[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] 2007 Living Legacy Event

Sun Jun 24 04:57:25 EDT 2007

Dear Colleagues,

  Just for clarification, the infamously misspelled reference to JWM read thusly:

  In a time of rising fundamentalism; twenty years since the Order:Ecumenical dispersed; a variety of activities like the interest in the archives, Earthrise Reflections, and Repository; participation in local churches;  participation in anything BUT local churches; permeation into businesses and organizations across the country; new books about Joe Matthews:

  It's already been corrected. 

  I haven't had time to go over the entire site with a fine toothed comb, but I will in the near future. I say, if those guys put it out there for us all to read, then they need to incorporate all the feedback they get. I just thought I'd start with the most obvious, glaring, and symbolically resonant error. 

  Joe Mathews is mentioned only in passing, as a kind of footnote--with his name even misspelled. And the obvious fact is that the books didn't even come from ICA-USA organizationally, but rather from an out-of-left-field group determined to get that stuff published. I also noticed that the other elements they mention are not organizationally part of the ICA-USA's work! The archives are (I hope) well preserved in the Kemper Building, but they don't seem to be an ICA priority.

  I have to confess that the offending typo really set me off, triggering a lot of unexpressed indignation over recent staff changes and board actions.

  Again, I promise to voice my concerns in more depth at an early date. It's not just that I want to complain along with many of my colleagues. 

  I want to look more seriously, systematically, and analytically at what has happened in the context of our real (as opposed to manufactured) history as a people.

  For now let me just observe that there is a major disconnect between the surviving  structural and institutional form of the ICA-USA and the organization's real and primary constituency, which is the group of long-term stakeholders who have the human capital residing in the corporate memory of an amazing cadre of people whose expenditure has been shaped by our movemental, extended, and symbolic ordering. In dejargonized English, it includes anyone whose life has been addressed by our work and who grasped a new and radical possibility for being alive.

  How ICA-USA and we as a people have come to this moment is of great concern to me. How the Board can just wipe out the continuity of culture and memory that the staff manifested, ignore the concerns of its historic constituency--as though we have no stake in any outcome--and just basically shut down all field operations is frankly beyond me. It looks like a slow motion train wreck--fascinating and chilling and disgusting all at once. And all this without recourse to any corporate process of consensus building--the one thing ICA is supposed to know how to do.

  Now comes a rerun of the Living Legacy weekend, which I thought was a good promotional gimmick for reconnecting with the diaspora, as long as it included the J. W. Mathews Library in the Kemper Building, Bishop James K. Mathews, and the Aragon Ballroom which symbolizes engagement and celebration in Uptown Chicago.

  So... what happened to the original venue, the Mathews Library ribbon cutting, the honoring of the Kemper Building, Uptown, the Aragon Ballroom, etc. and the participation of Bishop Mathews (who I heard is not well)?

  Techny, IL? That's some kinda suburban Catholic monastic retreat center and former seminary, as I recall. I taught EI courses there. But it ain't us, babe.

  So I propose that if the Board wants to invite us to the dance, they need to come clean about these questions and their process and stop blowing smoke.

  Here's some of what I'd like to know:

  What happened to the ICA's interim executive director, Dr. Kirk Harris, an African-American lawyer who was hired last November and now apparently replaced, and when did he go and why?

  What is the depth meaning in the story--emerging in bits and pieces, and without a PR strategy--that ICA has had such a rapid turnover in executive leadership?

  What is the transition planning process that would lead from organizational rebuilding under yet another interim executive director to some more permanent leadership?

  And what does it mean organizationally that this process must now take place without benefit of the resources of the staff that was dismissed?

  Or is the ICA-USA just grinding through a series of well-meaning but hopelessly over-their-heads outside organizational-consultant CEO-types who basically don't have a clue? Not to mention a support system.

  And is the real mission of the new interim executive director not just to shut down the whole thing-a-ma-jig and try to preserve ownership of the assets in some viable residual organizational form to preserve rental income?

  How is it that the Board of Directors is self-perpetuating and accountable to no one? They used to be accountable to all of us to live out their engagement in mission, stand in the comprehensive, discern the contradictions, apply their organizational wisdom, provide strategic oversight, and model structural and personal integrity--all for the sake of profoundly guarding our ability to sustain our work.

  These nagging questions just seem to emerge from my fertile brain late at night in the absence of any compelling context that I can believe in. 

  What's missing for me is any sense of participating in a creating a vision that becomes embodied in the governance process that the Board is responsible to be about. 

  In other words, I just don't believe those guys. After all that's come down, they've lost all credibility with me.

  Please, no more Living Legacy Band-Aids. Let's address the real wound. And bring some committed colleagues to the table for a real conversation.

  More later,

  Wayne Marshall Jones

Len Hockley <lenh at efn.org> wrote:
  Amen, Brother,

Len

At 06:55 PM 6/23/2007 -0400, you wrote:
  Dear Wayne and colleagues

Like many others who have commented (ranted) on this issue,I am confused. I would like to point out that Wayne's proof-reading critique actually appears to apply to the recently received ICA International 2006 Annual report, not the Living Legacy web site.  At least that document is the only place I could find JWM's name misspelled (or is it mis-spelled?)

It is clear that many of us (me-not so much) are having trouble getting over it.  Hey  ICA USA is now a consultant, some dedicated volunteers, and a couple of less than perfect buildings.  These folks want to have a get together to talk about the good old days, and kick around some ideas for the future.  If you don't want to show up--fine!  But Jesus Christ-- let them have their party without dumping piles of guilt s--t on Janice and Judy.

And if you must complain, at least check out the facts and context just a little bit.

That said, I hope we can all find the time to consider the transformative experiences we all had, continue to have, and each day try to some degree to offer to others.  There's party in Toronto, a party in Chicago.  I say let's party, not crap on each other

So  grace and peace.  Honest to God!

Dick Kroeger

In a message dated 6/22/2007 2:47:10 A.M. Central Daylight Time, synergi at yahoo.com writes:     
   Dear Judy,   

   I was prepared to be charitable and not comment on the many, many painful instances of bad English grammar in the text of the ICA's new website.   

   BUT...   

   I just can't stomach the fact that you guys can't even spell Joe Mathews' name correctly.   

   Has it really come to this? How bad can it get in Chicago? Do those guys now running the show at the ICA even have a clue about what they've done? Doesn't anybody even proofread around there?   

   I'm sorry, but this material reflects poorly upon your Living Legacy project.   

   Wayne Marshall Jones   
   aged 66 but still able to spot typos and wield a sharp blue pencil

   Norm and Judy Lindblad <nj.lindblad at gmail.com> wrote:   
   Dear Friends and Colleagues,

   ICA-USA invites you to visit our new website, www.ica-usa.org, where you will find news about the 2007 Living Legacy Event on October 5-7 at the Techny Towers Retreat Center near Chicago.  

   Sincerely,   
   Judy Lindblad, Secretary ICA-USA Board of Directors   
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