[Dialogue] Response to Corlyn Antenen Revised

[David Walters]

In an earlier version of this message I tried to show my comments in orange 
that did not seem to work. You will now find my comments in bold type and in 
parenthises.



Carolyn Antenen  wrote:

(David's response in bold)

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 do 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 describe 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