From The Vault: Guides to Meeting and Faciliation

Democracy is not an abstract principle, rather it is something we make or unmake in practice, and it is dependent on the political awareness and practical steps taken by all participants. It requires a commitment to active co-operation, disciplined speaking and listening and respect for the contributions of all. Every member shares the responsibility to actively participate in these structures.

Every member shares the responsibility of ensuring that all contributions are voiced and heard. This means that the group is alert to and confronts situations where particular members exert more or less influence than is appropriate.

New people should be made to feel comfortable in the meeting space, with procedures explained and contribution encouraged.

If you support a decision that is being blocked by others, it is your responsibility to listen and carefully consider the objections raised. Reactive comments, even funny ones, can make others fee uncomfortable about suggesting ideas.

“Conflict” should be supported and resolved co-operatively. Conflict is desirable. It is not something to be avoided, dismissed, diminished, or denied. Objections and criticisms can be heard not as attacks, not as attempts to defeat a proposal, but as political or practical concerns which when resolved, will make the proposal and the group stronger.

Discussion and debate should never be seen as a conflict or competition between individuals or groups of individuals. We want to politicise the personal, not personalise the political. Personal tension can only be destructive to political debate; various positions need to be assessed on their own worth and not on the feelings towards the speaker.

Our discussion and activism is frequently about issues we have great passion for. Individuals frequently do have emotional attachments to particular political positions and strategies, however they need to be viewed as objectively and politically as possible by all participants.

Prepare yourself for a meeting.

Conciseness makes it easy for others to listen to you. Take a pen and paper to meetings. When you’re thinking out what you want to say, write things that you want to say on them as you wait till you can speak. Try not to speak until you have a fully-formed thought, otherwise you won’t make a useful contribution. Jot down other people’s ideas and see where they fit in.

Consider giving yourself homework from a meeting (e.g. if someone mentions a useful article, go and read it). Consider organising for presentations to be handed out before the meeting so people can think about them before talking about them (it can save someone having to read them out during the meeting!). If someone does give you their materials before the meeting, read it!!

Come to the meeting with a clear idea of the issues you want solved that day (urgent things), the issues you want to make people aware of (news), and those you want to float for later discussion (deep, ongoing issues). Allow the group to move on from your issues if a resolution isn’t possible or practical that day.

Contributions should build on previous discussion.

Avoid restating what others have said, or saying “I agree with Sophie when she said …..”. This just wastes some time. Try to build upon what was said before, by adding a new point, considering a new dimension or developing a counter-argument.

Avoid attempting to represent what others think on an issue. Saying “I think I speak for everyone when I say …” or “I was talking to Mark earlier, and he thinks….” can cause discussion to spiral off into a bout of crystalising what everyone does think about a particular issue (maybe not a vital one). This can be really tiring and wasteful because the issues at hand don’t get dealt with.

Breaks should be considered every hour or so. More or longer meetings are no substitute for well planned meetings that develop strategies piece by piece.

The need for constant evaluation

Meetings can often be a time when some people experience feelings of frustration or confusion. There is always room for improvement in the structure of the process and/or dynamics of a group. Often, there is no time to talk directly about group interaction during the meeting. Sometimes it is good to reserve time at the end of the meeting to allow some of these issues and feelings to be expressed, particularly so as to avoid misinterpretations/misgivings to linger and go beyond the original issue.

Evaluations need not take long, five to ten minutes is often enough. It is not a discussion, nor is it an opportunity to comment on each others’ statements in the meeting proper. Do not reopen discussion on an agenda item. Think about how the group interacts and how to improve the process. Be sure to minute evaluation comments. Over time, if the same comments are made again and again, this is an indication that the issue behind the comments needs to be addressed.

Purpose of evaluation

Evaluation provides a forum to address procedural flaws, inappropriate behaviour, facilitation problems, logistical difficulties, etc. To foster communication, it is better if any criticism is coupled with a suggestion for improvement. Also, always speak for oneself.

Make comments on what worked and what did not. Expect differing opinions. It is generally not useful to repeat other’s comments. Evaluation prepares the group for better future meetings. Do no attempt to force an evaluation, and also do not let it run on.

