Response to "Open Letter Re: Mike GW"

Date:    Wed, December 2, 2009

We are writing in response to the recent "Open Letter" circulated by some
NEFAC members regarding Mike GW, which we know has been shared widely
through the radical community.  We appreciate and respect the concern and
care that led people to write and circulate the letter, and value deeply
the ways our community can be mobilized for the safety of its members,
because we know when those things are done with good intentions that they
can be acts of solidarity and support and the kind of thing that will help
dismantle this awful beast.

The problem is, from our perspective, the letter is pretty awful.

We are the ones who convened the "SDS-NYC mediation" referred to in the
letter, which wasn't actually an SDS process and wasn't technically a
mediation (it was a circle process that involved him, the women harmed,
and support people for both sides) years ago.  It's a process the women
who were harmed chose because of their needs, values, and politics, and we
were eager to support them in all those things.

We've been working with all the folks involved since then, addressing
lapses in Mike's accountability, building in better support (and thinking
hard about what that looks like/requires in a community), learning and
growing from the experience, and finally, in this past year, really seeing
some moves on his part toward taking real accountability, fulfilling the
robust agreements that emerged from the circle, and doing the hard work of
becoming a better person. This has not, as you can imagine, been easy, for
anyone-- including first and foremost the women impacted, but also those
of us facilitating and supporting the process, and genuinely, Mike
himself.

This letter was sent without any consultation with the women who were hurt
or with those of us involved in the accountability process (even though
the senders knew who we all were, had known about this process for quite
some time, and had our contact information).  The letter has been highly
counterproductive and harmful to a process we've poured an enormous amount
of effort into for years, and we are now doing the work of undoing its
damage.  We don't question the good intentions of the writers toward the
women who were harmed and the community, and we respect the general
principle of organizations taking accountability to the broader community
for actions of their members.  We hear, honor, and share the sense of
urgency in the letter, and know these are hard waters to navigate.
However, by not involving those who were impacted and who had knowledge
about the process and the current state of Mike's compliance, the letter
has inadvertently damaged some years of effort by a number of us who take
these issues very seriously.

Apart from the lack of consultation and information-gathering, in our
view, the call to isolate him and exclude him from all radical community
is, in fact, contrary to the aims of the accountability process.  Those of
us who participated in this work, including the women harmed, did this
work in part because we believe that the exile approach to harm, in
addition to looking a bit too much like the prison system's logic, is a
"not in my backyard" approach that would keep him in the world but removed
from precisely the types of support and demands that might help him to not
cause more harm in the future, and would instead put him "out there" with
women who may not have a political infrastructure of support and/or a
community they share with him that can help address his behavior, hold him
accountable, retain a historical knowledge of his past actions, and help
him to transform as quickly and as much as possible.  The letter has set
back a deep and lasting effort on our part.

We’ve asked NEFAC to retract the letter, or at least the portions of it
that lie outside their direct experience, from the public domain and from
all the sites it was posted on. We’re very concerned that NEFAC has not
yet successfully done so. Surely they'll make their own decision as to how
to move forward—to be clear, we don't think we have any right to judge or
interfere with how they talk about their own experience with and issues
with Mike, only to request their solidarity and support for the women
harmed and those of us dedicated to trying to address these issues on a
daily basis.

We also strongly encourage them to not use Mike’s full name in any public
letter they may send out. An abbreviation will be equally understood to
all who have worked with him while not closing the door on his potential
to change. We urge NEFAC to act now to remove the letter from the sites it
was posted on, and to contact the respective webmasters to ensure that the
letter and records of the letter are no longer in the public domain.

This is hard, messy work, and while the NEFAC letter has been damaging to
our efforts over the past years, we believe this challenge represents an
opportunity for us all to learn and grow together to develop better
strategies and understandings for working together to address this kind of
harm so that we can direct our care and concern in the most fair, most
effective, and most transformative way.  We are regularly meeting with
Mike, working with the women harmed by his actions, monitoring Mike's
completion of the agreements that emerged from the accountability process,
and doing our best to do this as well as we can.  We welcome more support
from the broader community for this and other efforts, and are happy to
discuss ways people can support this process with Mike and others like it.
The process, like us, is surely imperfect, but we honor deeply the
decision of the harmed women to pursue this path, value all we've learned
in this process, and are truly hopeful for both Mike and our community as
we continue this hard work for the long haul.  He is with us in it, as are
the women, and we hope NEFAC and others will be too.

We'd be grateful if you'd circulate this letter anywhere you sent the
original "Open Letter."

With our thanks and respect,
Danielle and RJ (in consultation with the women who were harmed)