Good article. It reminds me of a discussion I was part of a couple of years ago about how narcissists can find a home in progressive organizations and use rhetoric about justice and bias and...
Good article. It reminds me of a discussion I was part of a couple of years ago about how narcissists can find a home in progressive organizations and use rhetoric about justice and bias and privilege to bully people and cause psychological damage and create smear campaigns.
Yes! assholes that like to abuse people foam at the mouth at the chance to have a captive audience of passionate people who really believe in something. It's why I tell people looking to work in...
Yes! assholes that like to abuse people foam at the mouth at the chance to have a captive audience of passionate people who really believe in something. It's why I tell people looking to work in exciting and cool fields to be very very very very very careful around management. They are NOT your friend.
Yes, most definitely. But as this article points out the abuser might also be a peer or a subordinate derailing the organization and distracting from the mission.
Yes, most definitely. But as this article points out the abuser might also be a peer or a subordinate derailing the organization and distracting from the mission.
Sure, but the power difference means it's usually management. I'm also just bluntly not going to take the word of the Intercept at face value. The article does raise some interesting points but it...
Sure, but the power difference means it's usually management.
I'm also just bluntly not going to take the word of the Intercept at face value. The article does raise some interesting points but it includes weird sections like this:
“People want justice, and they want their pain acknowledged,” Rudd said. “But on the other hand, if acknowledging their pain causes organizations to die, or erodes the solidarity and the coalition-building that’s needed for power, it’s probably not a good thing. In other words, it can lead to the opposite, more power for the fascists
Like sure, yes, we should not lose sight of the greater goal. But in reaching that goal we can't also give up our values. I did like this part a lot though:
Ross, a Smith College professor who helped coin both the terms “reproductive justice” and, in 1977, “women of color,” said that she often hears from people skeptical of her critique of callout culture. “The No. 1 thing people fear is that I’m giving a pass to white people to continue to be racist,” she said. “Most Black people say, ‘I am not ready to call in the racist white boy, I just ain’t gonna do it.’ They think it’s a kindness lesson or a civility lesson, when it’s really an organizing lesson that we’re offering, because if someone knows if someone has made a mistake, and they know they’re going to face a firing squad for having made that mistake, they’re not gonna wanna come to you and be accountable to you. It is not gonna happen that way. And so the whole callout culture contradicts itself because it thwarts its own goal.”
A good leftist critique of cancel culture is something I've wanted for some time, and this is pretty good.
I don't think this is as clear as you present it. Imo one of the biggest reasons why cancel culture, virtue signaling and abuse of identity politics in general are popular is precisely because...
Sure, but the power difference means it's usually management.
I don't think this is as clear as you present it. Imo one of the biggest reasons why cancel culture, virtue signaling and abuse of identity politics in general are popular is precisely because they allow people who are not in any formal position of power to project power over others.
Yeah. There was another article shared a year or two ago here about how one teaching assistant had managed to instill a completely toxic culture that imploded a writing workshop. The professor...
Yeah. There was another article shared a year or two ago here about how one teaching assistant had managed to instill a completely toxic culture that imploded a writing workshop. The professor (who would technically be the "management" here) just had no idea how to handle it. I think the callout culture "playbook" is effectively largely because traditional management structures don't know how to deal with it, so toxic personalities gravitate towards it because it's a fast-track to exercising the types of power they seek.
Right but in the article you'll notice it doesn't usually end well if you're not management, look at the part about Sunrise. Sure the guy tried to create strife to his own ends, but it blew up in...
Right but in the article you'll notice it doesn't usually end well if you're not management, look at the part about Sunrise. Sure the guy tried to create strife to his own ends, but it blew up in his face because it was his word against management and that still carries a lot of weight.
It's a mixed bag because this ability to speak truth to power has had benefits. But I definitely agree with the article, it's ripe for abuse.
That’s not my understanding of that particular situation. From the article: It very noticeably was not only management that squashed that particular humbug out of relevance; the staff were the key...
That’s not my understanding of that particular situation. From the article:
Key to the organization’s ability to move forward, though, was what happened next. The organization’s Black staff unanimously agreed to put out a public statement squashing the situation.
It very noticeably was not only management that squashed that particular humbug out of relevance; the staff were the key to maintaining the peace.