Evaluations are useful for:

1. improving the process by analysis of what happened, why it happened, and how it might be improved;
2. examining how certain attitudes and statements might have caused various problems and encourage attention to avoid them from reoccurring;
3. Fostering a greater understanding of group dynamics and encouraging a method of group learning or learning from each other;
4. Exposing unconscious behaviour or attitudes which interfere with the process;
5. Encourage the sharing of observations;
6. Checking the usefulness and effectiveness of techniques and procedures;
7. Acknowledging good facilitation and building upon it;
8. Provide an overall sense of completion and closure to a meeting

Evaluation Questions

It is necessary to be aware of the way in which questions are asked during evaluation. The specific wording can control the scope and focus consideration and affect the level of participation. It can cause responses which focus on what was good or bad, “right or wrong”, rather than what worked and what needed improvement. Focus on learning and growing. Avoid blaming. Encourage diverse opinions.

Sample questions:

1. Is everybody satisfied with this meeting?
2. were members uninterested or bored with the agenda, reports, discussion?
3. did members withdraw or feel isolated?
4. Is attendance low? Why?
5. Are people arriving late or leaving early? Why?
6. Was there appropriate use of resources?

I apologise for the didactic tone of this piece. Suffice it to say that its old, back from the time when things were urgent and interesting.

“When you’ve got a second, Love”

Tales of Horror From The Filing Drawer

Admin staff are among the cleverest and most capable I’ve ever come across. They are professional, they know everything that goes on in their offices along, they type the most amazingly long documents at a moment’s notice, and in a rush, along the way correcting the spelling, grammar and poor expression used by their ‘superiors’. A good administrator will make the office run on time, look professional, document everything and still be fantastically pleasant to even the rudest clients and staff.

But theses totally groovy people are at the bottom of the heap. Heaps of admin staff don’t have a lunch break, and many of those that do are expected to answer the phones and type letters during their ‘break’. Getting back even a few minutes late from a break is career suicide – suddenly no-one cares who answers the phone while the boss serves out a severe grilling.

While front of house reception staff dress impeccably on tiny salaries, the people making thrice their salary throw on last week’s trakky daks and an offensive t-shirt and saunter in late after a night on the turps…`No calls please! I’m hung over’.

And they’re always the first to go. Any company in trouble will fire the admin people first and use the money to put on another CEO. Of course the office falls apart while 6 people who have degrees and earn $150k stand around the fax machine wondering why using one was never taught at uni.

But increasingly, admin people have degrees but maybe didn’t get all HD’s, or just went really well in a degree that isn’t valued so highly by employers. It can be tough seeing someone with similar qualifications to yourself rocketing into career stratosphere while you get stuck answering their calls.

Admin people are can-do people. They tackle tasks head-on and if there isn’t a way of doing it, they create a way. They shuffle getting a round of coffees while making 6 copies of this, 9 copies of that, answering the phone and making small talk with those really important Japanese clients that nobody is ready for just yet. But they suffer from the ‘ditsy secretary’ stereotype where everybody assumes that they can’t understand complex problems, don’t have enough of a brain to be interested in current affairs, and that they are what they wear. Of course when correspondence goes missing, it’s the secretary’s fault (not the CEO who didn’t draft it). Admin people organise their office, devise systems, track individual pieces of paper through complex systems and do a million things at once.

Often the secretary will be the only administrator in the office. Often she will be the only woman in the workplace. But such isolation isn’t meant to phase her, she simply has to get things done and do what she’s told. She jokes with the boys and isn’t supposed to mind their sexist comments or that she’s excluded from certain conversations – they’re just being blokes. When she tries to interest people in the office in filling in forms correctly, documenting what they do (to make reporting easier), they glaze over. But when it comes time to file reports, tabulate expenses, she sifts through a mountain of sweaty receipts and makes sure the account is square.

But there’s a perception that admin people have nothing to do – or need to be constantly told what to do and when to do it. Everyone treats the secretary as their personal workhorse. “When you’ve got a minute love can you call the courier and see where my package went? Can you make me a coffee? Can you clean your desk? Can you go and get more milk? Can you finish this report for me? Can you put my spreadsheets in order?” Ad nauseum! “When you’ve got a minute…” becomes this incessant bell tolling the secretary’s day away.

