Ghosts of Joe Slovo

Wow. Four months since my last post. A personal record. Not the way to build the devoted readership that every blog author craves.

It's been an interesting little while, I have to say, my faithful readers. Why just in those four months my brother got married on the beach in North Carolina, my wife spent seven weeks visiting ancient churches in Jordan and Syria and working on an archeological dig in Syria, the IRS lost our stimulus check and I lost many hours of my life to the IRS bureaucracy, my weekly futbol blogging gig got axed but I got a new futbol blogging gig, I traveled all over the East Coast (NC to NYC to DC for vacation. DC twice more for work. Austin for work/Netroots Nation. Boston for work/American Political Science Association - okay, Austin is not the East Coast), and the flagship organization of the family of organizations for which I work replaced its top management team due to a financial scandal from 8 years ago that just became public in late May.

So things have been busy.

I strongly suggest that if your organization that is putting together a 1.2 million voter registration drive, a 1.6 million voter Get Out The Vote effort, playing a leading role in Health Care For American Now (HCAN), the We Are America Alliance (WAAA), Half In Ten, plus running its own campaigns on fighting the forclosure crisis and other economic justice issues that it try to avoid a financial misappropriation scandal. Speaking here from personal experience.

What is interesting to experience from a sociological point of view is the manner in which funders decide what they have the right to see from a funded organization. Instead of this "we're investing in your solid track record of success and respect the organizing model and its accomplishments", it becomes much more "we have the money and you don't so you better be asking How High when we say Jump" relationship. I'm not saying funders shouldn't have confidence in the financial controls of their grantees, but I am saying that if you believed in the work enough in the past to invest in it, then it makes sense to take pains to work with the grantee as its goes through a very difficult period. It feels very paternalistic from my point of view.

Of course, that's just a small piece of what has happened with that scandal over the three months or so its been in the open, but you'll have to wait for more. Not to mention I'll probalby be regaling you with details from other aspects of my life.

Now that I'm ending my four month sabbatical.

Kick ass and take names.