DELEGATE PERSPECTIVES

(Delegate from India): This is, of course, the 1st Congress of the Planetary Initiative. And perhaps it’s proper to say that in our first attempt we have not been successful in getting planetary representation. That means we do not have representatives from, well, many third world countries. And most importantly, the so-called East. Of course, that’s a drawback, which I hope the future Congresses will definitely address themselves. But of course, is not enough. We who are supposed to be taking the initiative, if you look around us today here, I did not see a single Canadian MP or a US congressman or a senator or anybody who is in a position to really have a direct say in what is happening in the world or in our countries we come from. 

I think in future congresses I would expect, uh, that more of these sort of people will either find it necessary to come here, or some of the delegates here will be assuming those positions in their countries. So I think we have a long long way to go. And well, I think one can keep on drawing good plans for the upcoming Congresses that may come, but I think there is a short item on my agenda which I would like to pursue with you. And that is tomorrow I would like to have a meeting with all the delegates who are not from North America. Mind you, that’s very few. And I think the time and place for that particular meeting will be announced tomorrow by Susan Anderson. I’m working on that. But I would like to know to tell all those delegates who are not from North America that we have particularly lot more work to do. Thank you much.

Brian Livingston: I’ve worked with this project for a while. I was on the Coordinating Council for a while, and when it was getting started, the Planetary Initiative asked me to write grants proposals to various organizations and all of them were rejected because of the reasons that Donald mentioned. This organization is never going to have its basis on handouts that other people give to us. There’s only one way that this organization is really going to get supported, and if we don’t support this organization, who do we think is going to do it but us? I think whatever form the new type of organization that comes out of this Congress takes, my basis for being here is because of my trust, my trust in Donald Keys, because I know that each of us has a spirit within us and his is so transparent that it shines right through. And I just know that what comes out of this is going to be positive. 

I worked in my region and developed an automated pledge collection system which presently collects one and a half million dollars per year for organizations that are working for people. I right now want to stand here and pledge $20.00 a month for the next two years to get this thing off the ground and get us working in the plains of matter because that’s where the need is right now. We are in our hearts and matter is what this organization is going to take. And I want to say that in front of everybody, just because I know that there’s a time to make a stand and this is the time that we need to start doing that. 
And I’d just like to hear from the rest of the people who speak tonight, not dollar amounts, I don’t care about how much it is or where it comes from. I just want to know if they support this, and if this idea is something that’s good, we can come up tomorrow with a typed pledge form and we’ll have something down so that the office doesn’t close next week because that could happen if we just go away. We don’t have the time to wait and get letters back from people. We should do it now, tomorrow before we go home. And I’d like to know the rest of the people here care. Thank you. 

Cecilia Page: My name is Cecilia Page. I’m from Halcyon, California, a utopian village of the world. I think the solution to our expansion of the planetary initiative is in three basic areas. Number one really is to get more members and how do we do it. There are a lot of people who are not here of course today are this conference that our members or have been participating at the local level in San Luis Obispo County, 15 or 24 of us have arrived from San Luis Obispo County. How many of you—I’m gonna ask you to raise your hand—How many know of at least 10 people or more in your local area that didn’t arrive at this conference? They are participating at the local level. Please raise your hands. That’s excellent. But I suggest that you do, is if they haven’t participated in joining officially the Planetary Citizens group, that you recommend that they write to Donald Keys in New York. I think that’s where you’re located and suggest that they join and start contributing. I like what one of the gentlemen said about contributing $20.00 a month. If each and every one of us in this room would contribute at least that much per month, that’s going to contribute a lot to our organization. Now in the areas of communications, I think it’s very vital that each of us who know how to write, who can write articles, who can write books, who can communicate on television, who are here, are familiar with videotaping, whatever background, like this lady that came up earlier said she’s in filmmaking down in Los Angeles, California, any of you have these talents should get busy after this conference and write up what you know about Planetary Initiative.

It is my suggestion that we do in our local areas at the colleges, what Donald Keys has organized here at this conference—that we promote other conferences in our local area to get even more people in an audience in our area, like we could get 500 people probably each one of us in our local area. That would bring thousands of people into our organization. I do believe that we should promote quite a bit of discussion groups and panels and I think the most valuable thing I’ve experienced this far. And the whole thing is valuable, but I think is that the working groups that we’ve been in daily have brought in a great deal of contributions to our group because we have been doing a lot of brainstorming and a lot of coming up with solutions to the blocks, to the problems, to the challenges. If we could do that at our local area and keep expanding the awareness of our people, we could get many, many people in this organization. 