Secretaries unite!
The Boss can’t type!
If he tried to write a letter,
He’d be there all night!

(from 19 May 2005)

I found a trolley last night in a dumpster at Sydney Uni. I’m quite excited, because its one of the style that I’ve coveted for a long time: the vinyl granny shopper. People normally only throw them away when the wheels have fallen off because the axel has broken. But this one’s only flaws are a small rip near the bottom of the vinyl bag, and a certain ripe mouldiness all over.

The magic of gaffer tape will fix the former, and a spray of vinegar will fix the latter (I hope). Then I’ll be able to make up a spray stencil and decorate!

I do alreay have a more modern shopping trolley. Its heavy, bulky and made of a nylon webbing that isn’t quite waterproof. The wheels rattle and it can be cumbersome over uneven ground. Its not very stable, either, due to a folding stand mechanism. By comparison, the granny-shopper is so light yet strong; rough-going yet quiet; slim yet capacious. It has a lovely chromed handle, and soft rubber on the tires. The fixed stand is sleekly curved.

For maybe a year now, we have been shopping by trolley. When I crashed my car, I didn’t want to get another one, but the weekly shop had to get done. Bicycle shopping has its charms, but packing a week’s groceries into 2 panniers isn’t one of them. So I started trolley-shopping. At first I could feel people’s eyes upon me, looking at the different thing. My boyfriend said that the old ladies were jealous that “that lady has a nice young man to pull her trolley” and maybe he was right. Checkout chicks were puzzled at first, as were bus drivers and just about everyone. People queueing behind us in the checkout aisle rolled their eyes and sighed.

But nowadays, lots of people use a trolley. I see middle-aged couples and young women trundling down the street trailing trolleys, and I smile. I like that there is an alternative to loading up a car. I like that there’s an alternative to being a nutty bicycle evangelist (I love them, but I’m not one!). I like that there’s a way to walk a really heavy amount of stuff around the streets, I like that I’m not stuck in one place, and that my shoulders are free of kilograms. What I like most is that this new trolley has a great feature that my old one doesn’t have - I can strap it to my bike, and it doesn’t fall over when I ride.

Oh trolley love!

“I dumpster-dived a granny trolley last night and tied it to my bike. So nice, so light, so smooth!”

Hey, I’ve been syndicated on infoshop and Anarchist News.

Apart from feeling very special, I’m really astounded by how much flak I’ve received on the infoshop page. I’m tempted to defend myself against every accusation, and refute every criticism. I don’t think I will though. I do need to write more clearly, and I do need to spend more time on my reasonings. I do need to research to support my claims (research is something I can be really good at, but when I don’t have time I tend to regard it as something mystical that other people do). I will answer my critics by improving my research and writing, YAH!

I am totally in awe of how few of the people who criticised me had taken the time to read my writing before criticising. No, actually I’m not surprised - I too have done that in the past. A case of the too-eager-beaver undermining good political thought.

There is one point that I need to make clearer when I next write about gender oppression, because I felt it was not widely understood. I don’t seek to guilt or shame men because of their share in privilege over me as a woman (and it does occur), but I do want the oppression of me to be recognised as such. Just as I recognise the privilege I have as a white woman with a straight job, as a hetero, as an English-speaker etc. This difference is the essence of class oppression because it is this difference that keeps us fighting among ourselves, and not against our common enemy: the middle and ruling classes.

Most happily, I find that my writing about anarcha-feminism has struck a chord with one or 2 readers. That the responses I’ve elicited from others have proved my point: women still have a long way to go to share equality as anarchists.

I went to the This Is Not Art (TINA) festival in Newcastle the weekend before last. (I was hoping to put up some pickies, but my camera broke.) (Update - see pics below)

TINA is a novocastrian venture started many years ago by the ultra-hip Marcus Westerbury. The aim of the festival seems to be jointly to improve Newcastle’s main import (tourists) and also to make something happen in that very sleepy, unemployed little city.

I do remember the very first TINA, except back then it was called “The Fringe Festival”, and I was going to put on a performance art piece in an abandoned shop front. I don’t recall what happened - only that it all seemed to fall through fairly quickly, and the only remnant of fringe was a giant combe that my partner in crime and I spray-painted onto a very secluded wall (I think it was between to buildings!) Ah, young passions.

