You're Kidding, Right?

So, earlier this month the September ICOIL meeting was cancelled by its chair, Jodi James. One would think to themselves, Ok so looks like were just going to meet next month instead, right? WRONG. The rest of ICOIL decided to have a meeting anyway, even though their room and sign language interpreter and everything else was cancelled.

So why did they hold the meeting anyway? Well, because they wanted to try to vote out the chair, secretary and treasurer. And why would they want to do that? Easy. Because the aforementioned ICOIL officers were starting to do good work. They were asking questions. And most inportantly, they wanted to focus on real issues related to people with disabilities Indiana.

While the rest of the council met unofficially in a makeshift meeting room in Indianapolis, chairperson James was in Washington D.C. fighting for rights of the disabled. She was at HUD fighting for more accessible housing. She was meeting with congressmen to push for better home health care. You can see some of her journey here. What was ICOIL doing back home? Talking about who gets gas money to drive to the meeting they had. No, seriously. They did.

So, the most important part of this whole thing is that some might say that ICOIL wanted Jodi James to be their puppet. They told her what to do and say and it actually worked for quite a while. But not anymore. Secretary Ramona Harvey also went to D.C. and ICOIL voted her out too.

Its really funny to those of us who stand outside looking in because the obviousness of whats going on here is...well, OBVIOUS. First of all, a few months ago ICOIL gave James carte blanche to basically do anything. Schedule meetings, cancel them, etc. They wanted to control the future of the council and James was the perfect pawn to do so, and now that she has taken the red pill and escaped from the Matrix, she finally realizes this.

Now, the fact that new ICOIL members are almost ALWAYS promised money for a new center of their own is discussion for another day, but just to let you all know, it still happens. Half a dozen poor souls that are new on the council are being promised money for centers of their own or at least money for other endeavors....AS LONG AS THE PLAY BALL. Can anyone say Puppet government?

Anyway, so James, who has complete authority to run that council was apparantly voted out of her seat because of her going to the ADAPT action earlier this month. WOW. We wouldnt want her fighting for our and her rights would we now?

But they "got her". Oh yea they "got her" really good. Can you sense the sarcasm? Good. Because I'm laying it on pretty thick. You give this woman authority and then dont let her use it. She got blindsided. But is all lost? Nah. We may have a new chair. Dee Ann Hart. Who is she? Um, who knows but apparntly she comes with strings because every single action she takes from now on her strings (if she stays chairperson) will be pulled to make her do exactly what the rest of the goobers in ICOIL want her to do.

After all, I mean, like we really need to pay Emas Bennett's wife to sit there and attend a meeting with her college educated husband and write her off as a "Personal Assistant" And the council needs to talk week after week about garbage that is completely irrelavent anyway.

So heres the lesson for those of you kids out there who want to know more about ICOIL. if you want to join, heres what will happen:

1) if you are disabled and look pitiful, they'll take you.
2) they will go on to promise money to you to open a new office that you can call your own.
3) you will realize that youre not getting any money so you get upset
4) you start to do your job well
5) then you will be run off the board for asking too many questions.

To Clarify #5 Just ask Ms. James, Dick Crandall, Mark Bair, John Guingrich etc. and the list goes on.

*SIGH*

To see a video of this unofficial meeting, go the Everybody Counts ICOIL meeting archive here.