Remember way back when UUism was down by less than 100 people and Morales made a big, election-friendly fuss about how we were way down without actually mentioning that the drop was so small as to be statistically insignificant? And when somebody asked the candidates what mistakes they had made and Hallman candidly answered about problems with Pathways, while Morales said something politician-y about how hard it is to schedule a church service when his church had SO MANY MEMBERS?
I wrote then "I don't believe him. I don't want a marketer, I want a minister."
Recent stuff the UUA under Morales has been up to includes slashing the Commission on Appraisal's Budget, according to President Morales, "as a way of initiating a conversation about the committee." Cutting the UUA Washington office is supposed to improve advocacy for reasons no one can explain. Merging a couple of our social witness departments and giving them less money is supposed to improve things.
Of those three issues, the Commission on Appraisal bothers me the most. I think of it as UUism's R&D and I appreciate having a committee to look at potential issues within the UUA and make recommendations. It is supposed to be independent, which Morales paints as "lacking in accountability." Source.
He made a lot of pretty statements on the campaign trail about raising membership. I'm not holding him to those. I am asking when he's going to quit insulting everybody's intelligence with all this marketing blather and just talk to us like we're reasonable people.
CC
who also thinks this is a really stupid time to be shifting duties from volunteers to paid staff in the name of "Policy Governance," but that's another post.
13 comments:
i just did a project where i drove across the country studying social justice programs at UU churches and I went to the church in Golden that Peter Morales was senior minister of and the whole church rubbed me the wrong way. Their social justice minister was very self righteous and kept returning to the fact that their church populace was so large. Just seemed like they internalized way too much of their suburban white identity instead of trying to approach their social justice from a standpoint of mutual liberation.
Definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
I am asking when he's going to quit insulting everybody's intelligence with all this marketing blather and just talk to us like we're reasonable people.
The marketing frame's a real problem. Especially because I don't sense they've got any smarts about it...
...tough times (or not) it's a good idea to make staff justify their contributions and see what needs to be revised, restructured, or eliminated.
But this marketing talk a real danger with out some careful consideration. We'll end up bamboozling ourselves. That's always a danger for people prone to thinking themselves the sharpest tacks in the room.
UUA President Morales has been rubbing me the wrong way for some time now, and he rubbed me the wrong way in person, aka mano a mano, during the UUA Board of Trustees meeting over the weekend of April 17 and 18. I found him to be very evasive and "less than honest" in a very "politiciany" way as CC puts it. His disingenuous assertion that slashhing the budget of the Commission On Appraisal to a fraction of its previous budjets was "a way of initiating a conversation about the committee" was just one of his "less than honest" assertions AFA*I*AC.
When I asked President Morales if he had received and read the emails that I had sent him in the last few months, such as my Groundhog Day email and its follow-up emails, he remarkably evasively (if not "less than hopnestly". . .) replied by asserting that he was not sure if he had read them or not. That is, he basically claimed that he could not remember reading my emails even if he did read them. I dealt with that "politiciany" evasiveness, if not disingenuous, by saying that if he could not remember reading my emails that he effectively had not read them and asked him if he would read the next email I sent him to which he responded "yes".
When I made it clear to President Morales that I expect the UUA to responsibly review the negligent and incompetent rulings that the UUA's Ministerial *Fellowship* Committee made in response to my clergy misconduct complaints against Rev. Ray Drennan and Rev. Victoria Weinstein he initially tried to pass the proverbial buck right back to the UUA Board of Trustees by claiming that the MFC was a Board Committee and therefore it was not his responsibility to deal with my little problem. When I replied to that by informing him that Gini Courter had told me that the MFC was not accountable to the Board for its decisions earlier in the day (Saturday April 17) he responded by saying -
"We're not going to reopen a case that's years and years and years old."
Is this the same Rev. Peter Morales who claims to be "fully committed" to dealing responsibly with clergy sexual misconduct in his response to the Nashville UUs "open letter" to him when he was a UUA Presidential candidate? Is this the same Rev. Peter Morales who stated that victims of clergy misconduct should receive an "immediate and compassionate response" to their complaints? Or does President Morales think that victims of non-sexual forms of clergy misconduct are just so much chopped liver? In his response to the "open letter" about U*U clergy sexual miosconduct Rev. Morales said -
"I am absolutely committed to doing the right thing, and I understand that we have fallen far short in the past."
