In any group of decent size, some people will be more involved than others. For years I learned and taught about communities of practice (CoPs) in public health. The principles I learned have applied to pretty much every group I've worked with since. Social theorist Étienne Wenger studied how people participate in a community of practice. These levels of participation are fluid and move from the outside in:

• Transactional members interact with the community of practice only on occasion. They may dip into a meeting or gathering for help with a problem or to access a community-built resource. Or they may have a specific expertise that they sometimes offer the group.
• Peripheral participants attend gatherings more often than transactional members. They will observe what happens in the group but rarely take part in the proceedings. Their frequent presence gives them familiarity with the group's activities, vocabulary, and norms.
• Active members make up about 15-20% of the group. They contribute during meetings and events. They take part in workgroups or planning meetings. They're reliable support but rarely start new activities.
• The core is where the leaders in the group operate. This is about 10-15% of the total membership. These folks set the group's agenda, organize events, and promote discussion. New ideas or direction often come from influential core members. This group is most responsible for the passion and energy that keeps the group running.
• Much further away are the resistors or skeptics. These are people who aren't supportive of the group's activities or priorities. They often fade away unless their critiques find acceptance within the CoP.

movement is good

These days I'm involved with a local mutual aid group called Long Haul Kitchen. Every Sunday since 2020, our group has distributed 120 free meals to folks in Seattle's SODO and Georgetown neighborhoods. Every Thursday we fill people's propane tanks at no cost. The community shares thousands of dollars a month to pay for the services and supplies we distribute. But mutual aid runs on labor: that money is useless without people to put it to use.

People will engage and disengage from a community of practice for many reasons. Movement between levels of participation is how groups sustain themselves long-term. When we make it easy to move from one level to another, we give folks a chance to step up. Even our core group members have changed over time. Some people move or move on; their lives may change in ways that mean they come around less often. Movement allows a core member to become less involved rather than leave completely. It also allows a transactional or peripheral member to become more active. I've been around long enough that I consider myself to be in the core group. Like in a strong community of practice, we need people to feel free to get more or less involved over time. How do we do that?

creating movement

Find ways for people to stick around. Not everyone wants to move between levels. Some folks like doing the same thing over and over. We can encourage that too. Others are waiting for an opportunity to feel more useful. Either way, we work to create a safe environment where people can feel the direct results of their actions.

Create pathways towards the core. One member might be peripheral during the school year but more active during breaks. I started out in a regular kitchen support role. I helped out a few times before I thought about taking on the lead role. It's a big job—planning the meal, buying ingredients, and getting it all done in 3 hours. That became part of the challenge for me: "can I pull it off?" Talking with other leads I realized that many of them felt stress about the parts of the role that excited me. We have been strategizing ways to lower those barriers to move more folks to the active and core levels.

We've popularized different ways to lead in the kitchen. We've split the time commitment: one person will do the shopping while the other leads. We expanded our list of pre-tested recipes for folks who worried about not making enough food. We've tested a system with two leads on a shift for a person who feels nervous about the responsibility. I look for folks who might be good at a lead role and ask if they've considered it. I learn about the hesitations they may have about stepping up. These solutions haven't led to a rapid or immediate growth of active participators. But I hope that they show a willingness to change our practices if it would better support our community.

Find ways to (temporarily) step away. I'm not describing people that should leave for the health of the group. Instead, I'm concerned with core members who may burn out if they can't disengage. Our mutual aid group is decentralized; nobody must serve a term or season. We come back because we choose to. And there's no pomp and circumstance directed at people who decide to take a less active role. We create a sense of safety by showing core members that the work will continue if they need to take a break. People are essential but not irreplaceable. But roles like the folks who manage our finances and storage space are still hard to replace. Our propane distribution team is there nearly every week. There's still work we can do to make sure those folks can take a break, too.

people at every level

How do we commit to the people, communities, and the groups we're in relation with? Even folks like me, who gravitate towards leadership, aren't leaders in every situation. Sometimes it's nice to be along for the ride without having to take the wheel. I also appreciate spaces that let folks give more when they feel safe and ready to do so.

