[Ground-station] AMSAT "Don't Rock the Boat" rule
Martin Flynn
Martin.Flynn at isec.space
Tue Apr 20 18:04:47 PDT 2021
Their last available 990 shows: 10605 Concord St, Ste 304, Kensington,
MD 20895 , which is Secure Horizon Settlements
712 H Street NE, Ste 1653, Washington DC 20002 is a maildrop / pack and
ship store
On 4/20/2021 8:48 PM, Bruce Perens via Ground-Station wrote:
> Written objection, in a paper stamped letter must be received from at
> least 10% of the members within 30 days of the postmark, or they will
> go ahead. IMO, that's engineered to prevent any viable objection.
>
> The address on the top of the letter is
> Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT)
> 712 H Street NE, Ste 1653
> Washington DC 20002
>
> I really wonder if anyone is at that address any longer.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 5:42 PM Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com
> <mailto:bruce at perens.com>> wrote:
>
> IMO you can't claim to represent US Radio Amateurs regarding
> satellite issues if you are selective about who you represent. So,
> if this is enacted we should talk with ARRL, IARU (and maybe even
> ITU) about their no longer qualifying as a national organization.
>
> ARRL can expel a member for cause (in Articles of Association, not
> Bylaws), but it requires notice and an opportunity to be heard,
> and I am not aware that in a century of history anyone has
> involuntarily lost their ARRL membership for anything but not
> paying dues. In addition, ARRL claims to represent all US
> Amateurs, so they have to listen to non-members.
>
> Thanks
>
> Bruce
>
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 5:38 PM Michelle Thompson
> <mountain.michelle at gmail.com <mailto:mountain.michelle at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> Understood. ORI board is currently in session and I'll ask
> them to help write something on paper and find a stamp and
> send it to all the addresses listed.
>
> Here's some background. There was a bylaws committee.
> Ironically, I'm the one that made the motion to establish it.
> The committee was tasked with fixing the electronic voting
> "problem", in that the wording of the bylaws was kind of not
> great and needed to be modernized.
>
> Those bylaws revisions, from that committee, were accompanied
> by a nice report from Brennan Price (the secretary at the
> time) explaining the rules changes. Those bylaws are not the
> ones that appeared for a short-notice vote this past March.
> Those original bylaws revisions were skipped over.
>
> Instead, these "Don't Rock the Boat" rules, along with the 3
> year membership requirement to run for the board, were
> substituted in the week prior. There was no accompanying
> explanation or writeup.
>
> There are no regular board meetings at AMSAT. They are only
> ad-hoc meetings like this.
>
> Choosing members is what this is about. There's no definition
> of "undesirable", there's no procedure here, and there's no
> hearing, or appeal, or any of the other mechanisms that exist
> in every other club or organization bylaws that I'm aware of.
> This is subjective as written. There's ways to write
> membership removal rules.
>
> The "3 year minimum membership to run for the board" rule
> works in here because once your membership is interrupted,
> then the clock starts over and you can't run for 3 more years.
>
> There isn't any reason to require a 3 year membership to run
> for the board. The vast majority of people that have run
> recently are life members or long-serving. Honestly, I think
> it would help the board to have recent members elected.
>
> I objected to these bylaws being substituted in instead of
> what I considered to be the authentic committee work. I
> pointed out that without standards/cause, a process, and an
> appeal that these rules were way too easily abused.
>
> In order to stop this, according to Patrick Stoddard, 10% of
> the members would have to object in writing. Without a
> coordinated campaign and spending some money, I do not believe
> that enough members will clue in to this in time.
>
> I believe they'll "review" ORI's Member Society membership as
> soon as it comes up. It is really sad to see things like this
> happen, but it's not surprising given the other choices
> leadership has made since the Reno Symposium.
>
> We should object to these rules and be prepared to simply be
> eliminated as a Member Society. Currently, senior leadership
> refuses to even list us in the AMSAT Directory with the other
> Member Societies, has interfered with presentations at AMSAT
> Symposium, and has interfered with our news submissions to ANS
> Bulletin. I believe AMSAT should be holding up its end of the
> bargain as the major advocacy organization in amateur
> satellite, and actively helping us, supporting our work, and
> being fair and kind to our volunteers. Most of which happen to
> also be AMSAT members. This bylaws revision is not the right
> direction.
>
> We need to stay focused on publishing good work and helping
> projects in our space be successful. We offer no threat or
> harm to AMSAT. Our work directly benefits AMSAT in a wide
> variety of ways. In the future, things may improve. In the
> meantime, sending a paper letter objecting to the bylaws would
> be a positive step.
>
> Thank you for bringing this up, Bruce. If you have any
> specific advice on constructive wording and instructions on
> exactly what the "right" address is, to avoid any misdirected
> mail, then that might be helpful to those reading.
>
> -Michelle W5NYV
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 4:49 PM Bruce Perens via
> Ground-Station <ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute>
> wrote:
>
> ORI is an AMSAT member organization, and I submit that ORI
> should file a written objection to the proposed AMSAT
> "Don't Rock the Boat" rule.
>
>
> Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com
> <mailto:bruce at perens.com>>
>
>
> 4:44 PM (1 minute ago)
>
>
> to AMSAT
>
> The proposed modifications to the bylaws of AMSAT include
> a provision for the secretary and the board members to
> deny membership renewal to any member or member society.
> This is included in Article 1, Section 2. The new rule is:
>
> Section 2. Applications for membership or renewal as
> Member or Member Society shall be submitted to and in the
> manner prescribed by the Secretary. *In the case of any
> applicant whose character, reputation, or conduct might
> make him or her an undesirable member, the Secretary shall
> refer the application to the Board of Directors (the
> "Board") for review; in all other cases, the Secretary
> shall have the authority to grant membership.*
>
> Obviously, this is aimed at the folks who dared to
> challenge the board (and win) in a democratic election,
> and of course me, for daring to campaign for them. It is a
> fact that many non-profit boards have never learned about
> the fact that there /should/ be contentious elections -
> that's what democracy is about. They just see them as a
> threat. So, here's a rather undemocratic rule which allows
> them to purge opposition, so that they will not be able to
> vote in the next election.
>
> Because the board doesn't want you to interfere with their
> addition of this rule, they have required that you
> register any objection to this, and other new rules, by
> writing a letter on paper and mailing it with a stamp.
> Objections you post to this list and the AMSAT BBS are
> useful for discussion and I encourage you to do so, but
> the board will not count them.
>
> --
> uce Perens - Board Partner, OSS Capital LLC Venture Capital
>
>
>
> --
> Bruce Perens - CEO at stealth startup. I'll tell you what it is
> eventually :-)
>
>
>
> --
> Bruce Perens - CEO at stealth startup. I'll tell you what it is
> eventually :-)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openresearch.institute/pipermail/ground-station-openresearch.institute/attachments/20210420/c408f51b/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Ground-Station
mailing list