[Dialogue] {Spam?} Re: Response

Tue Jul 10 14:17:58 EDT 2007

And wondering who said what makes my head spin.  Proofreading is a good
thing.  

Diann McCabe

On 7/10/07 1:52 PM, "Sunny Walker" <swalker at CERTRedEarth.com> wrote:

> That's true (though I COULD read what was in parentheses as David's
> remarks). It's because the listservs use only plain text, not HTML.
> 
> Sunny Walker
> Senior Facilitator
> Council of Energy Resource Tribes
> 303-282-7576; cell: 303-587-3017
> FAX: 303-282-7574
> 695 S. Colorado Blvd.
> Denver, CO 80246
>  
> CERT MISSION
> To support member Tribes as they develop their
> management capabilities and use their energy resources
> as the foundation for building stable,
> balanced self-governed economies, according to each Tribe's vision and
> priorities.
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
> [mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Jim Rippey
> Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 10:54 AM
> To: 'Colleague Dialogue'
> Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Response to Corlyn Antenen Revised
> 
> David, I suspect the only way you will be able to distinguish your remarks
> is to put them in all caps.  I think that color and BOLD both disappear on
> Dialogue.  Jim Rippey in Bellevue, NE
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
> [mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of David Walters
> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 4:48 PM
> To: Colleague Dialogue
> Subject: [Dialogue] Response to Corlyn Antenen Revised
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
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