Keeping the tradition vibrant!

Governance

JAAH on the Brink of Whitrification
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JAAH on the Brink of Whitrification

 

It bothers VP Franklin and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham none that to sell out a century of self-publishing they have had to disenfranchise the membership and make less money. Why let an organization of black folks get in their way? A graduate of the University of Chicago, Franklin with whom I labored for thirteen years gets to be the editor for a whole year at a journal published by his alma mater. For Evelyn, whose ASALH accomplishment before becoming ASALH president was to write a fund-raising letter, this is the crowning achievement of her presidency and her time on the board.

Now both still try to pretend that the white folks who used to work for us, Tapestry Press, was our publisher. This is largely because they do not really know what a publisher is. Believe me, documents will bear this out. They cannot distinguish a vendor from a shot caller. Yet publishers get a cut and are liable for what is printed, thus they are the decision makers. Ask a lawyer filing a libel suit and they’ll tell you who is the publisher. And Chicago has a clause in the contract saying that the next editor has to be agreeable to them. Now, Tapestry had no contract and printed whatever we told them. We could have told them to print that the white man is the devil, and they would have done it. That is what printers do. Say something Chicago doesn’t like, and you’ll meet your boss, baby–even if you own the journal.

The membership does not have to take being disenfranchised and having its authority usurped lying down. Before we were disenfranchised we were told everyone would get a print copy of the journal. That is not true. We were told that the $100,000 would be all profit–the only money they’ll make will come from cheating people out of the promised journals. Indeed, we will make about $35,000 less than before. And our new issues will not be in JSTOR. Worse still, worse of all, we will no longer be the oldest scholarly journal published by a black organization in the world. Nope. We gave that up for the look of being a University of Chicago Journal. Wow, how black is that?

By the way, until now, the board has not voted to give VP Franklin the $5,000 raise he has been looking for. If so, ASALH will make about $40,000 less than it has been making. In ASALH world, where deficit are frequent, this is more money than you know.

Selling Out Tradition at a Financial Disadvantage
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Selling Out Tradition at a Financial Disadvantage

 

After disenfranchising the members of ASALH at the 101st Annual Meeting in Richmond, denying our constitution and by-laws and throwing out a motion during discussion, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham got the board to compound her extra-constitutional action by authorizing her to sign the contract with Chicago. So much in this letter is inaccurate, but what is missing is more important. I will keep it to six points.

1. The contract with reduce our profit from the journal by $35,000 a year.

2. The officers told the membership in Richmond that the we would receive $100,000 in profit each year from the new relationship, but in fact the expenses that ASALH will incur will total almost $70,000–unless ASALH lays off staff.

3. The officers told the membership that every member would receive a print copy of the journal, and they will not. Only certain categories of members will receive a print copy–over half of the members will not.

4. Although ASALH will own the journal, we will be content providers and not publishers. We would own the farm and work the farm, but the white university press will manage us. Because of our scholarship, editing, and brand, we will feed them and ourselves, leaving us less profit than we make now.

5. Tapestry Press worked for us, now we will work for Chicago.  They were paid a fee for services, not a percentage.  They took no risk, we did.  We were liable for what we said–this is what publishers do. Publishers are shot callers and risk takers.  Now, Chicago is our publisher, and we are no longer the oldest black published journal in the scholarly world.  That title now belongs to The Journal of Negro Education.   As our publishers, Chicago will manage the affairs and cut us a check when we produce content.  Without an examination of either numbers or facts, our board believes Chicago can do it better and make us more money–and they won’t.   That is because they still really don’t understand what publishing is.  Now, those of you who love status more than independence, who love taking care of others as they tell you what they are doing for you, who love the ice in the other person’s cup–the ice that you put there, then you should be happy with this new era of ASALH.

6. New issues of The Journal of African American History will no longer be part of JSTOR’s database, and so each year the JSTOR archive will become less useful to scholars.