Long Haul is just one mutual aid network in Seattle. We field about a dozen community members to help out every single week. Even when participation is low, we'll make and distribute a simple meal for folks in our community. I've spoken to folks who lurked on our signal group chat for months before they signed up for their first shift. Our groups may be a community of practice, a mutual aid network, or some other configuration. Whether a member is active or peripheral, transactional or core, we're all part of that community. How we engage is as much up to us as it is to the spaces we inhabit.

If you would like to support The Long Haul Kitchen, you can visit our patreon or send money our way. If you're in the Seattle area and would like to help out, please email me!

With over 100,000 automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) sprouting out of the ground over the past few years, you might be tempted to ask: “with what money?”

Drug money, as it turns out, though it’s not exactly what you might think. A bombshell investigation by Mother Jones found that police departments across the US are using settlement money from the opioid crisis meant for struggling communities to instead fund Flock surveillance cameras.

All together, Mother Jones identified 19 agencies across ten different states which spent nearly $1 million of opioids settlement funds on ALPRs from companies like Flock and Axon (though the publication notes that’s almost certainly an undercount.)

The funding pipeline looks like this: after massive pharmaceutical firms agreed to pay out a combined $50 billion for their role in the opioid crisis, state agencies responsible for allocating those funds decided that police departments would make efficient use of the dough. Police agencies — which already account for one of the largest shares of municipal expenditures in the US overall — made a heartwarming pitch: send us that opioid money, and we’ll use it to buy new police toys and stamp out drug dealers.

As police departments across the US have made abundantly clear, ALPR systems are much better for stalking and harassing innocent civilians than they are for actually fighting crime. And when it comes to combatting the opioid crisis, specifically, there are perhaps few police toys less suited to the task.

“While $50 billion may seem like a lot of funds, once it’s divided up over 18 years and thousands of localities, a lot of places really aren’t getting that much, particularly given the scope of the crisis,” Robyn Oster, director of policy at the Partnership to End Addiction told Mother Jones. “Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”

Overall, it’s a slap in the face to anybody victimized by the man-made public health emergency that was — and still is — the opioid crisis. Rather than funding state-run rehab clinics or harm reduction campaigns, that money is being flushed away into AI surveillance cameras so that police can catch hardened criminals legally buying weed, or picking up petty cash from the ground.

“It’s just really not the way to make the most impact in addressing addiction,” Oster said.

More on Flock: Flock’s Network Is Losing Value to Cops as More and More of Its Cameras Go Offline

The post Instead of Using Opioid Settlement Money to Help Poor Communities, Police Are Buying Flock Cameras to Play With appeared first on Futurism.

I was an adult when I encountered Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” for the first time. I grew up thinking Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover was the original; I can’t say exactly when my ignorance was rectified, but Twitter was almost certainly where. There was a type of tweet that would, and maybe still does, reliably go viral about the origins of the song, usually referring either to the fact that Parton wrote it and “Jolene” in the same day, or to the fact that she did all that only to be outsung, and in some quarters, almost entirely eclipsed by Houston’s cover. I know that I saw a variation on that tweet a couple of times before I actually sought out Parton’s original recording. I remember finding it a bit boring.

The story goes that “I Will Always Love You” was written as a sort of parting gift to Parton’s mentor Porter Wagoner, who introduced Parton to the world in the ’60s on his long-running nationally syndicated musical variety show The Porter Wagoner Show. The two worked together through the late ’60s and early ’70s before Parton decided to do what she came to Nashville to do: become her own star. In a stripped-down 2009 performance, Parton recounts how Wagoner took the news:

“When I started working with Porter, I told him I had come to Nashville to be my own star and to have my own group. But the money was so good, I told Porter I would stay for five years. And he agreed to that. Well, five years came and … I told him I wanted to go out on my own. He was just having a fit about it. We argued a lot and I thought, He’s never going to listen to me. He’s not hearing a word I’m saying … So, I went home, wrote a song about it, came back the next day and I said, ‘Porter, just sit down, let me sing you something, then you’ll know how I feel.’”

Man they don't make em like that anymore. What a woman.

