Mark's Pages
July 28, 2008:
Their hearts are in the right place. But, they still have no Web site.
I had dinner at the house of one of the key national leaders. There was another guest with us, an author whose career she disrespected, but who brought with him the possibility of broadening and growing the group. She refused to speak to him all evening, hiding in her kitchen drinking wine, while I chatted with him at length about his book, his possible role in the organization, and my own views of the work we were engaged in. He left with no clear notion of whether he was welcome, or not.
There was a prominent feminist in the group, a well-known writer with a strategic perspective highly respected by the national leadership. She wanted our branch to organize a women's conference, but, she personally refused outright to perform even a single organizational task, saying, "I paid my dues before you were born." So that I wrote the leaflet, had it printed, bought the envelopes and the stamps, organized a stuffing party, mailed the invitations, rented the conference site, set up the chairs, and later swept the floors, all for a conference I wasn't allowed to attend.
The same woman would arrange to leave branch meetings a few minutes before the end, specifically to avoid offering rides home to younger people who lived near her, but miles from the meeting site. My housemate and I took public transit, two hours each direction, a commute time she could have cut by three-quarters by being even marginally generous.
At the start of the Gulf War the group as a whole refused to change direction, offering excuse after excuse after excuse for why their current routine local work was somehow more important. After 9/11 a leader of the local branch told a meeting, "This changes nothing. Our work continues as before, as it always does."
Their hearts are in the right place. But, they still have no Web site.