One fact will let you know how little the President still knows about the journal publishing business even a year later. Chicago is far from the leading publisher of journals. It is a very small fry with less than 100 journal. Sage publishes about 1,000 journals; Wiley, 1,500 journals; Frances Taylor, 2,100; Elsevier, 2,500 journals, Chicago publishes three times less than Cambridge or Oxford, less than the University of California Press, and not much more than Duke and North Carolina. It looks big only in the eyes of Penn State University Press and the University of Illinois.

Here is the letter in its entirety.

 

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Why The Executive Council Cannot Admit It Was Wrong and Apologize for Disenfranchising the Members

 

Our century of self-publishing our journal is over.  The board has voted to allow the University of Chicago to become the publisher of our Journal.  It has been a year since President Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Vice President Greer Stanford Randal stood before the 101st Business Session and claimed the membership lacked the authority to make the decision about the future of self-publishing the Journal of African American History.  By now President Higginbotham has every reason to know that she had no authority to shut down discussion and deny a vote on a motion for ASALH to continue self-publishing the Journal of African American History.  Despite what is known the people who disenfranchised the members like we were black and they were white and it was 1899 cannot come clean.  They must continue to lie.

The By-Laws clearly states that the function of the Executive Council is the enact the policies set by the Business Session.  The members are the bosses of the Executive Council, including the President.

This matter was brought to the attention of the Executive Council before it took a vote in February to make the University of Chicago the publisher of the Journal of African American History.  The board should have tabled the matter until after the Business Session could make its will known in Cincinnati.  Moreover, the Board, on reviewing the Constitution and By-Laws, should have sent a formal apology to the membership and stated only that it would defer to the will of the people on the matter.  Instead, the Board pretended the Constitution and By-Laws had not been violated.

Now that the Executive Council has voted 13 to 11 to go to Chicago, an apology to the membership would be an admission that the board has violated the constitution and by-laws by signing the contract with the University of Chicago.  Indeed, the contract itself stipulates it is only valid if the Executive Council has the authority.

 

 

Thus, when ASALH meets, the Officers of the Executive Council will have to go Trump and lie until the cows come home about the rights of ASALH’s members and the Board’s right to shut down the motion on the floor from the last Business Session.  And the paid parliamentarian will have to follow suit.

Would They Have Disenfranchised an Organization of White Folks? What Will We Do?
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Would They Have Disenfranchised an Organization of White Folks? What Will We Do?

Violating our mission

When the Executive Council of ASALH voted in February of 2017 to end our century-long tradition of self-publishing our Journal of African American History, it violated not only a tradition established by our founder, but also our belief in democracy.  Carter G. Woodson believed that historical truth, published and promoted by black folks, would promote an expansion of democracy in America. His fight and our fight has always been to use history to make the United States and the world respect the rights of black people.  Thus it is doubly tragic that the decision was made by violating the voting rights of the members of ASALH.  At the 101st Annual Business Session of ASALH in Richmond, the president denied the constitutional right of the members to decide the question. When a member raised the question of whether the Business Session had the power to make the decision, the president ran through the open door and never looked back.

Violating our fundamental laws

The constitution and by-laws state clearly that the members are the bosses of the Executive Council, which is bound to execute the policies we set.

Rather than take a moment and consult the constitution and by-laws, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the president,  high-handedly told us that she not only had the power but that she was the authority to which we had to appeal!  And if this action was born of ignorance of our laws, and that is always possible, she and rest of the Executive Council knew when they voted to go to Chicago several months later–because the opposition on the board and this site made it clear.  Democracy matters not to the majority of the board–and to three former presidents who either serve on the board and voted for the measure and weighed in to sell out tradition and democracy.

I will continue to point out the folly of this move to the University of Chicago (it will financially weaken us and reduce our staff), but what saddens me more is the evidence of mis-education involved in this move. Would the Executive Council have disenfranchised an organization of white people?  Would an organization of white people have allowed such a thing?  We were founded to combat mis-education, but we will have lost the war within our own ranks if we do not hold the Executive Council responsible when we meet at the 102nd Business Session of ASALH that will be held in Cincinnati.

