Look, y’all can fight all you want. All of this happened before I joined, DMS, so I can’t comment on the content of the lawsuit or who said what and frankly, I don’t care. What I care about right now, today, is how this feud is ruining the community vibe I thought I was getting when I signed up for this magnificent organization.
Here’s what I can comment on, or at least ask as a question: How much will this lawsuit appeal cost Dallas Makerspace if you win, @AndrewLeCody? I don’t know you well enough to ask anything other than that.
I got beat up in these threads for asking for a $400 licence to Microsoft Office to help people build job skills and support their Maker hobby.
If you kept the cost of the loss at $12k, (a number I saw somewhere, I don’t remember where), I’m sure you have enough friends here and people who agree with your reasons for starting the lawsuit to pay those legal costs via a GoFundMe or something similar.
Human psychology tells me that if anyone - anyone! - demands an apology by setting up a lawsuit that literally pushes a defendent between a rock and a hard place to where an apology is going to be seen as an admission of wrongdoing by the court with very real professional and financial consequences is never, never, not ever, never going to get an apology, because now there is no way for the defendant to save face, reputation, or financial damages.
Please, lower your weapons, folks.
If anyone reading this is feeling disrespected or misunderstood by someone with power at DMS who didn’t use their power the way you thought they should’ve, welcome to the club. No human being is perfect. We all have issues and old, unhealed emotional and spiritual wounds that we carry around with us, and we all have blind spots and hot buttons. Many of us were bullied for being different. That’s the other side of the artist/creative coin.
Everyone here on Talk (with exceptions, of course) could do a much better job of treating prople well. Our community could benefit so much if the people taking this feud most personally could find a way to make yourselves feel whole from this bad experience without decimating the community by having people feel like they have to take sides or having to make the Makerspace treasury pay for the fight in court.
Open offer: If you want me to listen to what you have to say in person with an open heart and an open mind, please reach out.
#AHouseDividedAgainstItselfCannotStand
On a side note, @AndrewLeCody, If you need help paying for chemo, and you start a GoFundMe specifically for your chemo, I’ll contribute. As a fellow cancer survivor, hear my heart when I tell you toxic stress is carcinogenic. We survivors need to surround ourselves with love and kindness and put out into the world what we need to get back.
There is so much passive-aggressive bad blood here that needs healing. People who are hurting hurt other people, that’s a fact.