Every group and institution has its own "life-cycle" of birth, growth, peak, decline and finally death. Shortly after 9-11, Solano Peace and Justice Coalition came into existence. It was born from the tears and ashes of the World Trade Center tragedy and anger at the rush to war of the Bush Administration. The first meeting I attended was at a Baptist church in downtown Vallejo. There were probably close to thirty or forty people at that meeting when we created our "Principles of Unity." The American Heritage Dictionary defines "coalition" as "An alliance, especially a temporary one, of people, factions, parties, or nations." The emphasis on "temporary" is mine. The history of Solano Peace and Justice Coalition is a history of factions and parties that came together in unity for a common cause but those same factions and parties ultimately were much the cause of decline. I guess it was inevitable according to the American Heritage definition of "coalition."
After a couple of meetings at the Baptist church, the group quickly moved to "progressive" First Christian Church. As I remember, since I was attending both the church and SPJC at that time, the church was looking for ways to grow it's congregation and had been reaching out to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gendered community as an "open and affirming" church. Reaching out to Solano Peace and Justice was another progressive evangelism opportunity to reach out another progressive demographic with many shared values. By offering SPJC meeting space, the church hoped to bring more like-minded people into contact with the church which could possibly result in church growth and thus being mutually beneficial to both fledgling Solano Peace and Justice Coalition and the declining First Christian Church. My impression was that the work that Solano Peace and Justice Coalition was doing for peace and justice was seen by some in the church as more valuable at that time than rent money. It was a great way for the church to make a statement about their faith and beliefs about activism pertaining to peace and justice issues. Both political activists and Christian peace activists benefited from this relationship.
SPJC was certainly an alliance of "factions" and "parties" at those early meetings. Politically, we were mostly Green party members and Democrats that were putting our differences aside to fight against mutual goals of ending the unjust Bush Administration war and unconstitutional policies. Our first two moderators identified themselves as "Green" while many of the members seemed to identify themselves as Democrat, (although no poll was done to determine what the actual numbers were at the time). We all agreed that the group would be non-partisan but often that was difficult, as progressives tend to have opinions and tend to want to express those opinions regardless of "policies." Liberals have never mastered the "lock step" talent of the right which keeps the right so much more simplistic, cohesive and focused on their talking points, agenda and goals. The left is always more intellectual, thoughtful and factious and have difficulty fitting their ideas on bumper stickers. There always seem to be more arguments over minutiae and consensus is more elusive with progressives.
There were many great successes in the first few years. Many of those successes can be seen in the slide show of over five hundred pictures that are available on Google and through the website at www.solanopeaceandjustice.org. We began a Wednesday night vigil at the Ferry building that lasted a couple of years and another in Benicia on Thursday nights which have lasted to this day. We had a well attended downtown event with speakers called "World Says No to War." We sponsored lectures by Father Roy of the School of America's Watch- once in Vallejo and once in Suisun that were well attended. We had movie nights. We had marches and made a visit to a Muslim Mosque to stand in solidarity with the Muslim community. We participated in the 4th of July parades. In other words, we were a busy group and kept the war on the front pages of the Vallejo Times-Herald and brought much more attention to issues than there would have been otherwise. All of us that participated should forever be proud of those efforts and accomplishments. I think they played a small part in changing the attitudes of people locally which contributed to changing the attitudes nationally toward the war.
Out of our fundraising we paid for speakers such as Father Roy and other event expenses. For the first two years the website and domain name were paid for out of the group funds. The group could afford a regular snail mail newsletter and had people to actually work on it for a while. The group contributed funds and most of the energy that brought a "peace pole" to the waterfront.
By November of 2004, many of the early participants had already lost their fire and energy and had started dropping off. Life happens. People move or get busy with other things. Sometimes people would make suggestions but then not want to do the work to make those things happen. Sometimes people felt like they were not being heard. The biggest thing that happened that year, though, was the election.