 

Silenced Dissenters
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Silenced Dissenters

The entire effort of the regime to end a century of our self-publishing history has been an effort to impose this move on ASALH in a very authoritarian fashion.  There has been no regard for building a consensus among either the Executive Council or the membership.  We shall never forget that a motion remains on the floor of the Business Session, despite the President’s attempt to usurp the authority of the membership to decide the issue by disenfranchising the membership.  Against the Constitution and By-laws, President Higginbotham brazenly claimed to the Business Session that the Executive Council makes the decisions for ASALH and our only option is to vote out people.  Now that the Executive Council has taken its rogue vote, every effort is being made to make sure that the membership does not know how board members voted.   Regimes want to perpetuate themselves–that’s what they do–and they will use extraordinary means to make it happen.  This is the latest effort to squash transparency and accountability.

From what I can gather, the rogue vote of the Executive Council took place on a conference call.   After some wrangling about secrecy, it was decided that the vote would be semi-secret with board members emailing their vote to three of the officers, including the President and the Secretary.  (Note, the Great Disenfranchiser herself got to know how everyone voted.  The leader of the movement to end tradition had perfect knowledge of who was for and who was against her program!)  The outcome of the vote was 15 to 11, not bad for a vote held under her watchful eye.

After the vote, I began asking people how they voted and it became clear immediately that people had a problem being accountable.  So many, even people who were known supporters of our tradition of self-publishing, were reluctant to say.  So I posted on facebook for members of the board to speak up and tell how they voted.  After all, the members of ASALH would ultimately need to know so that they can decide whom they should support for re-election.  Even the president said that the recourse of the membership would be to vote out the Executive Council for their actions.  Well, despite this, board members have been reticent–even when they are right with Woodson.   With a bit a peer pressure from facebook countering the peer pressure of the board, a couple of folks spoke up.

It seems some have conflated a secret ballot with an oath of secrecy.  A secret ballot simply protects the voter from telling the world how he or she voted, but every individual who makes a secret vote has the right to tell any and everyone how they voted according to their own lights.  If the vote were taken under an oath of secrecy, then all who vote must refrain from revealing even how they voted as an individual.  These are different rules of voting and should not be conflated.  By all accounts, there was no oath of secrecy.

Soon the new elections for the ASALH board will be held.  If people who are on the board run for re-election won’t tell us how they voted on their candidate’s statement–simply vote them out.  And if the folks who are running for the first time are not allowed to tell us where they stand, then the regime is not worth supporting with membership dollars.  At some point, transparency and accountability must prevail.

You Will Not Get Away with Disenfranchising the Membership of ASALH
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You Will Not Get Away with Disenfranchising the Membership of ASALH

 
 
Two days ago the Executive Council of ASALH, under the leadership of Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham of Harvard, unconstitutionally arrogated to itself the authority to sign the contract with the University of Chicago Press. Our constitution requires us to follow Roberts Rules of Order, and now the president of ASALH has brazenly violated our rule.
 
When the legislative body of ASALH met in its Business Session at the 101st Annual Meeting in Richmond, the members, exercising their constitutional power, debated a motion to self-publish. Without constitutional grounds and in flagrant violation of Roberts Rules of Order, Professor Higginbotham ended the debate. Not only did she claim that the body had no such power to decide the issue, she asserted, in an autocratic move, that only the Executive Council makes the policies for our body and that our only recourse was to vote them out of office. Worse still, she announced that she herself was the authority to which any appeal of her ruling should be heard. The would-be dictator maintains she heard none! For sure, because she ain’t got no such power! The Vice-President of Membership, Greer Stanford Randle, concurred with this mockery of the constitution which clearly states that the function of the Executive Council is to carry out the policies set by the Business Session. Both must be held accountable.
 