By almost any measure Dolly embodied "the American Dream." Some people come from nothing and make it big and then consider the problem of poverty now solved. If they ever even consider it again. Others will remember that there are still so many people with nothing and use what they have to help.

Just something to think about during this latest round of "this person who isn't poor wants to improve the lives of others" we've been hearing so much about whenever a DSA member has more to their name than a barrel with straps on it.

I'm sorry to poison Dolly's memory with this transition here but it's something I saw yesterday and just severely depressed me. I know it's nothing new. I know this is exactly how the right thinks. But it's nevertheless illuminating to see it spelled out so plainly.

After winning the special election Republican primary to assume her late brother's senate seat in South Carolina Darline Graham explained how she differs from her opponent Annie Andrews.

“Gun control, government-run health care, abortion until the moment of birth—bad idea after bad idea. Annie Andrews backs them all,” she said on Tuesday.

“I have a different background and vision for our state.… I grew up in the back of a bar and a liquor store in one room in central South Carolina. My parents worked long, hard hours to make ends meet. We didn’t take vacations. If they were sick, they had to get up and go to work because if the doors weren’t open, we weren’t making money. My mother passed away when I was 11, and my father just over a year later.”

And that is as good as it should ever be for anyone. We all must suffer like that.

I'm thinking now about the contrast between the days Lindsey Graham and Dolly Parton died. Virtually no one had a single bad thing to say about the latter. We're all going to die but – as I wrote here – I think the only thing is to try live your life in such a way that no one wishes you gone.

I quite liked this piece by Rahawa Haile.

"For those of us not born to wealth, conviction is our greatest fortune. Dolly never squandered hers. Her values were clear: Pay your union dues, stand with labor, love the castaways, put money directly in people’s pockets. Make great art (and own your work). Share books freely. Uplift the land as the land has lifted and lifted you. Higher still, even. And help the people climb."

For more reading on Dolly please see Natalie Weiner here:

Or here:

Niko Stratis also has a lovely piece on Dolly and her mother here:

When I was young, never to be old, music was something that came with stories told by my mom in her kitchen. I write little notes in the app on my phone about the silence and the cicadas. I think about Dolly being gone. I make coffee and move through our apartment, Bowie is asleep in his bed, the cats the same, and I’m alone but not really alone. Dolly on the stereo. I text Lysh to tell her the sad news, then my mom, who did not call me back but does respond to my text with a heart emoji. We text back and forth about her, about her music, about how my mom saw Linda Ronstadt once, a story she has told me countless times before. I will listen to it again, I will listen to all of them forever if I could. I will absolutely be annoyed at times about her repeating stories, and I will miss them when they’re gone. It will destroy me when the stories stop.

I called my parents too the other night when I heard the news. Of course they both had heard. Of course they both were sad. I listened as they told me a couple of stories about her life as reflected through their own lives even ones I already knew the endings of. Like this great punchline about refusing to sign over publishing rights to Elvis when he wanted to record I Will Always Love You.

When the 1974 recording of the song reached number one on the country charts, Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record the song. Parton was interested until Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told her that it was standard procedure for the songwriter to sign over half of the publishing rights to any song Elvis recorded. Parton refused. She recalls:

I said, 'I'm really sorry,' and I cried all night. I mean, it was like the worst thing. You know, it's like, 'Oh, my God… Elvis Presley.' And other people were saying, 'You're nuts. It's Elvis Presley.' […] I said, 'I can't do that. Something in my heart says, Don't do that .' And I just didn't do it[…] He would have killed it. But anyway, so he didn't. Then when Whitney [Houston's version] came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland.

We're probably going to do a Dolly Parton week at Flaming Hydra next week. Maybe I'll write more then. In the meantime I'll be listening to this.

Speaking of Flaming Hydra the next edition of the print magazine will be shipped out soon. It looks so good! This one is about the end of Gawker. For my contribution AJ and I went back to an interview we did years ago and annotated it. Older versions of ourselves commenting on the things we said earlier.

I would like to make sure that another sad passing does not go unnoticed. Soraya Roberts was a long time online pal and respected colleague and she also left us this week.