Bush was running for a second term and this became a divisive issue in the "coalition." Many of the Green party members felt the emphasis should be on developing a third party. They did not see the Bush administration as much as the problem as the two party system itself. Many of the Democrats felt that Bush and the war would not have even happened if it had not been for Ralph Nader siphoning off votes from Gore in 2000. The group continued to try and be non-partisan but it became increasingly difficult as all felt there was so much at stake. The Democrats wanted to hold the Bush Administration accountable for their lies and misdeeds but the Green's objected to "Bush bashing," as they called it, and insisted that the Democrats were just as bad because some had voted for the war and the Patriot Act too (albeit based on lies and misinformation of the Bush administration). The Democrats felt it was important to work within the Democratic party to get Kerry elected who promised to take us out of the war. The Greens felt it more important to abandon the Democratic party and make a statement about the two party system. Eventually the Green's were abandoning the coalition to emphasize that point. As it had been with the Democratic party before, for many of the Green's opposed to any kind of political negotiation, it was all or nothing, and when the whole group wouldn't go along, they took their ball and went home. Meeting numbers tumbled dramatically during this period.
Where the group had required the church sanctuary previously, by the election of 2004, the group had dwindled to a size that could fit into the church library. By this time, many had grown weary of emphasizing the war over and over again and other "justice" issues became more prominent than "peace" issues. Some would say the group lost it's focus at this point while others argued that it was necessary to be inclusive of other issues to bring more people into the group. There was the fight against the natural gas plant that took the limelight temporarily. Our original moderator had moved on to another political community based group called ACORN and then formed another group in quick succession. Some members seemed to be competing to see who had the most "progressive" credentials. Heated arguments broke out over whether a vinyl banner could be used at the Fourth of July parade since vinyl was not seen as good for the environment. The meetings grew more chaotic and divisive which made others increasingly uncomfortable, asking "this is a peace group?" More quit coming.
By 2006, the group was essentially on life support. There were rarely enough people in the group to have a "quorum" of eight to actually vote on any of the business per the original guidelines. Since there were only about eight people attending with any regularity at this point, the "leadership" structure was changed to an "oversight committee." This oversight committee would plan events and actions but soon personalities clashed, power struggles developed, and control issues came up and the eight dropped to seven and then to six.
Soon the meetings at the church were only being attended by a core group of four with an occasional drop in of one or two others from time to time. By this time the church itself was having more financial difficulties and had asked the group for fifty dollars a month for using the building. This information was not shared until sometime later with others still involved in fundraising and eventually this lack of sharing information would become another point of contention. The core group of four had ceased to communicate meeting minutes to those that could not attend meetings on Thursday nights and at one point, seemed almost as secretive as the Bush administration itself.
There was ongoing discussion about how to bring people back to the group. There were various theories as to why people had left and various ideas of how to get them back. A survey was sent out with about fifteen questions for people on the mailing list to answer. Out of approximately two hundred people on the mailing list, only about thirty responded. Many said they could not come to meetings on Thursday nights at seven and had said that the weekends worked better for them. It became obvious that the group could no longer afford to pay the church $50.00 a month for four or five people to meet there when those four or five people could meet almost anywhere else for free and at any time that was convenient for them. The church seemed inflexible about both the $50.00 a month and Thursday nights. Neither worked for the group anymore. Discussions took place over several months but the church would not waive the $50.00 fee or offer meeting space on Saturdays. (Sadly, after the group had made arrangements to go elsewhere, it was implied the church may not have been as firm as it appeared on either issue but by that time, it was already too late and the group had moved on).
The turnout at the first meeting at the Bayanihan Center had the best turnout in a long time. About ten people were there. This was the first time there was a "quorum" in quite a while. Although the core group of four or five had been making decisions for the group for quite a while, the actual guidelines set forth that there should be a quorum of eight to do business. At this meeting, it was decided the group would meet on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month at 11am. This would be the last time a quorum would be present.
