|
|
The following reflects my personal response to the strategic issue facing the California clients movement today.
Every once in a long while the movement reaches a turning point where things have changed enough so that strategic decisions must be adopted. Right now in what some call ‘The Battle of California’ we have won a victory because we have worked together in a new way. Indeed this is a limited victory because we seem to have lost a lot in the details, especially, in the broad funding of ‘mental health courts’. Nevertheless this victory is quite real and it occasions the rethinking of how we want to build our movement in the coming period.
The Network’s decision of how to handle the Forum 2K in San Diego is clearly a major component of the setting of the new strategy. With this in mind, I want to bring back (1) the issue of how strategy is set and (2) what this strategy should be. Lynne Stewart the former CEO of the Network says that the difficulty is the dominance of a philosophical approach of ‘absolute’ thinking. Carol Moss, who was volunteer coordinator of the Network office, says that people need to learn to be more accountable.
I think I’m in harmony with these perspectives and I feel that the Network Board and leadership isn’t, or hasn’t yet been so. In 1995, the last major strategic decision point, a conscious choice was made to support a strategy of ‘revitalization’ over ‘revisioning’. Ultimately a ‘new kids on the block’ vision triumphed and those who wanted to reform/revision the Network were branded as ‘controversial’ and attacked/hung out to dry. In other words, a choice could have been made to negotiate a common future, a broader movement, and a less exclusionary process, but this dialogue was rejected.
The themes of the three subsequent Forums have reinforced the strategy of ‘revitalization’ and the adversarial relationship to the reformers and visionaries. But this fight over AB 1800 has now drawn us temporarily together and provided the opportunity to negotiate common ground. There is a ‘partnership agenda’ driven by a hate campaign against ‘controversy’ and a general problematic of neglect of the role of trauma in the system for us to take up together, if we would. I call upon the Network Board (1) to make meaningful apology to the likes of Carol Moss and (2) to level with the reformers and visionaries and negotiate a mutually satisfactory thematic approach to Forum 2K.
<Sigh!> I wish you all well, I’m going to be off doing the work I know needs to be done.
Respectfully
