From The New York Shitty Inbox, Part I: And Now A Word From GWAPP

Naturally I had to kick this corker over to Queens Crap. Follows is his analysis:

“The Board is proposing amendments to those by-laws to reflect an organization that is no longer an association of local orgs meeting regularly but, rather, a Board overseeing various programs and initiatives with volunteer help.”

or, rather:

“We don’t like having members who question the things we do, therefore we’re planning to dump them all and close the group off so that’s it’s just the rotten inner circle that makes decisions.”

And what if the reps in attendance vote no?

I do not have much to add aside from noting that, in essence, the powers-that-be behind this organization are using the revision of by-laws to effectively create a new and very different “group”. Of course one has to compare and contrast both sets of by-laws in order to draw this conclusion. While it is refreshing to see that GWAPP seems to have made their by-laws available to the public I find it a mite bit disconcerting they only did so after a blogger, I, made them public. I will share them here once again:

And here are the old/present ones.

Please take a moment, gentle readers, and compare them. You’ll find some interesting differences.

UPDATE, 5:55 p.m.: It has been brought to my attention that the Williamsburg Greenpoint News + Arts has published an item regarding GWAPP and this upcoming meeting. This you can read by clicking here. Follows is a segment I for one found interesting:

But Dewey Thompson — with Christine Holowacz (Board of Directors co-chairs) who are on the receiving end of complaints — is caught off guard by the sudden attacks. “My biggest crime is volunteering my time too much,” he said, also adding, “there’s a misperception that organizations exist at the whim of community input. To set up meetings takes a lot of energy and incredible amount of time. Those people who will want to participate will actually need to commit themselves to this work, and be a part of it, and open to that kind of participation.”

This governance issue, he said, is to change bylaws so there are no longer membership organizations—he indicated that many are no longer active, and that the particular politics that brought them together aren’t relevant anymore.

“We are asking them to now amend those laws, so we can operate the board the way we are doing it now.”

In response to the notion that it would exclude public participation, he said: “We expect the nominating committee to do outreach and find people interested in the committee. We are not beating people away from GWAPP. We are very well known — anyone can have easy access to the board. We’re totally open to meeting new people and hoping we find new blood. We are hoping to refresh the governance, get a new board, and a new set of bylaws, for what we think is a very vital organization.”

Exactly who constitutes this nominating committee, you ask? Well, if a source who took up this matter with Mr. Thompson recently is to be believed, it is the following folks:

• Trina McKeever, a member of Open Space Alliance North Brooklyn, Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park and Community Board 1
• Rich Mazur, Executive Director of the North Brooklyn Development Corporation. Some of you might recall this organization is handling the dispersal of the $19,000,000 Exxon-Mobil settlement.
• Barbara McGlamery, the wife of a board member of Open Space Alliance North Brooklyn: Adam Perlmutter.

(From the April 29, 2005 edition of the New York Daily News)

Interesting, yes?