"When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark...
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain..."
(Oscar Hammerstein, II)
"On n'arrete pas Voltaire."
(Charles de Gaulle)
“I Cannot and Will Not Cut My Conscience to Fit This Year's Fashions.”
(Lillian Hellman)
"It is also a mistake to seek to suppress speech in the name of equality. Free speech and association are tools for the minority, whoever they are at a given moment."
-David Cole, "Yale: the Power of Speech," NY Review of Books, Jan. 16, 2016
* * * * *
"You never pick a fight you can't win.
Otherwise, you're gonna get your ass kicked."
Even you are recounting based on what happened to you when you tried to stand up for your rights as a human being: to be treated with respect and not discriminated against.
Funny how some people will say "Well, then...you must have been picking a fight."
I believed that principles were worth standing up for.
That is what I tried to do.
I hope I will have helped in furthering a fairer, more balanced discussion of race, discrimination, responsibility, and victim-hood, even though I doubt that in my lifetime my efforts will be acknowledged.
The management of the downtown YMCA picked a fight, not me. And they thought they won in the end. But did they really "win"?
In America what looks like winning is losing, and vice versa.
Stifling open discussion and/or succumbing to prejudice was not what I thought Seattle was about.
This is what I learned at the downtown YMCA in Seattle.
But an individual CAN stand up, even if others remain silent because they are afraid.
I didn't realize that not all liberals were, first and foremost, interested in being kind or fair.
Thank you, downtown Seattle Y. You taught me a lesson.
Funny how people can show very different aspects of their character depending on the situation...
Cynthia Klever undoubtedly believes that she "won" on July 7, 2015 by interrogating me to the point where I broke down. What she doesn't know is that by lying--something most people do not realize when she is the middle of some "pretend" game she takes obvious delight in--it was she who exposed herself, to me.
What a game of truth or consequences life is. And the downtown YMCA is complicit. I suspect every staff member (not necessarily every volunteers--I applaud their idealism) is compromised in some way.
Try to get a peek behind the curtains and see who is pulling the strings.
Who doesn't want to be exposed.
This civic institution is as American as...
Businesses are responsible for the conduct of their employees.
A consumer has the right to know whether members use obscene, violent language or if there are security issues (theft, stalking, bullying). Businesses should not try to block unfavorable reviews.
On July 9, 2015 I, a disabled senior citizen and a member since 2002, was bullied and verbally assaulted by Cynthia Klever, director of the downtown YMCA, a young white woman in her office. The experience traumatized me.
The Y's core values of "respect," "caring," responsibility," and "honesty" were flagrantly violated by Ms. Klever.
The Y selectively enforces its rules of conduct, which is discriminatory.
Contempt and hostility invite the same in return. I decline the invitation to lie.
* * * * *
If we do not speak this week, I will put your membership on hold until I return from vacation, which is Friday July 17th." --Cynthia Klever in email dated July 8, 2015
BULLYING is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power, which distinguishes bullying from conflict.
(Wikipedia)
I was bullied at the downtown YMCA by several employees, including director Klever.
At the meeting of July 9, 2015, there was a power imbalance that included (1) white perogative and (2) having two people of the same race, gender, and approximately the same age against one of a different race, gender, orientation, and age in the room. They kept saying to me, "What difference does it make?"
Ms. Klever resorted to the use of a threat and a false pretext ("to resolve an email") to get me to meet with her.
Noisily chewing a huge wad of gum in my face, she was at first "friendly." Then she began to aggressively interrogate me. Finally, she dropped her customary jolly facade and in an scornful, insulting tone of voice, she harrangued me blaming and accusing me of things that were patently untrue.
Through snow blizzards, shingles, ankle and toe fractures, acid reflux, and knee pain, over the past 23 years, I have swum at Evans, Colman, Garfield, Queen Anne, 24 Fitness, Meredith Matthews, Seattle U., downtown Y pools, and from Honolulu to Boston and San Francisco.
Yet Ms. Klever viciously castigated me for causing problems for other swimmers. That is simply not the truth, as lifeguards can testify to. In fact, for the past 2+ years I have uneventfully swum 7 miles a week at the downtown Y.
The irony is that she had admitted to me that (1) she herself had difficulty not hitting the lane dividers and (2) the lanes were narrow.
Asking the Y to abide by its own rules is not, as Ms. Klever charged, bending over backwards to accomodate my needs.
She did not allow me the time to answer her accusations. Nor did she respond to the many points I brought up in the "offending" email. And she dismissed out of hand my concerns about bullying by Y staff.
Several times I was provoked to the point of tears. Stripped of defenses, I let slip out an expletive, that Ms. Klever pounced on to, in the same second, terminate my membership of 13 years.
Treated like a common criminal, I was told to get my things and leave at once.
In a shell-shocked daze, I forgot to lock my locker after I had pleaded to be able to take a shower and say good-bye to friends.
This experience left me feeling betrayed, humiliated, and demeaned.
Legal action appears to be the only recourse.
* * * * *
In the past year I had already noticed that Ms. Klever prevaricated on several occasions. Ten months ago, for instance, in response to my dismay at staff gossip, grinning from ear to ear, her rejoinder was: "Gossip? Gosh, us?? No...this is the YMCA!"
I had nothing to hide by meeting with Ms. Klever but everything to lose by doing it in her office, where what she said, and how she said it, would be shielded from scrutiny.
I believe that the Highest Judge will say, "This was a pre-meditated attack on your part, not a discussion. I think you know this very well. You relentlessly goaded L. past the breaking point."
Running aground with the downtown YMCA by taking it at its words ("values" and "mission"), I discovered they were not living up to them.
No, I had not spent time shooting the breeze with Ms. Klever in her office.
But, in a nutshell, I discovered that it is personal agendas that drive this YMCA, not "mission," which--after all--is distributed in sheets and plastered on the walls, courtesy of the national organization.
But when staff tell you confidentially that they are being harassed [at this YMCA]," you know something's wrong.
Under Ms. Klever, racial disparities and stereotyping have only grown, while security has steadily worsened.
The downtown Y did not provide for me as a minority a safe environment.
As long as our civic institutions engage in and cover up such behaviors within their ranks, we will not stop bullying among our youth.
If this had been about accusations of racism by an African-American member, the downtown YMCA could not have sloughed off its responsibilities ("we've bent over backwards for you") and, instead, pummeled the victim. Young, white heads would have been rolling, instead of eyes, if that had been the case.
I have never experienced more racism or bullying in my entire life than I did at the downtown Seattle YMCA.
* * * * *
In the past, several young lifeguards got off clean with dereliction of duty while playing fast and loose with the truth. Naive and foolish of me to believe that this business would live up to its creed, bottom to top.
Google "Danny Chen." Or Matthew Shepherd. Or Bradley Manning.
"...one night dragged him out of bed and across the floor when he failed to turn off a water heater after showering."
[New York Times ("Soldier's death raises suspicions," 10/31/11)]
