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