[Dialogue] Response to Corlyn Antenen

[David Walters]

Carolyn Antenen  wrote:

(David's response in orange)

Thanks for your witness. It was interesting to understand more about your 
perspective.



Obviously each person experiences reality differently. Reading a witness 
about how one person

experiences a situation does not necessarily tell how things are, only how 
that person

experiences it.



I think it is important to respect Marge and Margaret's witnesses for the 
telling of their own perspective.

I have never tried to anything other than to honor both of them. I speak out 
of gratitude for the impact that have had on my life.



It is inappropriate to publicly dispute or contradict such a thing. After 
all, each person's perspective becomes their story. I have not sought to 
"dispute or contradict" anything that they said in their witnesses. Maybe 
what you are saying is that you do in fact "dispute or contradict" what they 
have borne witness to.



The Board of Directors has tried to respect the privacy of former staff 
members and to discuss changes

only in a structural manner, avoiding details on problems in operations that 
could be construed as individual  criticism.

What is the point of causing embarrassment to colleagues that we respect and 
wish to treat in a dignified manner? I and some of my other colleagues 
around the country would be interested in how you and the board have former 
staff with "diginity". The manner in which they were fired resembled the HR 
practices of a multinational corporation rather than a nonprofit concerned 
about the human factor in development.



Much of your discourse sounds so personal in nature, that I am unable to 
appropriately comment. I reacting to the pain of colleagues in personal, 
then so be it! I am one of TWC.



I certainly appreciate that the changes at ICA USA may be painful and 
confusing to many of our long time supporters.

"Confused" does not begin to described my response to the actions of your 
board.
As with anything in Life, many others would see the same situation from not 
only a different viewpoint, but all together

differently.



As to your statement "Then to sit and watch as a small but otherwise trusted 
group of colleagues making some awfully inane

decisions about the future in order deal with an imbalanced balance sheet." 
I can strongly say that the balance sheet

was not why the ICA USA Board made the decisions it made in October. If the 
deficit in the balance was not the reason for the firings, then please tell 
us what was the rationale.



Perhaps you have not stayed fully aware or  have significant gaps in 
knowledge of ICA USA's structure in 2006-7

from the pre 1984 era?  You may not know that the staff has been fully 
salaried with benefits, hired to meet the mission of a nonprofit 
organization? I have read all of the 990 returns for ICA and EI for the five 
years preceding the firings. It is interesting that the 2206 returns are not 
available on the web. My analysis of the data in these returns causes my to 
believe that the board has not been completely transparent to the rest of us 
with its actions.



Thus accountability would be connected to performance and outcomes. ICA USA 
answers to its program recipients, donors, the IRS, and various 
constituents.



We honor our legacy but strive for modern best practices on all levels of 
our organization.  Please explain these best practices and how you are 
implementing them.



By chance have you followed the communications that the Board has sent out 
since October?  We are working hard to help colleagues understand not only 
the need

to change our staffing model, but new directions and ways to participate. I 
would be interested to understand where we've mis communicated with you, so 
that we can

do a better job. I certainly have read everything on your website and all of 
the emails posted to the ICA and OE lists. It is not so much what you and 
other boards members have communicated

but rather what you have not communicated.

I was unsuccessful at reaching you at the phone number 334-222-7062 that is 
listed under your name. My new number is 344 370 0173, Perhaps you would be 
interested in sharing how you've used EI/ICA methods

at the Living Legacy event in October?  It appears that you and the staff 
and present staff have decided to use the "Living Legacy event" as a 
lets-all-get-together-and-feel-good-soiree to provide cover for the inane 
and insane actions of your board. I will not be attending..





David Walters



PS I don't know if you ever took RS1, but you might ask Jay about the use of 
the term "floating". It certainly describes you and the board.



The following is my witness on the earthrise list to which she was resonding 
to :
Thirty-seven years I boarded a night owl flight from Atlanta to Chicago. 
Someone picked me up at O'Hare and drove me to a strange place in the middle 
of the westside ghetto. I woke the next morning to sound of a gong and some 
idiot screaming, "Praise the Lord! Christ is Risen. With only a few hours 
sleep it was all I could do to make the appropriate response, "He is Risen 
indeed!" I felt like a stranger in a strange land. Thus began a long journey 
that I am still own.