You can find much of her recent work highlighted anew at Defector right now. She was a talented writer and a critic of taste. Most importantly for me we shared a strident anger over the years about how freelancers are treated in this business and would both speak out against it regularly.

Soraya's former partner and Hell World contributor Corey Atad has written a beautiful and moving piece about her life and work here:

Paid subscribers can keep reading for more from me down below. Thank you for being here.

Here's a newish poem for the road.

Hospitality

Four pigs waddled into the restaurant and let the wooden door slam shut behind them on its rickety hinges. The clap startled the dinner crowd. They tucked their fat asses into a booth without asking and began ordering the hostess around. Just a minute she said heading back toward the kitchen to consult with her grandmother. Their stench spread like poison throughout a room that had a moment ago smelled of peppers and cooking oil. Desecrating a place of community. There's one just like it where you live too. In almost every town in the country. We love their food here so much. Our food. They laughed amongst themselves about whatever it is hogs find funny and waited impatiently for the staff to prepare their meal and to serve it with eyes down all the while knowing that they were shortly going to ruin as many of their lives as they could. On full stomachs. The dishwasher had already left so the owner was in the weeds now trying to catch up. The cook’s hands grasping his knife unsteadily. Praying to God. Not Jesus today but one of the meaner ones. They have laws against this. Every person knows that. In every culture throughout human history we have had laws written and unwritten about this exact thing. Not here though. The blender behind the bar had stopped whirring.

Oh my god dude you have got to watch this video loooolllll holy shit. What in the world are they thinking?

About a year ago I started looking at digital cameras. I describe myself as a perpetual hobbyist because I love trying out new things. I wanted to take a photography class, and the good classes near my house required a fancy camera. The hobby would've had a practical purpose. Most of the photos on be the future are ones I've taken over many years. I'm starting to feel like I've run out. It's taken me a year because I'm allergic to impulsive purchases (except for tinned fish). But the thought lingered; the tabs piled up. I wanted a camera that wasn't attached to the distraction machine in my pocket.

Like a good number of Gen Zers, I've grown disenchanted by my phone's camera. It's convenient but not intentional. Or I'll go days without realizing I haven't taken any photos. My phone comes out but I'm as likely to check my email as I am to take a picture. It didn't take me long (a year lol) to realize that I didn't need to spend over a grand to buy the camera I wanted. I didn't need a fancy expensive DSLR with interchangeable lenses. A decade-old point-and-shoot gives me a camera I can bring everywhere at a fraction of the cost. I bought one about a week ago. It's so much fun to use!

storytelling

Why was a camera so important to me? Photography fixes a moment in time. Light enters the lens like a rudimentary eye. The film or digital sensor collects an imprint of the light that reaches it. But photography is not impartial—it's an art form, impressionistic. We decide what to focus on. We choose the angle, the lighting, whether we want our subjects to pose or act natural. AI smoothing and digital effects are now native to phone cameras. Before them, retouching and other analog tricks accomplished the same thing. With these tools we can even appear to edit reality itself. David Levi Strauss writes, "We manipulate images, in part, to obscure how much they are manipulating us." These manipulations are choices. Every time when we take a picture, we choose what to remember and how to remember it.

the sum of memory

Photos tell a story in ways that extend beyond the artifact itself. A collection of photos can carry memories of an entire age. They can speak to a life or a fragment of one. My archive of pictures, sorted in date stamped folders, speak volumes to me now. They tell stories of cooperation, friendship, family, distance, and solitude. Given enough time, my photos become my memories. They keep a record of days I might otherwise forget. They fix in time the people I filled my life with, the ones I spent those days with. I hope I have many memories left to make. I'm grateful to have found another small way to remember them.

It was all so slippery. The way it went down; the way it sounded, too. Just when you thought you had a grip on Frank Ocean, he slid through your fingers and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of smoke and streaks of light. Elusiveness is his nature, his essence, and yet so is profound emotional resonance. It’s what made Blonde so alluring back then, and why an album defined by impermanence has so powerfully endured.

The post <em>Blonde</em> Turns 10 appeared first on Stereogum.