The rogue vote of the Executive Council on Tuesday insisted on by the regime showed the rise of a principled opposition. Fifteen to eleven was much closer than the regime thought it would be. The regime was weakened by the last election, and they will eventually be removed. I commend those who have spent a year of their lives opposing the sell out of the principle of self-publishing, the foundation of our organization’s mission. I condemn those who would not only end our founding purpose but will do so at our financial disadvantage and against the rights of our membership. Just who are you to trample on our rights?
 
Many of you out here were at the meeting where the membership was disenfranchised and others have heard about it. Some of you have stayed on the sidelines concerned about bigger issues and sometimes your own careers. I understand. Yet in the new phase of this struggle to be right with Woodson, I will call on those of you who are members to sign petitions, to vote this year’s election, and to attend the meeting in Cincinnati, where we stand up for our rights against a handful of people who have lost their way.
 
Disenfranchising black people is not right with any major tradition in in black history, and our organization was founded on the belief that knowledge would expand, not contract, democracy.
Woodson, Too Many Former ASALH Presidents Still Won’t Look at the Numbers Before Making Decisions
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Woodson, Too Many Former ASALH Presidents Still Won’t Look at the Numbers Before Making Decisions

These former Presidents who signed the letter in support of taking the Journal of African History to the University of Chicago Press ought to be ashamed of themselves.  Here I speak of Betty Gardner, Robert Harris, Samuel Du Bois Cook, and John Fleming.  Gardner, Harris, and Cook held office when the journal was at Morehouse for that 25-year period, when Alton Hornsby kept the subscribers list and received all the revenue.  He often submitted reports saying they were broke without providing an accounting of the numbers. When the journal returned to headquarters, under the presidency of Gloria Dickinson, it came without either records of subscribers or documents about revenue.  In fact, back in those dark days when these former presidents sat the board, there were no IRS filings, and the only reports they had were cash roll ups.  I will never forget the day when I showed the treasurer that his numbers had to be false, and he sat behind a typewriter and created a new report without documents before him–he made it all up as I had suspected.  Oh, those were dark days–much different from those by the time of John Fleming who agreed to be president in part because I agreed to continue as Vice President for Programs.

So John Fleming should know better than much of what he says about the journal.  It was marginally profitable during his years.  Thanks to VP Franklin’s regular production of the journal and decisions to raise the price slowly from $40 to $150 today, the journal has had positive revenue all these years.  So much so that we started charging salaries and overhead.  Now Bob Harris would not know this, because he was gone.  And John Fleming left in 2009–before we went digital.  Since going digital the revenue increased from $75,000 to a highpoint of $130,000.  With JSTOR’s reduction in fees and leaving our current vendors, our revenue will tip $150,000 for the first time–but how would these past presidents know this.  They would not know about the current finances of the journal because there are no numbers provided by the regime they are supporting.

The letter also states that Woodson’s Appeal made no money.  Now, in 2008 we were getting $1000 plus donations for the appeal, some as high as $5,000.   They are so wrong about that they should be ashamed.  Yet, Cook would have no way of knowing that.  Bob Harris had left the board, and yet John Fleming and Bettye Gardiner should know better, especially John.  I will ask him to personally apologize for that gross misstatement of fact.

Now two of these presidents were involved with the major financial disasters of our time in ASALHland, the Que Street Debacle and the Lost Treasures.

 

 

How Can You Sign on to a Project When No One Gives You Anything Like This?  Selling Out Woodson Without Reference to Numbers, SMH

 

Why Does the Regime Not Have Numbers for the Impending University of Chicago Press Decision?
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Why Does the Regime Not Have Numbers for the Impending University of Chicago Press Decision?