Julian Russell: I’d like to—I’m Julian Russell from London, England, and I’d like to specifically address the question of what happens to Planetary Initiative after this Congress, because this seems to be something of primary concern. And the thing that seems to be almost the most important thing for me is to find out what the people who have been working on the ground, the people who’ve actually been putting on talks, who’ve been running issue exploration groups have actually been doing the local action, what sort of support do they need and how can they somehow be integrated as a network and integrated as an organization? 
And I think we need to keep a very clear and specific focus that, on Tuesday we split up and what happens from then? Do we just leave it all to Donald and his team to decide what happens next, or do we somehow work out how we as individuals locally are going to act and have some sort of mechanism to coordinate us and give us an identity. And so I think it’s very important to deal with these real issues, and so one thing that I do—want to support here—is the people who’ve actually been active and have been doing the work for the last three years in the grassroots movement.

We’ve had the coordinating council in New York, and we’ve had the people throughout the world trying to get it together locally. And so for example, I think that the PI contact person meeting is, is extremely significant part of the Congress. 

Kay McNett: My name is Kay McNett. I’m from the Charlottesville, Virginia area Planetary Initiative Project. The official contact person, Ed Bickford, is not here, but several of us, three of us are here from that area. Our group wanted us to ask a lot of questions while we’re here and have a discussion about what is our purpose now? Can we redefine our focus? Because this is something we found last year. It took us half an hour each time we tried to explain Planetary Initiative and we feel like we need a new focus. I’ve been asking this question and sort of answering it for myself. I’m beginning to see the focus as perhaps global education. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the thing that we’re, that we have to infuse. Umm. So that’s the kind of question, and also how we reach out? We found that we’re, we had a lot of good projects, we had colloquium seminars, we got a lot of the same people. And so the question is, how do we reach out in our own local communities? Is the Issues Exploration group the best way? Or is there a way we can take the materials and the process and hand them over to others who are already doing the work in the communities? So I’d like to see this kind of discussion and have this kind of discussion with people here. Thank you. 

Al Anderson: My name is Al Anderson, I’m from Ukiah, CA and my wife and I have been contacting people there, and Donald mentioned the meeting of their contact people which will be after this meeting at 6:45 in the 5th floor lounge. But I wonder if I could have two minutes for speaking to the issue. As I see it, I’m trying to get the picture of and speaking to you Donald about it as you were seeing it, of the present situation where you’re saying that we thought of PI being a coalition and that didn’t work out. And it seems to me that it’s gotten to the point where it has to be an organization among others. And therefore, it has to have a position of some kind. And as I see it, the unique position of Planetary Initiative is to deal with the mega crisis. There are plenty of single-issue organizations that are working around, and the area we’ve been working was the only unique thing we had to offer. We couldn’t be a coalition. They didn’t want us to be a coalition for them, but we could, nevertheless point to the mega crisis as such, as a problem. And in regards to that then, what do we do with it?

It seems to me it’s a matter of identifying just the things we’ve been doing here in the working groups. Really identify it. What is it? And then talk about the causes, what are what’s causing it? And then thirdly, how do you meet that problem? How do you meet the things that are causing it? So it’s basically an educational role that seems to me you were mentioning there in the Bay Area, of being a kind of a university. Well, it seems to me that that’s what is needed to be a kind of a university to teach the adult, you know, the adult community, of these issues and the mega crisis and what we can do about it. I was thinking of how do you proceed? Well with the existing supportive organizations it seems to me, never mind trying to get a coalition, but the people that are supporting proceed with that. Who else could you join with? The part of the UN that I feel holds most promise are the agencies, that is particularly the UN University.

The UN University seems to me is one of the most promising agencies in the UN and there should be a way to relate to that and possibly other educational things—Friends World College and others that have a global perspective. There should be some way to relate to that. As far as the local scene is concerned, the thing that we have emphasized there is building new structures,  because the existing political structures that are running in the world are doing the damage. They’re the problem. They’re not the solution. And we have to somehow build new structures, social, economic and political. And they’re not going to happen overnight. They’ve got to start from the grassroots. And that’s where it seems to me, we have to work. And we have to have a way to get those grassroots people into this, into this structure PI, into the decision making of PI. And that’s those are some of the suggestions. Thank you. 

