In the spring of this year, POC (Person of color) members of Twin Oaks were invited to write an article to be published unedited in the community's official newsletter, Leaves of Twin Oaks. One such Twin Oaks member, Flinch, wrote an article, "Not A Twin Oaks POC," (follow link and scroll down, short 3 paragraph read).

When I read the article, I was glad that Flinch's views were allowed to be expressed even as he was critical of the prevailing "woke" culture at TwinOaks.

What a disappointment it is to see a "Follow Up" to the article posted on the front page of the TwinOaks website (see the facebook postings on the right sidebar.) Twinoaks actually states, "We apologize for the harm that our presentation of this article without appropriate context has caused," then meanders on to say, "As a community, we feel it is important that equitable space be given for our members’ voices who belong to marginalized and oppressed groups..."

For me, the incident is indicative of how much current politics have overtaken TwinOaks life and how any dissenting viewpoint is dealt with. Twin Oaks loudly trumpets that it wants to hear the voices of people of color, but when one such person bravely writes an article goes against the grain of what they believe a POC should think, he gets shot down - publicly. Or as Flinch wrote, "One of my ideals is that no one should force their values on another, no one should have to conform to another person’s beliefs, but that’s a surprisingly unpopular ideal here at Twin Oaks, a community of idealists."

I hesitated to post this this, as within-community debates get rather down in the weeds. But TO is the largest egalitarian community, and gets talked about here a lot. Interesting to see how different their actions are from their claimed ideals.