[Peace-discuss] Re: [Peace] URGENT! Democracy at WEFT under threat (again)

Fri May 30 23:49:37 CDT 2008

Randall, I know so little about all this, but the media is all a giant problem/disaster, so if I could do anything to help, I would like to do that.  I can probably put together some kind of letter (basically from your letter), but "immediately" is there something else I could do?

linda

--
live simply 
love generously 
care deeply 
speak kindly 
leave the rest to God

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Randall Cotton" <recotton at earthlink.net> 

> The democratic, community nature of our community radio station, WEFT 
> 90.1FM is (once again) under serious threat. 
> 
> Background: 
> ------------- 
> Every year, WEFT conducts an election for Board members in which each WEFT 
> Member (anyone who contributes $40 or more) is given the opportunity to 
> vote by mail-in ballot. Anyone is allowed to run (the station Bylaws only 
> require Illinois residency and U.S. citizenship). You may remember that 
> last year, the sitting Board of Directors tampered with the election by 
> changing the rules in the middle of that election. Their action favored 
> the incumbent candidate (the Chair of the Board at the time) to the 
> disadvantage of the 5 challenging candidates. It was the Chair himself who 
> proposed the motion to change the rules. This resulted in a lawsuit by 16 
> WEFT Members that successfully forced the Board to rescind their decision 
> as part of an out-of-court settlement. The Chair was ultimately voted out 
> of office as part of that same election because of his involvement in this 
> matter. 
> 
> For reference, the lawsuit is online at: 
> 
> www.reformweft.org/lawsuit.pdf 
> 
> Though I was heavily involved in the effort to reverse last year's 
> tampering, I was not a candidate myself. This year, I did come forward as 
> a candidate. And this time, the Board has acted even more aggressively to 
> manipulate the election. Last Tuesday evening, May 27th, the Board simply 
> voted to bar me from running, even though they had already accepted and 
> formally announced my candidacy on May 15th. 
> 
> Our community radio station is supposed to be democratically run through 
> this democratic election process. The Board is the highest governing 
> body at the station. For that body to attempt to dictate who may or may 
> not run in a Membership-wide election for seats to that very body, 
> profoundly harms WEFT's democracy. In this way the integrity of the 
> station's democratic foundation and community nature stands to be severely 
> compromised. 
> 
> My candidacy: 
> --------------- 
> I decided to run for the Board in this year's election (scheduled to start 
> next week) in part to help correct the culture that lead to last year's 
> election corruption. But there are other reasons as well. In fact, WEFT 
> has many problem these days and is quickly losing support in the 
> community. We attract donation pledges at less than half the rate we did 5 
> or 6 years ago (and 38% less than even one year ago). The candidacy 
> statement I submitted to WEFT provides more detail on this and also a 
> rundown of other issues affecting the station adversely these days. This 
> statement is online at: 
> 
> www.reformweft.org/candidacy.pdf 
> 
> I complied with all requirements for submitting my candidacy and on May 
> 15th, the station formally announced me as a candidate along with two 
> others. A copy of this announcement is online at: 
> 
> www.reformweft.org/announcement.html 
> 
> My investigative report: 
> ------------------------ 
> 10 days after submitting my candidacy, on May 24th, I published a 
> comprehensive report regarding a different serious issue at WEFT that 
> motivated my candidacy - the performance and management of the paid 
> Underwriting Coordinator. It's a very well-documented investigation of 
> the poor performance of the station's Underwriting Coordinator position, 
> the ineffective management of that position, and the failure of the Board 
> of Directors to correct the situation for more than 2 years. The report is 
> about 13 pages long (but with more than 120 pages of supporting 
> documentation). The focus of the report details precisely how this state 
> of affairs is harming the station and its mission. The report is available 
> online at: 
> 
> www.reformweft.org/ucreport.pdf 
> 
> Removal of my candidacy: 
> ---------------------------- 
> Three days after I began publicizing that report, on May 27th, at the WEFT 
> Board of Directors monthly meeting, the Board went into an unannounced 
> "closed session" (Board meetings are generally required to be open to the 
> public). During that closed session, the Board voted to bar me from 
> running and remove my name from the list of candidates. 
> 
> Though I have long been speaking out about problems at the station and 
> advocating for change (as a Member, Volunteer, Associate and also while 
> serving on the Board previously from 2004-2006), I believe my recent 
> investigative report, released 3 days before I was barred, combined with 
> my efforts to help reverse last year's election tampering, contributed 
> heavily to the Board's decision to remove me from the election. This 
> action provides a very damaging appearance for the Board and severely 
> harms the station's democracy and the organization's integrity. 
> 
> What can you do to help? 
> -------------------------- 
> Regardless of whether you've ever contributed to WEFT, the station is 
> meant to serve the community as a public service. Anyone in the community 
> has the legitimacy to communicate their reaction regarding this decision 
> to the Board. You can send mail to boardchair at weft.org to formally 
> register your opinion and urge the Board to reverse their decision before 
> the ballots are mailed out on June 5th. Given that the Chair has been the 
> primary advocate for this action, however, I would also suggest sending a 
> copy of your communication to weft-comm at curadio.net so that it is 
> documented publicly. weft-comm is an open, public community mailing list 
> that was set up to discuss issues regarding WEFT (it was recently set up 
> independently from the station after WEFT's management shut down the 
> station's only open discussion mailing list, "wefta"). 
> 
> You can also *subscribe* to the weft-comm at curadio.net mailing list and 
> join in discussion regarding this and other station matters by visiting 
> www.curadio.net on the web. 
> 
> Thanks for your attention to this issue and I hope you'll take action to 
> oppose what's going on. Not because it's a matter of unfairness to me 
> personally. That is not the issue and is of no significance (by the way, 
> Board seats are not paid positions and are not compensated in any way). 
> The issue is the damage being brought against what is supposed to be and 
> what we've all understood to be a community media resource, democratically 
> run by its paying Members. 
> 
> Indeed, WEFT's Bylaws encompass many democratic provisions, not just this 
> election. And democratic control of public access to media channels is 
> already in a desperately poor state in this country. Community media 
> channels provide an invaluable alternative to increasingly monolithic and 
> conglomerated corporate media and are only becoming more important and 
> precious with time. 
> 
> But for years, the current leadership at WEFT has been closing the station 
> in on itself, erecting walls instead of reaching out, becoming more and 
> more insular and self-serving. And there have been serious management 
> problems that are being ignored (the matter of the Underwriting 
> Coordinator I delineate in my report is hardly the worst of it). Now the 
> leadership is engaging in a direct and quite undemocratic attempt to 
> control who may or may not join that leadership. If this is allowed to 
> stand, it will set a horrible precedent, deal a severe blow to the 
> community nature of this important public media access service and 
> institution, and turn WEFT into even more of an insider's club than it 
> already is. 
> 
> There are other ways you can help - please contact me *IMMEDIATELY* for 
> details if you're interested. Immediate action is necessary due to 
> election-related deadlines - the deadline to gain voting eligibility is 
> tomorrow, Saturday May 31st and the ballots are scheduled to be mailed out 
> to WEFT Members on Thursday, June 5th . Please feel free to reply to me 
> directly via email or, if you prefer, call me any day, any time between 
> 7:30AM and 1AM regarding this matter at 217-351-8644 (home) or 
> 217-722-8470 (cell). 
> 
> Randall Cotton 
> 
> _______________________________________________ 
> Peace mailing list 
> Peace at lists.chambana.net 
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20080531/e80316af/attachment-0001.html