NOW-NYS Council Meets In Saratoga Springs
Delegates Express Concern Over the Direction of NOW
Arlene Ketchum, Council Delegate

Saratoga Springs was the site of 1999’s first State Council meeting. Council meetings bring together representatives of the more than 20 local NOW chapters throughout the state and chairs of the State special focus task forces. These meetings give local NOW leaders an opportunity to share the goals and activities of their chapters, to hear the latest information about relevant pending legislation before NYS’s Senate and Assembly, to approve the State organization’s budget as well as the plans and budgets of the various State Task Forces. Delegates to the Council also have the responsibility to vote on resolutions that come before the body. These weekend meetings include, as well, meetings of the Board of the NOW-NYS Foundation and the NOW-NYS Political Action Committee.

Over the past year, in addition to the normal course of business, the State Council meetings have increasingly addressed concerns about the overall structure and direction of the National Organization for Women.  NOW is experiencing the growing (i.e. aging) pains expected of any organization that has been in existence for three turbulent decades. Ironically, the growing pains are colliding with a shrinking membership and the resulting strategies (real or imagined) for coping in these times have raised concerns among local NOW leaders.

Rumors abound regarding actions by the National Board that may shrink the rebates to state and local chapters. It was even reported that NOW might become exclusively a Washington-based, feminist lobby and disband the local chapter structure altogether. Dissatisfaction with the actions of the national and regional boards was expressed. A sense of disconnection and feeling left out of the policy-making process of National NOW even led Council delegates, for the second year, to propose addressing these issues to National NOW through the appropriate mechanisms at the national conference.

It would be wonderful to think that a feminist organization, run largely by and for women, would be immune from the crises, the infighting, the power plays, the setbacks, and the internal criticism. But NOW is a large organization and an organization is like an organism whose viability depends on its parts working well together. When one part gives out or when the organism is subject to stress from aging, fatigue, lack of nourishment, or environmental assault, the survival of the organism depends on its ability to regroup, to change, to alter its direction, to evaluate its environment, to identify its strengths. The National Organization for Women needs the support of and open communication between its members and leaders at all levels.  It will change.  It will age.  (Don’t we all?)  But it will survive and grow and continue to provide a strong feminist voice into the next century.