Theos-Talk Archives (April 1998 Message tl00135)

You hit the nail on its head.

I think every current official as well as any future candidates for any
office should be asked if they are a member of ES. They should freely and
boldly and courageously disclose it for the benefit of the voting members.
We will have to see.

mkr

At 12:50 PM 4/9/1998 -0400, you wrote:
>>    Realizing this, I see that ACT is pretty much another political
>>party in the TS. Quite frankly, I am not sure that I favor either the ES
>>or ACT, so I will probably vote based on the individual rather than on
>>party support. However, as long as there is going to be one voting bloc,
>>I do feel that it is important to allow other voting blocs, as well.
>Several huge differences though .... the ES *controls* Headquarters assets,
>publications, and even the vote counting process. It's members have passed
>bylaws making it difficult for any other "party" to challenge the status
>quo. Unlike ACT, it does not publish a platform for reveiw of the general
>membership, publish the names of people to contact, or invite membership. In
>fact, the vast majority of members may not know there *is* the ES "voting
>bloc" of which you speak. Yet their Society is governed by it. 
>
>ACT is completely open about what it is, what it wants to do, and why it
>wants to do it. The ES acts in an almost completely covert way - though it
>even in part uses money from members to accomplish its ends.
>
>This is *not* a situation in which ACT is simply "another" voting bloc like
>the ES - in which ACT and the ES can be considered analogous to the
>Republications and Democrats. There is no open discourse between two clearly
>articulated perspectives on Theosophy (which IMO would be extremely
>*healthy* for the TS). What ACT is is a democratic movement attempting to
>open the TS, to force what is *covert* to become *overt*, to insist upon
>accountability in elections and finances, to insist that any member with
>something to offer has an *equal chance* of running for an office. The ES
>acts like an autocratic, covert ruling junta that not only does not
>encourage open discourse and debate, but that takes significant steps to
>supress the information that it even exists as a voting bloc whose members
>are deeply integrated into every aspect of TS goverance. A political party
>or voting bloc is not a conspiracy. A completely covert organization that
>effectively rules the TS while never even making its existance as such
>public, *is*. 
>
>I would be *most* happy if the picture you paint was the actual reality ...
>if the ES came out in public and *said* that it was a faction with distinct
>views of Theosophy, and the way the TS should be governed, made public the
>names of its organizers, if every ES member who was running for an office
>*told* the membership they were an ES member (as ACT candidates will make
>*their* views, ideas on governance, and ACT affiliation public) - and if, as
>the elections approached, genuine debates occured in which ES and ACT
>candidates engaged in free and open debate, clearly articulating their
>perspectives ... that is, permitting the TS Membership to have *COMPLETE*
>information about who the people running were, and who they were affiliated
>with - if ACT members were permitted *equal* time in the Quest/AT during the
>year preceeding the election (giving every candidate a token article just
>before the election is hardly meaningful when JA has two or three articles
>in every publication - the ES *knows* how to play the name recognition
>game).  
>And further, that a voting process that was beyond question - i.e.,
>accomplished from beginning to end by an independent firm, assured that the
>voting was beyond dispute. 
>
>What ACT wants is a Theosophical ideal - the *truth* to be made known, open
>and free discourse, and the entire membership able to make their voting
>choices with full and complete information about what they are voting for.
>And if the response ACT has already gotten is any sign, more than a few
>members also want this. -JRC