Ah. (Laughs.) I’ve not had very good experiences with meetings. Well, I mean, on the whole they are quite important and useful ways of spending time. But you do get meetings which drag on. People taking the opportunity to quote Marx endlessly or other things they’ve read. They’re just taking the chance to make speeches. It can be quite a frustrating experience. If they could just stop doing that, it would be fantastic!
Despite what I just said, even with those slightly less productive meetings, it’s often quite energising being in a room with people who feel the same way as you about the way things are, and wanting to do something about it.
It’s quite a nice feeling, I find.
Woman of colour, 20
Is this like therapy or something? I’m not good at impromptu interviews. A lot of people feel that meetings serve no real point and want to just go out and do things. Other people, who know about the existence of logistics, know meetings are an essential part of making anything happen – at all.
So there’s frantic debate between people trying to get the meeting done, piece by piece, and people distracting the meeting out of boredom, or complaining about the uselessness of meetings.
This problem is going to remain until activists learn to provide an education about the purpose of meetings, the alternatives to meetings, and why meetings are the best available option.
Man of colour, 19