Re: Our prioritized efforts

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kirby urner

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Feb 23, 2015, 2:09:12 PM2/23/15
to Carl Thatcher, mmm...@googlegroups.com, joyce Zerwekh, Ron Marson, Debbie Averill

Prioritization is the name of the game in a lot of ways, I agree. 

I'll archive this thread to MMM-PSC given how you've kept taking it to the next level.  Good queries!

My advice: lets give Multnomah a lot of breathing room and hope for the best, and not expect any great feats of heroism or activism for the time being. 

Remember, we're talking about a basket case meeting that tried to blow its own brains out last June 22, by ending the "thinking committee" for two years (ours, I was on it then).  We were about to do it. 

Oversight (Jeff) said no ("uncomfortable"), but Nominating was shutting down asking people anyway, nothing any of us could do to stop them. The final bullet was in the chamber, hand on the trigger.

The only reason we didn't pull the trigger that day is an outside family, the Luchinis, performed an intervention, and got Nominating to put down the gun.  We agreed to thresh about it instead, talk the meeting down off the ledge.  That took awhile.  Even after October, Nominating insisted we rewrite the job description or we would not be allowed back in the meeting's good graces.  How twisted is that?  Since when did a standing committee have to "meet conditions" to be kept alive? It felt like we were being held hostage by people with no clue about the Good Order of Friends.

Anyway, with a case history like that, we don't expect a sudden recovery, believe you me.  More time in the rec room drawing the crayons maybe?  Give the Quaker Roots 2 and SMAD's deep dive into racism (ongoing) some more time to work?  What else looks promising that you see happening in the meeting? 

The EEG seems to have fizzled for now, after the Dove Puppet event, but the Wiki was a promising development.  The image of Quakers as Luddite, like the Amish, is highly damaging, almost as bad as the bad rep earned by Puritans when that rubs off (they're the ones who used to hang us, lets recall -- Mary Dyer et al).  I'm encouraged whenever Quakers display some prowess in a technical area -- more like the good old days (1790s).

When it comes to having friendly dialog with ISIS or Taliban du jour, I'd say leave that to Thirsters maybe?  Meets @ McMenamins.  Lots of Friends go (Chandlers, Pebly, myself... John Taylor when he's around).  Retired Peace Corps, some of them, quite a few professors.  I have a link to their listserv at mine.  They overlap with our Linus Pauling House group a lot (Wanderers).

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mmm-psc/_lZx4X8Eqs8

We've already hosted a Pashtun Khan, ready to reunify his homeland when the Americans finally leave (this was over a year ago, so they may have left by now). 

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-khan-at-thirsters.html

Or leave it to AFSC to have those campfire conversations about how would you rather be executed: cleanly beheaded by ISIS or left in the hands of Abu Ghraib style torturing Americans who don't have the competence to get it right. [1]

Also, remember that many Americans live quietly in their heads with TV shows, screenwriter illusions, stage plays, about what the world is like.  Most their information about "terrorist groups" comes not from study and citizen diplomacy, but from movies and entertainment-news.  When striking up a conversation with an American, ask about what their favorite movies or TV shows are.  That will often give you a lot to work with. 

Don't expect them to "snap out of it" though.  They have nothing else to go on in a lot of cases, no real life experience.  Be especially wary of the ones who've only been infused with a concoction of Bible stories and Tea Party views and now drool for some apocalypse involving the Holy Land.  They're like meth heads in activist circles, burned out and gone.  Don't waste your time.

In Friendship,




On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Carl Thatcher <ctha...@aol.com> wrote:
Good to hear your takes on things, Kirby!  No disagreement at all.  Except that I say to you, as to another exceedingly smart guy in meeting with an issue-oriented outlook--What do we require to be on-task here?  We are Friends with a particular view of witnessing to Light (or the spirit of Christ in each of us).  We happen now to be in a time, as we were 50 years ago, in which the society all around us has gone mad with ideas of annihilating the Bad Guys, whether they be labeled Communists then or present-day Islamic extremists.   We may feel moved as I am, to present forthrightly the ideas of peaceful, non-violent responses to ISIS or other forces of violence.  

