[Libs-Or] Responding to recent discussion of OLA's EDIA petition

Tue Feb 22 09:08:49 PST 2022

Hi Penny,

I usually try to avoid addressing people individually in these kinds of
conversations. I also don't usually feel the need to do the full "my views
don't represent the views of my employer" thing, but here we are. (Along
with doing on-call HR work for Multnomah County as it says in my signature,
I also am a Compensation Consultant for Legacy Health. I don't represent
the views of either organization.)

In my previous email, I tried to do what Taylor Worley (and possibly
others, my apologies if so) described as "calling in." This is a call-out.

You define the library field's core professional values as "sharing
information, valuing diverse points of view and protecting intellectual
freedom." You have skipped over what is an even more fundamental task for
library workers: Collecting, discovering and retrieving *reliable*
information. We-- and I beg everyone's indulgence for including myself in
this "we" despite the nature of my current paid employment-- first and
foremost share *reliable *information, value diverse *informed *points of
view and protect intellectual freedom in service of *informed *discourse
and learning.

We also, out of an abundance of principle and humility about our own
limits, collect materials that might not meet these criteria, but still are
of historical or popular interest. But for our own internal work as a
field, we hold ourselves to a higher standard.

You fall short of this standard in two main areas that you claim are of
great importance to you:

--Conflicts of interest

--Equity, diversity and inclusion as an area of subject matter expertise

You say, "If OLA does not already have a formal conflict of interest
policy..." I was surprised that you-- a librarian!-- allowed that "if" to
exist in your mind before publicly addressing your concerns. I am astounded
that you didn't find out before doubling down. It took me all of fifteen
minutes last night to find the relevant governing language for what a
conflict of interest is in this context, and how it can be remedied when it
exists:

--OLA Bylaws 40.071
<https://www.olaweb.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=257>

--ORS 65.361 <https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors065.html>

I do appreciate your link to the IRS explainer, but it does not say what
you think it does, if you think this petition falls under it. *I am telling
you this as someone who evaluates and remedies conflicts of interests as
part of my literal job. *

The opinion piece by Jan Masaoka from 12 years ago is more supportive of
your argument, and yet, in those past 12 years, all the people whose job it
is to steward the public trust and prevent conflicts of interest in Oregon
have not incorporated this more expansive definition into policy or, to the
best of my knowledge, practice. There has been expansion in places of what
relationships to an individual can invoke a conflict of interest--
recognizing that entangled relationships don't line up neatly along family
or formal business lines-- so it isn't like nothing has changed over the
past decade. *But this is not one of the changes, and you don't get to just
declare that it is.*

This is where white privilege comes into play. Everyone gets to have an
opinion-- again, hopefully an informed opinion-- about what an organization
should set out in its conflict of interest policy. Everyone has the right
to pursue their desired outcome through legitimate means. Only white people
act like they believe that their opinions should be binding in
contradiction of actual law and policy, and only white people act like they
believe they shouldn't have to do the institutional work of building a
coalition to achieve their desired outcome. BIPOC folks know they don't
have that luxury.

(This is also a very gendered phenomenon, talking about society in general.
Men do this a lot more than women, for very similar reasons.)

Others have already tried to educate you on where you are incompletely
informed about the empirical sociological data and theories of
organizational change that make up current subject matter expertise in
equity, diversity and inclusion work. They weren't successful, but also and
more importantly, *they know more than I do about it.* Not because they are
BIPOC (or deferring to BIPOC leadership) and I am not, though the lived
experience definitely factors heavily into the expertise, but because their
information is authoritative and current and reliable.

I believe that when I looked at the petition last week, there were
somewhere in the neigborhood of 250 signatures? And now there are 428. It's
about to be 429, because I am going to sign it as soon as I hit "send" on
this email. Congratulations! You have managed to convince me that this *is*
actually my lane, and this coalition appears to be growing just fine
without trying to accommodate the vaguely defined discomfort of an
unspecified number of their colleagues. If they turn out to have misjudged
that, well, that's what OLA elections are for-- assuming that you are not
merely concern trolling <https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/concern-troll/>.

Regards,
Mark

*Mark Kille*
*On-Call Human Resources Analyst Senior*
*Department of County Human Services*

mark.kille at multco.us  *| *503-988-7527 *|* email preferred

Gender-Inclusive Workplace: My pronouns are
<https://multco.us/assertive-engagement/lgbtq-justice-further-learning-resources>
he/him/his.

Leading with Race
<https://multco.us/safety-trust-and-belonging-workforce-equity-initiative/why-we-lead-race>
: I am white and Southern.

Land and Governance Acknowledgment
<https://edmethods.com/student-posts/whose-lands-are-we-on-recognizing-original-peoples-lands-and-history/>:
Multnomah County sets policy, enforces laws, and provides services on land
taken from many Indigenous peoples
<https://indigenousportland.wordpress.com/> by white settlers with
government support, using wealth derived from centuries of forced labor
<https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/16/20806069/slavery-economy-capitalism-violence-cotton-edward-baptist>
by enslaved Africans and their descendants.

