Puppet Board Members Not Showing Up for Meetings

Remember the puppet Board that Jean Swanson and Paul Taylor installed at Carnegie in June, as a strategy for ensuring that pro-democracy incumbent Rachel Davis would not get elected? At the Sept. 4th Board meeting at Carnegie, President Matthew Matthew announced that this new Board couldn’t get things done because too few of them were showing up at Committee meetings to get a quorum. The front page of both the August and September Board meeting hand-outs shows just how lax the new Board is:

September Board Meeting

Program Committee Report – No Report

Community Relations Report – No Report

Oppenheimer Park Committee Report – No Report

Seniors’ Support Group Report – No Report

Volunteer Committee Report – No Report

Education/Library Committee Report – No Report

Publications Committee Report – No Report

Finance Committee Report – No Report

Just two Committee Reports were available to members at the September Board meeting: the Program Committee Report, and Community Relations Committee Report.

August Board meeting

Program Committee Report – No Report

Community Relations Committee Report – No Report

Oppenheimer Park Committee Report – No Report

Seniors’ Support Group Report – No Report

Volunteer Committee Report – No Report

Education/Library Committee Report – No Report

Publications Committee Report – No Report

At the August Board meeting, only the Finance Committee had a report for members .

Not only Committee meetings but the monthly Board meetings have not proven to be magnets for the puppet Board. One onlooker reported that “quite a few of them” were no shows at the September 4th meeting.

At the September Board meeting, President Matthew asked for feedback on what to do about too few Board members showing up for committee meetings. He was described as "patient" by a witness. There was some discussion, with Board member Stephen Lytton stating that Board members had an obligation to the membership to make an effort to show up at committee meetings.

At one point during the discussion, the contentious issue of Roberts Rules surfaced. Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty noted that Matthew Matthew, in his role as Chair, was allowed to vote at meetings when a tie vote needed to be broken. As she spoke, Matthew Matthew offered to check a point in Roberts Rules. He put his hand on his copy of Roberts Rules and was about to open it when Whitty interjected, “No. No.” That elicited laughter from Board and audience members.

The laughter stemmed from the fact that it was well known that when Rachel Davis was on the Board, she wanted Roberts Rules followed. Wilf Reimer and other members also insisted that Roberts Rules be followed so that people could speak at meetings without being cut off. Jeff Sommers, a Board member at the time, did not agree. “Do you need a rule to piss?”, Sommers asked at two separate meetings. Finally, after a meeting in which Paul Taylor responded to a question by Rachel Davis with "Shut Up!" and to Wilf Reimer with, "Up your ass!", the City of Vancouver sent three copies of Roberts Rules to Carnegie. You can bet that Whitty, who is the City’s representative on the Board, has not mentioned to her bosses at the City that she is discouraging the Chair from opening that book.

Now that there aren't quorums at committee meetings, it seems that the committee process is simply being skipped. Despite the fact that there was “No Report” from the Volunteer Committee for August and September, a major decision to prohibit tipping of kitchen volunteers has been made. On Sept. 5th, I noticed a sign on the cash register in the cafeteria stating something to the effect, “Tipping of concession workers is prohibited. Management” The tip jar had been removed. “That’s why there’s no volunteer today,” a staff person said, referring to the fact that the cashier was working alone with no helper to dish up food and keep the line-up of hungry customers moving fast. The kitchen volunteers are dirt poor, usually getting welfare, and count on tips. But Whitty, who gets $104,000 salary -- and presumably she was included in the huge raise City managers got a few months back -- has stated openly to members that she does not believe volunteers should get tips.

The failure to get quorums at meetings is no doubt working out nicely for Whitty. She likes meetings to be short. At an important election recount meeting this summer, despite members being clearly upset, Whitty sneaked out early. She just disappeared. Poof!! Like 'I Dream of Jeannie'. Members also recall a Community Relations meeting last year when Whitty had to answer for the undemocratic barring of elected Board member William Simpson from Board meetings. Whitty was upset that she had been inconvenienced. "I can't do" long meetings, she insisted twice.