Unless those who believe only the Business Session of ASALH owns the publishing issue win the day, the ASALH Executive Council is poised to make a decision on the University of Chicago contract proposal on Tuesday.  Despite having the basic proposal for nearly six months, the regime has not presented the board with the any financial information and analysis that should accompany a major decision.  At the Business Session of the 101st Annual Meeting, Gilbert A. Smith, our treasurer and a CPA, told the members they that the $100,000 per year was all profit, not simply revenue.  We have exposed that to be a lie, but since then neither he nor the committee headed by Sharon Harley has produced known expenses or a cost-benefit analysis. Although the council met in person last Friday and will vote on Tuesday, the editorial office expenses, including overhead, has not been represented to the decision makers–and the Chicago proposal makes clear it does not cover 100% of the publishing costs.  And nothing that looks like a cost benefit analysis of self-publishing versus going to Chicago has been produced.   Mind you, without such numbers two former presidents of ASALH, Robert Harris and John Fleming, have endorsed the move–somehow. This is not surprising giving ASALH’s history of making poor big decisions such as the purchase and sell of two headquarters buildings, the 14th Street property and Q Street. Given that this Association, founded by Carter G. Woodson, has self-published for a century and given that its journal is the oldest, scholarly journal in the black world–yes, the entire black world– you would think that due diligence would be done, that a sound basis for making a decision would be made.  One is left to speculate aloud about why due diligence is not being performed.  Why hasn’t it?  Your guess is as good as ours, but let me suggest a number of possibilities.

Why not Delineate the Expenses against the $100,000?

  • Revealing expenses will confirm that the original position that the Chicago money was all profit was a flat-out a lie?
  • Enumerated expenses will reveal that the promise that all members will receive free hard copies of the journal was a lie, too, or that keeping the promise will cost as much as $20,000 to $24,000?
  • Disclosed expenses might reveal a decision to eliminate office staff whose position would be made superfluous by the contract?
  • Reporting expenses would reveal an on-going overhead cost of $15,000 because it cannot be eliminated, reducing the revenue available after the deal?
  • Reporting expenses would reveal a decision whether to increase the editor’s salary $5,000 or not, which was the origins of the entire fiasco?
  • Fear that surplus revenue of $10,000 to $20,000 is not worth ending a century of tradition?  This begs the question of the cost-benefit analysis.
  • It would become clear that there would not be any money left to do all the wonderful things the for rest of the Association as the regime has suggested there would be.

Why not Prepare a Cost-Benefit Analysis?  Well, It Would Reveal the following:

  • We can make $200,000 over five years via self-publishing.
  • We will have a $55,000 Reserve Fund proffered by the Get Right with Woodson Campaign.
  • We can make more surplus revenue without eliminating a staff position.
  • That the if the Chicago contract proved unprofitable, our revenue might slide 50% in five years and cannot be replaced.
  • That it would cost us $20,000 or more to re-establish our self-publishing if necessary.
  • The opportunity cost for not self-publishing.  We could work with branches to place JAAH in primary and secondary schools, a place where Chicago cannot effectively market.
  • Would reveal that something other than our traditional values and money were behind this entire project.

Those Right with Woodson Believe in Data

For more information on the financial benefits of self-publishing. Despite the personal success of the folks who make our decisions, the collective failure of ASALH boards–past and present–reveals a fundamental shortcoming of our institutional life.  How tragic it is it that Carter G. Woodson, who viewed the lack business acumen of educated blacks part of their mis-education, has been plagued by the shortcomings he sought to eliminate.  It is almost as tragic as the organization’s losing its way on the question of self-determination.  None of this is right with Woodson, and those of us who disagree will either stop this move before it happens or clean it up in its aftermath.  Do know that the self-publishing tradition will prevail now or later.

ASALH’s Que Street Debacle
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ASALH’s Que Street Debacle

Nothing is worse in the non-profit world than having more money than ever before, except also believing your organization should have more status and prestige than it does. This combination led ASALH to what some of us know as the Que Street Debacle. A new headquarters building was bought and yet ASALH never moved into the building. How this million dollar mistake was made is a cautionary tale about the failure to perform due diligence and operate with transparency. It is a lesson that has been lost again by current members of the Executive Council.

After receiving a 1.5 million grant from the now defunct Wachovia Bank and selling the Woodson Home to the National Park Service, ASALH had a cash position of nearly $2.5 million, more than it had ever seen in its 90 year history. For nearly three years, ASALH had been a guest on Howard University’s campus and there were many who believed that ASALH now could afford a place of its own–having only sold its Fourteenth Street headquarters only a few years earlier to escape crushing debt. The national real estate boom was in full swing, and property seemed a sure thing.