After breakfast, I was assigned to a team charged with converting a sad 
looking, dirty, grimy space that had once been a gymnasium into a meeting to 
seat five hundred souls that would come together a week later for the summer 
research assembly. We were supposed to do this with little to no budget. All 
went well until the last day when Joe Mathews walked in and told us that we 
needed something on the north wall. He said wouldn't it be great if we had a 
big set of triangles to symbolize the three parts of the Local Church Model. 
It was to late to go out at that time of night (Lowe's and Home Depot had 
not yet been invented). So we scoured the basements and attics of several 
buildings and came up with enough to build a huge mobile suspended against 
the wall. This next morning Joe was pleased.



That week taught me what can happen when a group of committed human beings 
can accomplish when they decide to take what have been given to carry a 
specific task. Over the next twelve years as an order member and movement 
colleague, I got to participate in making the same kind of miracles happen 
over and over again. This my first lesson in team work



About half way through the summer program I was standing out in the 
courtyard one evening with two or three other people when Joe walked and 
joined the conversation. Someone began to tell him about the trouble 
everyone was having getting the little canteen. It seems that the colleague 
assigned to run it would not show up at the appointed time to open up. About 
the time that Joe was explaining the he had assigned this fellow to run it 
and not much else for the summer, up he walks. Joe turned around and became 
his former army persona and addressed this guy down with is colorful 
language and by saying: "If you want to be a son-of-a-bitch - go somewhere 
else and be one. But you don't get to

Be one around me." He then stooped over and began chatting with a young girl 
that had been tugging on his pants leg trying to get his attention. This was 
first real lesson existential style and radical integrity.



Marge Philbrook witness several months ago was painful for me to read. Here 
was some who cared for me all those years ago when I trying to figure out 
where was and what this new way living was all about. What was so painful 
was not so much the way she had been treated along with all her other 
colleagues who had been so shamefully fired, but rather the decision who 
some very old colleagues had decided not to care for her and other dismissed 
staff members. She talked about how people would come to conferences in the 
Kemper building and express appreciation over the gracious hospitality. She 
bemoan the fact that was now gone. This is the place where some many learned 
about what means to human being engaged it creating the future.



Then a couple weeks ago I got an email from Margaret Aiseayew. She too wrote 
about the pain she felt relative to what has happened in the Kemper building 
over the last nine months. Here is another colleague who had invested so 
many years not only carrying the tasks she had been assigned but caring so 
deeply for all around her. Then to sit and watch as a small but otherwise 
trusted group of colleagues making some awfully inane decisions about the 
future in order deal with an imbalanced balance sheet.



I have thought about Marge and Margaret a lot the past few days. I thought 
about the bumbling colleague that Joe had chewed out. About the board that 
had refused to act out of the common wisdom and methodological prowess we 
had all learned together. About a president who refuses to change course, 
about a college student who kills thirty something people and then himself 
last spring. What underlies all this it seems to me is what happens when 
people refuse to deal with life?



Kirkegard taught us that what we despair over is not the situation we find 
our selves in, but the relation ship we take to our given situation. Jesus 
expressed the same thing when he told the man to pick up his bed and walk. 
We can all live our lives or let our lives consume us. The word about is we 
can decide to live our lives -  or we can even decide to  REALLY REALLY LIVE 
OUR LIVES.



Marge and Margaret have both decided in the midst of their pain to go ahead 
and live their lives and we can too!



I am David Walters. I took a PLC course and RS-I in the spring of 1970 and 
worked in the summer program on the Local Church.  I attended the Academy 
that fall. . I worked on the Social Processes the next summer. I helped 
finish up with town Meeting in the spring of 1978 and went to help start 
thee Gibson HDP. I stayed until it ended in 1980. Since then I have been 
living in Andalusia, AL and continue to use what I learned with EI and the 
ICA in community projects and my local church