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Friends of KOOP called for a meeting of the membership so that the members' wishes regarding KOOP leadership could be made known, officially. You would think that a Board of Trustees supposedly committed to democracy would favor the involvement of the membership. Especially since we're a COOPERATIVE, right?
Think again. At an early August '98 board meeting, Board President Teresa Taylor said that Friends could not legally call a membership meeting, and so the board need not concern itself with anything that the membership decided at the meeting. (She's wrong about our not being able to call the meeting. Here's our response to that.) If the board really cares what the membership thinks, then why don't they want the membership to be able to meet?
But that's not all. On 8/24/98, trustee Mac McKaskle called the Unitarian Universalist Church (the site of the membership meeting), and threatened them with legal action if they allowed the KOOP membership to meet there! Is this the action of someone who really embraces cooperative principles?
But wait, there's still more. A listener called the station to inquire about the membership meeting, and community board member Eduardo Vera falsely told her that the membership meeting had been canceled!
But surely that's all, right? Not a chance. While we don't have any proof that a trustee or community board member did this, somebody filled out a Change of Address card to have all our postal mail forwarded to KOOP, about two weeks before the Special Membership Meeting, meaning that we didn't receive any petitions or proxies mailed to us by members during that time. Around the same time, Eduardo Vera started picking up the mail for KOOP. Never did Eduardo ever say, "Here's some mail addressed to you that came to the station somehow."
By now you're banging your head against the wall thinkng, "Surely even KOOP's board of trustees couldn't go any farther than these several examples of dishonest subversion?" But that's where you're wrong. The board is supposed to call a general meeting of the membership every year, regardless of any special meetings that are called. And they promised to hold one in Fall 1998. But they never did. Why? This board dislikes its membership.
KOOP members deserve better than legal threats and deceit from our elected leaders. These are just the latest examples of why we feel it's WAY past time to recall the board.