From: Andrew Phelps <dis_course@yahoo.com>;
Subject: Re: [cnmhc] Re: Food for thought
To: cnmhc@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, June 14, 2008, 2:31 PM
Klm:
.. Lynne was the first Chief Administrative Officer of CNMHC 1983-88 and for you to assert she "doesn't know her facts" is presumptuous. In fact, she did wonderful grassroots work for those years, and the sad truth is that the Network has fallen off on grassroots work and - ever since - had a primary policy
de facto of controlling rather than supporting the "grassroots. " What we really need is a total reorganization oriented towards a "bottom-up" rather than "top-down" approach. That's my view.[Lynne], I think you are very wrong about the Network not wanting more grassroots involvement from its members. The problem has been an insufficient staff and poor communications because of the fact that each board member is a volunteer with many other things on their plate as well.
This is quite superficial. As a bureaucratic excuse, it bears some impact. It's true that intensifying the control of the grassroots involvement would be expensive; however a more principled approach might bear fruit.
An example is the Homeless Action Center in Berkeley and Oakland. This group has taken up the "political space" vacated by the failure of the "self-help" model locally developed by Sally Zinman and Howie the Harp. Their approach is "community advocacy" and it's .. less bureaucratic and more in tune with the "client voice."
Andrew Phelps