ISKCON Philly
BY: BHAKTA MIKE
Mar 23, USA (SUN) — I can definitely verify everything that Chaitanya Simha Prabhu is saying in his recent article, "ISKCON Philadelphia". I went to the Philly Temple for a while, a few years ago, and have been to Govinda's. It is exactly as he has said. There are many other things he didn't mention, probably because he didn't know about them.
The Temple is in absolute shambles, completely falling down and dirty. There wasn't a Bhagavatam class for a long time, not even sure if there is one now. Most of the western devotees are long gone, and they mostly don't even come to the Sunday Feast. The feast is usually cooked by non-initiated devotees, for example.
There was a guy named Patrick who lived in the temple. He was obviously not a stable person, but they let him live there anyway. He went crazy and tried to murder another devotee with an ax! The devotees were all terrified because he had keys to the temple and everyone was walking around with weapons to protect themselves. He eventually went to jail for it.
They threw a really nice devotee and her husband out because they tried to speak up about the harassment they were receiving from one of the Bengali devotees. But, the temple management always sides with them, because they have invested so much money in their immigration. I heard that devotees in the congregation petitioned the GBC about this, but of course, nothing was done. Basically, most western devotees left because of situations like this. They even threw one devotee out who was deathly ill, with no money and nowhere to go.
I thought of working for Govinda's once, but devotees told me that the owner would promise to pay you and would keep putting it off, and eventually would owe you all this money and you would have to fight him for it. He would do this to devotees quite often, that's probably why only karmis work there now. The manager at the time, who was a nice devotee, told my friend that nothing was offered. He tried to change the situation but the owner didn't care. He said that the owner just "considered" everything offered. That's real love and devotion.
The Food for Life situation is definitely accurate, everyone knows about it. If you search 'food for life seva retreat' you will see all the Mayavadi stuff Chaitanya dasa is talking about. It's a real shame. So many sincere devotees would do anything to have a restaurant and facilities like Food for Life has. It's really a sin that it's being wasted on people who don't know how to use it in Krishna's service properly.
It's really hard to see all of it, and me, being a nobody, I have absolutely no power to say or change anything. The GBC obviously doesn't care about anything except for their own "guru retreats" and "leadership seminars". This whole movement is going to hell in a handbasket, they're even letting farms get sold to the totally demoniac oil industry that has basically destroyed this earth planet. Even I, a humble bhakta, knows that Srila Prabhupada compares them, in the Bhagavatam, to Hiranyaksa, who stole all the gold form the earth and caused the earth to fall out of orbit. I guess the demons are destroying everything from within, as Prabhupada predicted. It's really sad that we had to witness it in our lifetime, though. ISKCON Philly seems to be a good example of what we should expect to see everywhere in the near future.
Bhakta Mike