(Name not provided): As a facilitator, I’ve facilitated a group this spring and I just think that that, and we’re experiencing it here, that that is such a cornerstone to me of what this organization is about. And I think we’re in kindergarten. I mean, I, I felt like I had a lot of abilities and a lot of experience and consensus and the people here certainly come with that, but we’re still learning and the more you go through this process the whole group is elevated to a higher plane of efficiency and communion, that we’re just we’re just beginning I think we’re just absolutely beginning to see the power of the consensus process. And I don’t know again, if Planetary Initiative did not stay with an emphasis on that, you know, I’d have to go look for it elsewhere because I’ve just seen no other arena for dealing with what’s really important in the world in such an empowering process. 

Jamal Adeen Adena Dan: My friends. My name is Jamal Adeen Adena Dan. I’d like to address the question of the future of the Planetary Initiative and the problem of the people of the East and the Third World countries as they relate to this organization. I am a Muslim. I may be wrong, but to my best of my knowledge I am the only Muslim at this meeting. I am a North American. The problem stated by Medicine Story this morning is clear: the question of form has been brought up. I believe it was Gerhart who pointed out, it was a question of whether this form was still viable, whether this form needed to continue into the future. I agree that it does. However, I think that we must recognize that the form which Planetary Initiative is, is in its essence and by its nature, a thing of the West.

I think that in order to bring the people of the—even the idea of bringing the people of the East or of the Third World nations into something of this sort is wrong. What is required is a local initiative. Local action is something that I believe, an idea that we all share. The Planetary Initiative must then be sensitive to this,  must be sensitive to organizations existing or created in the East. And be aware of the differences in form, necessary to accommodate us all. And be prepared to work together with such organizations to cooperate, but not to impose our Western forms, our Western ideas. 

Susan Anderson: I believe that we have a momentum. I agree with Gerhart in his previous comments. That even if we were to dissolve this, we would have to recreate it. So we are what we are. And we do what we do. And we are in this moment in time where our—it’s my feeling that our time has not fully come yet. In other words, this is part of the grassroots, it’s the groundswell. The reason why we have so much difficulty in explaining it, is because there’s so few people in a sense who are really able to hear what this is about. But it’s time will come. And it’s my feeling that we have to have patience with that. There’s no redefinition necessary of the purpose, for which this is. Its purpose is clear, it’s clear, and its charge is clear. We work, we continue to do. And by attraction, by the projects that we do, there will be a continual ground swelling.

It’s my sensing that it may, or anyway it’s my sensing that it’s not particularly important to identify with particular projects per se, so much as to build what we are. That, to me, is fundamental. Our time will come, I feel, in about 15 years, when we will come into our full strength, and we will be able to stand empowered and be able to act at that time with what needs to be done. I feel that it’s a part of our doing is a training process. Now, 15 years sounds like a long time and some people feel defeated by it. It’s my sensing, and you can take it or leave it as you wish, but I feel a very special kind of purpose in what Planetary Initiative is about and I don’t want to dilute it with other facts and figures, so to speak.

So that because we have this momentum, I feel that in a sense it’s the invitation that’s already been given. The decision is whether we’re going to accept that invitation. I don’t know how we can refuse it. I don’t know how we can honestly go home and say I couldn’t, to whoever one considers one’s guidance ones wisdom in the world. I do feel that some kind of structural plan is needed. And that we cannot go on a holding pattern. I know it doesn’t work. And so that there is some kind of fundraising and structural plan that is needed. I am content, if only that. Okay, I don’t know what my role would be, that it really isn’t my concern right now. That would be too much for me to even think about. But I do believe that those who are in position to take the coordinating steps can divide into groups and work on structural ideas, taking input from the woman who was here before and all the other aspects that we’re considering of how to work with Planetary Initiative, various aspects, activities of the work itself. Okay, so that would be program, structure and fund, funding. Okay, the pledge idea is probably the best because I mean, I don’t have very much money, but I mean, I feel that if we don’t do it, then who is going to do it?