Rachel Davis Boycotts her Long Term Volunteer Position at Carnegie to Protest Ongoing "abuse of power" by City Management and Carnegie Board

Rachel Davis, a former Carnegie Board member and long time volunteer in the Carnegie Music Program, has tried everything from hiring a lawyer to giving radio interviews to get "abuse of power" by City management and the Board of Directors at Carnegie Centre to stop. It hasn't stopped. So she announced yesterday that she is boycotting her volunteer position until changes are made.

Davis outlined her reasons for boycotting her volunteer position in the following email sent to Carnegie management including Executive Director Ethel Whitty and Vancouver City Manager Judy Rogers; City Council including Mayor Sam Sullivan and Councillor Peter Ladner; Carnegie supervisory staff; Carnegie Board members including Secretary Rolph Auer, and media:

This is to inform you that I am boycotting my long-held position as a Volunteer Music Leader for the Carnegie Community Centre due to the following reasons:

1) Carnegie's City Staff employees failure to follow proper procedure in matters of Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy requests by Carnegie members. The Carnegie has been investigated for this before, and found wanting, but still the rules of FIPPA are not being complied with.

2) Carnegie's City Staff employees, namely the Executive Director, acting as tellers in the election of Carnegie board members, in contravention of the Carnegie constitution, and in obvious conflict of interest.

3) The failure of the Carnegie Community Centre Association Board of Directors to comply with the Carnegie constitution, and produce a teller's report at CCCA Board elections.

These last two failures in procedure have resulted in a call for a recount of Board of Director Election results due to the CCCA membership's mistrust of the proceedings. The recount was done in exactly the same manner as the first time, unfortunately, only further disregarding the membership's obvious desire for accountability, and thereby deepening the mistrust.

It is extremely distressing to me to feel I have to take this measure. I am a community volunteer, I have contributed to Carnegie since it's opening, and have always considered it a beacon of light in a dark place; but I having tried to remedy these problems with due process at Carnegie through many other means, and I find myself unable to continue to be officially involved in a volunteer program that contributes to a City-run establishment that systematically breaks the rule of law, land, and it's own constitution.

I have written emails, talked to the President of the Board of Directors and the Executive Director, held meetings, called the City, hired lawyers, filed FIPPA complaints, given radio interviews to CBC Radio One, and Co-op Radio, written articles, had articles written in the Sun and other publications, and many other members have also done many of these things as well, in an effort to resolve the situation of rampant disregard for the law of the CCCA Constitution and the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Our earnest attempts at communicating our need for basic human rights are met with platitudes such as "We've always done it this way", and the abuse of power goes on. These abuses are many and varied, and well documented at Downtown Eastside Enquirer ,but I bring forward these three specific examples because they are so egregious, and so directly connected with the City of Vancouver, therefore, I am hoping, they are easily resolved.

If City employees begin complying with the rules of FIPPA, and stop putting themselves in conflict of interest by being tellers in Board elections, and if the elections tellers report is made a part of the proceedings at Board elections as it should be, I would be overjoyed to take up my volunteer position again. I have always have taken pride and enjoyed making a contribution to the lives of the CCCA membership, but I sadly must boycott my volunteer services in an yet another, but not final, effort to end the abuses the CCCA membership and I have tried so hard to resolve in a myriad of other ways.

Sincerely,

Rachel Davis
Senior Member of the CCCA

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

Carnegie Election Kills Free Speech

Photo by Wilf Reimer. Carnegie members line up outside the theatre where the election was held.

Just one person running in last night’s election for Board of Directors at the Carnegie Centre had taken a stand against totalitarian tactics being used against Centre members. Tactics like launching a witch hunt for bloggers. Or banning homeless man, William Simpson, from Carnegie Board meetings just two weeks after he was elected to the Board of Directors, accusing him of operating a website which linked to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog. These tactics weren’t acceptable to Rachel Davis. Last night they got rid of her.

By they I mean the Carnegie establishment, people like Jean Swanson who claims to advocate for the homeless in her paid work with the Carnegie Action Project. And Paul Taylor who edits the Carnegie newsletter and used it to libel the homeless man, claiming he had gotten himself elected through fraud.

