Submitted by nickb on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 6:58pm
What was it? What was it to you? What have you heard?
- storytelling project, recounting the history of Icarus, acknowledging the sexual relationships that played a role and the politics of those relationships
- Account and assessment of gender and power dynamics
- Exploration of the “gendering” of visionaries
- Response to the fact that the “owl collective” became 3 people and Madigan was the only woman
- Discussion of the structure of Icarus polling many women who had been involved in designing it and had contributed time and energy
- Attempt to bring anti-oppression analysis into interpersonal relations among the organizers
- Look at historical patterns
- Attempt to make the structure of Icarus more inclusive and share power more equally
- Invitation to step back and recognize gender privilege intertwined with marginalized identities as mad people
- A challenge to be more welcoming as a way to grow our movement
- Gathering about the dynamics of Icarus, to address privilege and relationships between all
- Madigan was inspired by the Zapatista womens encuentro and wanted to meet with the women of Icarus who had left the project to hear their critiques
- Repercussions were felt by public allegations posted on the website, a lot of fingers pointed as a result
- 4 pages of feedback given to one man of Icarus precipitating a series of conversations with many others
- Community-wide wound leaving open a lot of issues that never got talked about
- Left feeling unsure about how to talk more about gender and power dynamics, created a lot of personal pain
- Also created a sense of hope and cultural evolution
- Men got together as a result to talk about gender, accountability and relationships, pain of what hasn’t been talked about yet
- a welcome to the project for new woman organizer, reassurance that gender issues would be addressed
- inspiration for new members from women who left and did their best to leave it better than when they started
- influenced creation of a new working group structure, but we haven’t yet evaluated the new structure in light of the original critiques
- movement-based structure was created, moving out of hierarchy and into a radical non-profit structure, into collaboration and symphony
- desire to bring skills from the Zapatistas to our work
- address the pain of several women leaving the project
- 1.5 months of volunteered time devoted to making Icarus more accountable and inclusive
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