SOS being Secular Organizations for Sobriety, founded by Jim Christopher.
Christopher, kept afloat personally by the largess of Center for Inquiry for years, had to get others to help bail him out a few years back to get matching funds that CFI required of it, rather than a blank check which it had been cutting.
Well, the website got overhauled as part of that.
Without Duaine Metevia, who may not have been "THE" right hand man of Jim, but certainly was "A" right hand man. That would be the Duaine who, a dozen or so years ago, after Marty Nicholas stepped down as head of Lifering Secular Recovery and dodged founders syndrome for himself, and forced the organization to do the same, which it has done generally well indeed, threatened to call the cops on me if I ever attended the Dallas SOS-LSR meeting again.
That meeting was dual-branded at the time. I was at the Lifering Congress when Marty stepped down, and was also elected to its board. I talked about this after getting back from Dallas. I never mentioned Jim's name. But, I had no problems if people inferred I was making an insinuation, hint, whatever.
That's when Duaine threatened to call the cops if I ever showed up again.
I got Lifering to stop the dual listing, of course.
Back to three-four years ago.
Duaine is cut out of the loop by a younger generation, with better web design skills for non-professionals, or professionals, than him. (Jim could barely send an email himself; his secretary at his office at CFI-West, which he got along with a salary, as part of the personal gravy train, had to do anything like this for him. It's part of why many people besides Marty were ready to move beyond SOS, which Duaine wouldn't tell you.)
So, he eventually takes his ball and runs home.
The national meetings list is no longer maintained.
When Yahoo ends its email groups, he makes no attempt to find a replacement on another site. (Lifering is at IO Groups.) He doesn't create a Facebook group, though somebody else has.
Then, Jim dies in July 2020.
And, SOS goes further downhill since then. SOS National had the "stay tuned" on meeting lists basically since that time, and it's now going on five years.
Center for Inquiry is clearly not going to fund a paid successor as executive director, let alone with a secretary and free office space.
And, I've known for years they don't have a real board of directors. Whether the IRS knows that, and what that would mean, and how far short of a real board of directors they've been, I don't know.
Now, in today's Net world, sure, it's not impossible to maintain local sobriety groups by word of Facebook mouth or whatever. But, that doesn't easily reach people who move across country. And, the lack of email groups or social media, which are unlikely to be maintained by individual groups, means that there's not that source of information about national happenings, either.
In short, these people are kind of like orphans. But, not 2-year-old or even 6-year-old orphans. They're like teenager orphans, who can survive on their own, but would be better off as part of a family.
Maybe leaders of some of them, like Metevia, have a smidgen, or more, of anti-Lifering animus. Maybe some are just wedded to tradition, even if it's a dead weight, the corpse has been rotting from the inside for five years, and the physical embodiment of the corpse has himself been a corpse for more than a year. Maybe, beyond that, but short of animus, it's stubbornness.
But surely, some leaders of some of these groups know of Lifering's existence already.
Anyway, whoever runs their website, and whatever other de jure (but not de facto, sorry) organization SOS has, from St. Louis? They've been contacted with a short and sweet summary of all of this:
"Wouldn't you be better off officially disbanding the organization and getting / encouraging member groups to join Lifering as their first / best option?
"Signed,
"Someone who knows some history"
The response, from John Gennari?
"Secular Organizations for Sobriety truly respects all paths to sobriety."
I replied to him, admitting the question was at least partly rhetorical, but telling him that clearly wasn't a direct answer and thus I was taking it as a "no" from him.
Given everything I've said above, IMO he's wrong. I also suspect that he knows enough about Lifering to know that ... at a minimum, even as an SOS last-ditcher, the issue is open to discussion.
So, maybe he wants to be a medium-sized fish in a tiny, and drying, pond. I mean, if there is a St. Louis SOS meeting, he can't even get that on the website. If there isn't one, he doesn't even have a personal puddle he's swimming in, only the national pond.
And, a quick Google proves me more than half right, at a minimum, on everything provable. A MeetUp shout-out isn't a website. Yes, he's getting one or two other attendees about .,.. one quarter the time? But, well over half the time, there's one attendee and I think we know who that is. The MeetUp isn't even linked on SOS's online groups page, though all of its nonexistent Yahoo groups are. Other than the Winnipeg group's website that led me here, the only other things listed are within a 60-mile radius of Buffalo, or Amherst, New York and CFI headquarters.
That said, going to THAT link? The plot thickens!
Gennari is ensconced at CFI West, according to it. Quite a magic trick, John, being in both St. Louis and Los Angeles. But, THAT would indeed seem to confirm the other part ... he's Jim Christopher 2.0, and seemingly not a lot better at current age techie stuff than him, or a mix of that and no better at getting help from the people (CFI IT staff, mayhaps?) who did the website overhaul five years ago. It's also "interesting," per what I know and what I've heard others say, that he identifies as a board member when the reality of an actual functioning board has also been a question.
Seriously, dude. You've been at least a self-anointed heir apparent for what, a year, I'll guess, before Jim died? You've had two years to fix and update the website and haven't. You're a fine chip off the old Christopher block indeed.
AND ... interesting. NO IRS 990 form on file. But, that's an OLD notice. Back from the 1990s. Still, it shows Christopher was some sort of mis-manager then. Surely it wasn't fully under CFI's umbrella in 1992. That said, this additional info? Who is Hubert Michael Lenihan? Answer? Involved with a trademark suit over the SOS name. As in, Marty before Marty. In a sense. But, from what I can tell, never really involved in Lifering after the split. I MAY HAVE met him at a Bay Area Lifering Congress.
And, I've wasted enough time.
I will say, per the trademark lawsuit, I think Christopher talked about "individual SOS group autonomy" because he knew he was shit as an administrator. Peter Principle, sloughed off.
==
In addition, this quote from the SOS website:
If you can't find a physical meeting in your area, there are dozens of on-line groups utilizing the principles of Secular Organizations for Sobriety.
Is not true, or at least not unequivocally true.
SMART, for example, has four "steps," is explicitly wedded to cognitive behavioral therapy (which, IMO, may help you STAY sober, but is too rationalist to help a lot of people GET sober), and has at times, IMO, played footsie with moderation.
Nor does it take account of Refuge Recovery and other allegedly "spiritual but not religious" (Buddhism is a religion, folks, and Refuge Recovery is based on principles that are ultimately derived from the religious, metaphysical stances of Buddhism) sobriety orgs that aren't AA/NA.
And, if it WERE true, wouldn't it underscore my point and make an SOS national org even more nugatory?
==
Two comments, a year later.
First, looking at old emails from the late Itchy Bradley, he thought Duaine was a "call screener" for Jim a decade-plus ago. Could be; Duaine's computer skills at that time would have looked like stable genyus to Jim. (Sidebar: Why did CFI never build a website for them? Why did Jim never ask? The second question probably loops back to Duaine.)
Second, when the old Yahoo Groups disappeared and Duaine was cut out of a website redesign at about the same time, to raise money per a CFI demand? An email of his said that SOS Dallas would never go away. It linked to the website, which is ... now dead.
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