One Carnegie member sitting in the meeting said, “Jean Swanson told me to show up; she said I’m going to be nominated. She has a plan but I don’t know what it is.”

She did have a plan. There is little doubt of that.

Unlike most Annual General meetings at Carnegie, this one was packed. Stacked would be a better word. One long term Carnegie member said, “Half the people there, I either didn’t recognize or I hadn’t seen for a long, long time.” A number of candidates nominated said they had a history of work with End Legislated Poverty, the almost defunct organization Jean Swanson founded and operated for years.

Presumably Swanson used the e-mail list she has access to as an employee at Carnegie to contact comrades to remind them not only to show up at the election but of who to vote for. She did that during the last by-election to get her protégé Rolph Auer, formerly a writer for the End Legislated Poverty newspaper, elected. Auer did not disappoint. Like Swanson, he did nothing to get the homeless Board member reinstated. Swanson nominated Auer again last night.

Did I mention that Paul Taylor elected his most loyal comrade, Lisa David? He didn’t mention to voters that she was his wife.

In a handout at the election, banned Board member Simpson was listed as “absent without notice.” That brought to mind the weekly dinners Stalin held where people who were present last week suddenly weren’t present this week, and were never present there or anywhere else again.

"Unity" was the theme pushed at last night’s Annual General meeting; the word was splashed across the cover of a handout. Their idea of unity is to disappear dissidents. They had done it with William Simpson and they would now do it with Rachel Davis. Davis had been on the radio talking about the importance of allowing a duly elected Carnegie Board member in the door. Last night they would push her out the door.

Davis would have been easily elected if it had been up to regular users of the Centre, rather than the swarm of unfamiliar faces. One member, Audrey L., (above photo) pinned handwritten signs, "A Vote for Rachel is a Vote for Transparency". Jim A. said he too had come out to vote for Rachel Davis. But while there, he said, he would also vote for Colleen Carroll because he likes the conspiracy theory documentaries she shows at Carnegie. (Carroll even concocted a conspiracy theory about Davis; asking her at a committee meeting, "Do you work for the Fraser Institute?")

Twenty-three people were nominated and 20 people ran for the Board. Fifteen were elected:

James Pau
Adrienne McCullum
Stephen Lytton
Lisa David
Greg Hathaway
Norma Jean Baptiste
Margaret Prevost
Gena Thompson
Harold Asham
Colleen Carroll
Mathew Mathew
Sandra Pronteau
Joe Leblanc
Paul Campbell

"It was a coup d'etat for Jean Swanson," one member said over coffee after the election.

On free speech, there is nobody left to speak up.

Close But No Cigar

At a meeting at Carnegie Center on Vancouver’s low income Downtown Eastside on Thursday evening, Chair Margaret Prevost told Rachel Davis to “Shut up”. For many members present that about summed up what was behind this Special meeting to change Carnegie’s constitution: silencing Rachel Davis.

Davis and two others elected to the Board, William “Bill” Simpson and Sophia Friegang, had become thorns in the side of the hard line left-wingers on the Board who are in favor of free speech as long as it follows their script.

Simpson was completely off script. He was an outspoken critic of the Downtown Eastside poverty industry in which Carnegie Board members and staff tend to be immersed.

Although more politically aligned with the Carnegie Board than Simpson, Davis and Friegang became targets of overt hostility by the Board when they spoke out against the barring of Simpson from the Carnegie Center and Board meetings just two weeks after he was elected. Friegang argued that the Board was complicit in abuse of “human rights”. Definitely off script. She was ignored. She resigned.

Two down, one to go.

As Davis continued to sit on the Board, she became the target of tactics ranging from verbal abuse to a secretive meeting by Board members to discuss her advocacy on the Bill Simpson matter. She was sent a letter from the Board requesting her resignation. But she wouldn’t take that train to Siberia.

Shortly after Davis refused to resign, the Board called a Special meeting to pass a resolution to change the way Board members got elected. The timing left Carnegie members suspicious. “Why is this in front of us now?”, a man called out from the audience at the meeting.

