Not much to say, but boring is good (sometimes).
People are refraining from attending DEI meetings, maybe we have to double-down the creation of safe spaces, where they can freely expose their problems?
Work to be done: remove references to the (defunct) Slack forum, replace it with the discourse and mastodon account, update the times of the meeting to 14h00 UTC.
Let me try to throw in my merciless perspective of why I am refraining.
True DEI is impossible. By creating “safe space”, inconvenient people are excluded from the conversation. The inconvenient people are those who have problems expressing their opinion in certain way (friendly, complying etc.), or seeking attention beyond what others feel “acceptable”. The real cause why these people are excluded in the first place to become DEI group.
The second reason is that I attention freaks like me need attention. Regardless of my DEI status (and being from the sanctioned country I felt all the pain of being a n* person) if there is no auditory, or if it doesn’t meet expectation (and I am an emotional failure), I better skip it.
Third one - it is useless. Things are not changing. There is nobody to do “your job”.
Thanks for the update, @gvlx.
Did you mean the SustainOSS DEI meetings, or all all DEI meetings?
Where are the references - happy to update them.
@abitrolly Thanks for your perspective.
I’m not sure what you mean by “True DEI”. I recognize that there will always be work to do. Paul Farmer said it well; it’s the “long defeat”.
The work of connecting people who are unconnected, of sharing tools with those who don’t have equal access to the tools, and of including people who are not normally included is not useless. Change happens slowly, and it often happens on a personal level. I think DEI work is incredibly useful.