one day without...
Dec. 15th, 2016 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistCan't remember if I've mentioned this here, but I'm regional lead for One Day Without Us, the immigrant strike/day of action planned for February.
I volunteered for this in the usual way, by asking on Twitter if anything was happening in Manchester back when they were trying to encourage various regional groups to start. And the answer was basically "no, do you want to?"
And (largely because I was applying for Job I Really Wanted at the time, and thought it'd look good on my CV, to be honest) I said okay. I was told that there were people who were interested in a group who lived in the area, just none of them wanted to lead on it -- a scenario familiar to any volunteer. And I thought, yeah, no problem. I started a Facebook page and a Twitter account.
Nothing really happened. I vaguely wondered if I should be being more proactive, but also I was busy with a bunch of other things and I had signed up to project-manage this, not do everything.
The occasional e-mail or phone call from the national org asked me how it was going and I was like "...where are the people?! I was promised people?" I was told well, most groups are just a group of friends at this point, so where are your friends? I did the mental equivalent of surveying the room and thought Oh. You wanted someone more middle-class for this, you should've said. My friends are all busy working tiring jobs, and poor, and probably chronically ill or disabled in some way. My friends are already volunteering. My friends are already doing all they can.
But of course they're also union reps or working in social housing or otherwise able to talk to people and put feelers out and stuff. And, of course, when I didn't get The Job I Really Wanted, the person from that organization I'd talked to over the summer put me in touch with the person who did get it -- which stung a little, like the ex you haven't gotten over telling you how great their new partner is, but it was clear to me even before I met her yesterday that they absolutely should've chosen her and not me.
One thing ODWU encouraged the regional groups to do was organize a face-to-face meeting early in December to brainstorm ideas for what we'd like to do on the One Day.
I arranged Manchester's for last night, pimped it out to my friends and even my local Wi (having been encouraged that it's Our Sort of Thing, which was nice) and... to cut a depressing story short, after a comedy of errors in getting there, turned up half an hour late to find the place dark and locked and with no indication of a meeting there. And out of all the people who might have turned up, only one was still there (and I think that was partly because she was waiting for her husband to drive back and give her a lift home as planned!), the person who got the job, R.
We ended up having the "meeting," her and Andrew and Em J I'd brought along with me for moral support, in a nearby takeaway over fizzy drinks. Some useful stuff got done, though! R is knowledgeable, unflappable (she was actually reassuring me about how okay it was that the meeting hadn't worked out as planned, despite her having been the one stuck outside a confusingly locked building in a strange area in the cold!) and the kind of welcoming that will make her great at a job that consists of having meetings with all kinds of different people and groups.
I gave her the information I'd excitedly printed out, she already wants me to come to meetings with her to talk about this and (since I ended up confessing I'd gone for the same job, which bless her made her feel bad and say that I should've gotten it, which made me feel bad...we're both immigrants, yet both still so capable of the British hang-ups) said she wanted to take me (and even Andrew and Em J if they want!) to a meeting she has to go to in London in January to showcase volunteers she's working with.
One of her reasons for saying I should've gotten the job instead is that it's a lot of work: lots of reading to catch up on, lots of meetings all over the place and co-ordinating public transport to get to and from. I knew this is the kind of thing that the job entailed, of course, and I kinda feel like I might've been more able to take it on if I'd gotten it because having the job would've meant I had a job, if you see what I mean: I'd have worried less about money and I'd probably have picked fewer fights with Andrew and that sort of thing: I might have had more energy to devote to it. But I was a little relieved when she talked about the work because it kinda does sound like too much for me.
I made a joke about how if it's too much for her she should tell them she needed help and they should give me a job, but I don't quite think it was successful -- she seemed to take it seriously and make good points about why that couldn't happen (she's too new at the job herself to have any kind of clout, of course) but also that's when she started inviting me to some of her meetings with people who she says might be interested in One Day Without Us and suggesting places we can meet, and that kind of thing.
I got home and I was...rightly spotted by Katie who rang me soon after as having a kind of low-level anxiety attack. I felt like a spring wound too tight. I'm unhappy with the venue that arranged the meeting as normal and then was closed. I'm unhappy with how much more difficult it's been than it should be to find people in Manchester who want to do something for immigrants for one day in February. I'm annoyed at myself for probably being shit at both of those things which is why they're in such a sorry state. I'm annoyed at how awkward I was about a job I didn't get and feel like I'm having my feels about not getting a job on someone who totally should have gotten it instead.
I volunteered for this in the usual way, by asking on Twitter if anything was happening in Manchester back when they were trying to encourage various regional groups to start. And the answer was basically "no, do you want to?"
