Date sent: Wed, 28 Jan 1998
From: "R. Paul Martin" <rpm@glib.com>

At last night's WBAI Local Board meeting there were some games going on with membership.

DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES

The first thing that happened was that Local Board Chair Nan Rubin said that they would not "seat" the elected Staff Representatives until the next meeting. That's in March! She tried to make this seem like standard operating procedure, but we'd been through these things before and knew it was some sort of scam she was attempting.

This really only affected the Paid Staff rep. because the Unpaid Staff Rep. was going on her second term.

The 1997, Paid Staff Rep. was there and so she decided to take part in the meeting. The Chair wanted to stop her, but we said that if she wasn't going to seat the 1998, Rep. then the 1997, Rep. must still be active. She couldn't get out of this one and so the 1997, Paid Staff Rep. participated in the meeting.

Later on the 1997, Rep. said that she wouldn't be in town for the Feb. 11, Mary Frances Berry events, and the Staff Reps. should meet with her. So she said that the 1998, Rep. should be "seated." After a lot of argument over this it started getting obvious that they were discriminating against the new, 1998, Rep. The Chair clutched at the fig leaf of saying that of course this meant that they'd seat him during the Executive Session after the regular meeting. But I think they got a taste of things when the 1998, Rep. voiced his protest over these discriminatory tricks.

In the middle of the meeting the reason for the trickery came out: the Pacifica proposal for Local Boards is that Staff could only be non-voting members! Nan Rubin was trying to put off the seating of the 1998, Reps. in the hopes of having them stripped of all voting powers by Pacifica fiat. Nasty stuff. The other Local Board members unanimously said that they wanted the Staff Reps., and the non-Rep. Board members who were Staff, to be full fledged members of the Local Board. So the WBAI Local Board is going to recommend that this disenfranchising of Board members who are also Staff not be implemented.

WBAI'S NATIONAL BOARD REP. IS NOT A MEMBER!

During all of this fancy dancing, and before the capitulation to seating the 1998, Paid Staff Rep., elections for WBAI's representatives to the National Board came up. Nan Rubin nominated Frank Millspaugh, and a new member, to be the 1998, Reps. to the National Board.

Little problem with this: Frank Millspaugh is not a legal member of the WBAI Local Board! He tried to lie about it, saying that he was a year short of having his final term expire. The head of the Membership Committee said that, no, his term had expired early in 1997. There was debate about violating the by-laws by putting Millspaugh back on the National Board, and letting him participate in the Local Board, but in the end they decided to let him keep on. This while they were trying to keep the elected representatives off the Board.

In the end there was some muddy decision to violate the by-laws and put Frank Millspaugh back on the Pacifica National Board, but maybe not for the full year. The argument was that he was so experienced he'd do a lot of good. Of course he hasn't done any good in years past. He doesn't even bring the motions from the WBAI Local Board to the National Board. He's an empty suit at those meetings.

But it came out that Millspaugh is the Chair of the National Board committee that is making policy for Local Advisory Boards! And there's only one other person on that committee. What a wonderful story.

Going through past records reveals that not only is Millspaugh's term expired, but so is Nan Rubin's! Ho Ho!

As you might imagine, this was an "interesting" meeting last night.

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