There were those who believed that ASALH should purchase a headquarters in Washington not far from Woodson’s home, and the property identified was 636 Q Street, NW. It was a residence, not a home, and it was said that the build out to make it functional as an office would be less than $150,000. The advocates of the position, led by a business person with vast experience in the hedge-fund industry, held that the building, once purchased, could qualify for a thirty-year municipal bond. Thus the fifteen-year loan that we would sign for would not matter so much as it would be temporary. Rather than take on a mortgage, or a mortgage alternative like a bridge loan, some of us believed that ASALH should relocate the headquarters to Maryland, where we could pay cash for a business condominium. The total cost, with build-out, would have been no more than $500,000 and ASALH would headquarters free and clear. Effectively we would have spent no more than we had made from the sale of Woodson’s home.

Before the Executive Council meeting, I argued the case for moving free and clear to Prince George’s County, and Rev. Richard T. Adams, whom I admire and consider my reverend, argued for staying in the city. Few would forget how he waxed on about how ASALH needed to be in the city, the nation’s capital, and not in the “cow pasture.” We all chucked at his humor, and most of the people on the board agreed with him. With the transaction in the hands of the hedge-fund manager and the incoming president of ASALH, no one else on the board, including me, felt compelled to examine the documents. In short order, we owned a building–the now notorious Q Street, and we would move in as soon as the modifications had been made.

ASALH never moved into Q Street. Although only authorized to make expenditures of approximately $150,000, the board member in charge of the project submitted bills for substantially more. Efforts were made to reign in the spending but the president’s efforts were rebuffed, and additional amendments to the contracts were signed. There was the unexpected new roof, termite abatement, facade shoring up, and numerous other challenges. Before all was done, the rehabilitation had run up to $500,000–and we still did not have a building that could pass inspection for occupancy. By this time the board member conceded that ASALH’s project would no qualify for a municipal bond–the size and the scale of the project, among other things, were inadequate for the minimum bond that the city would float. The hedge-fund guy who glibly talked about municipal bonds knew nothing about them! But that was not the bomb, nope. Brace yourselves, we had been lied to about the terms of the mortgage. It was not a fifteen year instrument. Nope, the mortgage was for five years–amortized over fifteen years–with a $600,000 balloon payment due January 1, 2012. Translated, the amount you would pay if you had a fifteen year mortgage but at the five year mark the rest of the money owed came due. Someone had signed a mortgage without appreciating or reporting the terms, believing, it seems, what we had all been told. The balloon had the ability to take the association under in three years. This is unfortunate for us. We know there were more affordable mortgages available. There are even mortgages to help new residents, allowing them to apply through their international credit reports, so they are able to settle in the states.

With great effort the project was brought to a halt. Leans were placed on the property by the building contractor and vendors involved, and bad feelings were everywhere because assurances had been given that we had the money to complete the project. Q Street became my mess to clean up. Everyone involved ran for the hills. Over the course of more than a year, I negotiated with the contractors and disabused them of the notion that would could honor our contractual agreements and survive as an organization. Eventually they let us out of the contracts, and Q Street became our unoccupied shell, would be headquarters. Under the presidency of Jim Stewart, we were able to sell the building at a great loss–having lost just under a million dollars on the project. Yet we were simply glad that we succeeded in selling before the balloon payment had taken us under.

So here we find ourselves once again business person, Gilbert Smith, lending his professional credential to persuade the board and the organization down a dubious path. While it is not his idea, he has lied about the Chicago Proposal. He and those involved have not done due diligence and vetted Chicago’s business plan, and no one has provided a cost benefit analysis. Worse still, the central documents have not been shared with board members and those who know most about the business affairs of the journal. Members are supposed to trust people who know nothing of publishing who have already been caught literally lying, representing revenue as profits. And to shut down opposition, they have resorted to efforts to stifle open debate and to overriden the constitution’s provision that allows the Business Session to make decisions that are binding on the board. The Que Street debacle may have cost a million dollars, but this debate over self-publishing has trampled over any notion of democracy and good governance.

