[Wpfw-lsb] LSB Meeting Jan 19, 2005

[thomas ruffin]

dear wpfw local station board:

i received a telephone message friday evening from the board's
vice-chairperson, mark berman, whose message informed me that the local
station board meeting set to take place at hadley memorial hospital on
wednesday, january 19, will be held at the ella baker center on 15th
street, across the street from malcolm x park.  mark berman's message
informed me that jim brown changed the location for the meeting.  from what
i learned in an earlier telephone message from mark berman and in a later
telephone call with jane gatewood, many of our board members feared that,
with president bush's inauguration scheduled to take place the next day,
travel through the city to hadley memorial hospital would be impractical. 
i have an objection to any change in the meeting place for our january 19
board meeting.

first of all, in the pacifica bylaws, under article 7, section 6(D), the
notice for our meeting must be given to "the public and all [wpfw]
Members", and this notice must be provided "at least seven days prior to
the date of each meeting".  we cannot provide seven days prior notice at
this late date.  moreover, the notice to the public and to the wpfw
membership must include "four on-air announcements, made during prime time
on the radio station on four different days".  since i received my first
notice about the new meeting place last friday evening, we cannot possibly
provide prior notice of the meeting "during prime time" on four different
days.  after all, prime time arises on weekdays, not on weekends. 
apparently, while we plan to elect officers for our local station board, we
plan to do so without providing adequate notice to the public and to the
wpfw membership.  this smacks of the same sort of procedural misconduct
that plagued much of our work last year.  i absolutely object to this new
and illegal arrangement.

lastly, i am disappointed that the board, or its leadership, believes that
bush's inauguration on january 20 will pose so great an inconvenience that
our board members cannot travel to hadley memorial hospital, but that in
contrast board members would not be inconvenienced by travel to the ella
baker center in northwest.  since the inauguration will not take place
until january 20, the inauguration will not interfere with our travel to
hadley memorial hospital or to any other location outside of downtown d.c.
on january 19.  in fact, if people living or working in northwest cannot
travel to anacostia, then i would not possibly be able to travel to the
ella baker center on 15th street.

last year, when i suffered the inconvenience of traveling to udc for our
meetings, i often had to abandon the work of my clients and always on
weekdays had to travel through evening rush hour traffic.  the board
insisted that any inconvenience i endured arose as part of my reasonable
service on the board.  some even insisted that, if i could not timely
arrive at meetings, then i should resign.  i resented these remarks. 
today, i resent the idea that board members on the north side of this
metropolitan area feel so greatly inconvenienced by a meeting in anacostia
that they illegally changed the meeting place for january 19 board meeting.

as it is, we cannot lawfully meet at the ella baker center on january 19
because we have not provided adequate notice of this meeting place.  in
addition, because the board's leadership unilaterally changed the meeting
place and stopped giving notice of hadley hospital as our january 19
meeting place, we cannot lawfully hold a meeting on january 19th at hadley
memorial hospital or at any other location.  hence, we have to postpone the
meeting, agree upon a meeting place, and give a new and, this time, an
adequate and consistent notice of the location, date, time, and subject of
our next board meeting.

i hope that i receive no resistance to this objection.  to be honest, i am
tired of the procedural errors that persistently plague the legitimacy of
our work.

thomas ruffin


> [Original Message]
> From: Jane Gatewood <cjgatewood at netscape.net>
> To: <wpfw-lsb at lists.mutualaid.org>
> Date: 1/12/2005 5:40:56 PM
> Subject: [Wpfw-lsb] LSB Meeting Jan 19, 2005
>
> The next regular meeting of the LSB will be:
>
> 7 pm - Wednesday January 19, 2005
> Hadley Memorial Hospital
> 4601 Martin Luther King Jr Avenue
> SW Washington, DC
>
> Main Cafeteria (First Floor)
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