Charity (and Drama) Begins in Williamsburg-Greenpoint

So today we went to a CSA core group meeting for the first time in many months. Last year we had gone to every meeting, held about monthly, until Kevin got ill, after which I continued going until December. At that point I was pretty unhappy with how things were going and decided to move back from it all. It had come as a shock to me that some of the other core group members were receiving 50% or 100% discounts (depending on position) on their vegetable shares in compensation of the work they did coordinating the various things that must be done to run the CSA (accounts, communication, distribution, etc). It made me upset because I felt like it was hidden from us. Then when it came time to "vote" (and I use that word very loosely) on who would be in the coordinator positions in 2008, I felt completely shut out because of the poorly run process.

Kevin was kinda unhappy with them from earlier in the season, though I don't recall why exactly, and so I thought we would be happy to just be "regular members" for 2008. Kevin was spooked about signing up for 2008, he thought we might be shunned as nasty people who couldn't be bothered to stay with the core group, PLUS who lived not in Greenpoint or Williamsburg but...[gasp!]...Queens! But it was no big deal.

As the new season rolled around, Kevin became interested again and decided he wanted to be involved in the core group again. He has since said to me that he stepped back to let the new group of young high-energy types go ahead and take care of things, but he felt compelled to rejoin because he thought they were "screwing things up" and he might be useful, and a voice/opinion that is needed to get things back on track. The first project was the first few distributions, which would be run only by core group members to ensure that things started smoothly. So I dropped him off at 8:30am a few Saturday mornings in June, and picked up our shares and went to the green market, and came back later to pick him up. We also ended up dropping off the leftover shares (some ALWAYS end up not getting picked up) at a local church that is running a food pantry and soup kitchen program.

I should mention that we stayed on the fringes of the group the whole time because we had continued to get all the list-serv emails and postings, and sort of knew what was going on.

The reason for the meeting we went to today--which was not a regular meeting but a "meeting about meetings"--was because at the previous core group meeting some personalities had a complete clash and one of the coordinators, who is VERY involved in the CSA as well as a number of other grassroots organizations in the W'burg area, stormed out of the meeting because she felt attacked. So it was bad situation all around, including the fact that three newbies witnessed it, and so some other regularly-attending members thought that we ought to prevent that kind of thing by splitting the meeting into two parts: the first hour for current core members only, and the second hour for new attendees. The coordinator who is always the voice of reason (I am sure it is sometimes very hard to be her, as I think people go to her with their greivances and often ends up in the role of negotiator when she just doesn't want to have to deal with other peoples drama...) suggested the core meet to discuss the issue. I am flatly against that policy, as is Kevin, and so we ended up going to the meeting. I was nervous about the situation because I thought we were going to be the minority opinion in the group. Well, as it turns out we weren't, and all the people who initially thought that they wanted the two sections had rethought their initial reactionary opinions, except for one person who wasn't able to attend this quickly-scheduled meeting.

Anyway, when we were all done speaking (we went round the table because noone really wanted to begin, lucky me I was first) I felt much better about the group as a whole. So when it was decided that since we were mostly all together that we also needed to discuss what was going on with our friends at the soup kitchen/food pantry. Some of the food was going to waste because of timing and communication: the soup kitchen is on Wednesday evening, and the food pantry is on Thursday, but the bigger of the CSA's food donations are on Saturday, and some things just won't keep, especially if they're not refrigerated. And the Wednesday night drop offs needed to be put away, too, and more importantly labeled so that during the food pantry people knew what they were getting.

After the positive, reaffirming first half of the meeting, the discussion was going downhill. The coordinator who had been kinda flowing things through to the church (she had not made the intial contact with them, but felt that if she didn't step up to that role then nothing would have happened at all with us making donations), the same one who had stormed out, was getting frustrated in explaining the situation and options and the responses to them, began raising her voice: "Well, if you want me to tell the church that we won't be giving them any more vegetables, I will. It wasn't my idea in the first place!"

I had an immediate response in my brain to that: go ahead and help make this work. So I agreed to be the coordinator for getting the food donations to the church on Wednesdays and Saturdays, in a manner in which they can use them.

As a general rule I do not love churches and religion, but this particular church gave me a good vibe when we dropped off the veggies. The pastors of the church are a lesbian couple, who just had a baby the other day. We had met Pastor Ann a few times, and she seemed genuinely open and positive and non-descriminatory. The church itself is a gorgeous old mansion on Milton Street in Greenpoint. And I really like the idea of reaching people with a food pantry and soup kitchen; I think those kinds of programs meet an immediate and present need. I have been trying to find something "important" to do with my time for a while. I had thought about volunteering for a group like Save Kitty, but that's just too heartbreaking for me. Last year we got involved in the CSA, early this year I thought I might want to become a Citizen Pruner, and most recently we've been getting more involved in local politics. This kind of just fell into my lap, and I hope it is a good fit for me. I would be pretty disappointed in myself if I'm not able to make this work without getting burned out.