Meetings continued at the Bayanihan Center for several months. The Bayanihan Center had only charged the group $50.00 for the entire year which was a big difference from the $50.00 a month the group had been paying the church but attendance continued to be increasingly sporadic. Sometimes only one or two members were showing up for meetings. Everyone seemed to have other things to do and new issues in their lives. There were underlying currents of resentment from one or two because of the move from the church. Those that had said they would come if the meetings were held on Saturdays, still didn't' come. Some didn't like the time of the meetings, either feeling it was too early for those that like to sleep in or too late for those that wanted to get the meeting over with so they could do other things on their Saturdays off.
For a couple of years, the core group of four or five attending meetings, regularly brought up Vallejo Community Access Television and wanted to have a presence there but nothing ever happened. There was just a lot of talk. Finally, I purchased a camera, (again out of my own pocket), because the core group seemed to feel this was an important endeavor. More money was spent on dvd's and batteries and editing software for the purpose of getting the Solano Peace and Justice programming on the air. Although I have a background in film making and enjoy video making, I would not have needed this video equipment at all for my own needs. As soon as this money was spent and the equipment was acquired and the project was finally off the ground, there were some that incredibly and totally withdrew their entire support of the project! Those that had seemed to have had so much to say for so long and wanted to say it on VCAT, suddenly were silent and refused to participate! Here was a great opportunity to finally talk those personal issues each of us had and to tell what brought each of us to the peace movement and share those ideas and experiences with others.
VCAT, besides the website, was the best opportunity in a long time for such a small group to reach a larger audience. We could now reach way more people than we could ever expect to long onto the website or certainly more than we could ever expect to come to even our most successful events and it required so much less energy and expense! Here was the opportunity that we had been talking about for over a couple of years and there went core members bailing immediately. What is wrong with this picture???
Many had said down through the years, "is this the Solano Peace and Justice Coalition or the Vallejo Peace and Justice Coalition?" There had been many requests for the group to meet in other places in Solano County down through the years but that had always been dismissed out of hand when we were still meeting at the church. Now that we were no longer locked into Thursday nights at the church, meeting elsewhere could be explored. Since there had been such a small group meeting for such a long time, really they could have met anywhere- a restaurant, someone's home, or elsewhere and mostly for free.
A meeting was scheduled for Café Voltaire in Benicia. At that first meeting, two new faces appeared. At the second meeting in Benicia, one of those reappeared and there were two more new faces. This only made up and balanced out those previous core members who were absent. There did seem to be new energy and new possibilities though. But by this time, the core group was tired and burnt out and power struggles seemed to be breaking out among them as to whether meetings should continue and where those meetings should be. Another poll was done and five people committed to both Vallejo meetings and Benicia meetings but then only three of those followed through by attending the next Vallejo meeting. An addition six committed to meetings in Benicia and we have yet to see whether the five that committed to both and the six that committed to Benicia will all show up. That would make eleven. Before that meeting could take place though, burnout, frustration, and depression caught up with the four remaining members of the coalitions former "steering committee."
For some of us, it feels like SPJC has been on life support for quite a while and only a two or three and sometimes four of us have been doing cpr while others watch, critique, complain and fuss. There are some that want to make suggestions, but expect others to do most of the work. There are some that seem to contribute most of the finances while it is others that do all the spending. The group hasn't paid for the website for several years. That has all come out of my pocket. Event expenses are never offered to be reimbursed. Some are left contributing hundreds of dollars over the years and hours of work while others just want to dictate how that money will be spent and what others should do next. Those that have been "doing" are exhausted and burned out. Those that don't do are resentful that those that "do" don't want to do more or contribute more.
At this point, this writer is moving on. The website will continue to be maintained for the peace community, at least until October when the server service will need to be paid for. This has come out of the writers pocket for the last several years.
If YOUR version of SPJC history differs from mine, please feel send it and I will post it here...