LEADING BY LYING, PREPARING BY PROCRASTINATION

I received a good e-mail from Tom Atlee today, relaying a Sedona, Arizona Y2K organizers anguish over the BIG NOTHING that is happening there and pretty much everywhere in community organizing for y2k. Here in Sonoma County, California, we have much the same....no more large forums, zero interest from y2k newbies.

Why? All our government leaders have decided that their overriding concern is to allay our fears. Panic must be avoided at all costs. Consequently, all the government news is thickly poured out in a gooey, sticky, sweet syrup: Its OK, nothin to worry about. With all their media and authority resources they are succeeding to the point of putting everyone to sleep.

Now, since not everyone in every level of government is an idiot, maybe at some point it will start to dawn on them that they ARE GOING TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE if things dont work. Its time to stop the disinformation campaign! If I could say one thing to Koskinen, that would be it.

Its not just government either; businesses sure dont want to damage their reputations or lower the value of their stock. A lot of people are in such serious denial that they simply cant see the truth, while the informed are afraid of losing their jobs if they say too much and make waves.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

On the other hand, how many people do you know who have Gotten Y2K who are still talking about doing something about tunafish in the summer? Its May, summer is here! Have you got your water set, how about food and medicine? Are we procrastinating because we are in denial ourselves?

THE TEST

It has been our sorest test, as individuals and as leaders, to come to grips with the lull these past two months. First we had to get over our naive astonishment that the Feds would actually lie to us! We were surprised and hurt that the public and business officials we invited to the groups we organized shot us dead in the water. Next we were deflated by the collapse of interest on the part of the public, and had to cancel events as attendance dropped.

It is only this week that I have a sense that we are starting to build up interest and action again in y2k. At a meeting last night one storage food seller mentioned that she is just starting to get a lot of orders again in the last two days.

GOOD NEWS

The good news is that people are doing things like gardening, medical training, replacing their car with an electric bike, meeting with neighbors in fruitful ways. Community organizing has gone underground into quiet action.

Many of us are naturally more aligned with the intellectual, wordsmiths, not doers. This is our time to prepare ourselves, not others, to do and to lead by example, and it will pay rich dividends in practical knowledge and the authority that comes with action.

To prepare for the next wave of interest we need to keep up our leadership groups, talk to each other, learn to keep faith with each other when the momentum seems to have disappeared. We already know how to put on seminars and talk to each other on the internet; now its time to learn to work with each other in a more mundane way when we are not energized by big flashy events and energy from outside.

We need to prepare structures that can quickly expand so that when the next flood of people comes in, as it will, we are ready to receive them. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the Y2K picture, and at some point the dam of denial WILL break, and the flood will be upon us.

Donna Jones

-- donna Jones (SERAPHIMA@AOL.COM), May 07, 1999