Stranger, Then Friction

by Paul Axelrod, Free Press Contributor

Way back at the end of June, the volunteer corps of Seattle Rape Relief met one night with about 40 members from the community in the basement of Douglass-Truth public library on Yesler Way. They were there to discuss strategies for an ongoing struggle between the staff and volunteers of SRR and its management and board of directors. After impassioned pleas from the public to take control of the agency after the board secretly decided to close it on June 22, the assembled group voted by an overwhelming majority in favor of so-called "Option One," which called for nothing less than a coup at SRR's South Jackson St. office.

When I reported these events in the Stranger on July 8, three former SRR volunteers wrote letters to the editor at the Stranger and accused me of sensationalizing the story by characterizing the attendees as "pissed off women" and "radicals," and that I made the volunteers out to be "a bunch of angry fanatics." In fact, there were pissed-off women there, and even some "radical" people too. Was it misrepresentative of me to describe "Option One" as a call for a coup? According to the organizers, "Option One" meant to "take over existing organization, regain control of the crisis line, hold current board and administration accountable for their actions, find out realities behind original 'closure'." Did I ever say that the volunteer leaders condoned violence? What I wrote is that Heather McRae-Woolf said she thought some members of the corps might be willing to resort to violent measures if that was the only way to get physically inside the agency offices, and that she did not seem sure exactly what tactical maneuvers would be involved in the even of an occupation. McRae-Woolf has denied ever saying this, even that I had ever asked her the question, but I did ask her, and that is what she said.

In any case, the real issue was not who said or saw what. If former SRR volunteers are disappointed or angry with me it's because I suggested that there was a real problem in the way they handled themselves in the events leading up to the meeting, a problem that was all too obvious in their response to my article in the Stranger. First of all, the end of SRR was not just the work of its board. Some volunteers have taken offense to the idea that they could have prevented the current situation "if only they had been active in Board decisions in the past," as Heather McRae-Woolf derisively put it. And while it may be the case, as she says, that "SRR volunteers are trained to provide services" and that "volunteers must be able to trust that the Board and management will provide leadership and listen when concerns are raised," it hardly shows a lack of understanding of the role of volunteers (one of my many faults, McRae-Woolf claims), if the reason why the volunteers failed to head off the board's activities was that the volunteers had become too preoccupied with service to take pause for serious thought and discourse with others about their practice. When I suggested that violence could be a possible outcome of that meeting, some SRR volunteers got really pissed off. But they did not react that way because on June 28 they had given any thought to the violent implications of their decision to take over SRR's offices. Instead, they were upset because I implied that they might have been acting recklessly in the service of the abstract principles behind their 'training' and 'mission' of non-violence. The point of their meeting was indeed to turn anger into something constructive. But that does not lessen the possibility that their mission of non-violence could easily dip into a destructive mode anyway. Violence is always a possibility, precisely because it's so unpredictable. Serious self-reflection would have taken that into account. Instead, the SRR volunteer leadership got caught up in the silky web of their own principles, and assumed that whatever they said or did on June 28, the benign ideals of their mission statement would necessarily triumph over the real possibilities of political conflict.

In any event, the former volunteers at SRR have moved on. At this time, they are planning to resume offering services to victims of sexual violence under a different name, Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA). And it is fortunate that in planning CARA, the former volunteers at SRR are ensuring that the kinds of internal problems with SRR that led to its demise won't happen again. For instance, the agency's volunteers will require the board members to learn about the agency's mission. This is just the sort of behavior that might lead to a serious discussion between volunteers and board members about the meaning and implications of their principles and mission, a discussion that was sadly lacking at SRR, and which contributed to its demise.