Why do some groups of volunteers achieve consensus while others fracture in discord? That is what I asked myself repeatedly during and after the Sept. 16 presentation in City Hall by Jefferson County’s Healthy Together Task Force. How was a county task force, formed in the wake of strong public pushback to a proposal for a county-wide sales tax to fund a new aquatic facility on Port Townsend’s Mountain View Commons, able to unite people from fundamentally different perspectives and achieve consensus after only nine meetings and several site-specific field trips?

A chat with the sole “staff” person on the task force, County Commissioner Greg Brotherton, helped clarified what happened. It’s a process that the current board of the Port Townsend Food Co-op could learn from. 

“It was contentious at first,” Brotherton acknowledged. “But one thing that we had was a shared vision.

“The first thing we did in our first icebreaker was to ask, ‘Why are we here?’ Everyone thought we needed a new aquatic facility, but they all had different ideas about where and what it should be. 

“At one of our last icebreakers, we asked everyone what assumptions they came in with that they changed their minds about. Ultimately, we were willing to listen to each other because we had a shared goal. We were all listening, we had a shared vision, and we were patient with each other. If someone had a different opinion, we listened to it. The attitude was, we’re not afraid of ideas. Ideas we don’t agree with should be talked about rather than tapped down.” 

Brotherton used the analogy of long-term relationship. “Sometimes you have to drop the hot stones,” he said. “We all can go back and be aggrieved by things. It’s so easy to jump back to the most acute pain that you felt in the last fight. But that just means that you’re feeling a lot of pain and you’re not really moving towards consensus.” 

Back to the Co-op, and my several exchanges with Cameron Jones, who is a co-director of Black Lives Matter Jefferson County / Well Organized (BLMJCWO). Jones was summarily removed from the board of the Co-op on July 29 after a hastily called executive session, which caught him and at least one other board member by surprise.

It came to light later that Co-op General Manager Kenna Eaton had felt “threatened” by Jones and took that to the board. Eaton told me Jones’ words “spoke to our Code of Conduct, where we say that directors will always act with civility and kindness, even when we have a disagreement,” as I reported in my Sept. 11 column. 

I have since had a chance to talk to Jones at some length to get his side of events. 

Jones said that as a board member, he spoke with community members and former and current employees of the Co-op who “didn’t paint their work life at the Co-op in the best possible light, especially in relation to Kenna. There’s supposed to be clear communication between employees and the board, but that doesn’t seem to actually happen,” he said.

“In April, I was hoping to have a candid conversation in executive session with the board only about those dynamics, a lack of transparency, and the disconnect between people’s experiences at the Co-op versus what we board members learned from the general manager’s reports.

“I wanted to have that conversation without the GM present. I didn’t want to put her in an awkward position, and I wanted us to be able to feel like we could freely have a conversation. At no point did we ever have a chance to talk about those things because the GM was at pretty much every meeting.”

But at the April board meeting, Jones said he was surprised when another board member asked that Eaton be present at the executive session. Others agreed. Not wishing to rock the boat, he went along with the proposal and proceeded to share everything he had planned to share confidentially. 

Afterwards, when he and Eaton were unlocking their bicycles so they could peddle home, Jones said he “apologized if the conversation was uncomfortable or a little intense. I said that these conversations are hard, but I thought it was good for the store and for the board to be on the same page. I also said it was probably going to be one of many conversations about things like this and she agreed.” 

After that, Jones said he and Eaton “had no other direct communication except maybe some emails.” 

“There were other conversations at board meetings about equity, the need to reinstate an Equity Committee, and the need for a facilitated conversation with a third party to discuss our differences,” he said. 

“When the board ended its Equity Committee in 2022 — their only job was to read a few books — the board and the GM couldn’t even agree on a definition for the term equity, so how could they view everything through the lens of equity if they couldn’t agree on what it meant? There were some tensions in those conversations, but nothing that is atypical when people are coming from different racial and ethnic backgrounds and perspectives.”

Thinking back to my own brief stint on the Co-op Board over five years ago, Jones’ description of the disconnect between the Board and the heart of the Co-op rings true. At Board meetings, I learned what was going on from the General Manager and supervisors who attended those meetings, rather than from employees. When, between meetings, I’d chat with employees, they’d frequently tell me that the Board was something removed — an entity that really didn’t know what was going on. Which was anything but a healthy situation. 

Now, with the departure of Juri Jennings, who resigned because of Jones’ removal from the board and was on the Co-op board when I served on it, only two other longtime board members remain. One is Owen Rowe, board president, and the other an Emeritus member with no voting privileges who has strangely ended up the secretary in charge of all correspondence with Co-op members and owners. 

These two people are playing an outsize role in how the board functions, and with what voice it speaks. 

It is past time for the Co-op Board to call on outside facilitation intimately versed in equity issues to help it unclench its fist. It needs to engage in discussion with Black Lives Matter Jefferson County / Well Organized, acknowledge its contribution to the damage it purportedly sought to repair by jettisoning Jones and alienating Jennings, and get on the right page. 

When the board president asks the GM to contact me to answer questions for my column, it’s reasonable to question the nature of their relationship. The board’s job is not to shield the GM; its job is to supervise its sole employee, the GM; act as a governing body; and receive feedback without fear of retribution. 

Instead, it has fired one equity messenger and precipitated the resignation of the other. With them gone, it has locked elbows and sent members a “GM update on fostering equity, belonging and inclusion,” jointly authored by the board president and general manager. Talk about strange bedfellows.

How can you claim to be “dedicated to operating with integrity and accountability to create a diverse, open and thoughtful community that is welcoming to all” after jettisoning a Person of Color for sharing ideas in tones that express the very marginalization you pledge to end? You need to breathe in and listen to people’s anger and frustration, not tap down ideas and shut them out because their tone and message hurt your feelings or violate your “code of conduct.” Stop insisting on controlling the tenor of the conversation! Really folks, how much person of privilege whiter and hypocritical can you possibly get?

Jason Victor Serinus is a critic of culture, music and audio. A longtime advocate for rights, equality and freedom. Column tips: jvsaisi24@gmail.com