And (largely because I was applying for Job I Really Wanted at the time, and thought it'd look good on my CV, to be honest) I said okay. I was told that there were people who were interested in a group who lived in the area, just none of them wanted to lead on it -- a scenario familiar to any volunteer. And I thought, yeah, no problem. I started a Facebook page and a Twitter account.
Nothing really happened. I vaguely wondered if I should be being more proactive, but also I was busy with a bunch of other things and I had signed up to project-manage this, not do everything.
The occasional e-mail or phone call from the national org asked me how it was going and I was like "...where are the people?! I was promised people?" I was told well, most groups are just a group of friends at this point, so where are your friends? I did the mental equivalent of surveying the room and thought Oh. You wanted someone more middle-class for this, you should've said. My friends are all busy working tiring jobs, and poor, and probably chronically ill or disabled in some way. My friends are already volunteering. My friends are already doing all they can.
But of course they're also union reps or working in social housing or otherwise able to talk to people and put feelers out and stuff. And, of course, when I didn't get The Job I Really Wanted, the person from that organization I'd talked to over the summer put me in touch with the person who did get it -- which stung a little, like the ex you haven't gotten over telling you how great their new partner is, but it was clear to me even before I met her yesterday that they absolutely should've chosen her and not me.
One thing ODWU encouraged the regional groups to do was organize a face-to-face meeting early in December to brainstorm ideas for what we'd like to do on the One Day.
I arranged Manchester's for last night, pimped it out to my friends and even my local Wi (having been encouraged that it's Our Sort of Thing, which was nice) and... to cut a depressing story short, after a comedy of errors in getting there, turned up half an hour late to find the place dark and locked and with no indication of a meeting there. And out of all the people who might have turned up, only one was still there (and I think that was partly because she was waiting for her husband to drive back and give her a lift home as planned!), the person who got the job, R.
We ended up having the "meeting," her and Andrew and Em J I'd brought along with me for moral support, in a nearby takeaway over fizzy drinks. Some useful stuff got done, though! R is knowledgeable, unflappable (she was actually reassuring me about how okay it was that the meeting hadn't worked out as planned, despite her having been the one stuck outside a confusingly locked building in a strange area in the cold!) and the kind of welcoming that will make her great at a job that consists of having meetings with all kinds of different people and groups.
I gave her the information I'd excitedly printed out, she already wants me to come to meetings with her to talk about this and (since I ended up confessing I'd gone for the same job, which bless her made her feel bad and say that I should've gotten it, which made me feel bad...we're both immigrants, yet both still so capable of the British hang-ups) said she wanted to take me (and even Andrew and Em J if they want!) to a meeting she has to go to in London in January to showcase volunteers she's working with.
One of her reasons for saying I should've gotten the job instead is that it's a lot of work: lots of reading to catch up on, lots of meetings all over the place and co-ordinating public transport to get to and from. I knew this is the kind of thing that the job entailed, of course, and I kinda feel like I might've been more able to take it on if I'd gotten it because having the job would've meant I had a job, if you see what I mean: I'd have worried less about money and I'd probably have picked fewer fights with Andrew and that sort of thing: I might have had more energy to devote to it. But I was a little relieved when she talked about the work because it kinda does sound like too much for me.
I made a joke about how if it's too much for her she should tell them she needed help and they should give me a job, but I don't quite think it was successful -- she seemed to take it seriously and make good points about why that couldn't happen (she's too new at the job herself to have any kind of clout, of course) but also that's when she started inviting me to some of her meetings with people who she says might be interested in One Day Without Us and suggesting places we can meet, and that kind of thing.
I got home and I was...rightly spotted by Katie who rang me soon after as having a kind of low-level anxiety attack. I felt like a spring wound too tight. I'm unhappy with the venue that arranged the meeting as normal and then was closed. I'm unhappy with how much more difficult it's been than it should be to find people in Manchester who want to do something for immigrants for one day in February. I'm annoyed at myself for probably being shit at both of those things which is why they're in such a sorry state. I'm annoyed at how awkward I was about a job I didn't get and feel like I'm having my feels about not getting a job on someone who totally should have gotten it instead.
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(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-15 10:08 pm (UTC)Venting is good. The cold meeting venue would have freaked me right out.
From over here, it would be the second-worst week of the year to be organizing a mass action: end of year holidays are keeping folks busy; families are seeing each other; parents are having to cope with school holidays. I'm hoping you'll be getting better response when you're contacting folks charged up by New Year ambitions.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-12-16 07:11 am (UTC)