mountain scene, northern Mendocino Co., CA
To: no-list@yahoogroups.com
From: Dennis Budd <nitewing@ku.edu>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 22:29:55 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [no-list] National Desk effort
Nnn,
The process that was trying to create the National Desk was a strange half-breed, half spawned by the NO-LIST, half spawned by an Alternatives meeting. In the end, it didn't work. I don't think it needs to be an example for how work groups that we create ourselves will work.
Had the process come to the point of launching a National Desk under our auspices, I would have made sure there was some transparency in the process to everyone. As it was, I went out on a limb at one point publicly confronting what I saw as an effort to keep the process "under the table". When the process finally fell apart, I saw no need for that to be "transparent". As I stayed out of the internal NO-DESK process, I know approximately as much (as little) about what happened there as you do. I've always felt that the process was heading toward a National Desk without any real accountability to the movement at large, that this would not work in the long run, and that we were fortunate that this particular effort failed.
Just because that effort failed does nott mean that the whole National Desk process was for naught. When we start it again, we'll have to start it more on the right track, but we won't have to start it back on square one.
Dennis
To: no-list@yahoogroups.com
From: Dennis Budd <nitewing@ku.edu>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 22:50:39 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: [no-list] Re: Beltway
On Sat, 25 Oct 2003, Xxx wrote:
The past two months have been rugged for me. I'm coming back [now], .. so I can look at broadening the focus of the first three sections. As we left off, the people working on charter, mission, etc. were ..
Which brings up another thing...Joe has announced opening of a Beltway desk in near future. Do we scrap that component or keep working on it? Help.
We keep working on it.
The goals of Joe's Beltway desk are within the parameters of what the Clearinghouse can do as a federally funded organization...tracking information, distributing it to the movement at large, following what is happening with our issues in DC, working to get csx input, etc. This takes some of the immediate time pressure off of the National Desk that we want to create.
But we need to keep working on a National Desk that can be grounded in a grassroots base and that can work specifically on organizing legislative and other political change that comes from our constituent base. That will require progress with a lot of the things that we are trying to do now, as well as further work on the National Desk effort itself, and it will require funding totally independent of the MH system once we get there.
Dennis