do that.

kathy says she is very anxious & feels that she has NOT been respected. she acknowledges that she is white & privileged, but reminds us all (again) that she came from a working class family.
“kindness is a big deal for me,” she says.

in response to kathy’s anxiety, the facilitator is leading them all in some deep breathing.

he also said something about having read hillbilly elegy... gonna try to tell him maybe he should read @elizabethcatte’s book instead

the female facilitator thanked kathy for sharing, saying “that can’t have been easy for you.”
i agree to some extent, she did seem to be struggling. but she always has the option of NOT playing the victim here.

the female facilitator says she often recommends to people that they take a two month hiatus from using email to focus on how they communicate.
this is terrible advice.
but kathy agrees with her & says she would add social media to that. kathy’s ready to log all the way off.

wes says he doesn’t think things are that bad, which is met with some laughter. the facilitator asks him is he’s ever the target of this behavior, to which he says yes. kathy jumps in and asks, “from other councilors?”

who was it who asked me if they’ve referred to themselves as a family yet?we just got there.

oh boy now we’re in family therapy territory.

extremely funny to hear mike signer passive aggressively come at wes about the importance of councilors not attacking or undermining other councilors when he’s been the absolute champion of attacking and undermining other councilors on the dais.

i’m confused about the agenda. we have not yet identified the witch.

wes says he doesn’t think the rest of the council has done a good job being patient with nikuyah. he says it’s really hard being black on council. and there’s an added dimension of gender in nikuyah’s case.

chief brackney says people in charlottesville feel “empowered to confront black women in power.”
she says she’s never been disrespected the way she has been since coming to charlottesville. (i don’t doubt there is a race & gender element, but people hate you because you’re a cop)

incredible neoliberal trash to say we should be nice to a cop because she is a black woman.

chief brackney & heather are agreeing how hard it was for them to watch people be rude to kathy.
kathy says heather was “flayed alive” & she herself was “belittled” at the listening session on august.

that’s a little fucking melodramatic kathy.

heather says she wants to find better ways to support each other through the experience of engaging with the public. would be cool to see them care this much about our feelings!

kathy says someone threatened to “kick the shit out of her” in council chambers. anyone witness this? was this at the meeting i missed?

she’s worried that when her reputation is maligned that people will believe it. she’s worried that “people really do despise” her.
oh kathy.

oh it appears the “threat to her body” that she received was from the conversation with mary carey that occurred last month during a recess. mary is in her 70s.

nikuyah with the receipts: kathy is whining about being personally called out. nikuyah says she simply made reference to a memo kathy wrote in 2005 (an incredibly racist memo!)

kathy says “i’m not going to enter into the facebook circus” & nikuyah shouldn’t have posted this public document publicly, i guess.

she says she’s afraid to say anything to nikuyah because it will get “posted and misrepresented on facebook.”
which is disingenuous because, again, what nikuyah posted was a publicly available written government document kathy authored.

i know “shrill” is a word often used unfairly to malign women in positions of power but honestly the tone of voice kathy is using makes it physically impossible to listen to her.

mike signer is deeply engrossed in an incredibly detailed full page geometric doodle

wes to nikuyah: you didn’t even really acknowledge what she (kathy) said.

nikuyah, firmly: i heard her.

🌶

heather wants everyone to agree to not call out other councilors by name on social media. again, we are talking specifically about an incident in which nikuyah referenced a LONG, DETAILED MEMO written by kathy galvin.
documentcloud.org/documents/4917…

hearing the chief of police explain “oops/ouch” is causing a malfunction in my brain

now discussing the mess we had a while back with a name that had been floated in the city manager hiring process. the incident in question is over but obviously it’s not resolved. lots of hurt feelings & recriminationdailyprogress.com/news/local/cou…Q6af

signer says he & wes have been through various phases of their relationship & “things aren’t that great” right now for “various reasons,” but he goes on to describe how much they’ve been able to grow & compromise over the last few years.

i don’t know what the hell is happening because we aren’t following the agenda, we’re supposed to be at lunch right now, and we’re rehashing a really specific incident from four months ago, but the facilitator just pulled up this powerpoint slide

the file name is “Healing the Soul Wound (1)”

ok apparently all three points of the triangle are all of us.

