As most of us have undoubtedly noticed, Cerene Roberts—a NY-based opportunist whose nefarious activities sporadically land her in the belly of Pacifica's beast—could always be relied upon to disrupt PNB meetings.
Her activity escalated when she allied herself and her JUC faction with MNN's Dan Coughlin in his attempt to take advantage of WBAI's near-fatal ESRT rental delinquency and absorb WBAI.
Now that she no longer has a seat at the table, we can no longer hear her clumsy-but-effective interferences at meetings, but her destructive activities continue in the form of e-mail posted to various lists. Yesterday, her nonsense came in the form of an open letter to ED Tom Livingston and the PNB.
Here is Bill Crosier's letter:
A warning to anyone contemplating cancellation of the 2018 Pacifica Delegates election, based on what Ms. Roberts wrote:
Her arguments are clearly partisan, designed to circumvent the whole reason the Bylaws were re-written in 2002 - that the membership should choose who their representatives are on our boards. Neither the PNB nor management should cancel the elections based on flimsy excuses from people who will benefit from not having elections.
Ms. Roberts and her faction depend on taking advantage of a flaw in the Bylaws that allows candidates who were not elected in the previous election (those not chosen by the membership - some being distant runners-up having very few votes, sometimes as few as one vote) to replace those who were elected, in order to eventually get control of our LSBs and Delegate assemblies, which in turn elect Directors. When elections are cancelled, we end up going even further down the runner-up list and seating on our boards more candidates who lost the previous election. While some runners-up have been willing to effectively serve their stations, many have not, and this is NOT having the membership choose their representatives! Ms. Roberts and her allies have learned how to take advantage of this flaw in the Bylaws by harassing, slandering, creating disruptions in meetings, and otherwise driving away effective board members so that their friends who got almost no votes eventually get put on our boards, even though the membership chose to elect other people. Cancelling elections fits right into their playbook.
Pacifica almost always hires the NES late, and the elections go on. This year the NES was hired even later, but our NES is working to make sure the elections are completed as soon as they can be done properly. We should let him do his job.
Management and the PNB should not interfere in the elections - it is a direct conflict of interest for board members to do so.
While she says the delay in getting the elections started is contrary to the timeline in the Bylaws, a much more serious violation of the Bylaws would be to cancel the elections completely.
Also, the cost figures for the election quoted by those who don't want elections have been greatly inflated. While we've have some expensive elections in the past, that was usually because of screw-ups that required ballots to be re-sent, and because of excessive costs in the way we used to do elections (such as for mailing a printed copy of the entire candidate catalog) to all members, instead of just making the info available online. We have learned how to control the election costs, and while not trivial, they are certainly manageable. Our iED has also told us that the NES plans to really watch costs and keep them at a minimum, while meeting Bylaws requirements.
Regarding costs - If the Delegate elections are cancelled, there will almost certainly be a lawsuit, the court will tell us to do the elections, and we'd end up paying then for both the legal expenses AND the elections. So let's just get the elections done and stop this nonsense about cancelling them based on taking things out of context from the Bylaws.
Regarding what Ms. Roberts said about me, we never got a report from the NES nor for most LES's for the 2016 election. I have not withheld any reports. I was not even iED during that time. I became iED in Feb. 2017. I do know that payments to the NES and some or all of the LES's were greatly delayed in 2017, and two of the LES's resigned in the middle of the election period, putting even more work on the NES. And some people (especially from one faction at KPFT, that is allied with Ms. Roberts' faction) buried the election supervisors in complaints, increasing the work load even more. Obviously, we should have received reports from all the election supervisors, but when they are weeks late being paid and the work is much more than expected, things can happen that we don't like.
Bill Crosier
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