From: Andrew Phelps <no-action@cwnet.com>

To: s-acc@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [s-acc] labor advocacy

Date: Sat 04/09/11 06:50 PM

 

Hi

On Fri Apr 8 21:21, Kmo sent:

Yes. Missing some one is very hard. I still miss many in my life.

I was trying to help Sue map a path forward under difficult and trying circumstances - and she was gaining insight/purpose. Now I have to find how to honor her legacy and also to disengage. When PsySR went back on its word in Boston, and wouldn't let me say a few words to honor Sue (who had twice presented at PsySR workshops), I was devastated.

Respect and dignity no longer had any meaning. It was absorbed into the rhetoric of professional ethics and treatment and had little to do with recognition of the person being treated. Hence i am searching for a new word.

I think you are missing the concern for "strategy" as against "tactics." Professional psychology has a "rhetoric problem" because they (and other social scientists) have accepted Ramus' and Descartes' reductionist way to engage rhetoric. I see a "rhetoric failure" in the ideation of professional ethics and treatment. I'd encourage you to challenge their notion of "rhetoric" on humanistic grounds (of course your Za-zen works in that direction).

I think i shall go with equality. And i agree no one approach is "correct" - that term is kinda meaningless in Zen (correct that is) Zen pt of view. Everything is the nature of things. Or things as they are are natural.

The way I see it, "fairness/equality" is the core issue of human rights. So, that's good "business talk." But in terms of the social change process that works towards that kind of social justice, there is a kind of historically validated dynamics. In the client/survivor movement, the "first wave" involves "choice/empowerment" and it's how we "get the foot in the door" (sorry, José, who lost his foot organizing the Gilroy self-help center!). The success of that effort promotes the "second wave" effort which we define as involving the tactics of arguing dignity/respect. As in HERE. At the "third wave" level, far from now, we would be contending, of course, for "fairness/equality" as the direct objective.

So, whatever style of being works for you and the problems you engage, fine. But thoroughness of understanding involves recognizing the tactics that fit for the strategic considerations of the time, and of the place.

As a youth, the idea for me was "fairness." What happened to Sue seems to me to be most unfair.

 

Andrew