Be the Change; Give Some Change
Crowdfund passes the 25% mark!
TL;DR: We don't get sponsorship, so our message is pure - if you like how we work, please support our crowdfund to reopen the DIY workshop
"Be the change you wish to see happen" - Arleen Lorrance, a school teacher in Brooklyn, NY, (not Gandhi.)
I love the adage to be the change you wish to see in the world, but I also have to recognise that in this very moment we live in a late stage capitalist system, where our means for surviving is often dependent on having enough money or inherited resources to stay alive. And while I would like very much for the Tories to stop funnelling taxpayer money off to their friends, the reality is that they've done it, and will keep doing it, so long as people keep voting for them. (And people will keep voting for them so long as their emotional triggers are pulled via immigration fears, unstable employment, made up culture wars, and a scarcity mindset.)
This is a very long preamble to avoid talking about money.
Money is a complex topic fraught with emotions, moralisation, hang-ups, oppressive structures, and secrecy.
It's also an everyday tool that we use to negotiate transactions with each other.
I'm still wrestling with and untangling from my fears about money but I'm a believer in transparency so I'll just come out and say it:
LBK doesn't have any money. We live hand to mouth, paying back what we owe on a Covid loan, paying all our bills, and eking out a small income to the mechanics. It's a very unstable way to work, and has only become more unstable this past year with the manufactured "cost of living crisis" and the price of bike parts doubling.
We are not a charity. We are a company limited by guarantee, meaning we have no shareholders to tell us what to do. We are structured as a not-for-profit, and operate unofficially as a worker co-operative. This means that 99% of the time decisions are made by consensus; very rarely do I step in with my director hat to make a call. And now Silvi has come on board as a second director, with the aim for all 4 of us to become co-directors soon.
I don't believe in charities. The charity industrial complex uses them as shell companies to funnel rich people's wealth away so that they don't have to pay tax. Many of them are used to greenwash / pinkwash / gaywash the dirty deeds of corporations (see: Earth Day / International Women's Day / Pride for examples.) I do wish to differentiate this from true grassroots organisations/charities, many of which are run by the very people they support (a good thing). But there are grassroots charities that often end up filling the gap where government should be. (See: food banks)
If a charity exists, its purpose should be to make itself redundant. The point is to solve a problem, otherwise you are just profiting off of people’s pain points.
WEAPONISED ALTRUISM
I don't believe in the volunteer economy. I think it is yet again another way for capitalism to exploit labour via guilt tripping.
When I first started working on the idea of LBK in 2011, I would lurk on the US/UK bike forums and read about their trials and tribulations. I also visited as many DIY workshops as I could, and spoke to the workers to get an idea of how things were run. Something that struck me as odd was that many community bike projects ran on donations and volunteers, instead of an hourly rate for both the student and instructor. Why would you work at a job you hated, only to go volunteer somewhere you loved? Yes, this was good for patrons, but it made it difficult to reliably stay open. If you didn’t have enough money to pay rent (and your squatting laws were all in favour of landlords) then you wouldn’t be able to remain open. Volunteers were not required to come in, and so if people didn't show up, the workshop just wouldn't open. It's understandable that people would have to prioritise a job where they were paid over working their volunteer shift. This also meant that you would need a lot of volunteers to pool from. Another thing I noticed was the tension between paid and volunteer staff - if workers were doing essentially the same jobs, this distinction between those being paid and those who weren't resulted in resentment and folks leaving. This also happened at LBK early on, and I decided we wouldn't run the DIY workshop on a mix of paid/volunteer labour - everyone would be paid the same wage.
In my 20+ years of working with volunteers at different organisations in different ways, I have come to this conclusion: volunteers are great for one-off events or short term projects that have a clear beginning and end. For anything that is ongoing, people must be paid for their labour.
Having the free time to volunteer is a luxury that many cannot afford. Upon writing this draft of the newsletter, I uncovered a memory that up until now I thought was insignificant: in 2017 I gave a talk about my book (How to Build a Bike) at the Bikerowave, a bike kitchen in LA. Afterwards, a board member (an old white man) gave me grief for having the gall to charge for our instruction and time. I felt bad, and couldn't find the words to defend myself - he was merely repeating the fear I had in my own heart. Meanwhile at the very same bike kitchen, a few young women came up to me and told me they were so happy to meet a woman mechanic and hear about a woman-led bike kitchen, and our targeted Women and Gender-variant nights. They each expressed still feeling uncomfortable in their pale/male/stale community workshop environments and were wondering if and how things could change. I only realised last week that these two things were related. If you are retired and have time to give (especially in holding a position of power), your presence and opinion are going to shape the environment that you're in.
For over a decade I used to beat myself up because LBK had a different work environment, and wasn't a "real" bike kitchen that ran on donations. Only after writing the draft for this newsletter did I realise that that model of workshop is replicating patriarchal hierarchy and control. Who has the time to volunteer? Who tends to hold the knowledge required to assist others in repairing bikes? Not women, and not people of colour. No wonder I felt bad. I was going against the grain. The cop was in my head, telling me that paying workers for their time and expertise was wrong, and I should give it all away for free, and yet I still did it because I love the people I work with and they should be valued and compensated. The cognitive dissonance had been causing a constant low level anxiety. Now, after this realisation, I do not feel bad at all.
So the question now becomes, why do you exist?
To serve the customer or to serve the worker?
When I first started out I thought it was the former, but now I believe it is the latter. The workers will own the means of production. We provide a fantastic service because we love what we do, we love where we work, and we are compensated. And that will be beneficial to the student, always.
I dream of giving young people (esp young women and nb people) a different future, a different way of being, a different way of working, a different way of living. I don't want to keep recreating the same structures of oppression in workplaces. It's not been easy to change this, the deck is stacked against us. Rents are skyrocketing, the price of parts keeps rising, and we are still living under the oppresive structures of sexism, racism, ableism, etc.
Friend, you have the opportunity to give us the chance to reopen the DIY workshop and start over again, and an older & wiser me is inspired and motivated to see how we can structure things for the better.
The irony of us asking for donations in this instance is not lost on me - however, we are not an organisation that regularly depends on them. 99% of the time our income comes directly via labour. This is an exceptional circumstance for us, (though sadly becoming more and more common for many these days.)
Still, we are not sponsored by any corporations (they probably wouldn’t touch us with a 10ft pole - the feeling is mutual.) Over the past 12 years I have applied for a dozen grants but only got two. We have done one successful crowdfund and we are now doing our second. People power seems to be our way forward.
Our message is pure. Help us keep it that way.
MAY CLASS SALE!
Get £10 off any class when you use the code: LBKclass10
Valid on any class, even ones in June.
Be quick! Book before the 31st of May!
END TWIN CITIES WITH ISRAEL
I only just learned last week that the city of Hackney (where LBK is located and where I live) is also twinned with Haifa in Israel.
Sign the petition, call on Hackney Council to immediately end its twinning with Haifa, and end its complicity with Israel's ongoing crimes.
That’s all for this week friends.
Thank you so so SO much for donating to our GoFundMe! We are over 25% funded, and y’all have been so generous. So far 148 kind souls from this mailing list have donated. If you haven’t yet donated, now’s your chance! People power means that if our entire mailing list donated £10 each, we’d reach our goal in no time. Our goal is to get to £15k by the 31st of May. We have 15 days!
Help us get there. Whether you donate or share, your help is invaluable. Thank you again!
I leave you with 82 year old South Londoner Anne Jones cycling up Mont Ventoux on the 76th anniversary of the ongoing Nakba. You can read more about Anne here.
Ride on,
Jenni x
