MKPUSA WTF: An Organization Based in Leader-Centrism


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 its local leader body where they feel empowered to impact the weekend as well as maintaining overt and covert control over many aspects of the community as well. 

Many of them are exalted as community founders which exacerbates the issue of misunderstanding of their role. On the other side of the issue, they are paid contract trainers and should be considered nothing more, unless they choose to take on some community leadership to build community for those people they initiate.  Even then a good leader ought to be concerned about training effectiveness (impact), retention and attrition, and continuous improvement through the original fundamentals to recreate a consistent initiation across the organization.

Even as a standing member of the executive committee I was not able to get through to them that this issue impacted any possibility for the success of a multicultural initiative.   From the beginning the leader body has resisted collapsing on one common language through one consistent training.  As professional trainers it soon devolved into regional training based in different philosophies and completely different goals and outcomes.

So, imagine how this kind of disorganization might manifest itself when the issues become critical. Three groups come together to discuss something as broad as cultural appropriation without a facilitator or a common language to frame the conversation. The leader body had already pretty much put a line in the sand, the holacracy circle processes is it as if everything represents a series of tensions to be dealt with, and the LKS group trying their best to be honest, generous, and deferential to the process until it became clear that the committee was going nowhere.

The LKS Role was to protect the family and communicate the permissions that they do have without placing undue risk to those people with whom they shared a 30 year relationship.   To protect the family on Pine Ridge from this White Man’s fight they made certain concessions in order to protect the family from this embarrassing developmental problem MKPUSA is having right now.

Because of leader-centricism the MKPUSA board never had a chance, and neither did the LKS in MKPUSA. The new and improved multicultural curriculum evolved through COVID in the MKPUSA curriculum circle did not have the answers for them and, as we talk more, you'll see that there was a certain bug already built into the system that guaranteed that certain people would never be held accountable for creating bad faith, lies, and power plays.  End result is that those multicultural tools were misused, and the impact was to strip 1/3 of the NWTA weekend leadership at the root, creating chaos in all communities and MKPUSA as a whole.

More to Come!

Reading: The Culture of The Apologist

If you feel unheard in these issues, feel free to comment below or e-mail me at UnheardinMKPUSA@gmail.com

-------------------------------------------------------

Editor's note: I want to reiterate That each one of these stories is in a sense exactly that: a story.  Unless a person has incredible imagination and can create alternative worlds, the stories usually have a grain of truth. I suppose if anyone takes my story personally, they might know of the grain of truth that they're reacting to.  Luckily within the intentional men's community most of what they know is that anything that comes out of another man's mouth is just projection on the first level therefore they are protected against even noticing that there is truth in the other man's statement. That has worked for us for 30 years in this community.   It allows us to closely guard our shadows and keep secrets.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MKPUSA WTF: The US Leader body: Cancel Culture and the Oops, Ouch, Whoa

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...
Read more

MKPUSA WTF: Constituencies, Money, and Cancel Culture in Action

Image
"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...
Read more

MKPUSA WTF: How Did We Get Here?

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...
Read more