Lessons of Mexico

(11/96)

I am writing this on my laptop on United Airlines flight 1010 from Mexico City to San Francisco. I want to sum up for our Internet SOS community what happened and didn't happen in Mexico and what we can learn from it.

It was clear a few weeks before the event that this was not going to be an SOS International Conference, as advertised. The number of participants from the U.S. was going to be quite small. I sent out an email message to the SOS list some time ahead, and advised people in my area's meetings, that the nature of the event was changing: instead of a representative gathering of SOS activists from different countries (an international conference), we were going to be panelists promoting SOS at the International Humanist Conference.

This turned out to be correct. In fact, economics and other obstacles severely decimated the ranks by conference time. The British SOS members had a financial emergency and could not put together the ticket money. The Australians had a similar problem. A number of U.S. members expressed fears that Mexico would be dangerous due to political and social instability. The bottom line was that the total SOS contingent in Mexico consisted of Jim Christopher, Dr. Bill White, Ed Batis, Larry Beck, Luisa Barajas Beck, and myself.

Jim C. is of course the founder and Executive Director of SOS, the man whose breakaway from AA more than a decade ago made SOS possible, and who has devoted the last eight years of his life full time to the organization. "Dr. Bill", a psychologist, was one of the founding members of SOS in Los Angeles. He is now living in retirement in Costa Rica. Ed Batis, Larry and Luisa are long-time SOS convenors and activists in Los Angeles. Ed and Larry have contributed frequently to the SOS newsletter. Ed is a professional alcohol and drug treatment counselor with special expertise in Latino and African-American communities. Larry and Luisa are married and have made recovering couples a special concern. Ed and Luisa both speak fluent Spanish and helped all of us out tremendously during the event.

The six of us had an enjoyable and interesting time together. We learned quite a bit from and about each other and became friends. We also did some good for SOS. During the cocktail hour on Friday evening, Jim led an introductory workshop on SOS for humanist conference participants, and this reportedly drew some 30 attendees. My plane arrived too late for me participate. By all accounts this was the high point of the conference members' interest in us. Here a family counselor from Mexico City came forward and expressed the desire to start an SOS meeting in Mexico City. If this pans out it will be remembered as the validating accomplishment of the Mexico effort. Mexico has a strong anti-clerical and secular tradition and there is no good reason why SOS should not flourish in this soil.

The next day (Sunday Nov. 17) the six of us gave a press conference attended by two reporters, one from the Sol de Mexico newspaper, the other from Radio 13. They both asked basic sorts of questions about alcoholism. The conference organizers supplied us with a simultaneous translator for the event. I took notes and will post a digest of the conference separately.

Directly after the press conference we were to go into panel mode with the expectation of attracting some portion of the approximately 150 attendees at the humanist conference, as well as members of the recovery community in Mexico City. In this we were disappointed. The curiosity of the humanists had apparently been satiated at the previous evening's introductory panel. The outreach to the City's recovery community, promised by an enthusiastic local sympathizer, had not in fact taken place. We twice delayed the beginning of the panel in the hope of bringing in more warm bodies. Eventually, we proceeded as a panel of six presenting to an audience of five including the translator. We made the best of it by getting off the rostrum and putting chairs in a circle with the audience. Who knows, maybe we planted some seeds here; but all of us wondered whether our time and money could not have been targeted more efficiently.

Our schedule completed at 3 p.m., we salvaged our mood by visiting the murals of Siqueiros in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The awesome drama of the Mexican revolution and the agonies of the human experience which the great master brings to life on the interior walls of this regal monument of architecture soon dwarfed, for me, our comparatively trivial successes and failures, and induced a reflective mood. Jim and Luisa and Larry and I spent the next two hours walking through the parks and streets of the capital. As we rubbed and bumped our way through the huge crowds of city residents who were out enjoying the mellow Sunday evening, Jim and I had a long and frank talk about what we were doing and where we were going.

It was a mistake to have called for an SOS conference in Mexico City without adequate preparation beforehand to ensure its success. The reason for calling the conference there and then, namely that the secular humanists were having their conference at the same time and we would have free use of the hotel facilities, was transparently inadequate. The motive for the conference was external to SOS and based on a myopic view of economy. In fact, while the humanists may have had a sufficient basis for an international conference there and then, this was not a priority for SOS, and the cost of travel massively outweighed the free meeting room. As we talked our way through the ancient streets of the capital's Zona Historica toward the Zocalo, the great central square in front of the Palacio Nacional, we reached agreement that in order for SOS to succeed, we need to make the needs of our own organization the first priority, and that our entire membership needs to be involved in shaping, directing and sustaining the national organization.

Toward this end, Jim C. has asked me to put out word to all the SOS activists in the SOS cybercommunity to begin discussion and planning now toward a national convention of SOS activists in 1997. The time, place and agenda will be determined by ourselves in the course of our collective discussion, based on our own capabilities and needs. As a first step, the Clearinghouse will be engaging in a census of meetings (which it has in fact already begun), and a comprehensive current list of public SOS meetings, replacing the largely obsolete directory published in 1994, will be posted. As a next step, all meetings will be invited to select delegates to the national convention, to participate in shaping its agenda, and to raise the funds necessary. Finally, in the course of the convention, SOS will form a permanent collective national leadership structure, in accordance with the decisions of the delegates.

This new and very welcome development in our organizational life is due in very great measure to the growth of the Internet subcommunity within SOS. Thanks to the email lists which Tom Shelley began to organize two years ago, we now have a living nationwide organizational dialogue. We have forged new bonds and found new voices. It's important for us to remember, however, Jim cautioned, that not everyone is wired for email. Substantial parts of the organization are not online, and it would be an elitist game to exclude them from the dialogue.

One way to reach out to the larger community is to copy the most important content to print and circulate it the old-fashioned way. The current issue of the SOS International Newsletter, just off the press in time for Mexico, should be a big step in that direction. The lead article announces the major breakthrough that Jim C. achieved in Texas, when he persuaded the Texas prison system to adopt SOS as its secular program. Almost the whole of the remainder consists of material taken straight from the email list. It is one of the best issues in a long time, and I don't just say that because one of the articles is mine. Subscriptions are only $18 -- send money to the Clearinghouse, 5521 Grosvenor Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066.

-- Marty N. (11/18/96)