Open Membership

Last month I conducted a series of workshops at a brace cooperative houses in Austin TX. While there I got into an interesting conversation with folks about the pros and cons of open membership (where anyone can join if their rent check clears). I want to share the highlights of that exchange.

The Bright Side of Open Membership
a. This resonates with those who dream of a society where everyone is treated equally—which is definitely different than the society we have. If we're committed to diversity as a core value, isn't this what it means?

b. Who are we to judge others, anyway?

c. If I have trouble living with someone else, it may say as much about my flaws as theirs. If so, aren't I better off facing it than avoiding it?

d. If we commit to personal growth, then open membership leads to hybrid vigor, and serves as a prophylactic against stultification.

e. It's simpler—there's nothing to do but take who comes. It neatly avoids potentially awkward and challenging conversations about the perceived faults of prospectives. Whew.

f. Being selective about membership smacks of privilege and self-righteousness, and can all too easily be used as a glib justification for sustaining oppression. Yuck.

g. It reinforces us/them dynamics—a major pothole on the road to world peace.

The Dark Side
1. Not everyone drawn to community has the skills to do it well, and it's far cheaper to weed out bad apples at the start.

2. Not everyone can live together. Open membership more or less guarantees that you'll eventually encounter the limits of what that means—and it's no fun once you're there. Yes, point e) above means you can save time on the front end by not being selective, but you pay on the back end when the problem you avoided in the beginning is much more painful and difficult to address. In short, it's a poor bargain.

3. Community does not tend to attract people who have an appetite for dealing with conflict, yet open membership significantly increases the frequency with which you'll encounter it. Is that a good idea?

4. Over the course of my 40 years of community living and working with more than 100 intentional communities, I have witnessed a handful of times when groups with open membership have struggled to rid themselves of troublesome members who seemed perfectly at peace with their difficult behavior (even to the point of witnessing the police physically hauling out a deadbeat who wouldn't pay their rent). Each time it was incredibly expensive in terms of time and energy to navigate the extraction.

• • •

OK, so what's the way through this? Let's look at some of the key issues.

—Diversity
If you think about it, you can't actually live at either end of the diversity spectrum. On the closed end, it's impossible to avoid some level of diversity no matter how homogenous a membership group you desire (after all, we're not clones). On the open end, you can't be all things to all people. You'll have to face the reality world limits of how much diversity you can support. You'll have to make choices about what to prioritize. Isn't it better to make these choices consciously, rather than have it determined by chance (where you accept whatever diversity knocks on your door until you're full)?

—Being a Little Bit Pregnant About Discrimination
Upon reflection, it's an exaggeration that open membership means no boundaries at all. For example, you'll probably insist that people pay their rent or HOA dues. If members become delinquent (there may be a grace period if you fall behind, but ultimately there's a hard stop) they are booted out. Further, there are probably some baseline prohibitions, such as no illegal activity, or no violent behavior. Depending on the severity of the risk, the offending member may be given a warning and a second chance, but eventually they'll be asked to leave if they don't bring their behavior in line with acceptable community norms.

So where's the line? What kind of discernment makes sense?

Because communities, at root, are trying to create and sustain cooperative culture, I believe it's appropriate to screen prospective members for the skills needed to make that work. In my experience (30+ years of helping cooperative groups navigate their dreck) it's clear that groups cannot tolerate many non-cooperative members and still have a positive experience. Even one can be a nightmare.

Thus, I advocate screening prospective members for cooperative skills, by which I mean the ability to: 

o  Articulate clearly what you think.  

o  Articulate clearly what you feel.

o  Hear accurately what others say (and be able to communicate that to the speaker such that they feel heard).

o  Hear critical feedback without walling up or getting defensive.

o  Function reasonably well in the presence of non-trivial distress in others.

o  Shift perspectives to see an issue through another person's lens.

o  See potential bridges between two people who are at odds with each other.

o  See the good intent underneath strident statements.

o  Distinguish clearly between a person's behavior being out of line and that person being "bad."

o  Own your own stuff.

o  Reach out to others before you have been reached out to yourself.

o  Be sensitive to the ways in which you are privileged.

When these skills are absent, you should be very afraid. 

I also think it's a good idea to articulate the group's vision and common values, and check to see that prospective members agree to abide by them. Revisiting foundation values every time a new member wants to rock the boat is exhausting and you aren't likely to be very happy or effective in the world if everyone is seasick most of the time.

How Elitist Is This? 
Good question. I think there remains plenty of room for a robust response to those committed to diversity and wanting to tackle issues of oppression and privilege, such as:
• Working constructively with passion and emotional expression
• Welcoming non-rational communication styles
• Doing the work to understand what it will take to attract desirable under-represented populations, which might include a focus on race, class, ethnicity, mental health, or people with disabilities, to name a few.

If the group is paralyzed by an inability to work through differences—because the it lacks sufficient communication skills to do so—you aren't going to be an attractive group and you aren't going to be particularly inspiring, either as a model of social change or in whatever work you do. Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that groups select for people who are meek or mild-mannered, or who won't raise issues. Rather, I am saying it's OK to discriminate against people who are stuck in their viewpoint and refuse to consider any other.

I say, let the non-cooperative folks duke it out amongst themselves. I don't have time for that shit.