Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Distrust at Carnegie Results in Request for Election Recount


Carnegie members don't trust the results of the June 5th election for Board of Directors at Carnegie Community Center. James A. announced at the meeting that he would like a recount. Many other members who came out to vote for incumbent Board member Rachel Davis, who was defeated, support a recount.

Board member Colleen Carroll assured James A. in front of the audience at the June 5th election that he was welcome to count the ballots, that the ballots would be preserved for 30 days for that purpose. Carnegie Director, Ethel Whitty, with a reputation for involvement in fraud and undemocratic practices -- her reputation can be supported with documentation -- sat at the Board table nodding her head in agreement.

Guess what happened when Carnegie member Audrey Laferriere (pictured above at the election) recently asked for a recount? Board President Matthew Matthew responded that the request for a recount would be granted only if it was accompanied by 150 signatures from Carnegie members.

Laferriere began circulating a petition for signatures and on it she wrote, "We do not need a President who is inflexible and into power tripping. Anyone should be allowed to recount votes without hindrance. He has screwed up my long weekend."
Dag, a blogger at Covenant Zone, who had attended the June 5 election to support Davis for speaking out about erosion of free speech rights under the Whitty administration, suspects Matthew Matthew arbitrarily chose 150 as the number of signatures needed. "It's as if he looked in his hat and saw the number 'one five zero.' "

Paul, a labourer who often has dinner at the Carnegie cafeteria, voted at the Board election but was not optimistic about securing a recount. When Paul learned that his pal James A. was one of several Carnegie members helping Laferriere collect 150 signatures, he signed the petition but said, “If they can only get 75 people out to vote, how are they going to get 150 people to sign.” The 75 people Paul was referring to had made up the unusually high turnout at the June 5th election. That turnout was the result of intense organizing by such members of the Carnegie establishment as Jean Swanson (who doesn’t live on the Downtown Eastside) and Paul Taylor, who got their friends and allies to swarm the meeting and vote for a slate that didn’t include Davis.
The Carnegie establishment, including Director Ethel Whitty, had wanted to get rid of Rachel Davis since she appeared on Co-op Radio and later CBC Radio to question the legitimacy of Whitty delivering homeless man, William Simpson, a letter barring him indefinitely from the Carnegie Center where Board meetings are held. The letter was delivered two weeks after Simpson was elected to the Board and it's content was called "contrary to the rule of law" by lawyer Gregory Bruce. Whitty later appeared on CBC Radio and lied about the reason for Simpson’s barring, presenting this man as a "WorkSafe" risk. Her claim completely contradicted the official reason given to Simpson in the letter, that he operated a website that "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog which criticizes Carnegie.

The votes that Carnegie members would like recounted were originally counted by Board secretary Rolph Auer. Rolph is an unfamiliar face to most regular Carnegie members and was elected during a by-election last year after Board member Sophia Freigang resigned due to what she called “human rights” abuses on the part of the Board and City staff. Freigang had pressed for a review of the barring of Simpson and was critical of efforts by Whitty and her cohorts to curb “free speech” by barring a man for being connected to a blog. Jean Swanson (did I mention she doesn’t live on the Downtown Eastside?) had been instrumental in getting Auer elected, using the email list from the Carnegie Action Project to ’remind’ people to come out and vote for him. One of Auer's early tasks as a Carnegie Board member was to show up at a Community Relations meeting and oppose Davis' attempts to curb the use of the Carnegie newsletter for personal attacks. And when the man sitting next to him, Paul Taylor, told Davis to "Shut up!", Auer didn't even flinch.

Even if Carnegie members are granted a recount, they are not convinced they can ever trust the result. James A. said, as a few other members having coffee with him nodded their heads in agreement, that it would be easy for somebody to use a pencil to tick off a few extra boxes on ballots. This possibility exists because many people at the meeting had ticked off far fewer boxes than the 15 they were allowed, as they simply weren’t familiar with many of the candidates. One woman at the table said, "I only voted for Rosetta (aka Rachel Davis) and maybe one other person."

Laferriere wrote towards the end of the petition, "Time is of the essence as the signatures have to be done within three days."

This issue will be raised at the next Board meeting at Carnegie on Thursday evening at 5 p.m.

Contact information for Audrey Laferriere:
audreylaferriere@yahoo.ca
778-329-1250

6 comments:

Dag said...

With Ethanol Mugabe running the show I'm sure the recount will be totally -- Whoops!

Well, with the way things are run there at the Carnegie Centre, what do people expect? Is there something to hide? Some reason to make in nearly impossible to recount the ballots? Or is it a Zimbabwean "run-off" in the making? It stinks, no matter how one slices it.

