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

"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 Council (MCC) was established in 2004 by the MKPI Project Council.  They worked hard to establish a voice and the vote on both the MKPI council and the MKPUSA council as it was instituted at the time.  Slowly but surely those responsibilities were reduced to the point where when I returned from sabbatical all representation and funding had been withdrawn as well as financial considerations of where proceeds went and royalties owed had been conveniently forgotten or misplaced.  

 

2. Many of us MCC reps were brought back in along with the original consultant to establish the Equitable Community Initiative (ECI). As we tried to assess where we were at it became apparent that there was no lessons learned process around the MCC. At that point it seemed common to blame it on internal infighting but there was no assessment of what was successful, what challenges they faced that we may face again, and what we could do to avoid the previous dynamics.  Meetings were held for approximately three years without any real foothold or progress given to the system. One of the first things that the new MKP USA chair did in 2019 was essentially deactivate the committee and everyone walked away as if nothing happened.

In both instances MKPUSA failed to honor the volunteer efforts of its members and proceeded to squash any history of these efforts.

If MKPUSA tries to do the same thing to the Lodge Keepers Society, a key constituency of the New Warrior Training Adventure, I think they will find that those behaviors may not work to their benefit unless they stop to analyze their past behavior to learn how to repair relationships at the institutional and cultural level when these issues occur.  There is technology to accomplish that, but my fear is that the past behavior is guiding their current group behaviors:

1. Out of fear of the MKPUSA leader body they acquiesced and have attempted to disband the lodge keeper society and disavow its status and processes from the training weekend. 

2. Out of fear of a website that pretty much sprouted when the cultural appropriation committee disbanded, They have been reduced to negotiating with a group purporting to speak for an entire Sioux Nation.

3. They have been encouraged and have cooperated with these issues by trying to place the blame and responsibility of all this on a group of volunteers who have served the project and the weekend for 30 years.  30 years!

As a result of this violent extraction weekends have been cancelled, the entire funding structure of MKPUSA has been disrupted, and even the previously approved budget for local LKS representative attendance to the annual meeting have been adjusted and canceled, representing a cash dividend in their favor that they would be reluctant to let go of at this point.

Honestly I thought MKPUSA was better than that as an organization, AND this stands as a warning to anybody who thought they could depend on their brother in MKPUSA leadership to support them and protect them.  MKPUSA requires volunteers but they really do not know how to honor them.

Men thought this organization could rise above the old ways of doing things through lies and power plays and reconstruction of history but from what I can see the Lodge Keepers are slowly but surely being moved out of the system in MKPUSA, so they had to reorganize in order to continue to serve the international MKP community.   

Lodge Keepers Society still exists and will meet, although we are using a vouch system as we transition off of the insecure servers of MKPUSA.  If interested, please contact the International Headmen.

Meanwhile, let’s see how long this website lasts:
https://mkpusa.org/honoring-the-lks-international/

For those of you placing odds or betting, the link lasted less than 24 hours.... people are watching!  I will post the content below....

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

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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.