Then there was The Pod - an arts and living space inside a warehouse. It all seemed very privileged to me at the time. Then The Octapod, and by that time I was in Sydney - living it big in the Big Smoke. Yeah right.

But this TINA, I actually went and I actually had a good time. The attendees were numerous, and from exotic places like Brisbane and Melbourne. There were so many places to go out and have a good time, but I ended up being really drunk at a crappy hiphop emcee battle, booing all the sexists (we were pretty hoarse by the end). The workshops were dizzyingly various - on all kinds of topics and with so many pannelists. I was only able to attend one workshop: “Subterranean Sex” about DIY porno. The pannelists were Anna Brownfield (feminist video pornographer), someone from ManJam (a DIY male strip club) and Domino from Slit Magazine, which is a volunteer-run lesbian sex mag based in Sydney - woo! Suicide Girls were also tipped to come, but didn’t. That was a pity because the audience had reserved a lot of criticism for SG for basically propagating patriarchal crap porn while pretending that its something novel and ‘alternative’. What’s with them being called ’suicide’ anyway - how is that positive or alternative?

There was also plenty of criticism for ManJam for their generally lax attitude to developing their own politics. There were lots of problems with their last performance in Sydney just propagating racist and patriarchal crap - a black-face ‘golliwog’ transvestite performance, a huge sign proclaiming “MEN ARE BACK” (like, where did they go?), a running policy of ‘no cunts on stage’ even though women helped to set up and run the show on the night…aaand a flyer that showed 2 men fighting gladiator-style with penis weapons in front of a giant cunt. It was pretty interesting to hear ManJam explain that they are ‘just doing whatever they feel like’ and shouldn’t be censored when they are being racist or sexist - like hello? that’s the whole problem of patriarchy! Men “just doing what they feel like”, when that is derrogatory and hurtful, isn’t good enough anymore.

On the flip-side, Slit Magazine told of coming under fire for censorship when they asked a performer not to perform a black-face piece at one of their gigs. Lots of audience members agreed with Slit’s critics that this is censorship. I prefer Slit’s view - racism, sexism and homophobia get all too much airtime in this sick society, so much that its really up to liberationist spaces to close the doors on it and create a haven from sexism, racism and homophobia.

Pics

I went to see Enron: The smartest Guys in the Room last week. Its a pretty slick documentary about the disasterous collapse of corporate giant Enron.

They do some pretty shoddy and morally repugnant things before finally declaring bankruptcy. Like generating California’s energy crisis to push up their share price, and electing The Governator. News clips from the time show just how manipulative the media was willing to be. And just how much government was willing to roll over (cut to: a confused californian energy employee saying “it just doesn’t make sense, the numbers just don’t add up”).

The film is diven forward by the testimonies of the people who were there - the journo who broke the enron story; the whistleblower who ratted out the very dodgy accounting; traders who tell us that they would stomp on your neck to increase their bonus; and one of the executives who was really high up enough to have known better. At the end of all this very heartfelt contrition and confused confession, I felt hollow. The Enron story simply exposes the giant confidence scam that is global capital, and while its interesting to watch it crumble from within, no larger lessons are drawn by the film makers. Who really cares whether the directors got $200 million or $201 million - its so much money that it loses all meaning. Only some attention is paid to the ordinary workers who’s $30 000 pension fund was frozen when it had declined to a balance of $12. It was frozen to enable those directors to scrape just that little bit more from the ordinary investors. It might be pathetic, but that’s capital.

Overall, this is a tops film, though it will culture-shock some Australians. There were lots of moments when I found myself wondering whether the people on the screen were really saying what it was that I was hearing (”The Enron collapse is like Body Heat where Enron is Kathleen Turner, and the investors are John Hurt”!!) Its very entertaining, and an insight into the games people play with your life.

Its time to put on my peril-sensitive sunglasses and pretend that its not happening. That’s what all the smart people are doing this season. There’s no better way to combat the blistering socio-economic heat generated by the Howard Government’s IR reforms. Its time to sit back and relax, awash under a cooling wave of absolute ignorance.