We deplore seeing so many here go off, knee-jerk fashion, into approving, rationalizing annihilation as a central US policy!  Shouldn't our vision of non-violent possibilities be at the center, not the periphery, of our motivation and directed activities?  What purpose does it serve to expend energy, funds, etc. (what you might term appropriately, "mutant Quakerism"!) on recruiting people to a doctrine or activities that don't testify to our commitment to non-violence as the basis for peace in the world?  Don't we need to direct every bit of this precious available human energy to love rather than fear and hate?  And to efforts that strategically convey our vision to those who might be receptive to it?  By our witness, we are able, each one of us and collectively, to say No! to the side of Corporate Power, death & destruction for small countries on the other side of the earth!  Then we can say, Yes! to the very human pleas for peace in all worldly affairs, especially in those places where the US and other parties have been killing and destroying so much for so long!  Can't we all loudly proclaim to the populace and the governments, "STOP in the name of Love!"?

Carl Thatcher
ctha...@aol.com
-----Original Message-----
From: kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com>
To: Carl Thatcher <ctha...@aol.com>
Cc: joyce Zerwekh <jzer...@cu-portland.edu>
Sent: Sun, Feb 22, 2015 9:30 am
Subject: Re: Program Committee resignation

Hi Carl --

At the NPYM level, the IT committee wants to help fledgling worship groups become full fledged Monthly Meetings and that means providing some guidelines.  Like with any franchise, branding is a concern.  If you wanna play as a McDonalds (heaven forbid) you need those golden arches [tm], plus fries made from Burbank potatoes. 

If a "monster meeting" puts a bloody crucifix on its home page (animated blood dripping) and advertises "baptisms every Sunday", well, that might be fine for them, but it's not the NPYM brand.  Those are not our icons.  I'd say any crucifix at all, bleeding or otherwise, would be off brand and off putting.

What the counterculture did not have is the global Internet, smartphones, access to so much worldly information so quickly.  It's much harder to conceal malign plans as people become more financially literate on average.  McDonalds found its customers in the strip mall ghetto were well aware of its colluding with ALEC (the Koch-funded anti-labor anti-voting group) and willing to boycott.  McDonalds and many other companies are sensitive to bad PR.  Taco Bell joined the Fair Food Program.[0]

I just watched a documentary called Pay 2 Play yesterday, rented from Movie Madness [1], which reminded me that Monopoly was stolen from the public domain by the private sector and that one of its original pioneers was a Henry George economist (a woman -- it's all in Wikipedia).  Thanks to the Internet I was able to bounce that off a guy I know as a Henry George follower today (he said that fact is well known in his circles), even as he rides his bicycle from Vietnam to Cambodia (he's our age).  Way cool.

This movie also makes the point that Occupy has flowed, energy-wise, into the global May Day events.  I know from past May Days here in Portland that Occupy is actively embraced and alluded to, with a whole wall of pictures from Occupy Portland (OPDX etc).  I was quite active in OPDX on logistics and know that was an orderly withdrawal, not an "eviction" per se.  We had some of our demands met:  more / better city bathrooms [2].  Food Not Bombs also fought and won against the Hinson Street Baptists (where Senator Hatfield sometimes went I'm told [3], many of whom wanted to shut down our serving pavilion in Colonel Summers Park [4].

AFSC is involved with May Day planning this year as in the past [5].  AFSC had signage at Occupy (I saw to that, took the signs myself).  Quakers created a committee of professional activists almost exactly 100 years ago, and it's not a negligible organization.  I consider it at least 10x more powerful than FCNL, and much more savvy about dealing with Friends, though that doesn't mean relations aren't stormy sometimes.  That's because there's so much infrastructure:  Yearly Meeting Appointees (NPYM level), Regional Executive Committee, Program Advisory Committee, Liaison / Friends Relations Program... FCNL has nothing that fancy.

My view is the center of gravity in Quakerism, when it comes to social activism, is shifting from Progressive Friends Meetings toward AFSC, a relatively new development and not at all what was happening in the recent past, when AFSC almost went under (2009?).  That's because AFSC has actual management and organizational memory whereas Monthly Meetings, especially high turnover big city ones, have relatively poor organizational memory and in Portland at least, a crumbling committee structure bespeaking a faded / lackluster identity (somewhat like the website I'd say).[6]




On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 11:18 PM, Carl Thatcher <ctha...@aol.com> wrote:
You have my agreement.  What "cures" might there be for these "mutant" forms of Quakerism?  Might it take another 15 yrs. of Middle East wars to get enough people off their butts and into the streets?  I can't wait, not even another year, another few hundred billion $$ wasted and how many lives?
  
