Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 11:56:31 -0700
To: "MHOCCA List" <mhocca@egroups.com>
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Subject: Re: [MHOCCA] Board Agenda
Cc: Roy Crew, Selina Glater 

Folks:

Following is Board Agenda for Board Meeting this weekend, October 20-22.
 
<snip>

1 - 2
Governance Committee
            Recommendation re “Affiliate” membership, 
                including language and placement
            Report on idea of a new Committee
2 - 3
Client Forum Planning Sub-Committee Report
            Update on Forum planning
            Recommendations —
                Awards
                Additions to Program
            Fundraising proceeds — Should region get a percentage
            Board brainstorming of ideas for Client Forum

Program Evaluation Committee Report
            Recommendations — Regional Project Coordinator hiring 

3 - 3:15
Cultural Competency Committee
             Recommendation — CIMH grant proposal
<snip>


What I can’t understand is why the Network leadership is so dead set on ‘picking a fight’. Maybe my intuitive sense of things is all askew, but I know I’m not alone in my perception of things.
  • In 1977, when I tried to work with NAPA, they wanted to pick a fight with me instead.
  • In 1985, when I sought to join the Berkeley MHAB, I was blackballed by the clients movement in Berkeley.
  • In 1995, when we were reorganizing the California Network, the reformers wanted to help but they were rebuffed, attacked, and driven to cover.
  • In 2000, after even we have worked together on AB 1800, the Network leadership again proposes an exclusionary approach to our future. Again they seem to be picking a fight.
    • I guess I’m kind of used to trying to be cooperative and being pushed into a defensive role. Even though my contributions are generally well regarded. Need I say that this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs?

    When I see that the E.D. is writing (“Let us Hope”) in hope that “the California mental health community will turn its back on divisiveness and focus its sizable energy on the consensus issues that we all share,” I shudder. This has the mark of an agenda of more divisiveness, under the cover story of cooling out anyone who is ‘controversial’.  :-(

    This is not a battle for “our core values,” as is claimed, rather it is an attack on my core values. Business as usual, ‘been there, done that’. Me, I’m committed to organize people who want to be accountable to the ‘core values’ of the client culture and to endure/work through all this hypocrisy. A daunting task, but at least one I can feel good about.

    The prevailing philosophy is that client activists are in it “for the money” and that this entitles one to treat others as  marks  and not really care about what happens to others consequent upon one’s actions. Again, this won’t do.

    I care to take on a constructive and productive approach to this adversarial morass. But I do have to admit that finding such an approach has become something of a challenge.

    Respectfully

    Andrew Phelps




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