I Have Completed My Accountability Process and Found Myself Innocent

Hi friends. Some of you have noticed I haven’t been at Thursday potluck since March. I’ve been doing my work. Today I’m ready to share that my accountability process is complete, and after a lot of deep reflection, I have found myself innocent. I know that will be hard for some of you to hear. Sit with that.

For anyone who only knows the version going around the group chat: in March, I redistributed $3,800 from the Porch Pantry mutual aid fund to a working artist in our community. The working artist was my band. The money pressed 300 copies of our debut LP on marbled vinyl, which, if you’ve ever held a marbled pressing, is its own kind of mutual aid.

Rae, who keeps the fund’s spreadsheet, called me in about it. I want to be precise here: she called me in through a shared Google Sheet with my name highlighted in red, which I experienced as surveillance. I don’t think Rae is a cop. I do think the spreadsheet was cop-coded.

The house set up an accountability pod with two facilitators trained in transformative justice, and I entered it in good faith. It became clear pretty quickly that the pod was structurally compromised. Everyone in it had seen the spreadsheet. They kept centering the numbers. At no point did anyone ask how the record sounded.

I dissolved the pod after the third request for a repayment date and mapped a new one, grounded in care: my bassist, my ex Juniper (who still thinks I’m a lot, but good), a guy from my Tuesday men’s circle who has also done a lot of work, and my therapist, who I see on a sliding scale (the bottom). I facilitated, because centering my own healing is part of the work, and honestly, who knows my harm better than me?

We met four times: twice on our porch on Cedar, once in Clark Park, and once on Discord because the bassist had COVID. We used a talking piece, which was my Fender, which meant I mostly held it. We did check-ins. We named our needs. My need was to be found innocent, and I’m proud to say the pod honored it.

Our findings, reached by consensus:

1. Harm occurred.

2. Most of it happened to me, via the Google Sheet, the group chat, and the energy at Thursday potluck.

3. Repayment reproduces the logic of debt, which is carceral, so I won’t be participating in it.

4. Rae is invited to a restorative circle to reflect on her role in my harm. She hasn’t responded, which we’re holding with compassion.

5. I’m innocent.

Before the literal cops of Baltimore Avenue show up with “you can’t run your own accountability process,” I want to be clear: centering the person who caused harm is the whole point of transformative justice. No one is disposable, least of all me.

Some people are saying I “stole” the money. I’d invite those people to examine why they’re so attached to property. Property is theft, which means that technically I un-stole it.

And every time I say this, someone barges in with “What about the families the fund was for?” I am begging you to understand that this is derailing. Yes, those families deserve care too. But I am talking about my process. Nobody in my pod needed groceries in March.

I want to name my positionality as a white cis man. I also want to name that being a white cis man in these spaces is incredibly hard right now, and that almost nobody has asked how I’m doing, except my pod, who asked every session because it was on the agenda.

Rae has since blocked me everywhere. I have respected that boundary by moving our correspondence into the report’s appendix and asking Juniper to tell her I’m bringing the lentil thing to potluck Thursday. I hope the conversation can happen there, where the food is shared and nobody has access to the fund’s spreadsheet.

Our LP, Harm Reduction, is out now on Bandcamp: $28 marbled, $22 black. The pod agreed that proceeds should go toward my repair, beginning with the pressing costs. I’ll have copies at potluck for anyone prepared to support the process in person.

Paid subscribers can read the full 40-page report, including a timeline of Rae’s behavior. Sliding scale, $5 to $500. If I’ve harmed you, please pay the bottom of the scale.