By Anna Von Reitz
This Fourth of July I was asked for my Wish List. The first thing that sprang to mind was: half a dozen Californians who have some fuzzy notion of what "community government" actually means.
Our California Coordinator, Michelle Ford, needs help, wants help, so she was looking forward to having a whole group of Coordinators working as a team with her to get California fully seated.
The only volunteers we got were people acting in bad faith— people with little vision beyond getting their own way and getting "power" over the assembly.
Unfortunately, we have seen this behavior over and over again in California. In two months, the new Coordinator Team accomplished very little beyond gaining access to our data banks and email lists and using them to cause disruption. While complaining loudly about lack of progress, they did nothing to advance any meaningful progress.
Instead of helping Michelle, they began a non-stop witch hunt. First, they tried to disqualify her because she has to travel to visit her kids in Arizona. Then they dredged up two long past incidents where mistakes were made— mistakes that were atoned for and in at least one case, a mistake that had been made in many other states. And finally (before I pulled the plug on them, a false claim and demand that Michelle had to post her declaration paperwork on the Assembly Land Recording Office and maintain it on a "searchable public database".
All this was going on directly AFTER these same people were — as part of their orientation — told that they had to bury any hatchets and let the past be the past going forward.
They abused the trust I placed in them as adults to follow these instructions.
They abused the trust the Assembly placed in them, too, as they repeatedly brought False Accusations against Michelle and abused the data banks and email lists to promote this disruption.
Despite being told point blank and from the very beginning not to do this.
At no time during the development of these wacky complaints about Michelle not posting her paperwork on the LRO did they take advantage of their positions as Coordinators to ask me directly about their concerns,
I could have told them as I have told everyone else for years on end, that no, the LRO is NOT the only means for people to declare, record and publish — and Michelle used these other means.
That would have opened up a discussion of why, although it is a good means, we don't want the LRO's to develop a monopoly as the only means for people to declare, record, and publish. That would allow the Assemblies to exert a totally inappropriate control over who could and who couldn't come home.
I would have also observed that their presumptions that these records have to be on a searchable public database are way off track We didn't have public searchable databases in 1860 so there is no requirement that people then or now record on such a database.
This is also a distinction California has missed in the past. For some reason the idea of having to step back and restore things starting from a point in the past has been elusive in California. Prior Assemblies have stumbled over this, too.
But these people didn't ask. They just assumed that they were right and bulled ahead, eager as hounds and convinced they finally "got" Michelle.
And this was AFTER agreeing to forgive and forget and seize the opportunity for a new slate, so it is all obviously in Bad Faith.
This morning I woke up to more taunting questions (now, after the fact, after they've been kicked out, they ask questions) about why Michelle is replacing all the new Committee heads with the Committee Chairs who were serving before the new Coordinator Team came on board.
I was horrified and had to explain that the "old" Committee Chairs should have never been replaced. If new people want to join Committees that's fine, but there is never any justification for just arbitrarily overturning leadership that is already in place in a community based government.
That shows a total disrespect for our faithful volunteers and is not in line with the customs and traditions of community governance.
Picture me shaking my head.
They just wholesale went in and replaced people who had been serving in good faith.
Not only does this make no sense, it is totally unfair.
And then they wanted to know why Michelle reinstated all the Chairs of all the Committees.
These people are clearly thinking in terms of politics and "take overs" and putsches— not community government. And as long as they had "power" they were eager to use it inappropriately.
Disrespecting all the we people who already earned the right to be there? That's not community government.
That's a takeover of community government.
I put a stop to it. I put a stop to their activities, because they were acting in bad faith, causing disruption and chaos, breaching the public trust, and plain not helping to accomplish anything worthwhile.
But Michelle still needs help.
That's why she and I are asking for new volunteers to step up for California.
The idea of a Coordinator Team is still valid and desirable, but it has to become a real team — and that requires good faith and a willingness to work together.
Not the back door corporatist backstabbing nonsense we have seen for the past couple months.
So— we are looking for a few good men and women who are willing to help get California where it needs to go without further rancor or adieu or game-playing.
That's my Fourth of July wish for all of you. Get your State fully functional, up and moving. Become the true embodiment of the American Way.
Granna
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