(More on Q Street can be found in Duke’s Archives. Scholars interested in writing about Que Street may also contact me for my files. You can still find videos on the final renovation on YouTube. The new owners got a half-million dollars of free work from our debacle.)

A Telling Vote of Confidence for Treasurer Despite His Lying to Membership and Not Producing Financial Reports
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A Telling Vote of Confidence for Treasurer Despite His Lying to Membership and Not Producing Financial Reports

Much can be said about the Executive Council Meeting of February 24th, but the Regime is denying that the 102nd Business Meeting in Cincinnati has authority over the decision to self publish the Journal of African American History or take on the University of Chicago Press as our publisher.  Pretending that they still have the issue, they are ignoring the much more profitable self-publishing option made possible by the changes in JSTOR’s Current Journals Program.   Never mind that there is three times the profit is self-publishing.   Yet the truth about the superiority of self-publishing is not clear because the Regime is not interested in putting out a projection of the revenue versus expenses for going to the University of Chicago Press.  After more than four months since the 101st Annual Meeting, where Gilbert A. Smith represented $100,000 of revenue as profit, he has still not provided the math.  There still is neither a cost-benefit analysis or a set of expenses that will remain during the period of the proposed Chicago contract.   The latter takes perhaps more work than then regime cares to perform, but the latter is something that a head of household can produce.  If one did not know better, the board will vote to go to Chicago without numbers.

Why Not Present a Draft Report with Everything but the Trivial Amount?

We hear that the numbers are not definitive yet because the current expenses are not accurately known.  Gee, how did we get this far if the board has no handle on the numbers?  And Chicago is poised to make the deal even though it admits it does not have good numbers.  The numbers in question have to do with the current revenue and expenses for print subscriptions.  The other expenses are well known and make up the bulk of the expenses, indeed, the provisional numbers would only change the bottom line on print expenses by roughly 10% to 20%, or $600 to $1,200.  It all involves whether we ship out print an additional 30 or 60 customers.  It is a trivial expense.  Some might call it akin to spoilage.

What Reason or Reasons Would There Be to Not Presenting a provisional Draft?

Well, there is no good reason since the report would be between 98% and 99% accurate.   The problems are twofold.

  1. Such a report would demonstrate that the Chicago Proposal is almost $200,000 less profitable over five years than self-publishing.
  2. It would be also be the proof that Gilbert A. Smith, CPA, misrepresented revenues as profits–in a very major way.

Those who believe in self-publishing produced a comparative report using the same base of data.

Despite This Failure to Do Due Diligence, the Executive Council Gave Him a Vote of Confidence

The Executive Council revealed itself once again more concerned about being on the best terms with one another regardless of how the membership, the legislative body, has been lied to as it was in Richmond.  Never forget that Gilbert A. Smith told the standing-room only crowd at the 101st Business Session that $100,000 in revenue would be profit.  Clearly taking issue on my blog and social media posts about the treasure’s mischaracterization of the $100,000, a board member called for a vote of confidence in the treasurer.   Gilbert easily won the vote–imagine that–despite never addressing the issue of revenue and expenses!  And the board was aghast that roughly a quarter of their members–mostly new–voted no confidence.

Hope for the Future as the Board Is Changing Before Our Eyes

The board was audibly surprised and upset by the number of new board members who were not on board with the sell out.  The truth is, you cannot get many people to sign on to the sell out.  Indeed, I was surprised at a couple of people who put their sympathy for Gilbert A. Smith above his role in lying to the membership by knowingly calling revenue profits.  Yet, everyone on the board should know that they are at odds with the membership on this question.  And Chicago should take note.  The people selling out tradition will be sent packing from the board.  Too many of these folks are here to be self-important at our Annual DC Black History Luncheon.  That becomes clearer every year.

 

 

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