Also, as far as left-leaning non-profits are concerned, the author goes out of his way to make this distinction:
The reliance of so many organizations on foundation funding rather than member donations is central to the upheavals the groups have seen in recent years, one group leader said, because the groups aren’t accountable to the public for failing to accomplish anything, as long as the foundation flows continue. “Unlike labor unions, church groups, membership organizations, or even business lobbies, large foundations and grant-funded nonprofits aren’t accountable to the people whose interests they claim to represent and have no concrete incentive to win elections or secure policy gains,” they said. “The fundamental disconnect of organizations to the communities they purport to serve has led to endless ‘strategic refreshes’ and ‘organizational resets’ that have even further disconnected movements from the actual goals.”
Beyond not producing incentives to function, foundations generally exacerbate the internal turmoil by reflexively siding with staff uprisings and encouraging endless concessions, said multiple executive directors who rely on foundation support. “It happens every time,” said one. “They’re afraid of their own staffs.”
The power imbalance in the field relevant to the article seems to be skewed towards the staff more often than not, rather than management.
Sure, but you can't deny the inherent power imbalance of having your boss ask you and all other Black staff to back them up. That's your job, people gotta eat. These seem like logical growing...
Key to the organization’s ability to move forward, though, was what happened next. The organization’s Black staff unanimously agreed to put out a public statement squashing the situation.
Sure, but you can't deny the inherent power imbalance of having your boss ask you and all other Black staff to back them up. That's your job, people gotta eat.
These seem like logical growing pains from having the balance of power shift from 'the boss holds all the cards' to 'workers hold some of the cards (but dont know how to wield that power well).' I'm confident we can get to a point where it's 'management and workers trust each other and work effectively together' but it will take a lot of pain to get there.
In University and Media contexts, it actually ends up working to the benefit of management. It's generally the middle-managers (professors and editors or senior writers) who have the most sway and...
Sure the guy tried to create strife to his own ends, but it blew up in his face because it was his word against management and that still carries a lot of weight.
In University and Media contexts, it actually ends up working to the benefit of management. It's generally the middle-managers (professors and editors or senior writers) who have the most sway and ability to secure fringe benefits for workers and organize around working conditions. But if the executive leadership can just keep sacrificing their high-performing middle-tier people and maintain a lack of trust between them and their subordinates, they get to exercise much greater control over the organization as a whole.
That's very true. I say a lot that in leftist orgs that middle management is unfairly maligned. There are good middle managers out there. They're really really important, because when your middle...
That's very true. I say a lot that in leftist orgs that middle management is unfairly maligned. There are good middle managers out there. They're really really important, because when your middle management sucks nothing happens. They're the ones that should be keeping ICs' lives easy and enabling them to get shit done.
Middle management is a lot like IT that way, or committing insurance fraud via electrical fire. If you do things right, people won't be sure that you've done anything at all.
There are obvious difficulties for the leadership of progressive organizations when it comes to pushing back against staff insurrections. The insurrections are done in the name of justice, and there are very real injustices at these organizations that need to be grappled with. Failing to give voice to that reality can leave the impression that group leaders are only interested in papering over internal problems and trying to hide their own failings behind the mission of the organization. And in an atmosphere of distrust, the worst intentions are assumed. Critics of this article will claim that its intention is to tell workers to sit down and shut up and suck up whatever indignities are doled out in the name of progress. (Emphasis added)
I mean you'll notice I didn't say that! I think that we can find a solution that results in actual progress being made while also keeping in mind the progressive values that we actually care...
I mean you'll notice I didn't say that! I think that we can find a solution that results in actual progress being made while also keeping in mind the progressive values that we actually care about. The things the article brings up are worth talking about and I don't think the point of the article is to just say "blindly trust leadership" because it explicitly doesn't bring up solutions, since governance is such a complex issue where blanket recommendations don't make sense.
It has some weird parts to it that at the very least are phrased very poorly. But the part at the end about the abortion nonprofit being paralyzed by union politics while Roe v. Wade was being actively dismantled does stand out: we can't take our eye off the greater prize when solving some of these systemic issues at home.
Bookmarked for rereading, because this one’s a doozy. I’ll be mulling a number of points raised within this article over for a good while. As a rule, I’ve adopted the habit of keeping myself far,...
Bookmarked for rereading, because this one’s a doozy. I’ll be mulling a number of points raised within this article over for a good while.
As a rule, I’ve adopted the habit of keeping myself far, far removed from any identity-based issues when at work; I’m not there for that, and I do not want in any capacity to be sucked in. And, unfortunately, the people who usually do get involved with these movements, both at work and in general, are at least two-thirds of the reason why I have always found the idea so unpalatable.
