On Tuesday, July 1, 1997, the first Council of The ManKind Project Los Angeles Community met at the offices of Small World Toys in Culver City, California and discussed and adopted by consensus the ideas and principles contained in the Community Governance Plan which has guided the Community since that time. Born out of the Community of MKP San Diego, the men of that MKPLA Council agreed to follow and improve the Community Governance Plan. The Community Governance Plan was blessed by the MKPLA Community at its first Community Annual Meeting held on Tuesday, October 14, 1997. This Wednesday, October 14, 2009, the Community will celebrate its 12th Birthday.
It used to be the norm that at most every official gathering of MKPLA (e.g. Council meeting, Community meeting, Thursday Staff meetings of the NWTA’s, Graduations/Homecomings, etc.) a man would stand and speak the mission from memory as stated in the Community Governance Plan to remind us of the intent of the first men who came together in 1997 and to remind us of the journey of our Community. That mission is stated as follows:
“To create a community
that empowers men
to manifest their dreams
by discovering and teaching
the sacred knowledge of being a man.”
As the Community comes together again next week at its 2009 Annual Meeting, I remind myself of the intent of the first men, of their passion, of their commitments, of their camaraderie, and of the foundation that they created for me to be a part of a Community of men.
Like most chapters of the Mankind Project, the Los Angeles center began as a satellite to an older, more established center, San Diego. San Diego was itself a spinoff of an older center, when three men who "went through" in Chicago brought the work west.
However, as recently as 1992, if a man from the LA area wished to be initiated into what was then known as the New Warrior Network, he still had to travel to San Diego. There were men from Orange County and Riverside, West Hollywood and Studio City, Pasadena and San Bernardino – in other words, Angelenos from the far corners of this geographically diverse area – all making the pilgrimage to San Diego on a regular basis to staff, brother dance and be in community with men.
By about 1994, the LA contingent had grown so large that it seemed logical to become our own community. We started having community meetings in Culver City, at Eddy Goldwasser's Small World Toys company warehouse. Los Angeles was granted Provisional Center status.
Soon thereafter, Los Angeles became a full-fledged Center in the New Warrior Network. By 1998, things were going strong. The Center was now called Mankind Project Los Angeles, and was already helping to develop another community as well, Mankind Project Santa Barbara. This is all as it should be, consistent with the MKPI credo of building consciousness, "one man at a time."
While the flame was carried initially from a small group of men who discovered the work in a place called Haimowoods in the Midwest, to another group in Chicago; it made its way to San Diego and then the light was carried to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Who knows where it will go next?
We live in a diverse community that is spread out over approximately 30,000 square miles of Southwestern terrain. As I write this Labor Day 2009, an area the size of Chicago is in flames while there are parts of our community where people are sunning themselves on the palm-tree shaded beaches and others are hiking through pristine mountain meadows. Still others are sweating it out on clogged and steaming freeways. But for those of us in the Mankind Project Los Angeles, when we sit in circle with our brothers, whether it be on a mat in the corner of someone's garage, or on a couch in a home office in the suburbs, we are one and the same, brothers in communion with each other, ready to “do our work”. And when one of us has reached some point of epiphany, the others in the circle will all shout affirmatively in the same guttural exclamation of the Native American tongue, "Aho!"