i hope we learn more about this graphic after lunch. i have a lot of questions.

i’ve been asked if i’m being kind. i said yes, which i don’t think is a lie. i said “kind is not a synonym for nice.” i’m not being nice, but i do think providing radically transparent updates from a public meeting is an act of love & kindness for my community.

i stopped for a moment on fourth street on my way back from lunch. this reminder to be kind has been at heather heyer’s memorial for a while.
antifascist & antiracist work are not NICE, but they are kind.
we do not need to coddle those who oppress xOZC

more than halfway through this meeting, we’re talking about ground rules.

wes says he thinks a good ground rule is to be patient with each other and not assume malicious intent when communicating with each other. signer interrupts & says that doesn’t sound like patience & suggests what he thinks wes means. way to demonstrate the point, mike!

oh i love when a white person makes the same point a black person made & gets validation for their new, good, and original idea!

signer’s example of being a good ally is when the pittsburgh steelers put a star of david in their logo.

(i should clarify that i do not in fact love this and it’s making me want to pull my fucking hair out)

it sounds like kathy sees the public as a hindrance to the work of council, rather than integral to the work that they do. it’s come up several times today.

mike murphy says “whoever sits in the chair should accept and welcome the accountability.” he’s said some reasonable things today.

wes again says he doesn’t think things are that bad. heather says, “you don’t see us as dysfunctional?” with incredible disbelief. he says he doesn’t think they hate each other. heather is frowning so hard her lips have disappeared.

i don’t think they’re gonna reach any resolution in the next three hours, folks. the facilitator seems to be growing bored with this conversation & has pulled his powerpoint back V0Uo

wes & heather are finding common ground as they share a basketball analogy - wes says he doesn’t want a team of just point guards, heather says they have to be able to pass to each other.

mike comes back again to his insistence that they prohibit councilors from alluding in any way to any personal motivations of another councilor. he’s really hung up on this. probably because of his shitty ulterior motives.

wes starts to say he has an issue with this, and mike immediately interrupts him. again.

ok now we’re back to the powerpoint for real

https://twitter.com/socialistdogmom/status/1075103458125144064?s=21

he says this slide really speaks to the triangle we saw earlier but i’m really not seeing the connection or meaning in... any of this?

“you all have expectations, but you need to get into the inspectations”

i would say that NOT having some crucial conversations has lead to disasters. i can think of some pretty concrete ones right off the top of my head...

fuck this. making these conversations “safe” means not having them at all. these conversations will never feel SAFE for the people whose comfort & privilege they threatizBu

as an example of how terrible the meetings are, mike recalls one from a year ago in which bob & kristin (outgoing councilors at that time) were unable to be awarded their plaques.
wow that’s almost as bad as hundreds of years of white supremacy.

the facilitator has derailed the meeting again with a very long and deeply personal anecdote about his own life without actually relating it back to the conversation he interrupted in any way.

the remaining principles of having a crucial conversation, i guess.
the facilitator has asked nikuyah to “state her path,” but she declines, saying “i’m gonna sit with that.”

so the facilitator moved on, asking @nstoutDP from the daily progress what HIS path is.
“you’re not just a reporter, you’re part of the family.”
(nolan looks uncomfortable)

nikuyah points out that when you come from a difficult background, you have to weigh when telling your story is beneficial and when it’s harmful.

nikuyah is telling a story about a time when a very personal story she told someone ended up published. she handled it with grace & the story she’s telling powerful & well-told, but it’s clear she’s still navigating how much to give of herself.

mike signer is now specifically referencing my tweets about the meeting we’re sitting in, calling them “really all over the place” and “full of very personal vitriol.”

kathy’s having a meltdown now about the time she was called a class traitor.

very weird and uncomfortable for them to repeatedly reference the fact that i’m sitting here tweeting!

i’m a constituent. at a public meeting. for mike to TURN AROUND AND POINT AT ME and call out my personal social media statements about my elected officials is PRETTY WEIRD.

last time a man interrupted a public proceeding to turn around and vilify me & call everyone’s attention to the fact that i spend my time sharing information online it was a nazi’s lawyer at a nazi’s bond hearing

https://twitter.com/emilygorcenski/status/1068686655509291009?s=21

U05E

if mike thinks he can shame, embarrass, or intimidate me into being nicer to him he must not have read enough of my tweets.

