[Community Rights Network] Fwd: Further Introduction...

[Caitlin Alexander]

Scott may have introduced himself to Shannon and Peter but he was given a
specific request by me to not attend our final day of Democracy School for
the following reasons that I don't think Shannon or Peter were aware of:

Several days before the third day of Democracy School, Scott sent an email
to the whole group advising that we abandon our rights-based ordinance and
instead focus on supporting an anti-fracking ordinance the County
Supervisors were working on. This made it clear that Scott did not
understand what a rights-based ordinance was despite his education and
experience. I emailed Scott directly at that time and explained this as the
reason for the Cienfuegos prerequisite, that rights-based ordinances are
completely different from regular ordinances and that one needed to learn
about this before attending the last day of Democracy School. He responded
with his resume informing me that he had plenty of education and did not
need to attend Cienfuegos or the educational portion of DS. Based on this
response and his attitude at that time I understood that he was not
qualified to attend our third day of Democracy School and for good reason.

DS was exclusionary in the same way an advanced chemistry class is
exclusionary, requiring prerequisites. The reasons to hold to this
standard, as set by CELDF and Shannon from the beginning, (and probably
learned from the experiences of many Democracy Schools and ordinance
craftings) were important and reasonable, so that all involved were on the
same page, moving forward with an advanced understanding.

Even though Scott attended our last day of DS, in spite of my request which
was of concern to me, in the last few days I have been emailing Scott the
links to articles and videos that Paul Cienfuegos has been sending us.
Scott has been receptive and responding with ideas that show he has taken
the time to absorb the new information. Based on Scott's new attitude and
willingness to learn I now think he would be a beneficial member of our
internal teams.

In the future, it is critical, to my mind, that each side of a dispute be
interviewed directly in a respectful and unbiased manner so as to be able
to provide a reasonably accurate and fair analysis and resolution. This was
not done in this case.

Caitlin Alexander
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