Cohousing-L Mailing List: EHO logo in advertising WAS Movies or short videos about cohousing (Malin Hansen)

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

I hear concerns about blame but that is not what is asked here! I would 
reiterate Ann's suggestion that we try to not feel attacked or blamed or 
guilted simply because a discussion of race has come up. 
Instead it is valuable to engage in the discussion of what it would mean to do 
something different, to approach the topic differently, to look for strategies 
of outreach?

Perhaps people want a "defined range of difference" but I don't think that skin 
color or disability is actually a good marker for knowing if the person is like 
me. 

In any case, if the intent of a marketing piece is to get people to buy homes 
it is illegal to not have the EHO logo and to show people in the same 
representative portion as they are in the geographic area they are marketing 
within. Your chance of getting caught is approximately 0% (organizations 
devoted to fair housing look for the primary advertising resources in an area 
and then go after them--which is a long and difficult process, even when the 
owner of the advertising resource is a blatant racist. Don't ask me how I know 
this.) But what would be our argument for choosing not to follow the law?

Cohousing faces many opportunities to be the same as US society, or to be 
different. 

This includes issues around the environment, car usage, community building, 
gender, and family style, where many coho's have chosen to be radically 
different; 
disability, economic difference, where we have varied success/interest in being 
part of the status quo, 
and race and ethnicity where only a few communities have made more than a 
limited effort in being different from the status quo.

I was once in an group discussion oppression of various sorts and we were 
divided into people of color and white people, and I spent the whole time in 
that group talking about how I was oppressed as a woman. Then I was put in a 
group of all women and I spent the whole time talking about how I was oppressed 
as a queer person. 

It wasn't until much later that I realized that sometimes I should spend some 
time thinking about the advantages I automatically get as white person, as a 
comparatively wealthy person, as a person with access to formal education, etc. 
Not to feel guilty, but to think about how I can use that information to affect 
the status quo.

-Liz
Elizabeth M. Magill
www.mosaic-commons.org
508-450-0431
Berlin, MA



On Apr 12, 2015, at 11:00 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com> 
wrote:
> 
>> On Apr 12, 2015, at 10:35 AM, Ann Zabaldo <zabaldo [at] earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
>> While many areas of the country may not have the density of nonwhites that 
>> Washington DC has truly you can't be telling me that there are so few 
>> minorities in your community that reaching out to them would prove 
>> statistically pointless?  
> 
> But to blame all of cohousing for the shortsightedness of a few, is not fair 
> either. How many Quaker Churches have minority members? Or  Unitarian?
> 
> I worked tirelessly to attract minority parents to a cooperative school years 
> ago. I'll never do it again. You can be open, be sure you post flyers 
> everywhere, pay special attention to speaking in minority neighborhoods and 
> churches, etc. but in the end, people like to  live in groups with a defined 
> range of difference. There is tons of research on this. AND the most 
> effective means of recruiting people to cohousing is acquaintances to 
> acquaintances.
> 
> On accessibility issues, I think the tide has swung as more and more people 
> see that everyone is disabled at some point and universal design is a winner 
> all around.
> 
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Sociocracy: A Deeper Democracy
> http://www.sociocracy.info
> 
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L/
> 
>