If the resolution passed, it would do away with guerilla election tactics. Currently any member who hangs out amongst the low income Carnegie Center population can simply turn up on election night, get a pal to nominate them, give a three minute speech, and get elected if they’ve asked enough of their pals in the Center to show up to vote. The long term members of the 15 member Board, who rely on abysmally low election turnouts to re-elect one another year after year, are caught off guard.

Bill Simpson caught them off guard. He had been barred from the Carnegie Learning Center on the 3rd floor for allegedly blogging about Carnegie – that was a few months before he was barred from the entire Carnegie building – but on the day of the June 2007 election, he asked his acquaintances in the Centre, “What are you doing at 5 o’clock? Would you be willing to vote for me?” A troop of Carnegie members trailed him into the election and Holy Brazen Blogger, Batman! Bill Got Elected!

If the new resolution passed, there would be a gap of a month between the nomination of candidates and voting. Never again would the current Board, which has members such as Jeff Sommers who have sat on the Board for decades, be caught completely off guard.

At Thursday evening’s meeting, Board member Peter Fairchild spoke in favor of the resolution, saying that every year on the evening of the election, “A whole bunch of people wander into the room who have never been involved.” The proposed requirement that nominees wait a month before the election, he argued, would “give people time to consider whether they actually want to do it.” He insisted that the Board was not attempting to “restrict” participation.

“Would you close the door and lock it,” Board Chair, Margaret Prevost, sitting beside Fairchild, called out to the door man checking membership cards of people arriving late to vote.

Rachel Davis spoke against the resolution. The current system “encourages positivity” in campaigning, she said. “It’s only negative campaigning that this will make easier. . .It will give a time period in which to do it in, a whole month.”

Jeff Sommers spoke in favor of the resolution. He’s the Board member who last year spoke against the request by Davis and Friegang for a review of the barring of Simpson, arguing that everybody who felt they had been unfairly barred would want their cases reviewed. “If you want to talk about shutting down democracy,” Sommers said on Thursday evening, “it’s not letting people campaign. . . .We’re one of the few community centers that doesn’t allow campaigning.” But as Carnegie member Wilf Reimer has pointed out to members in the past, Carnegie is not funded as a community center; it is funded and supervised by the City’s Social Services Group.

Karl MacDonald said he could see both sides of the debate but his concern was this: “It could end up as a smear campaign against people who for one reason or another are not accepted…It could end up like Pink Floyd ‘Up Against the Wall’.”

Jean Swanson, an activist with the Carnegie Community Action Project who has been outspoken about the treatment of Vancouver’s homeless but has seemingly lost her tongue when it comes to the treatment of homeless Bill Simpson, spoke in favor of the resolution. “Listening to Karl made me think if we voted yes, we could have an All Candidates Meeting where people would get a chance to say what they’re all about and answer questions.”

Joan Morelli, an anti-poverty activist and 35-year resident of the Downtown Eastside opposed the resolution. “I think that this Board should do it’s best to be inclusive of everybody in the neighborhood. Making it easier for people to participate should be the rule. Now they’re told they have to come twice.”

A man with a grey beard who volunteers as a tutor in the Carnegie Learning Center, said, “If people want to run for the Board, they should be willing to come to two meetings.”

Board member Gena Thompson was concerned that members were accusing the Board of “taking their voice” with this resolution. “Frankly, I’m starting to get angry.”
But Peter Fairchild saw the glass half full: “I’ve never seen so many people in the room for a meeting.”

“Yes you have Peter!", yelled former Board member Michael Read from the audience. "When William Simpson packed the meeting!”

Apparently picking up on the distrust in the room, Fairchild and Whitty counted the ballots in front of the membership. Each ballot was held up for the membership – those with stellar eye sight — to see.

Despite the many people who spoke passionately against the resolution though, the majority of the 52 people who cast ballots voted in favor of it. But the resolution failed to pass. That’s because the bar is high for a change to the constitution; seventy-five per cent of voters must vote in favor.

When the result was announced, Jeff Sommers immediately piped up, “There’s enough support here that we can do it next time.”

“Who said you had the floor?”, called out Wilf Reimer who, along with Davis, had insisted throughout the meeting that Roberts Rules of Order be followed to curb people speaking out of turn and interjecting abusive comments. Sommers would eventually snipe, “Do you have to have a rule to take a piss?”