back to the powerpoint. the facilitator ties it back by saying “talking about bad tweets” is part of detoxifying.
excuse me, SIR, the tweets are good. mike just doesn’t care for them.

the newspaper reporter in the room has a more generous read of the situation than i do.

https://twitter.com/nstoutdp/status/1075117260778414082?s=21

wes says he’s proud to be a city councilor in charlottesville & that the work they’re doing is trailblazing & important - “that is a beautiful thing, but it’s not pretty”
mike... disagrees? “i don’t agree with this valedictory kind of statement.”

wes didn’t sound like he was saying everything was perfect, far from it. but mike accuses him of “spiking the football.”

mike says he doesn’t think other cities are as intense in their efforts. wes says, rightly, “these are intense issues.”

“if you’re on the path to being a more equitable city,” there needs to be some codified evidence of that, says interim city manager mike murphy.

some interesting insight from mike murphy — many of the people activated & spurred to action by the events of summer of 2017 have fallen back. so for people who have been engaged on the issues for a long time, they’re seeing allies fall away. they’re feeling a lot of anxiety.

there’s a difference between the initial response to an event and the work that it takes to make change, says nikuyah.

without economic justice what do you really have? nikuyah says people often neglect the aspects of MLK’s legacy that make them uncomfortable. we see a whitewashed dr king & no one wants to talk about malcolm

just noticed wes’ t-shirt says “why be racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic when you could just be quiet?” 👍

we have NOT addressed most of the scheduled items on the agenda, but that’s probably for the best. we’ve got less than an hour and a half to go when we come back from this break.

back to a powerpoint. councilors are losing focus... everybody’s 1000000% done with this meeting.

the irony of the facilitator just forging ahead, reading this slide very loudly over the ongoing side conversations in the room is pretty spectacular.

“trust isn’t usually built in a crisis,” says the female facilitator. she’s spoken mostly in platitudes today & i don’t even find this one to be true.

when asked how they are innovating, kathy says their “active, action oriented” approach to affordable housing is innovative. 🤔

wes says self care is important, specifically addressing heather & nikuyah - “y’all aren’t really selfish with your time,” & says maybe they should be.

i wish i had been keeping better track, but i am almost positive that EVERY TIME wes has said ANYTHING, ALL DAY, mike has responded directly & immediately with something contradictory.

signer says “i don’t get it” when nikuyah introduces the idea of patriarchy into the conversation. “you don’t know enough about my context to make assertions like that,” says the white man to the black single mother.

mike says it’s “unproductive” to introduce “stereotypes” by calling out patriarchy & male privilege...?!

KEEP DIGGING THE HOLE, MIKE

when the police chief is coherently explaining progressive ideas to you, YOU’VE BEEN LEFT BEHIND, mike.
brackney is patiently explaining the existence of male privilege.

the female facilitator keeps desperately gesturing back toward her powerpoint, but the discussion at the table continues. just let the powerpoint go.

“i look at social justice in a very unique different way,” says kathy galvin. “i am viewed as not caring,” because no one understands her unique perspective on what’s best for other people

wes rarely talks about it publicly, but he and his family (including his young daughters) receive legitimate, constant threats & harassment. it really makes kathy’s constant complaints about being disliked look so small & petty.

back to this slide, heather says she wishes there were a safer place to have difficult conversations (about diversity) because people will “jump on” anything she says.
i think SURJ has groups where you can practice this.

wes calls out the faux woke white liberalism that plagues charlottesville. i agree! but kathy has no right to audibly agree & nod.

two black men are talking about how tiresome it is to hear white women who just got woke two months ago. kathy is lighting up, looking relieved for the first time all day, laughing & interrupting them to them how helpful this is.

kathy, at least those tiresome white women got woke two months ago. you haven’t done it yet.

well that was... something. that really was a meeting.

“it felt good to be taken care of today,” kathy tells the facilitators. she thanked them for making it a safe space. and with that... we are adjourned.

i’m just gonna pop right around the corner to city hall for the planning commission meeting. it’s sure to be... very different than whatever this was.