My ADLA-Chicago Constitution Task Force Meeting Notes of 7-15-16

Below are my mental notes from the ADLA-Chicago Constitution Task Force meeting held in the Refectory of Lutheran School of Theology Chicago, 7-15-16 at 10 AM.  

Seminarian Fanya Berry convened and hosted the gathering. Additionally attending were: Pastor Booker Vance, Policy Director of Faith in Place, Deaconess Marsha Cherry-Washington, Reformation Lutheran Council President, & Pastor Joel Washington, Reformation Lutheran.  Note: Valora Starr of Church-Wide's Women of the ELCA was absent due to a last minute scheduling conflict.  

The meeting's purpose was to clarify questions raised at the ADLA-Chicago membership meeting of June 4th, 2016 regarding the Chapter's By-Laws as they related to the National ADLA Draft Constitution.    

Although Fanya took detailed notes from our discussion around the Constitution, this writer made the following two mental notes:  

First, whereas the ADLA'S National Draft Constitution serves primarily to regulate relations between the ADLA Assembly and its Officers on the one hand and ADLA Chapters on the other, the Chapter By-Laws exist to regulate relations within the Local ADLA body only.  However, Local By-Laws cannot contradict the National Draft Constitution. 

Second, whereas the ADLA National Draft Constitution requires monthly Chapter meetings between September and June of each year, its specifically suggested 2nd Saturdays of each month from 10 AM to 12 Noon remains subject to the Local Chapter's discretion.    More, meetings during July and August are not prohibited. 

This writer suggested that the ADLA-Chicago Constitutional Task Force remain active by transitioning into a Parliamentary Procedure Task Force.  Said service was needed to insure and preserve Local Chapter meeting order.  As an instance, we held that, technically speaking, the recent ADLA election of officers at the June 4th meeting past was out of order and should not have been held on the same date we met to adopt both the National Constitution and Local By-Laws.  Elections should have been held instead, in our view, at a subsequent meeting scheduled at the pleasure of the voting membership.  Indeed this was discussed and voted on at the prior membership meeting of April 2016 at Salem Lutheran.  

More, nominations for officers by definition were suppose to be limited only to active dues paying members.  This said, it was out of order to place the name in nomination of a person who had not yet joined the active ranks of the Chapter, let alone circulate their bio, as a candidate for the office of Chapter President mind you, prior to their membership registration, inclusive of dues payment, weeks in advance of a rushed election.  

I concluded my suggestion that we constitute ourselves into a Parliamentary Procedure Task Force with the following observation that our purpose would be, to use the charge of all Parliamentarians, "to make the organization's President look good."   This said our suggestion was adopted and we agreed to present ourselves to the Chapter accordingly. This blog entry, then, is a part of that presentation.

Finally, we also decided to explore the possibility of doing a special ADLA event at LSTC initially at the end of August.  But this project fell through because of logistical self-doubt within the group and the time crunch. We subsequently proposed instead a fall-back suggestion for October, but I have decided to take it off the table and look at doing our proposed special event instead under another sponsoring group and at an alternative venue.

Stay tuned.

Respectfully submitted: Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma), Reformation Church-Chcago-ELCA ("Young Barack Obama's sanctuary for community organizing") 8-24-16.