Colluding with Oppression Hurts

Colluding With Oppression Hurts

Week 151
I saw evil at work at work today.
First I was vulnerable, coasting on a high, that my project to make some room for good education, got approved, that the guy from the Mayor’s office Lucha met at the adult educators’ conference invited me to a meeting, likes the writing by reading project is interested in supporting him and indicated with coded words (he let drop words like values, empower, collaboration, even popular education) that he’s a comrad of sorts, Solly even invited me with Xiomara to the meeting with the new vendors (who will take over for our current one, have no space yet, descended like vultures on the possibility of taking over our current space); deluded by my high that something benign could happen here
That I could keep my sights on the humanity of these people I work with, decide to believe their humanity, is what’s real and not the harshness, the cruelty, the house slavery, the backstabbing.
I saw the notes Solly wrote into Lucha’s report. Already to please Xiomara, Solly has turned on Lucha. It could be anybody. It could be me. The blood red ink on the report said things like, “Is this your job?”, “Why are you talking about this here?” “Why are you writing as if this is the first time you report on this when you met with me one on one and should have written in that context?” “So from now on when one of them is absent the meeting will be rescheduled?” And then later when the same rescheduled meeting is mentioned in another section: “Get my point?”
The tone of the blood red writing was hostile.
How do you flag, call, identify bullying when the whole culture is based on bullying?
Lucha is being bullied. It’s barnyard stuff. It’s pecking order. It’s pack leading and neck biting and belly showing and rolling over.
It made me sick.
I went into the bathroom, closed myself in a stall and cried. I am made to collude with oppression and that hurts. I am made to hurt others and that hurts. I don’t know how to help Lucha, be an ally to Lucha.
I spied. I saw the blood red report on her desk. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was like watching an accident on the road. I rubber necked. I’d gone to her desk to take back my stapler she borrowed the day before. And there it was, set on her chair by Solly, bleeding red ink.
How can I help Lucha? I imagine myself walking into Solly’s office and saying, “I can’t collude with your burocratic bullying. I quit.” And then I remember my mortgage, and my legal debts for Ori, and my wanting to go see Machi if I can find out where it is he is.
I am possessed I don’t know by what audacity and I go Xerox the report. I know I have time. Lucha is out in the field. I hoard my copy of the battered document. I go into a bathroom stall and read it.