i'm pondering the notion of success today. recently my activist team experienced some fairly lame internal organizational capacity and we "failed" to make an important meeting with some board members of the hospital who can make or break it for some of our demands. on one level, we looked terrible, unorganized, unprepared, inept. on that level, we could have gotten mad at each other, blamed our staff person, blamed each other, attacked each other. etc. but there was another level to consider. we are human. we have fulltime jobs. our staffer is new and part time. and the person who called the meeting was the opposition, the CEO. we know that part of his strategy is to wear us out with meetings. it takes us alot more time and energy to prepare for the meetings than it does him. they are paid to participate by our tax dollars, we all have to take time off, volunteer our time, find babysitters and coordinate this between five to seven people. a friggin nightmare. at the same time negotiating against a man in power for over 20 years. So, i'm thinking that while in the short run it kinda sucks, we are not giving up. this could also help us. it encourages our CEO to think that we are inept, which is great cover. he'll likely continue to underestimate us. As long as we don't underestimate ourselves, and support each other thru the rough times, and stick together against the challenges, we are going to win. our success in this loss was that we treated each other with the respect we deserve for the magnitude of the struggle we are in. and we are still together, prepared to take another step forward, as slow or as fast as we can.

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