WAND

[Holloway3@aol.com]

I found this on the Internet and it is so alien to me that I thought others
might be interested in it.  It is about an organization that had some
connection with Helen Caldicott.  I think that WAND is an acronym for Women
Against Nuclear Destruction.
I don't  know how they define nuclear threat exactly, but most likely it is in
a very broad sense.  It is remarkable in that it advocates ignoring facts, and
going with your "feelings".  
-----------------------------------------
>>>>>Originally, WAND had followed the model of Physicians for Social
Responsibility
(PSR) in trying to develop a bureau of public speakers on the nuclear issue.
PSR had
trained medical doctors and other professionals to speak as "experts" on the
facts and
figures of the medical effects of nuclear war. It became clear that this
"expert" training
for public speaking was inappropriate for WAND. The "expert" model is based on
an
authoritarian model of power through debate, where the domain is scientific
facts and
numbers. WAND's evolving message is that it is precisely in questioning this
model of
authority that women reconnect to their own untapped power. Rather than
becoming
overinvolved with facts, figures, and technojargon, WAND offers the message
that
feeling and conviction are an appropriate and sufficient first response to
this issue and
form the most powerful basis for further education and action. 

At the heart of the training is the recognition that it is insane to
disconnect from feelings
about the nuclear threat; rather, women must learn to speak out in an
emotionally
powerful and cogent manner. Women's power to empower others, and to use the
power
of their emotions effectively to move others to become involved and active,
rests not on
technical expertise but on personal authenticity and the energies released
through
emotional connection. The power of "listening" and "responding" from the heart
is thus
validated as forming a more valuable and lasting base for power than "speaking
out" as
an "expert." It is the building of relationship, the creation of the
"conversation" that
connects people, that is the core of women's powers and creative
energies--and,
potentially, men's as well. Accordingly, the workshop encourages connections
with men.
However, it also recognizes and addresses the ways that women can become
disempowered when connections with men are fragmenting, that is, maintained at
the
expense of the deepest connections to self and other women. Thus women's
connections with each other are seen as the first step in evolving a new
relational structure for mobilizing, sustaining, and organizing information
and activity. Men are welcome to work within this structure. Put another way,
the workshop creates a more "realistic" and more total basis from which to
gain and use our knowledge about the nuclear threat. <<<<<<

                                                 

                                                             R. Holloway
                                                             holloway3@aol.com
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