Moving forward toward lasting change.(Essay)

Lasting change is hard. Ask Madeline Duckles, or Joyce McLean, or Macgregor Eddy--or any of the hundreds of WILPFers who have struggled for decades to abolish nuclear weapons only to see their governments take steps towards acquiring them. Or ask one of the many, many WILPFers who worked to end racism long before the Civil Rights movement had a name. In its history of addressing the root causes of war, WILPF has adopted stances of both resistance and engagement; resistance as a mobilization of "holding" actions intended to stop imposed or injurious changes from going any further, and engagement as a release of creative powers when we work with others in crafting alternative solutions. Through our active engagement in developing the mechanisms for positive change in the world, we've all recognized that it takes more than a simple decision to secure our work.

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We've been thinking about how to institutionalize change because we took on the presidency of WILPF's U.S. Section with a goal of securing the changes begun by the 2005-08 National Board. Some of these changes are: making participation in WILPF and its work more accessible and meaningful; nurturing our sense of responsibility to each other by asking for greater political initiative from our members, and providing support and mutual aid through increased skills sharing and trainings; mending the gaps in our internal communications resulting from the "digital divide" that exists among our membership and addressing our failure to continually upgrade our technology. Re-tooling our organization to meet these goals and the challenges of the future, we recognized, would take sustained effort and the involvement of all our members and supporters.

As Terry Futvoy-Micus recognizes in her report on out recent National Congress (see page 4), transparency and democracy have become the rallying cries of many of our members as they seek to understand the tangible effects of WILPF's internal changes. But rather than rallying under the twin flags of transparency and democracy, perhaps we should be asking ourselves and each other "What does democracy look like?" or "What do we really mean when we ask for transparency?" The operational changes underway have opened up new spaces for engagement by our ...