I’m all for broadened and robust reproductive rights, and strengthening protections for marginalized persons and communities, but I very much resent the language and culture pervasive within left-leaning spheres of society. They drain me at a soul-deep level; just a perpetual pity-party slog spiraling ever downward. And I get it — I really, really do; but… that’s not my cup of tea.
This is an old article from the Intercept that Matt Levine linked to as an example of manager-worker disputes at nonprofits. (Coming up now because OpenAI is headed by a nonprofit.) …
This is an old article from the Intercept that Matt Levine linked to as an example of manager-worker disputes at nonprofits. (Coming up now because OpenAI is headed by a nonprofit.)
During the first week of June 2020, teams of workers and their managers came together across the country to share how they were responding to the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and to chart out what — if anything — their own company or nonprofit could do to contribute toward the reckoning with racial injustice that was rapidly taking shape.
On June 2, one such huddle was organized by the Washington, D.C., office of the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rights movement’s premier research organization.
Heather Boonstra, vice president of public policy, began by asking how people were “finding equilibrium” — one of the details we know because it was later shared by staff with Prism, an outlet that covers social justice advocacy and the impacts of injustice.
She talked about the role systemic racism plays in society and the ways that Guttmacher’s work could counter it. Staff suggestions, though, turned inward, Prism reported, “including loosening deadlines and implementing more proactive and explicit policies for leave without penalty.” Staffers suggested additional racial equity trainings, noting that a previous facilitator had said that the last round had not included sufficient time “to cover everything.” With no Black staff in the D.C. unit, it was suggested that “Guttmacher do something tangible for Black employees in other divisions.”
Behind Boonstra’s and the staff’s responses to the killing was a fundamentally different understanding of the moment. For Boonstra and others of her generation, the focus should have been on the work of the nonprofit: What could Guttmacher, with an annual budget of nearly $30 million, do now to make the world a better place? For her staff, that question had to be answered at home first: What could they do to make Guttmacher a better place? Too often, they believed, managers exploited the moral commitment staff felt toward their mission, allowing workplace abuses to go unchecked.
The belief was widespread. In the eyes of group leaders dealing with similar moments, staff were ignoring the mission and focusing only on themselves, using a moment of public awakening to smuggle through standard grievances cloaked in the language of social justice. Often, as was the case at Guttmacher, they played into the very dynamics they were fighting against, directing their complaints at leaders of color. Guttmacher was run at the time, and still is today, by an Afro Latina woman, Dr. Herminia Palacio. “The most zealous ones at my organization when it comes to race are white,” said one Black executive director at a different organization, asking for anonymity so as not to provoke a response from that staff.
These starkly divergent views would produce dramatic schisms throughout the progressive world in the coming year. At Guttmacher, this process would rip the organization apart. Boonstra, unlike many managers at the time, didn’t sugarcoat how she felt about the staff’s response to the killing.
“I’m here to talk about George Floyd and the other African American men who have been beaten up by society,” she told her staff, not “workplace problems.” Boonstra told them she was “disappointed,” that they were being “self-centered.” The staff was appalled enough by the exchange to relay it to Prism.
…
That the institute has spent the course of the Biden administration paralyzed makes it typical of not just the abortion rights community — Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other reproductive health organizations had similarly been locked in knock-down, drag-out fights between competing factions of their organizations, most often breaking down along staff-versus-management lines. It’s also true of the progressive advocacy space across the board, which has, more or less, effectively ceased to function. The Sierra Club, Demos, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, the Movement for Black Lives, Human Rights Campaign, Time’s Up, the Sunrise Movement, and many other organizations have seen wrenching and debilitating turmoil in the past couple years.
Good article. It reminds me of a discussion I was part of a couple of years ago about how narcissists can find a home in progressive organizations and use rhetoric about justice and bias and privilege to bully people and cause psychological damage and create smear campaigns.
Yes! assholes that like to abuse people foam at the mouth at the chance to have a captive audience of passionate people who really believe in something. It's why I tell people looking to work in exciting and cool fields to be very very very very very careful around management. They are NOT your friend.
Yes, most definitely. But as this article points out the abuser might also be a peer or a subordinate derailing the organization and distracting from the mission.
Sure, but the power difference means it's usually management.
