Links to Self-Care Resources; OTW: Racism in the Workplace

[wistfuljane]

Since living through Trumpism and also unprecedented times, I've been reading and listening to discussions on how to manage from becoming overwhelmed and burnout, and two of the takeaways I have are to identify (1) what I want to do and (2) when to take a break or disconnect.

Like for RaceFail '09, I decided to try and be intentional in uplifting BIPOC voices and actively seeking BIPOC works. When Trump was elected U.S. President in 2016, I looked up my local community action groups and worked to keep abreast of local political happenings (and boy, the interpersonal drama of just the Democratic Party in my local city with a population of 150k). With the OTW-ness, well, I don't fully know what I want to do yet beside continuing to support efforts to make fandom more diverse and anti-racist.

Here are some articles, podcasts (with transcripts) and resources that I found helpful: Life Kit: A Year After George Floyd's Murder, Coping With The Effects Of Racial Trauma, Everyday Feminism: 7 Questions to Help You Balance Self-Care and Resistance, Captain Awkward: Some Social Media & Media Engagement Hygiene And Self-Care Lessons I've Learned From Spending Several Years On This Hellmouth (The Half-Assed Activist), All Things Considered: Beating Burnout: Sisters Write Book To Help Women Overcome Stress Cycle (see also Separate the Stress From the Stressor and Complete the Stress Response Cycle), Our Body Politic: The Power of Mindfulness and Resistance Manual: Tools of Resistance (scroll down "Self-Care Tools").

But this is just a roundabout way for me to share and express well-wishes to fellow BIPOC fans who are dealing with the grief of having to again defend -- or seeing fellow BIPOC fans having to again defend -- their humanity in fannish spaces that they helped built, grew and contributed, of having to again defend against racism in their fannish spaces and of the continual sense of loss for that shared communities. I just hope everyone is taking care of themselves ❤️‍🩹

What happened is, well, beside, OTW continuing to allow racist harassment within its workplace and public spaces and what was previously revealed of its volunteer abuse and mismanagement, OTW continues failing to recognize the structural racism in its own organization and retaliated against a volunteer of color for trying to hold the organization accountable to address said structural racism. OTW also has failed to recognize geopolitical complexities and endanger its Mainland Chinese volunteers.

Here are dhobikikutti's testimonies: Letter to the 2023 Board of Directors of the Organization for Transformative Works, Copy of public comment made to Legal's New Post, Copies of Public Comments Left Elsewhere, Copy of CCAP sent to me by OTW Chairs, and My Response to It, Demand for Suspension of OTW Board Member, and Racism within the OTW.

For more contexts of the above posts, see synonymous's Letter to dhobikikutti from the OTW chairs re: CCAP + responses, Emyn's response to dhobikikutti, and dhobkikutti's response to Emyn (though I wouldn't exactly characterize Kutti's post as a response to Emyn but more of a personal testimony of workplace racism), Alex Tischer's pervasive racism, and a call by volunteers for Tischer's suspension, Controversy surrounding a targeted question during a candidate Q&A and The OTW's mistreatment of Chinese volunteers.

Here are some roundups and summaries that I've been following:

• synonymous: Roundup of the many exposes on the issues with AO3/OTW from discussions on key forums
• 221loislane: An Account of the Current OTW/AO3 Allegations & Additional Events
• aroceu: what’s been happening at the otw?
• fandomantiracism: A pattern of dismissal and retaliation: the experiences of Zixin Z. and the Chinese volunteers

I will also link to these two posts about OTW's "harebrained attempt to do an american interventionalism on hong kong copyright law" in 2022 (Tumblr login required).

ICYMI, I updated Anh, Qiao and Zixin's profiles in OTW Election 2023 with my key takeaways up to the 3rd Recent Discussions Q&As. I also updated Mythical Dragons & Wild Unicorns up to July 17th happenings. I don't know that it's particularly of note, but with some relevancy, I added a section on (awkwardly) navigating that post and comments and beyond which linked to Online Safety Guide and Online Harassment Field Manual and to some works by BIPOC fans to make fandom more diverse and anti-racist (scroll down to "Beyond This Post").

Again, take care and good night!

Comments

[cesy]

Thank you for the link about Hong Kong copyright law, I'd missed that one at the time.

[beatrice_otter]

Thank you so much for this summary and link list, it's very helpful.