Unheard In MKPUSA

  In the year 2000 the Mankind Project International entered into an agreement with a consultant to provide multicultural awareness training to a selected group of men interested in implementing multicultural awareness. Major money was donated and major money was spent over the course of four years in its implementation.  What was originally proposed was a series of 3 training courses for the initial team and for the initial team to integrate and pass those trainings on to the communities. The first level training was so impactful that the leader body tried to make it a required training for all leaders but that was watered down to a single non-specific requirement for multicultural training. Because funding was always difficult and the leadership had a huge money shadow around paying a consultant, the leader body muddied the waters by creating a whole variety of different multicultural trainings which confused the issue and the goals of the initial multicultural initiative....

So, to recap, MKP USA has inherited the basis for a multicultural initiative as well as an entire community of multicultural facilitators. Some things the curriculum committee sought to change, some things they really didn't look hard at.  Either the curriculum committee were looking at the wrong things or they were allowing some very bad processes to be introduced into the system, bad processes that were recovered from the trash bin of the MCC Presenter Council. I am talking about the evolution of their Intent/Impact and Oops, Ouch, Whoa processes that have permeated from UPPD to the Leadership trainings, the PIT, and onto the New Warrior Training weekend. MKPUSA simply allowed all this to grow and permeate because they assumed that the leader trainers who subscribed to it, prescribed it, and are the originators of these changes were educated enough to understand the impact of what they were doing.  Not all leaders agree, but then again we have a cafeteria of multicultural co...

The MKP Multicultural Initiative (MCI) began in 2001. Almost immediately, the leader body voted 22-20 to make the multicultural training a requirement for certification and re-certification. In so doing, a small group of certified leaders took hold of the MCI and utilized it to create a way of culling the herd within their leadership and peer group.   From the original “issues and Isms,” this clique of leaders “certified” themselves to both teach and collect income from the training. After three or four evolutions of this MCI initiative they had fine-tuned it to where they own the process which is what they wanted in the first place. The issue was there were so many different philosophies of multicultural work that people sought to interrupt the work by adding more in to processes and changing words.  The process got mixed by perspective so that people were teaching, learning, and operating from different definitions, intentions, and desired outcomes. While the original i...

"Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt."   - The Ten Commandments (1956) I have seen on more than one occasion how quickly New Warrior leadership in MKPUSA will distance themselves from the decisions they make and will move without haste to erase history of bad decisions that may lead to revisiting and correcting issues that impact the entire membership. Consider this: Constituencies in MKPUSA represent voices and perspectives. Constituencies in MKPUSA represent cost. Constituencies in MKPUSA are expendable. Or try it on this way: Volunteers in MKPUSA represent voices and perspectives. Volunteers in MKPUSA represent cost. Volunteers in MKPUSA are expendable. One is less personal, the other might land on the heart of your volunteer soul. I can give two cases in point of the above evolutions and then we can talk about the current LKS issue. 1. The Multicultural C...

I think one of the most important things coming out of Thursday's MKPUSA Town Hall was that the speaker recounted that all of this started in the MKPUSA Leader Body, with a large group of leaders forcing others to take sides against another constituency, with the MKPUSA board eventually falling in line with their demands, as well as the demands of an outside entity purporting to speak for the entire Sioux Nation. This validated a concern of mine that I had reported over 10 years ago to MKPUSA leadership. At the time it seemed that the organization was singularly focused to look at race and men of color as well as gay men, I reported that the biggest issue in MKPUSA around power dynamics was the issue of leaders in their communities, on their weekends, in their groups, and the power that they had to influence fundamental parts of the training and the organization itself. Leader-centricism manifests itself from the weekend enrollment of a leader, passed into the community and it...

Mankind Project USA has changed, and not all for the better.  They are at the precipice of losing control of its members and constituencies over some misinformed usage of diversity concepts, shame and blame, and white fragility.  And now they have essentially cancelled 1/3 of their leadership on the weekend. While some struggle and cooperate through the insults in the name of initiating men as its higher purpose, others are guided by the bureaucracy and needing the money to keep the machine running.  They also need to demonstrate that their holacracy principles and membership models work and can sustain the organization. And for those of us on the periphery worried about staffing or the next initiate:  Why would you want to initiate a man into this polluted and toxic atmosphere?   MKPUSA and its leader body have essentially amputated one of three legs that represent the entire leadership structure on the New Warrior Training Adventure and now are rushing...