I went to my first session at the conference. Three very well-spoken women gave a very impressive presentation on the basics of fundraising. I got the distinct feeling that any one of them could have talked for an hour on any one of the PowerPoint slides.

There was too much information to even try and take meaningful notes (I gave up after a couple of minutes) so I went up after to see if I could get a copy of the presentation. They were, understandably, surrounded by people asking question.

When I finally got to ask one of them she took one look at my badge (the “media” one was showing), coldly informed me that this was a “closed event” (delegates only, no media allowed), immediately took three steps away and started talking to someone else.

I flipped my badge and got the attention of another of the presenters. She had heard the exchange and (much more kindly) told me that she couldn’t give the material to anyone in the media. I smiled and told her I wasn’t the “real” media, just a blogger, and received a sincere laugh in return. I promised that I wouldn’t publish their secrets on the internet so she took my card and promised to send it if they got permission to mail it out to the attendees.

This was my first experience at being treated poorly because of my job. It was almost as if I was the enemy and reminded me of another experience I had about ten years ago.

I was doing yard work in my front yard and watched as two black women worked their way up the street going door to door. When they got to my house they stopped and pleasently asked if they could talk to me about Jesus (they were either Mormon or Baptists, I don’t remember which). Not being in the mood for being converted that particular afternoon, a sudden inspiration moved me to say, “No thank you. I’m Jewish.” (I’m not, although I might be if I didn’t have to learn Hebrew. That’s hard.)

The woman actually took a step away from me, leaned back to literally look down her nose at me and, with the most contempt that I’ve ever heard in four words, said, “Oh. You’re a Jew.”

I was stunned. And insulted to my core, even though it wasn’t true. Never had I seen such hatred evoked so quickly. As she walked away I felt like yelling, “Oh yeah! Take your two hundred years of oppression and shove it! Two thousand years of hatred, baby. Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it!” (Actually my first instinct was only part of that and it got filled out later in my imagination, but you have to admit that it would have been cool.)

Anyway, I have the distinct feeling that I’ll never see that PowerPoint presentation.

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