Is this the same President Morales who proclaims that demonizing and marginalizing people just because of who they are is wrong? Is President Morales not as "absolutely committed to doing the right thing" with respect to non-sexual forms of clergy misconduct as he claims to be with in terms of clergy sexual misconduct? Apparently so. . . UUA President has fallen far short of my expectations for him when it comes to providing restorative justive for ALL victims of U*U clergy misconduct be that misconduct sexual in nature or not. In fact I can't help but wonder what the ever so "absolutely committed" President Morales has done for clergy sexual misconduct victims in the first year of what may well turn out to be a four year (or less. . .) mandate as President of the UUA? Let's hear it Peter, deliver a report to the UUA Board of Trustees in May or June about all of the things that you have done to live up to, aka honor and uphold, the letter and the spirit of your response to the Nashville UU's open letter by reforming the UUA's clergy misconduct policies and procedures and provide restorative justice to victims of clergy sexual misconduct since being elected as President of the UUA last June. I am willing to bet that you haven't done very much at all yet. . .
President Morales would be very well advised to use that round head of his to change his mind about the "obviously deep concerns" that I have shared with him and UUA Trustees over the last couple of years unless he wants to be exposed as yet another two-faced Unitarian*Universalist hypocrite.
"We'll end up bamboozling ourselves."
U*Us have been bambU*Uzling themselves for decades Bill. . .
Sharp U*U tacks are few and far between from what I can see.
UUA President Morales has been rubbing me the wrong way for some time now, and he rubbed me the wrong way in person, aka mano a mano, during the UUA Board of Trustees meeting over the weekend of April 17 and 18. I found him to be very evasive and "less than honest" in a very "politiciany" way as CC puts it. His disingenuous assertion that slashing the budget of the Commission On Appraisal to a fraction of its previous budgets was "a way of initiating a conversation about the committee" was just one of his "less than honest" assertions AFA*I*AC.
When I asked President Morales if he had received and read the emails that I had sent him in the last few months, such as my Groundhog Day email and its follow-up emails, he remarkably evasively (if not "less than honestly". . .) replied by asserting that he was not sure if he had read them or not. That is, he basically claimed that he could not remember reading my emails, even if he did read them. I dealt with that "politiciany" evasiveness, if not disingenuous, by saying that if he could not remember reading my emails that he effectively had not read them. I later asked him if he would read the next email I sent him, to which he responded "yes".
When I made it clear to President Morales that I expect the UUA to responsibly review the negligent and incompetent rulings that the UUA's Ministerial *Fellowship* Committee made in response to my clergy misconduct complaints against Rev. Ray Drennan and Rev. Victoria Weinstein he initially tried to pass the proverbial buck right back to the UUA Board of Trustees by claiming that the MFC was a Board Committee and therefore it was not his responsibility to deal with my little problem. When I replied to that by informing him that UUA Moderator Gini Courter had told me that the MFC was not accountable to the Board for its decisions earlier in the day (Saturday April 17) he responded by saying -
"We're not going to reopen a case that's years and years and years old."
Is this the same Rev. Peter Morales who claims to be "fully committed" to dealing responsibly with clergy sexual misconduct in his response to the Nashville UUs "open letter" to him when he was a UUA Presidential candidate? Is this the same Rev. Peter Morales who stated that victims of clergy misconduct should receive an "immediate and compassionate response" to their complaints? Or does President Morales think that victims of non-sexual forms of clergy misconduct are just so much chopped liver? In his response to the "open letter" about U*U clergy sexual miosconduct Rev. Morales said -
"I am absolutely committed to doing the right thing, and I understand that we have fallen far short in the past."
WVC = pinus
That's why all of us do comment moderation, I am afraid.
As to the topic, I am a fan of the kind of big-picture oversight that the Commission on Appraisal CAN give a body like the UUA. But its work has not been exactly electrifying in the past 20 years or so, and I think that the format is wrong. 12 elected people get together and figure out a topic that needs to be studied and work for three years, mostly not using modern communication forms and therefore spending most of their budget on travel..it just doesn't seem like the way to shake things up in this day and age. And things sometimes need shaking up.
