The democratic, community nature of our community radio station, WEFT 90.1FM is (once again) under serious threat.

Background:

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Every year, WEFT conducts an election for Board members in which each WEFT Member (anyone who contributes $40 or more) is given the opportunity to vote by mail-in ballot. Anyone is allowed to run (the station Bylaws only require Illinois residency and U.S. citizenship). You may remember that last year, the sitting Board of Directors tampered with the election by changing the rules in the middle of that election. Their action favored the incumbent candidate (the Chair of the Board at the time) to the disadvantage of the 5 challenging candidates. It was the Chair himself who proposed the motion to change the rules. This resulted in a lawsuit by 16 WEFT Members that successfully forced the Board to rescind their decision as part of an out-of-court settlement. The Chair was ultimately voted out of office as part of that same election because of his involvement in this matter.

For reference, the lawsuit is online at:

www.reformweft.org/lawsuit.pdf

Though I was heavily involved in the effort to reverse last year’s tampering, I was not a candidate myself. This year, I did come forward as a candidate. And this time, the Board has acted even more aggressively to manipulate the election. Last Tuesday evening, May 27th, the Board simply voted to bar me from running, even though they had already accepted and formally announced my candidacy on May 15th.

Our community radio station is supposed to be democratically run through this democratic election process. The Board is the highest governing body at the station. For that body to attempt to dictate who may or may not run in a Membership-wide election for seats to that very body, profoundly harms WEFT’s democracy. In this way the integrity of the station’s democratic foundation and community nature stands to be severely compromised.

My candidacy:

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I decided to run for the Board in this year’s election (scheduled to start next week) in part to help correct the culture that lead to last year’s election corruption. But there are other reasons as well. In fact, WEFT has many problem these days and is quickly losing support in the community. We attract donation pledges at less than half the rate we did 5 or 6 years ago (and 38% less than even one year ago). The candidacy statement I submitted to WEFT provides more detail on this and also a rundown of other issues affecting the station adversely these days. This statement is online at:

www.reformweft.org/candidacy.pdf

I complied with all requirements for submitting my candidacy and on May 15th, the station formally announced me as a candidate along with two others. A copy of this announcement is online at:

www.reformweft.org/announcement.html

My investigative report:

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10 days after submitting my candidacy, on May 24th, I published a comprehensive report regarding a different serious issue at WEFT that motivated my candidacy - the performance and management of the paid Underwriting Coordinator. It’s a very well-documented investigation of the poor performance of the station’s Underwriting Coordinator position, the ineffective management of that position, and the failure of the Board of Directors to correct the situation for more than 2 years. The report is about 13 pages long (but with more than 120 pages of supporting documentation). The focus of the report details precisely how this state of affairs is harming the station and its mission. The report is available online at:

www.reformweft.org/ucreport.pdf

Removal of my candidacy:

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Three days after I began publicizing that report, on May 27th, at the WEFT Board of Directors monthly meeting, the Board went into an unannounced “closed session” (Board meetings are generally required to be open to the public). During that closed session, the Board voted to bar me from running and remove my name from the list of candidates.

Though I have long been speaking out about problems at the station and advocating for change (as a Member, Volunteer, Associate and also while serving on the Board previously from 2004-2006), I believe my recent investigative report, released 3 days before I was barred, combined with my efforts to help reverse last year’s election tampering, contributed heavily to the Board’s decision to remove me from the election. This action provides a very damaging appearance for the Board and severely harms the station’s democracy and the organization’s integrity.

What can you do to help?

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Regardless of whether you’ve ever contributed to WEFT, the station is meant to serve the community as a public service. Anyone in the community has the legitimacy to communicate their reaction regarding this decision to the Board. You can send mail to boardchair@weft.org to formally register your opinion and urge the Board to reverse their decision before the ballots are mailed out on June 5th. Given that the Chair has been the primary advocate for this action, however, I would also suggest sending a copy of your communication to weft-comm@curadio.net so that it is documented publicly. weft-comm is an open, public community mailing list that was set up to discuss issues regarding WEFT (it was recently set up independently from the station after WEFT’s management shut down the station’s only open discussion mailing list, “wefta”).

You can also subscribe to the weft-comm@curadio.net mailing list and join in discussion regarding this and other station matters by visiting www.curadio.net on the web.

What's at stake:

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Thanks for your attention to this issue and I hope you’ll take action to oppose what’s going on. Not because it’s a matter of unfairness to me personally. That is not the issue and is of no significance (by the way, Board seats are not paid positions and are not compensated in any way). The issue is the damage being brought against what is supposed to be and what we’ve all understood to be a community media resource, democratically run by its paying Members.

Indeed, WEFT’s Bylaws encompass many democratic provisions, not just this election. And democratic control of public access to media channels is already in a desperately poor state in this country. Community media channels provide an invaluable alternative to increasingly monolithic and conglomerated corporate media and are only becoming more important and precious with time.

But for years, the current leadership at WEFT has been closing the station in on itself, erecting walls instead of reaching out, becoming more and more insular and self-serving. And there have been serious management problems that are being ignored (the matter of the Underwriting Coordinator I delineate in my report is hardly the worst of it). Now the leadership is engaging in a direct and quite undemocratic attempt to control who may or may not join that leadership. If this is allowed to stand, it will set a horrible precedent, deal a severe blow to the community nature of this important public media access service and institution, and turn WEFT into even more of an insider’s club than it already is.

There are other ways you can help - please contact me IMMEDIATELY for details if you’re interested. Immediate action is necessary due to election-related deadlines - the deadline to gain voting eligibility is tomorrow, Saturday May 31st and the ballots are scheduled to be mailed out to WEFT Members on Thursday, June 5th . Please feel free to reply to me directly via email or, if you prefer, call me any day, any time between 7:30AM and 1AM regarding this matter at 217-351-8644 (home) or 217-722-8470 (cell).

Randall Cotton