Yes, to another counter-culture a la Theodore Roszack, but not to another draft!  What, then?  Even Occupy! didn't stick!  Bad strategy, I think--unwillingness to call the question--what do we do?  What do we want?  And by when?  Just providing the forum is not enough!  We must keep asking the questions, keep putting feet and bodies in the doors, maybe for years, just as our fore bearers (and I was one of them too, then!) did against that war fifty years ago!  I guess that the Occupy!'ers didn't care enough to follow through; didn't have a coherent-enough vision, or sufficient consciousness of how dire the cause actually is

Telling for me was the account (was it by Tom Hayden?) claiming that Nixon had mentioned in his memoirs his vow to use strategic nukes against North Vietnam, but he was deterred by the protesters in the hundreds of thousands in the streets all over the nation in the 1969 Mobilization against the War.  If that's what it takes to stop this war, that calamitous consideration--saving the world from terrorism by threat of Total Nuclear Destruction--then we had better get right to it!  I'm open to hearing, exchanging any ideas we might pool!



-----Original Message-----
From: kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com>
To: Carl Thatcher <ctha...@aol.com>
Sent: Sat, Feb 21, 2015 8:57 pm
Subject: Re: Program Committee resignation

Have you been informed of the Weds 2-4 P&SC meeting then? In principle any are welcome but in practice that time of day means retired, unemployed and flextime only. Debbie said she was especially attuned to the needs of our one ex officio, Leslie, but she can't make it then. I'm flextime and close to meetinghouse.
Hypothesis: no draft means the new parental units have no experience with a real counterculture like us oldsters have. That explains why even our branch flirts with retrograde / mutant / monster forms of "Quakerism" with Peace and Social Concerns safely shelved for years on end. For someone like me that appears a clinically pathological development. I've been seeking strong cures.
Kirby
On Feb 21, 2015 8:23 PM, "Carl Thatcher" < ctha...@aol.com> wrote:
I had always thought that as a fellow rad Quaker baby, you might be receptive to my concerns about this!  So I was thinking of you as I wrote it.  And the more I consider this issue--MMM v. the "war against terrorism"--the more upset I get!  This isn't about, as it seems to be for some, pushing my pet topic through channels to the top of the list!  This is about who we are as Friends, where both monies and mouths are.  

Now it's '64-'65 all over again, just post-Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and the Vietnam War is about to begin in all its tears and bloodiness!  Can we Friends now perhaps be the thorn in the side of power that puts the brakes on the push to yet another stupid war against peoples on the other side of the earth?

Carl Thatcher
ctha...@aol.com


-----Original Message-----
From: kirby urner < kirby...@gmail.com>
To: Carl Thatcher < ctha...@aol.com>
Cc: carol urner < carol....@gmail.com>; Andy Cross < a7cr...@gmail.com>; GABl...@cs.com < gabl...@cs.com>; lee Norris < leehaa...@gmail.com>; joyce Zerwekh < jzer...@cu-portland.edu>; Kathy Hyzy < qua...@kathyhyzy.com>; Karen Lowen < kalm...@msn.com>; Rick Seifert < wfse...@gmail.com>; Debbie Averill < debbi...@edaverill.com>; Joe Snyder < josephho...@gmail.com>
Sent: Fri, Feb 20, 2015 5:54 am
Subject: Re: Program Committee resignation

On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 10:47 AM, Carl Thatcher <ctha...@aol.com> wrote:
 

 Perhaps some of us could work together to resuscitate, revitalize an active PSC Committee…?


You're back from India then, Carl?  I saw someone on Mt. Tabor who looked so much like you I almost struck up a conversation but he showed no signs of recognizing me so I don't think it was you. 

Are you going to WQM Mens Group?  I am.

Your letter is important I think, as it gives a snapshot of where we're at in the meeting, before Nominating shared any slate after proposing to stop our committee (PSCC).  We don't really know if Nominating is doing anything, having failed to end our right to meet for two years.  Have you been contacted by a member of that committee?

I've archived your letter here, which you will be able to read if you click:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mmm-psc/0GvCbJiyQ_I

The number of Views does not count the people receiving postings by email.

Kirby



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