Davis says Fairchild later made a point of telling her that the resolution had failed to pass by just one vote.

(photo of Rachel Davis taken by Wilf Reimer)

The Meeting the Carnegie Board Doesn't Want You to Attend

Did you know that the Carnegie Board is planning to change the constitution on Thursday night? Bet you didn’t. There is not one poster up at Carnegie about this important meeting.

The Board will be attempting to change the Constitution to allow them to run elections differently. Why? Presumably so that they have a chance to prevent dissident Board members such as Rachel Davis and William Simpson from getting elected again.

These two Board members have embarrassed Carnegie. After being stonewalled by the Carnegie Board and City staff, they went on radio to talk about how Carnegie management, with the complicity of the Board, barred homeless Simpson from the entire building just after he was elected to the Board. Davis has also publicly questioned the fact that Carnegie Newsletter editor Paul Taylor has been publishing libelous tirades against Simpson.

The Board and Taylor have tried various tactics to push Davis out. [Simpson, remember, is not allowed in the door.]

First came verbal abuse. At a February 9th Publication Meeting at Carnegie, Davis asked a polite question and was told by Taylor, “Shut up!” He responded to a question from her ally Wilf Reimer with “Up you ass!”

At the same meeting, Colleen, a Board member, asked Davis an irrational question, "Do you work for the Fraser Institute?" It is obvious that Davis has nothing to do with the Fraser Institute,but for leftists at Carnegie it is the ultimate insult to associate somebody with this conservative think tank.

Then came a secretive meeting. Davis tells it like this: "[T]he board held a private meeting about me I was not allowed to know about. They all got together after a board meeting, and after they'd expelled the membership, and I'd already left, they talked about my efforts to resolve the situation where a fellow Board member of the Carnegie [Bill Simpson] is presently barred for having on his own website linked to another one that they feel is unfair to Carnegie….[T]hey voted that I be asked to resign immediately.”

Davis attempted to read minutes from the meeting but was told by Carnegie Director, Ethel Whitty, that none had been kept. This is “against the Carnegie Constitution”, Davis says. Whitty, a City staff person, would have known this as City staff – often her – take minutes at all Carnegie meetings.

Then came a letter. The Board sent a letter to Davis asking her to resign her seat, telling her essentially that she wasn’t Board material. She declined.

Now comes a kick at the Constitution. Board members want to change the constitution apparently to give themselves time to prevent people like Davis and Simpson from getting elected. If the proposed resolution passes, the tradition of making Carnegie elections accessible to the poor and poorly educated, people who don't carry appointment books, many of whom got Simpson and Davis elected, will be eroded.

As it stands now, if you happen to be at Carnegie shootin’ the breeze with friends in the cafeteria or having a smoke on the outdoor patio, you might hear, “There’s an election tonight.” You can just drop in for a free coffee and participate. Somebody might nominate you. You might nominate somebody like Simpson and you and your pals might stick around for a few minutes to vote for him. That casualness will be lost if the Board gets there way on Thursday evening.

Here’s what Rachel Davis had to say in an email about the proposed changes to the constitution:

"[T]here will a General Meeting of the membership, where everyone is allowed to vote, and what we will all be voting on is a change to the Carnegie Constitution that would radically alter the way our Board is elected. The way it's always been, is that members are nominated to the board and then voted on at one meeting. What they are proposing is that this be changed to a two step process, where members are nominated at the board meeting before the Election Meeting. We already have such low attendance at the meeting where we elect our Board Directors, that when the Board is a voting block of 15, and the membership at the meeting is a diverse group of voters, numbering 20 or so, the board can vote itself in over and over again. And they do.

"This change the board desires, to a two step process, will even further water down the voting power of the membership if the membership wishes to elect someone new to the Board. They will now have to take the time out of their lives to show up to twice as many meetings, but the board will, of course, have to be at those meetings anyway. I consider this change to the election rules of the Carnegie Centre Constitution to be clearly prejudicial to the membership's electoral powers, and not in the best interests of the Carnegie. I feel we should be removing barriers from the full and even handed participation of our membership in the running of Carnegie, not making it even harder for them to be involved.

