Coalition Decision Making

Stuart Alcock (Representative for Gay Men, Solidarity Coalition) [00:00:00] Well of course, the Coalition was chaired by Art Kube, and Renate, and Father Jim Roberts, who I saw exhibited an extraordinary degree of patience with a very diverse group of people. I’ve said before, and I’m happy to say it again, that one of the problems with the Solidarity Coalition is that it had people who were clearly in leadership roles in their organizations and their organizations had very clear decision making structures and systems of authority for decision making. Through to people who operated in groups that only did things by consensus. So they would have to come to a meeting, hear what was being proposed, and go back to their group and see if they could get consensus in support of this. So, and other decision making fell somewhere between those two extremes, if you like. So, I thought Art and Renate Shearer and Jim were really quite forbearing around this sort of, almost a monster of decision making that they were trying to control.

 [00:02:00] It was tense, shall we say. And it was tense even within Solidarity. There were a few people and I, and I, and happily I don’t remember their names, who didn’t think we belonged and made it clear that we didn’t belong. One man, in the middle of a meeting, lit into me because I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and I wasn’t properly dressed for being at a Solidarity Coalition meeting, he said. Give me a break. That was some of what we encountered.

Art Kube (President, BC Federation of Labour) [00:02:59] You know, we were in uncharted waters. And, and the important thing and the thing which really over came, over came that what you might call the divisions, was the overall thing of fighting the government and the legislation. I mean, it was so outrageous that you know, you just, you just didn’t have any other choice but to stick together, you know.