the way forward - Movementroles

25 Feb 2011


      Dear all,
I apologize on beforehand if I come across rude and insensitive in this
email. I do however feel the need to be super clear about this important
topic and do not want to fuzzify that with cuddling words.
I am very sorry to realize that since Frankfurt, we have not been able to
hang on to our optimistic agenda setting. We planned summer 2010 for an
inclusive process, involving people and allowing for input with a gradual
process. Unfortunately, for many reasons that are not helpful to discuss,
there was no real involvement until Frankfurt from the chapters or real life
community outside the working group to think about what this movement should
be shaped like.
After Frankfurt, people had unexpected time commitment issues, which can't
really be helped. It took somewhat longer to get the matrix out, and as
expected (considering the complexity) there was not a huge amount of
feedback. Now also the New Models email has been delayed.
In todays irc meeting with 4 participants from this mailing list it was
apparently decided that things are not going well and that we should leave
the agreed path. Jon apparently had a discussion with Arne, and I understand
that the path forward now would be to start writing a draft of a charter and
publish that next week. I would like to take this opportunity to explain why
I think that is the wrong way to go - because clearly I did not come across
in the IRC meeting. If everybody feels this is the way to go I will submit
to that of course.
The charter is our final goal - a piece of text that every single
organization in our movement can and will agree upon. This is a task that
should not be taken lightly and for granted - this will be very very hard.
It will be possible to make compromizes up to 50 or 75% of the organizations
to agree, but to have such a vast supermajority requires more. My feeling is
and has always been that people need to feel owner of the problem to be able
to allow solutions to become effective. They need to understand what we try
to fix before they can accept that the situation might have to change.
Otherwise we will not get further than describing the status quo. And I
think at least in Frankfurt we all agreed that would not be a Good Thing.
To have people feel owner of the problem, they need to be actively involved
in discussions. This is what currently is not happening. We agreed on a time
path with several emails to be sent out with respect to tough topics - this
would have made people aware of the needs, and perhaps involved them in the
discussion. Skipping this step now and just start drafting in our corner (or
even on meta) means that we could just as well not have had a process at all
- because it would basically be exactly where we were in August 2009 in
Buenos Aires - a bunch of people came up with a draft. The only difference
would be that we spent this time a lot of effort in setting up a good
process - which we then ignored.
Such a draft can be received in a few ways. It can be plainly ignored by
most organizations because they don't see the importance or relevance to
their situation. When it gets serious about signing, these people will
finally wake up and see all the problems and bureaucracy it will cause - and
they don't feel owner. Therefore they will not object to voting against it
and therefore making it a failure. Another option is that people will
protest on all the details that they don't like. You probably have seen
enough discussions on foundation-l to imagine such a situation. After all,
it is an external document, that is being put forward. They don't feel the
need for it, they don't see the issues. And a final option is that things
will just remain descriptive of the status quo. Then we will have to have
these exact discussions which we set up this process and working group for,
for fundraising (Barry is already doing that even) and other topics which
are not clearly defined.
In my opinion the only way forward is to involve people. And we cannot do
that just by the few hours that Austin can spend on this - as a group we
need to reach out to the people we know, we need to spark discussions and
see where they go. That is only possible if we invest time into it. If we do
not depend just on the single person who was in charge. Also, I hope that
Jon and Austin can be more direct in describing what still has to happen,
and who needs to do what. And are you not able to make a committed time
commitment? Sure, that can happen and I will not see you any less for it -
but please tell us as soon as you realize it so that other people can help
out.
Best regards,
Lodewijk