The co-organizer team and those of us who are active on the Ethics Committee have been thinking about how to make our work more transparent, and how to make space for community members to live into their awesome leadership skills. There are lots of ways to participate in building and sustaining RA, both formally and informally. Here are three formal invitations to the RA community.
Invitation #1: Come check out or participate on the Ethics Committee! Participants on the EC are the community members who drafted our Code of Ethics, worked through last year’s extended intervention process, and assisted people with interpersonal conflicts within the community. In an ongoing fashion, the EC will continue to support our accountability in keeping our practices aligned with our principles.
In addition, we — meaning whoever feels called to participate on the EC — now get to choose what else the Ethics Committee could contribute to RA. Some of you have expressed interest in aspects of transformative justice, creative intervention, and community accountability. In the upcoming year, we’re looking to tackle:
- Ethics and accountability for community leaders and educators
- Clarifying and documenting our process when called to address behavior that transgresses our community ethics
- Clarifying our expectations when individuals wish to use our communication channels for business marketing
The Ethics Committee meets every two weeks on Sunday evenings and meetings are on the RA Calendar. It’s not mandatory to be at every meeting. Come and go as you please. Our next meeting will be 5:30 PM Sunday January 8. Details and agenda will be sent out about a week in advance. If you’d like to come, please contact Eowyn. 1
Invitation #2: Come participate as a co-organizer! Earlier this year we started inviting the community to our monthly co-organizer meetings. Modessa and Will 2 have shown up to recent meetings, and it has helped us better understand how to welcome people into that space as leaders. So here’s our plan for the next evolution of the co-organizer team:
For the next six months, we are welcoming the big beautiful storm of possibility. During that period, we hope any community member who’s interested in joining the leadership team will show up to explore what that means. If you’ve been wanting to do co-organizer stuff, please come do it!
December 27 to May 23, we’ll meet monthly to address community business and co-organizer responsibilities. Then we’ll get together to co-work each month to help each other remain accountable for whatever tasks we’ve each taken on. Tasks, responsibilities, and community business includes everything it takes to make and sustain the monthly discussion events: discussion topics, locations, setup/cleanup for the events, managing communication channels, and lots of other assorted emotional labor. It can be boring and challenging. It can also be fun and satisfying.
At the May 23 co-organizer meeting, we’ll reassess with anyone who is currently active on the team and decide the next steps together. Our organizing structure could look really different next summer.
Our monthly meetings and our co-working sessions are listed on the RA Calendar. The next meeting is 6:00 PM Tuesday December 27. The monthly co-organizer meetings are open to everyone and we’ll create facebook events for each. The coworking sessions are open to people who have committed to deliverables at the co-organizer meetings.
Invitation #2.5: Come check out a co-organizer meeting! You can come to a co-organizer meeting even if you are not interested in being a co-organizer! You could attend and observe C-SPAN style. You could come to ask questions about how we work. You could bring specific items to add to the agenda. If you’re interested, reach out to anyone on the co-organizer team by email or fbook message and let us know you would like to attend and in what capacity so that we can be ready to receive you.
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