On Mon, Feb 21, 2022 at 8:06 AM Penelope Hummel via Libs-Or <
libs-or at omls.oregon.gov> wrote:

> External -
> [image: External Sender]
>
> As one of the people who has ended up in the center of the controversy
> over the OLA-endorsed petition to create an EDIA-focused position at the
> state library, it has been illuminating to read the perspectives offered by
> numerous members of the Oregon library community in the last few days.
>
> My original post was in response to a message Marci Ramiro Jenkins posted
> in response to questions she was obviously already fielding with respect to
> the appropriateness of being highlighted in the petition as the ideal
> candidate for the SLO EDIA position.  Since I believe that there is an
> additional related and important issue (conflict of interest because she is
> a member of the OLA board), I responded to her post. Apart from expressing
> a differing perspective on the issue that she originally raised, I also
> asked whether it was possible to critique any aspect of an EDIA initiative
> without being perceived as problematic/not an ally.
>
> To summarize the many responses to this question that have been posted on
> libs-or since then, the answer is a resounding no.  As one person wrote
> quite succinctly, “dissenting opinion is privilege.” If this is the case, I
> realize now there is no way that I could have approached this topic without
> being judged as problematic.  So, for me to address the comments that
> reflect a misinterpretation of my words (i.e., that I said that the OLA
> board was overtly strong-armed into endorsing the petition) , or where I
> was told I didn’t approach things the right way (“you should have talked to
> the OLA board instead of posting on libs-or”), seems rather pointless,
> because it seems that the only way I could have avoided censure would have
> been to remain silent. Since I do not find this unspoken rule of discourse
> to be in alignment with the philosophical underpinnings of our profession
> (sharing information, valuing diverse points of view and protecting
> intellectual freedom), I stand by what I’ve posted on libs-or.
>
> That said, the most significant argument made in favor of it never being
> acceptable to critique an EDIA initiative was that doing so is harmful to
> BIPOC colleagues, who have put a great amount of emotional labor into such
> efforts and feel that their lived experience is being called into question
> when any such critique happens. It is significant both because so many
> people made it (including, most importantly, several BIPOC colleagues) and
> because of the gravity of causing harm and emotional distress to others,
> particularly those that are subject to racism and other structural
> inequities. I take that seriously and am saddened that there appears to be
> no way I could have raised what I feel is an important issue without such
> distress being an apparent result. I believe we would do well as a
> community to explore how we might balance the obvious tension between the
> values of ensuring space for open discussion *and* sensitivity to the
> needs of particular participants. At the same time, I think there is a cost
> to favoring one exclusively over the other, including the loss of input
> that could potentially make an endeavor stronger.
>
> In that light, I would like to address one comment to the OLA board with
> respect to the anonymous and unsolicited feedback on the EDIA petition that
> I shared. In the posts that followed, there seemed to be a tendency to
> dismiss them as clueless in their whiteness (although one identified
> themselves to me as BIPOC), exaggerating the negative consequences they
> would experience should they be open about what they think, and in general
> worth ignoring just because they didn’t say what they said publicly. I
> would just remind you that many (if not most) of them are OLA members, all
> of them are members of the Oregon library community (the constituency that
> OLA serves), and in all likelihood, there are others who also see things
> the way they do. If OLA’s goal is success in its EDIA efforts, you would do
> well to pay attention to the feedback you’re receiving from *all* your
> stakeholders, including your critics. I may have been the only critic who
> spoke up in this forum, but many others watched what happened when I did,
> and are drawing their own conclusions about the extent to which the OLA
> board represents them or is open to differing points of view.
>
>
> Finally, since my original concern was about conflict of interest, I am
> providing a link on this topic to the OLA board and anyone else who is
> interested:
> https://blueavocado.org/leadership-and-management/nonprofit-conflict-of-interest-a-3-dimensional-view/
> Unlike what many seem to have assumed in this discussion, the impact of
> conflict of interest policy and practice is not to maintain white
> privilege; rather, it is to protect the integrity and reputations of a
> nonprofit and its board members, a benefit to all who are involved. As the
> article states, “A potential for conflict of interest is said to exist
> when a person can gain a financial benefit through ‘insider’ connections.”
> If OLA does not already have a formal conflict of interest policy, this is
> a gap that should be addressed as it is considered an important component
> to maintaining nonprofit status in the eyes of the Internal Revenue
> Service.  Here is more information direct from the IRS on this topic:
> https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/form-1023-purpose-of-conflict-of-interest-policy
>
>
>
> At this point, I think I have contributed what I can to this conversation,
> although of course others may continue on as they so choose.  Best wishes
> to all.
>
>
>
> Penny Hummel
>
> PENNY HUMMEL CONSULTING
>
> penny at pennyhummel.com | 503.890.0494 | www.pennyhummel.com
>
>
>
> *Ensuring that libraries survive and thrive in challenging times*
>
>
>
>
>
>
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