A group of us have gotten caught up in some drama with the elusive yet supposedly transparent MKPUSA Lead Operating Committee. They stated an intention to monitor and vet trainings listed in the MKP catalog as Next Level trainings. While our training "The Way Home" has met the Leader Body Requirement in 2004 and 2014, MKPUSA wants to have some input as to whether it fits their definition of Next Level Trainings. We did get a list of these trainings that for all intents and purposes were grandfathered in, so we can look deeply at the unknown process they are using and reverse engineer it into current offerings in the MKP marketplace.
I wanted to clear up a few things before we all go deep into this.
1. My belief is that we all have been placed within a power struggle that has existed in MKP for over 10 years and has been exacerbated by a re-organization that essentially tries to erase history, in this case the history of how these trainings ever became required and what is required etc ad nauseum.
2. The reason why there is a cafeteria of choices when it comes to MC trainings is that the Leader Body rejected the notion of being required to do any training so they flooded the waters with all sorts of trainings that might fit the rather loose requirement as it was adopted in 2001. Where the intention was originally a common language, we now have a variety of languages and modalities and intentions around MC trainings. Caveat Emptor.
3. The I&I in its current format is organized by a paid administrator (Br****ec), who also happens to lead 80-90% of the trainings. The I&I had to be watered down when MKP lost the right to present the VISIONs model after a failed I&I in Germany that got the attention of Co**er Th***son, a VISIONs facilitator who got brought on to co-facilitate but not before someone decided to try out some new edits to the I&I protocol without permission of the Presenter Council. When VISIONs pulled their permission, Barb and I had to help rewrite the entire I&I protocol using open source material.
4. I think most of us can agree that that either the MCC is dead or is badly in need of some attention. The Presenter Council is part of the MCC. The Presenter Council is required to hold meetings every year. Indeed in the corporate charter Presenters are required to re-certify on a regular basis (2 years) and the Presenter Council is supposed to provide 2 opportunities to do so, 1 at the MCC meeting and another at an annual Presenter Council meeting.
5.The Presenter Council has not had a meeting since 2011 at the MCC meeting in Iowa. There is no one in the Presenter Council who is technically certified to present the I&I if we accept that bylaws are valid. At this point there may be many Presenters who may choose to recertify but Br****ec, N****y, and MKPUSA have not made the attempt to operate this training in a fair and equitable manner (read: irony). So you have essentially 4 or 5 presenters and an 80=90% chance that it will be Br****ec. And what if I told you that C***is Mitchell as MKP Chair warned Br****ec not to exercise this dominance on the Presenter Council as far back as 2003? As Gr***gs would say, given enough information, all behaviors make sense. What I am saying is that there is no Curriculum Review, Peer Review or Quality Control on the MKPUSA training itself, the I&I.
6. Now. Access to Allies. How did a training that was being slowly tested but not fully vetted even by Presenter Council all of sudden get approved by MKPUSA? It's because MKPUSA might not have a clue as to what is going on in this part of the curriculum realm.
7. So all of that said, I want to empower each and every one of you as caretakers and clients when you engage ANY MC training on the list or off. Get the history, Hear the past feedback, and don't just do the same things we have done over and over and not expect change. IF you do an I&I just to check the box, you will get what you get. Can any of you show me how you were sold the I&I and specifically how Access to Allies will complement what you learned on Saturday?
8. Unless the I&I has changed, on Saturday by around 330pm your community will be left with a sense of huge dissonance after H***ry's North Carolina story and then a classism split, followed quickly with Alternative Behaviors, Commitments, and Checkout by 5pm. If you get stuck anywhere during the day the alternative behaviors that will change your community will be left as an afterthought because you ran out of time.
9. With all that said, Does Access to Allies attempt to repair that dissonance or does it start a whole new process? Ask your facilitators what their intention is for Saturday and ask what their intention for Sunday. And ask other communities if that is what they got.
Center Directors used to be quite careful about what was brought into their Centers. Don't assume that because MKPUSA approves it must be OK. MKPUSA needs to either address the issues with the MCC or dismantle the Presenter Council. They are intertwined and inseparable.
Lastly, what D***l and I are doing is completely different. We are showing people how the process works, not presenting it. We are taking a mixed group through to alternative behaviors and learning to use the process to help your community. We are presenting what we were taught by Wekesa Madzimoyo and Th***s Gr***gs and showing those local people who are already in the game how to work it so that have your own wizards growing locally. In that, we would welcome any I&I attendees and students of Th***s. This training was originally designed to train MC center reps and was approved by N**on in 2004, and reaffirmed by Mc**de in 2014. Our best blessings came from Gr****gs himself.
When Darryl and I were trained in this the intention was to bring it back to the centers and train others and to lead them to engage Gr**gs or get in the game wherever your mission leads you. Money was never the issue. What MC work in MKPUSA has become is essentially a MORAL IMPERATIVE and an UNFUNDED MANDATE. Barb R**h and I led this training twice in Indianapolis AT COST and then we co-facilitated the OCL103 with G**gs last year.
This is mission work for us and we won't talk about stipends. If you find someone who values it enough to fund us to next center, great. What I want you to see in this email as evidence of the processes Darryl and I subscribe to is this:
1. As an original founding members of the MRT and MCC it is our responsibility to reclaim the history that was lost.
2. As beneficiaries of a $100,000 investment in the process, it is our honor to give back what was generously given.
3. I want to show you that when fear is processed, power emerges, when anger is processed, peace emerges, and when sadness is processed, joy emerges. That is the promise.
What is the shadow that makes us all suspicious of a gift freely given that meets an institutional requirement? We have to pay for every step of leadership in MKP, but in this the centers have already paid tens of thousands of dollars. Your center paid for my training and yet you have to pay more and more and more? Why is that?
I wish it could be an easy choice for you. I wish you could see past the noise and make an empowering decision for your community whatever it can be. I wish the MKPUSA would clean up a lot of the nose for us so we can make safe choices that will empower our communities to greatness in this.
Draft In Progress
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