we have very few hispanic folks at our shop, but we get a variety of different people who might not otherwise have to work in proximity with each other, or maybe even encounter each other at all: queer and trans folk, very recent african immigrants who barely speak english, people dealing with moderate to serious mental health issues, suburbanites, solvent abusers, and on and on.
we've rethought our initial "racism, sexism, classism, homophobia WILL NOT BE TOLERATED" policy, not by abandoning those ideals, but by recognizing that people are coming from different places, and just may not at all be used to being around teh gays, or people trying to hang cupcakes to the tool board so they can be used by others, or whoever, and they might say some stupid bigoted shit, but it usually doesn't have to be that big of a deal, and is much better if you can try to talk through it, as long as you don't let it create a toxic environment or let that become the dominant atmosphere in the shop. i think this is much more productive than asking people who might have some bigoted values to censor themselves while in the shop. after all, who hasn't internalized some aspects of classism, homophobia, or white supremacy?
that's really vague and doesn't always work the way i would like, but maybe it helps? i'd be interested to hear the experiences of other shops.
macho http://bike-dump.ca
veganboyjosh@gmail.com wrote:
Howdy folks,
Community Cycles has a team of very motivated people working to get a women and trans bike night started here in Boulder. We're ironing out the last logistical issues, and have hit upon another potentially major one.
We've heard from a volunteer who's hispanic herself, and deeply connected with a lot of our lower income hispanic residents that homosexuality and transgenderedness is pretty taboo in Latino culture/Catholocism. (Of course, this is a broad statement, and not intended by me or by her to implicate every Catholic person, or all those of Hispanic descent in some sort of homophobic conspiracy.)
I'm wondering how those of you with a night or time set aside for women and/or trans people have overcome the taboo of queer folk and Latino "conservatism" in this regard? Any resources you can point us towards?
Advertising for the night itself will definitely include both "women" and "trans" in the language, so how to provide or present a welcoming environment if someone is uncomfortable or even against something like homosexuality? I'm confident that we can handle the in-shop issues of innapropriate comments, awkwardness, etc.
I'm more interested in hearing about the initial outreach steps.
Any input is highly welcome.
Thanks!
josh.