I'm also just bluntly not going to take the word of the Intercept at face value. The article does raise some interesting points but it includes weird sections like this:
Like sure, yes, we should not lose sight of the greater goal. But in reaching that goal we can't also give up our values. I did like this part a lot though:
A good leftist critique of cancel culture is something I've wanted for some time, and this is pretty good.
I don't think this is as clear as you present it. Imo one of the biggest reasons why cancel culture, virtue signaling and abuse of identity politics in general are popular is precisely because they allow people who are not in any formal position of power to project power over others.
Yeah. There was another article shared a year or two ago here about how one teaching assistant had managed to instill a completely toxic culture that imploded a writing workshop. The professor (who would technically be the "management" here) just had no idea how to handle it. I think the callout culture "playbook" is effectively largely because traditional management structures don't know how to deal with it, so toxic personalities gravitate towards it because it's a fast-track to exercising the types of power they seek.
Right but in the article you'll notice it doesn't usually end well if you're not management, look at the part about Sunrise. Sure the guy tried to create strife to his own ends, but it blew up in his face because it was his word against management and that still carries a lot of weight.
It's a mixed bag because this ability to speak truth to power has had benefits. But I definitely agree with the article, it's ripe for abuse.
That’s not my understanding of that particular situation. From the article:
It very noticeably was not only management that squashed that particular humbug out of relevance; the staff were the key to maintaining the peace.
Also, as far as left-leaning non-profits are concerned, the author goes out of his way to make this distinction:
The power imbalance in the field relevant to the article seems to be skewed towards the staff more often than not, rather than management.
Sure, but you can't deny the inherent power imbalance of having your boss ask you and all other Black staff to back them up. That's your job, people gotta eat.
These seem like logical growing pains from having the balance of power shift from 'the boss holds all the cards' to 'workers hold some of the cards (but dont know how to wield that power well).' I'm confident we can get to a point where it's 'management and workers trust each other and work effectively together' but it will take a lot of pain to get there.
In University and Media contexts, it actually ends up working to the benefit of management. It's generally the middle-managers (professors and editors or senior writers) who have the most sway and ability to secure fringe benefits for workers and organize around working conditions. But if the executive leadership can just keep sacrificing their high-performing middle-tier people and maintain a lack of trust between them and their subordinates, they get to exercise much greater control over the organization as a whole.
That's very true. I say a lot that in leftist orgs that middle management is unfairly maligned. There are good middle managers out there. They're really really important, because when your middle management sucks nothing happens. They're the ones that should be keeping ICs' lives easy and enabling them to get shit done.
Middle management is a lot like IT that way, or committing insurance fraud via electrical fire. If you do things right, people won't be sure that you've done anything at all.
;)
I mean you'll notice I didn't say that! I think that we can find a solution that results in actual progress being made while also keeping in mind the progressive values that we actually care about. The things the article brings up are worth talking about and I don't think the point of the article is to just say "blindly trust leadership" because it explicitly doesn't bring up solutions, since governance is such a complex issue where blanket recommendations don't make sense.
It has some weird parts to it that at the very least are phrased very poorly. But the part at the end about the abortion nonprofit being paralyzed by union politics while Roe v. Wade was being actively dismantled does stand out: we can't take our eye off the greater prize when solving some of these systemic issues at home.
Very fair.
Was that here on Tildes? I seem to vaguely remember something like that.
I believe it might have been, but I'm also remembering a Bernie supporters event I attended. It could have been either or both.
Bookmarked for rereading, because this one’s a doozy. I’ll be mulling a number of points raised within this article over for a good while.
As a rule, I’ve adopted the habit of keeping myself far, far removed from any identity-based issues when at work; I’m not there for that, and I do not want in any capacity to be sucked in. And, unfortunately, the people who usually do get involved with these movements, both at work and in general, are at least two-thirds of the reason why I have always found the idea so unpalatable.
I’m all for broadened and robust reproductive rights, and strengthening protections for marginalized persons and communities, but I very much resent the language and culture pervasive within left-leaning spheres of society. They drain me at a soul-deep level; just a perpetual pity-party slog spiraling ever downward. And I get it — I really, really do; but… that’s not my cup of tea.
This is an old article from the Intercept that Matt Levine linked to as an example of manager-worker disputes at nonprofits. (Coming up now because OpenAI is headed by a nonprofit.)
…
Mirror, for those hit by the account registration nag screen:
https://archive.is/sXbx1