First, congratulations to the SHCA board members whom have publicly resigned. You absolutely did the right thing, and don't let any of the hotheads make you feel otherwise! This was the best possible action for everyone and for the community!
The anti-democratic, Penn process, has trickled down to our neighbors. A main strategy of the patented UCD/Penn “dog and pony show” is to eliminate the possibility of discussion at tightly controlled “public meetings.” The agenda is packed and controlled in a way that runs out the clock up to the scheduled adjournment time. As members of the club or general public watch the time be completely used, those in control of the show are prepared to shout down anyone by claiming that they are out of order and moving off topic. As reported in the UC Review, the recent FOCP dog and pony show was strictly scheduled to adjourn at 8:22 PM due to Philly playoffs that evening. The FOCP leadership continued to defy the orders of members and had used much of the time in illegitimate unannounced yearly elections. Most of the time for this election was used because no one wanted to join the gang, not for the uncontested hand picked slate of gang members being anointed. At 8:17 PM, the new landscape firm ended the presentation about the plans from the closed secretive planning committee for a total redesign of the public park. That “presentation to the community” had appeared to be the principal reason for the show as reported in that day’s issue of the UC Review. In other words, five minutes remained for the only possible discussion of the closed committee’s redesign plan for the public park after sitting for 1 hour and 17 minutes of gang business. Many people, like Mr. Moyer, were probably hopeful about the news report, which indicated that the push to implement the UCD/Penn upscale redesign of the park had been curtailed by the FOCP club. Mr. Moyer even altered his important trip to Canada specifically to attend the meeting and offer his assistance to the FOCP gang despite a decade of abuse from its leaders. With 5 minutes to adjournment, Mr. Moyer immediately attempted to offer constructive criticism of the continuing problems with the closed process pushing the redesign plan and the continuing defiance of the member’s wishes to open the FOCP club transparently to the community by properly announcing all meetings and agendas. As has become standard operating procedure for the past few years, Mr. Moyer was silenced immediately for going off the topic. The topic was to use the 5 minutes to praise and support the work of the closed secretive planning process and the redesign. It was very disheartening to see that the Penn style, tightly controlled dog and pony show model for public meetings, had been so completely adopted by this dysfunctional gang even as they purported to take back the process and control of the park redesign for the community. Frankly, this latest FOCP show continues to indicate that our local civic gangs are far beyond reform as so many of our neighbors hope might come if only new board members replace the lifers who rule with an iron fist. Like the code of silence among unaccountable police forces, which has been studied, what actually occurs is that the new inductees are pulled into the patterns associated with such insular gangs. They often start off with the best of intentions for reform, but are quickly pulled into maintaining the status quo of protecting the insular gang from any and all perceived outsiders. I believe, we, the general public must reassert the principles of honestly informing the public about public issues that is necessary in a participatory society of free citizens. Civic gangs were not founded for the purpose of providing insular gangs a mechanism to abuse power over their neighbors, which is almost taken for granted in our post-representative democracy era and community. The purpose of these gangs was actually quite the opposite. They were created to give their members a mechanism to serve their communities, disseminate honest accurate information to them, and allow ad hoc organization for special projects. A reaffirmation of the purposes of these orgs is necessary and not new board members who will either submit to the gang ideology or resign in disgust as SHCA members are doing now and as Mr. Moyer did several years ago from this FOCP board. This model is not healthy for anyone and is not healthy for a great community as once existed here! The community needs to take up this issue and stop helplessly defensively reacting as powerful neo-colonial forces exploit this destructive civic gang model to the nth degree. And we need to accept that new gang inductees are indoctrinated into the system or resign because they cannot possibly be agents of reform as many of us have often hoped ! Sincerely, Mr. Moyer ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.