Ethanol Mugabe has things as she and her controllers want them for now. But tomorrow is a new day.

Dag said...

What does Ethanol Mugabe have to hide? Obviously there is a great deal in her life she doesn't ant made public, but how much of that is valid information for the public anyway? What, for example, is the reason for this nonsense about requiring twice as many signatures for a recount as there were voters in the rigged election? Where does it end? Haven't the secret controllers of the Carnegie Centre ha sufficient time already to fudge the votes, alter the ballots, and skew the results well-enough to pass an informal scrutiny of Carnegie patrons? How paranoid are the secret controllers at Carnegie Centre? What are they hiding?

Obviously they are hiding a great deal. The question is: "Why?"

Dag said...

I've been thinking about this for a long while now, and I have come to wonder just what Ethanol Mugabe is up to. Why is she and the clique of povertarians so desperate to keep control of the Carnegie board of directors? What's so important that they have to stack the vote to swing the election and then, fearing that wasn't enough, possibly even going so far as to alter ballots or even destroy them without membership scrutiny?

What are they afraid of? What are they hiding? Do Ethanol and her colleagues have a secret agenda? If so, what is it?

Anonymous said...

I am the Blogger, and I know many things, for I blog by night. I know many strange tales, hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes ... I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak.dvdjyk

Anonymous said...

CARNAGE AT THE CARNAGE CENTRE more like it eh?

Dag said...

There isn't as yet any genuine carnage at the Carnegie Centre, sort of, unless one looks around and sees empty places where one had before friends who used to make ones life fuller by their presence. Look around you, if you're one who frequents the Carnegie Centre and such places, and look into your memory to see the faces of friends now gone to the grave, dead of who can tell what, laid down forever because of the social conditions of the city. It's this way:

Povertarians, those who make poverty a moral issue, live by debasing the poor while proclaiming the povertarians to be saviours of the poor. Put simply, those who pretend to "help the poor" are parasites who make people dependent on the "helpers."

Povertarians are religious fanatics.

The religion of povertarians is a corruption of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount." Look to this: "Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the Earth."

What is blessed about the poor?

Only a religious fanatic would come up with the idea that poverty is a good thing. Povertarians come up with that idea every morning when they get out of bed to confront the world yet again. They get out of bed and go to work, for that is what it is, to preach the gospel of poverty and its nobility. They are religious fanatics who wish the world to live in poverty generally. They love poverty.

Poverty is unpleasant in Canada, but it's not fatal. Poverty in other nations, as many of us know too well from first-hand experience, is terrible. Here it's a hobby. But the povertarians make it fatal:

Those who have little are encouraged to have nothing. Those who would otherwise drink themselves to an early grave are herded into drug-addiction. Why? Because drug-addiction, according to the povertarians, is a response to "harsh social conditions," or perhaps it's due to some other nonsense cliche the povertarians use to promote helplessness among the certainly marginal.

And who can solve this problem? None other than highly paid professional povertarians themselves. Just give them $104.000.00 per year (that we know of) and they will host a centre where "the poor" can hang out and destroy themselves daily under supervision of professional minders defending their rights. Look to see if you know any of the dead who are dead because of povertarians. All this "help" is killing people. The smart ones, such as they are, are those like Bill Simpson, one who refused to play the step-and- fetch-it game of sucking up to those who watch the people die and rake in the bucks pretending they care. Povertarians, make a life and a living pretending they are saving the souls of the dying. The, the povertarians, are the ones who make so much death around this city.

But I can see that this needs a full explanation to make any real sense. This demands a full explanation. I'll put in the time and effort to try to address this issue. Meanwhile, look at the way the povertarians treat people under their care. Do you like it? Do you approve of the way such as Ethanol treat people? I would think not.

What are they doing? Why did they stack the recent Carnegie board of directors election? Why are they keeping the ballots from those asking to look at the results? And now, after such a long period of hiding the ballots, can one trust them as they now are? What's the game going on here? Why are they hiding the ballots? What have they done to them in the past month? Why do they feel they had to hide them in the first place? Why are they afraid of the people?

I can't begin to answer the questions of the behaviour of the Carnegie Centre management. I suspect a number of things, but it's up to the members to address the issues. It's also up to the people to survive. One smart step would be to refuse the death grip of the povertarians. Look at the dead and ask why they died. No, no t what killed them, but why did they die? And what part does the phony religious fanatic have in all of this? What are they planning now? What is their agenda? What is the secret plan they have?