[CIMC-work] acorn collective

[Garth Liebhaber]

Thanks for the insights, Ian.  It's quite the reason I 
forwarded it to the list, to give/ignite insights/thoughts to 
the ACORN project that our cousins were involved in.

They are all boys.  Last quarter I was the only boy in an 
educational class.  I would agree we shouldn't straight up 
and condemn them for active discrimination.  (I did laugh 
with your email, though, Chris G.)

To a certain degree I'm jealous.  As to their structure, I 
guess they decided what would work best for them.  
Though I know the culture in U-C is liberal, I was still 
surprised they have a president and that sort of structure.  
Perhaps that was for 501(c)3?  A question to ask if the 
opportunity arises.  I will say that the newspaper project 
that mle, mitchell and myself are involved with is a 
'benevolent' hierarchy and I detest it.  I find it counter 
productive to being a truly progressive project, and I don't 
mean that abstractly.  I think it has been a dampener to 
collaboration and co-creativity which allow the 
participants to rise to their full level of competence/
enthusiasm.  I would rather we were a collective with 
equal core members.  As I or apparently no one else has 
the energy/resources to pull that off, I shall push and pull 
as best I can to bring the project that way.

flecko g.





On Mar 13, 2004, at 5:04 PM, 
ChrisGeovanis at aol.com wrote:
 > huh. interesting. i note for the record that acorn is ... 
all dudes! 
 > can't tell how gender diversity is going at eggplant, but 
they have 
 > some really interesting clients. i think it's great that 
people want 
 > to create worker-run companies that self hire as a 
strategy for techs 
 > with a progressive bent to pay the rent. i'm not 
necessarily seeing 
 > the imc thing here, however...
 
 As far as I can tell there's only like one global tech person 
who is 
 female (though often I don't know what people's genders 
are).  It tends 
 to be the same in most tech situations.  For whatever 
reason women 
 aren't inclined to programming and system 
administration -- content 
 production, graphic design, and support all have more 
women in them 
 (but still not 50/50).  But if Acorn isn't doing much of 
those things 
 (or if those are all non-core concerns), then it's not 
surprising it's 
 all men.  Really, this isn't because of any discrimination 
(or if it 
 is, it's the vague society's-expectations kind of 
discrimination).  And 
 if Acorn wants to get shit done (the noblest goal for any 
progressive 
 group!) they need to think more about their specific goals 
than about 
 abstract structural critiques.  (It's abstract because the 
critique is 
 only demographic, not based on any specific claim of 
discrimination on 
 their part)
 
    Ian
 
                                                   

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