"You Can Vote On This, Thursday, April 3rd, 5: 30 PM, In The Theatre at Carnegie"

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An anti-poverty activist who doesn't want to be named as he is allied with activists at Carnegie, has weighed in on why there are no posters up for Thursday's meeting. "I've seen this all before; they bring in all their own people to vote and make sure the other side doesn't have a chance to bring their's."

CBC Radio Interviews Bill Simpson, the Banned Member of the Carnegie Board of Directors

Residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside were all ears this morning when CBC Radio 'Early Edition' host, Stephen Quinn, began asking questions about a denial of democracy and free speech at the Carnegie Community Center. Quinn interviewed
William "Bill" Simpson, a homeless man who was banned from the Carnegie Center in June 2007, two weeks after being elected to the Carnegie Board of Directors. The written reason given to Simpson for the banning was that he operates a website which "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog. The DTES Enquirer blog reports on frequent closure of services that Carnegie management and staff are funded to provide to the poor, as well as on the frequent banning of people without due process.

When asked why he was banned from Carnegie, Simpson said, "...I'm banned because I'm one of the voices that wants to hold management accountable and I think accountability is something they don't want to face." Simpson went on to explain that he wanted more accountability for abuse at Carnegie, including "management abuse or staff abuse." Complaining at Carnegie, he said, tends to get members nowhere.

Simpson said that a "solution" found by a blogger to the issue of accountability on the part of management and staff was to act "as a reporter on events going on at the Carnegie." He added, "I applauded the blogger's work...and I stood up for the blogger, and they didn't like that very much."

Carnegie Director, Ethel Whitty, who hand-delivered Simpson the letter banning him from the Center -- a letter signed by her boss at City Hall, Jacquie Forbes-Roberts -- was invited to be interviewed by CBC this morning but declined.

"They do have a history of coming down pretty hard on whistleblowers at the Carnegie," said Rachel Davis, a Carnegie Board member who was interviewed this morning along with Simpson.

Davis said the banning of Simpson was an "entirely politically motivated act." It had nothing to do with protecting the membership, she said, who ended up “frightened” that they too could be banned, or "barred" to use the official Carnegie term. "This barring was entirely about protecting the psychological and political comfort of City staff; they didn’t like being held accountable for their actions and they were willing to do anything to stop it, including barring a duly elected board member."

When asked by Quinn to elaborate on the abuse that Carnegie members suffer, Davis said, "People are being barred for no more reason than they make someone feel uncomfortable." "Management", Simpson interjected.

Because Simpson had been informed in the June letter that he was banned from Carnegie while an investigation into his conduct was ongoing, Davis has attempted to determine the status of this investigation: "I've inquired about this investigation recently and been told that it's really none of my business."

Davis went on to say that many letters had been written to City officials "all the way up to the Mayor" about the banning of Simpson, with no satisfactory response.


---------------------------
Wilf, a Carnegie member, has made an audio of the interview available at:
http://www.nowpublic.com/politics/barred-carnegie-director-talks-cbc-0

Man Asks Woman For Date At Carnegie, Gets Barred 1 1/2 Years Later

John, a member of the Music Program at Carnegie, was recently barred for something he claims he had done a year and a half ago. He had asked Sindi, the Assistant Volunteer Co-ordinator, for a date.

Sindia apparently told the Volunteer Co-ordinator, Colleen Gorrie, and then others got involved and John got barred.

Board member Rachel Davis, a.k.a. Rosetta, who is also a member of the Music Program, started asking questions -- just as she had asked questions when Bill Simpson was barred for allegedly blogging. John was reinstated.

One question raised here is: Why the double standard? When a female worker at Carnegie was accused of serial sexual relationships with vulnerable clients, she was never genuinely investigated. Witnesses weren't contacted. In fact, Director Ethel Whitty acted as though the people who spoke up were the problem.

Another question: Since Sindi and Colleen lock the doors of the computer room on a semi-regular basis, claiming that they couldn't manage to get a volunteer, couldn't their labour time have been put to better use?