On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 Andrew quoted:

let’s forget it already and stick with National Organization (NO)

No. It’s all about negativity when I say it aloud, No, no funding, .. I'm not comfortable with the message, the naming, the shorthand.

As the person who ultimately decided what the name for this list would be, I don’t feel that way about it at all. To me, it’s more a kind of “Zen,” as Andrew writes below. Where the “negative” and the “positive” are interwoven and inseparable.

Aside from the Zen, this list was given its name precisely to avoid making any implications for the name of a national organization. It was a “Zen” of sorts, deliberately leaving the naming issue “empty.” To give the national organization that might come out of this the acronym ‘NO’ does not exactly give a positive message to those we are trying to reach. We need to be a national organization for something. But Andrew may be right, we may not yet be at the point where we can productively decide on a name. I think it’s more important to make progress on principles, mission, etc. than to decide on a name at this point.

Dennis

The "NO" nomenclature was not set originally as the “name of choice” for the national organization. Rather, as Dennis once put it, it’s “a kind of Zen” When one has a foundation of principle and a mission, charter, etc. then one has the perspective to consider the ‘naming’ question in a positive framework. Until then, to do so is not productive; it tends to deal with ‘dominance’ questions rather than real questions.

The point is not to be “comfortable with the message.”" The point is to take on the frustration of ‘constructing unity’, up to where we transcend to a message with which we may indeed be comfortable, at a new level.

My two cents.

Andrew Phelps

Berkeley, CA