So...a story about a really frustrating day in my past: A few years back, a theatre company I was in was taking on new members. It was a complicated process, surprisingly. The theatre had recently undergone a management change. Before this year, the membership process was...1/x

...pretty opaque. Essentially, the former A.D. just picked the new members. But now, in the new regime, we wanted to do things in a more democratic way, more open, more fair. I was on the playwriting committee and brought some of the selection techniques I'd learned...2/x

...at a different, much healthier organization. Lots of consensus-based decision making, hearing people out, very transparent "voting." One of the relics of the old selection process was a "black ball" system where one person could, by secret ballot, block anyone's membership 3/x

That was obviously not a cool thing, so the playwriting committee did away with that right off. If someone had an issue with someone, they had to say it, stand by it and they could always be outweighed by everyone else. All with open discussion. 4/x

The way the process worked was each discipline (playwriting, directing, acting, etc.) had their own committee, each committee would decide on the final slate of candidates and then all the committees would join up and vote. 5/x

While mostly people were in their own discipline, some artist members were hyphenates so there were all sorts of people on the committees. Including people who had served on membership selection committees before. With the black balls and the secrecy. 6/x

So the committees get together and everything's gone okay. Except for the directing committee. They come in with their hair on fire. They have hit a snag. A real, real snag. Someone was black-balled. And the entire committee knew who it was. And why. 7/x

See, this one person, an actor, was mad at one of the directing candidates because the actor felt that they had been unfairly passed over for a leading role. And now they were taking it out on the director. And b/c the committee had kept the black ball provision...8/x

They were able to block this director that everyone else wanted in the membership. What made it even more frustrating was they wouldn't openly admit to the black ball. It had been a secret vote. This person just sat there, smiling smugly, while everyone in the room...9/x

Just LOST THEIR SHIT. We all yelled about fairness. About democracy. About the clear consensus in the room. But nothing would move them. And we couldn't move forward because a serious injustice was being done but we were all powerless to stop it. 10/x

It sucked. A lot. And that day, we just...gave up. We all walked away, made all the other votes and moved on. Yeah, that shitty person won that day. But they never worked at that theatre again. And the next year's membership committee changed the rules...11/x

So it could never happen again. And it never did. We never had to face one, obnoxious, recalcitrant person stopping everything from moving on, stopping what everyone knew was inevitable, ever again. And the offending person slipped into obscurity...

And that director got in the next year and remains a respected member of the community.

That's what's on my mind. One person, standing athwart history and majority, saying no. And how they just...wash away.

Hope that helps. Sorry for the epic.