Geoff Gilson's blog
We have an amazing opportunity in Carrboro over the next 18 months. When as many as six positions on the Board of Aldermen could be up for grabs. Beginning with the Special Election on March 19.
If anyone, including your preferences, truly wants to serve, they will have more than ample opportunity. So, let’s use these series of Elections to do more than just engage in Carrboro politics as usual.
Let’s use these next 18 months to encourage the widest, broadest and deepest conversation possible about the state of our town, and the direction in which it is heading.
In that regard, I have a challenge to all those who make up the political establishment in Carrboro. Stand back. Let the people have that conversation. Without imposition by you. Let them make their own choices. Without direction from you.
Do not nominate, do not endorse, do not lobby, do not campaign. Do not close ranks to anoint an heir. Rather, step back. And encourage as many different people as possible, with as many different views as possible, to nominate themselves as candidates. And then campaign, only for themselves.
Dan Coleman will be missed in Carrboro. I have a couple of sisters who lived in Australia. I've already written to Dan offering what help I can with his transition. But I know that he will enjoy his new adventure in Australia.
Which means. A vacancy will soon be opening on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen. And my mind turns to matters of political ‘establishment,’ the righteousness of challenge in a community, and what makes me itchy.
Now. Let's get clear. There is a political ‘establishment’ in Carrboro. This is not necessarily a bad thing. So, why the itch?
Well, I get itchy at any appearance of an 'establishment' coronation.
I get itchy at any sense that one has to be a part of an homogenous 'establishment' to make progress. That the primary attribute of a candidacy should be that one has worked one's way up the ladder of 'establishment,' allowing its members to get comfortable with one.
I get itchy at the suggestion that a community is, indeed, homogenous. When patently no community is homogenous.
All owners of Weaver Street Market Co-operative (both worker and consumer) will shortly be receiving an Owners’ News talking about the future of WSM, and inviting folks to stand for the Board of Directors.I strongly urge folks to stand for the Board. If you are less than happy with what is happening with WSM, it is no good merely standing on the sidelines. If you do nothing, then nothing is what you will get. Take a stand, and stand for the Board.
The
Owner News also has an Address from Ruffin Slater, WSM General Manager, in which he suggests that WSM should increase its impact in our community by becoming bigger. I disagree. I think WSM has, over the past 24 years, become too bloated, unwieldy and unresponsive. I believe that WSM can achieve more (and better quality) impact by becoming smaller. Sort of.
Weaver Street Market Co-operative still has $8 million in loans to repay from its last failed expansion project in 2007/2008. Yet, it is now planning, in its '2022 Vision', to build at least three more stores over the next decade.
I’m sorry. I misspoke. A few of the self-selected upper management in the corporate office in Hillsborough, NC are making these plans. And, to date, have shared them only with other managers.
Owners and workers in this worker-consumer co-op, where all are supposed to be equal, are not deemed equal enough to be consulted on the planning. Notwithstanding the fact that Board Policy and Employee Policy both demand that workers be meaningfully involved in major decisions that affect their workplace.
Which is a good spot for a little history for newcomers to the Family of Weave.
When Occupy began last October, it represented for me a protest against the domination of our society and our economy by the uber-rich, their heartless banks and their gutless politicians.
I became involved when Occupy started up locally, and the conversation was about highlighting the deleterious effects of arbitrary authority and conventional corporatism in our local community.
In January of this year, Occupy Chapel Hill/Carrboro decided it was time to move from mere protest to discussion about alternative local possibilities, and engagement with the community to explore more community-orientation and democracy in our economy and political life locally.
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