God knows that the UUA Board of Trustees and the UUA administration at 25 Beacon Street needs some shaking up when it comes to the UUA's "less than excellent" response to ALL forms of clergy misconduct. I have reasonable grounds to believe that I shook things up a little bit at the April 2010 UUA Board of Trustees meeting Christine, and doing so involved travel from Montreal to Boston and back. The UUA Board of Trustees had studiously and repeatedly ignored pretty much ALL of my previous "modern communication forms" in the form of emails, Emerson Avenger blog posts, moderated or unmoderated blog comments on other U*U blogs, so I therefore felt obliged to spend a few hundred dollars of my personal budget on travel to share my concerns with the BOT. U*Us can be thankful that I did not launch a full blown protest in front of 25 Beacon Street and some prominent Boston U*U churches as I had intended to do. Gini Courter was wise to allow me to attend the BOT as an observer and allow me to say a thing or two every now and then otherwise I would have been outside with picket signs and using "modern communication forms" to contact the Boston media although I *could* have just walked a few hundred feet east on Beacon Street and knocked on the door of the FOX News office directly opposite the State Government House. I will do exactly that if the UUA does not clean up its rather pathetic act and start providing some real and tangible restorative justice for ALL victims of U*U clergy misconduct between now and the UUA GA in June.
BTW Comments to this blog *are* moderated by ChaliceChick.
One more thing Christine. . .
Don't you think that if UUA President Morales *really* wanted to initiate a "conversation" about (or with*) the Commission On Appraisal he could have done so by using those "modern communication forms" you are talking about rather than slashing the COA's budget to the point where it could do virtually nothing?
* I *could* be mistaken but I think that UUA President Morales may have actually rationilized the COA budget cut as "as a way of initiating a conversation *with* the committee" rather than about the COA. U*Us may want to check any transcripts or audio recordings of the April UUA Board of Trustees meeting to enter into a free and responsibel search for the truth and meaning of what UUA President Peter Morales actually said. AFA*I*AC If UUA Board of Trustees meetings are not fully recorded using modern audio and/or video recording equipment they should be so that U*Us who are interested in what transpires at UUA BOT meetings, but are unable to actually attend them, may act as after the fact *observers* of UUA BOT meetings.
For the record a woman was typing away so constantly during the meeting that I thought she might be an official UUA stenographer. It was only later during the meeting that I found out that this woman who I thought was a UUA stenographer recording the BOT meeting was Jane Greer when I saw her name tag, and it was only several days later when I saw the UU World blog article she wrote about the meeting which left a lot unsaid, as one might expect from an official UUA propagandist. . . Stenographer make mistakes, modern recordind devices generally record what was said accurately. If UUA BOT meetings are not already fully recorded on audio so that there is an accurate and verifiable "church record" of everything that was said during the meeting I think that it is high time that they were. No U*Us?
Looks like I committed a little "sin of omission". I meant to say -
and it was only several days later, when I saw the UU World blog article she wrote about the meeting which left a lot unsaid, as one might expect from an official UUA propagandist. . . that I understood that Jane Greer was a senior editor of the UU World magazine.
The above does not preclude the possibility that Jane Greer *also* acts as an official UUA stenographer at UUA Board Of Trustees meetings and other UUA meetings. If there is an official UUA transcript of the whole April 2010 Board Of Trustees meeting I am an "interested party" who would like to see it. I would also like to have access to part or all of any audio recordings of what was said at the meeting, if only to have a very accurate record of what I said myself, and how what I said was responded to by UUA Trustees.
I thought your comment about hiring staff to do previously done volunteer work due to the governance model was interesting based on my experience in a UUA district where basically a staff person was paid to do work I used to do as committee chair. I thought personally the staff person's time would be better spent doing outreach and furthering the district goals, but the DE at the time chose to have the staff person take over what volunteers used to do and also reserved decisionmaking for herself that the committee used to do. at that point, I resigned. I didn't see the democratic process at work that I was used to seeing at the district level.
I would like to hear more about what you are seeing at the UUA level in this regard.
Very interesting point Anonymous.
I would urge you to share your concerns directly with the UUAS Board of Trustees using those "modern communication forms" that Rev. Christine Robinson was talking about here, or even a "less than modern" communication form known as a registered letter. . . If at all possible I would urge you to attend an upcoming UUA Board of Trustees meeting as an observer and share your concerns about this democracy deficit at an appropriate part of the meeting. The UUA Board of Trustees might actually pay attention to you if you do that. Unfortunately, at least in my experience, the UUA Board have a rather bad habit of not paying much attention to the "modern communication forms" that Rev. Christine Robinson seems to be so taken with. . .
Christine:
I like the COA, but again, I view it as UUism's R+D. In hard times, it's not unheard of for even fairly forward-thinking companies to cut the R+D budget. As long as they put it back as soon as they can, that doesn't bother me.
If Morales would present what he's doing in those terms, great. It's the claiming to be cutting the budget to "Start a conversation" and talking about an independent organization's "lack of oversight" that bothers me.
He doesn't need to try to pull a fast one to get what he wants. Just be honest with us.
CC
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