Yesterday, around 4:10, the lights in my office dimmed way down and then brightened up again. The network in the building stayed up, but my connection outside the building went down. About a minute and a half later, the network came back -- my connection to my home machine still up. A couple minutes later, it happened again, but not so severely. I wondered what it was, but it wasn't until I got home, that I found out that the lights had gone off from Toronto to NYC. Someone was on the ball somewhere to cut the switch and disconnect New England from the NY grid. Power was lost in Springfield and Pittsfield, but it never went off here.
There has been an on-going discussion via email about 
ESNE regarding the moribund state of the organization and what to do about it. I've finally weighed in with a statement that is largely based on the writing that Phil and I did in SenAsocioLanda.
The Problems with ESNE
Before I describe what I see as the problems with ESNE, I need to first say that the most significant problem with ESNE is not with ESNE at all -- it is that the world has changed. People are reconsidering what it means to belong and in what kinds of societies they will participate. ESNE, as an old-fashioned social club, is simply out of fashion right now. Furthermore, the transformation of electronic communication technologies has rendered the idea of a Newsletter nearly meaningless. The World is Different and ESNE needs to transform or die.
That said, I will argue that the two main problems with ESNE are the leadership and the membership. Bear with me -- I'm only half facetious. Let's start with the membership first: There is no membership. Or so little that it can be discounted. I don't care how many people there are on the membership list -- there are only about 6 people who actually take any notice of ESNE and we're it.
The problem with our leadership is that, in spite of Allan's superhuman efforts, we don't have a coherent vision of what we're trying to accomplish. None of the meetings I've attended have succeeded in developing such a vision or developing a plan of action with goals that the membership could undertake. Part of this I accept responsibility for: I haven't been willing to invest much effort towards Esperanto because I have a full-time job and two small children that I feel deserve my time more.
Allan, as president, has worked very hard to elaborate a vision for what he is trying to accomplish with the organization, including creating instructional materials, establishing an endowment with the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and ongoing efforts to persuade teachers to take Esperanto to receive professional development credit. In spite of that, I believe he has not succeeded in convincing "the membership" (ie, those of us listening) to engage significantly with this vision. Partly this may be because Allan is a "finvenkisto" and the rest of us are "rauxmistoj". That is certainly true in my case. At meetings, I have tried to make the case that "finvenkismo" is not very persuasive and that we ought to take a different approach, but I have felt that my suggestions were not acted upon and did not contribute to a change in the direction of the organization. I qualify this by pointing out that I haven't worked very hard to outline a different vision for all the reasons I listed above. Let me try to do that now.
First the easy question: Why should people learn Esperanto? We need to begin by recognizing that most people in the US don't need to learn a second language. English is the international language as far as most North Americans are concerned and most of them have no experience of needing a second language and likely will never have that experience. We need a message that is consistent with that reality. I think a case can be made for Esperanto, but I believe that a dialog that focuses on "why YOU should/must learn Esperanto" turns people off. Instead, I think the message needs to be about the "value-added" features that Esperanto offers, to travel, international contacts, and personal experience. I think a dialog that produced a coherent vision for what ESNE's message ought to be is a critical first step to getting everyone to pull together to support the organization.
Now the hard question: Why should people join ESNE? I'm serious when I say that I don't believe there's any good reason for most people to join. We, as activists, join out of a sense of loyalty to Esperanto, not for any tangible benefit we receive. When Esperanto materials were hard to come by, a newsletter was an important contact: a means of finding other like-minded people and a place to publish our writings. Now if you search for Esperanto on the web, you can find thousands and thousands of pages to read. There are multiple on-line courses and books. If you want to write, you can create a blog and publish as much as you want. And, finally, there are plenty of on-line directories to help you find other Esperantists. I don't think we currently can offer any reason for people to join. At the same time, I think ESNE should continue to be a conduit for people to give money to further Esperanto publicity, information, and education with a concomitant shift in ESNE's focus and activities.
So, if we don't tell people to join ESNE (or even if we do), what should we tell them to do? Learn Esperanto? Start local meetings? Do publicity? Give money? This is what needs to be clearly defined in a format that we can all agree on and support.
Once we agree on the message, we need to get the message out. Verda Lumo may still be a part, but I think a focus on grassroots organizing and using electronic resources must be the focus. ELNA provides PDF files of posters and flyers that could be edited and adapted for our purposes. (http://www.esperanto-usa.org/posters/posters.html). I've also lately been introduced to Meetup (and probably a number of you have as well). We should use Meetup to try to organize local meetings to disseminate information, hand out flyers, and start classes. One critical role that ESNE could play is in developing media and resources that all of us could commit to disseminating in our local communities. But I think we need to make sure that all of the elements work together to communicate a coherent message.
Finally, let me quality all of this by making clear that I'm speaking only in terms of communications regarding ESNE. Regarding a local group or organizing for ELNA or UEA, the message may be different. We don't all need to say and do the same things all the time. But I think that our organization has suffered because there has been no consistent vision that we all share regarding the goals of the organization and the role that we as members should play in participating in it. We should change that, if we want ESNE to go forward.