Policy

This week I went to one of the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities meeting and I realized a fundemental problem. Well a few actually. One of the people I work with and I were talking about this and really what happens is that the meetings are at least two hours long and people feel like it is torture. No one actually enjoys going to the meeting s Also, because CCD is so big, there are so many different interests that come to the meetings and different member organizations. Next there are about fifteen meetings to decide anything which is really frustrating and from that one of the big systematic problems is that when dealing with an issue they skip what is in my opinion a fundamental step: agreeing on the main objective at the start. They don't come to initial consensus so they go through zillions of iterations where they are nitpicking over details when they don't even all agree on the overall message and how that is being approached. If they only started each issue/initiative by agreeing on the overarching idea, then the details and the rest of the process would go much smoother. Also it seems like the environment is such that different organizations are listened to better or worse than others and this does not create a very engaging atmosphere if some people or organizations simply know they will not be valued equally.