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I am happy to publish comments trashing Media Island even when they are anonymous. I don't believe people have good reasons for staying anonymous. If the people were known they would be seen as trashing organizations for the problems they face rather than helping. I know for a fact that anonymous is not speaking for anyone who made soft loans to media island in the late 90's. And the implication we want to sell the house because of unpaid debts is simply promulgating false rumors. Many people admire the work media island was doing at that time.

Our mission has never been to manage a shelter. It is not what we are geared up to do. We do however help tons of folks in marginal situations with no funding or volunteers dedicated to this task. The majority of complaints against media island stem from problems created by folks who land here in need of a place to be.

Tons of activist groups use media island. To make the allegation that we are not an activist hub tells me anonymous is not involved in WIP, OMJP, Common Action, LASO, PMR, Copwatch, SPEECH, Media Island projects, KOWA, Food Not Bombs or any of the 30 or so projects which use media islands fiscal sponsorship services. What other organization attempts to share their space at all?!?

As far as "sub-legal" participation, there is nothing which says a Media Island International director needs to live in Olympia. We talk frquently and make board decisions about fiscal sponsorship requests etc. as needed, which is always more often than quarterly.

The other point which irks me the most is the presumption that Media Island has not been open to offers and nominations of new board members. We don't need or deserve to have board members pushed on us who are hostile or blame us for the very problems we have to confront managing a downtown house.

Who is out there who even wants to hear about all the litany of responsibilities we have been holding down? Without grants we have been paying around $600 of bills every month. We spend immense amounts of time keeping this thing afloat and it sucks getting dissed by anonymous observers. We have been asking for community help and participation to make MII flourish. We meet every tuesday night at 7 to allow a time for new volunteers and proposals to be heard. People are also welcome to help us struggle with decisions on managing the house: How to develop policy, but even more important, how to enforce policy once it is decided upon. Joe was unwilling. He also dissed our meetings and went on doing thing badly because he couldn't handle the restraints of organizational process. His only agenda item ever was Chuks departure. The problem was that Chuks is willing to work as part of an organization and interface with people who come in. Joe was not willing to do this and without it we need to lock the doors.