LAMA Breathes Its Last
What I had not anticipated when I left the LPMAPAC Board was that eastern Massachusetts activists would use their joint control of the LAMA and LPMAPAC Boards to destroy LAMA—the long-term LPUS affiliate— under the guise of a merger. The eastern group announced that they were going to merge the two organizations. The presentation of the merger proposal to Libertarians around the state—the author attended one of them —took the form of Eli Israel appearing and saying ‘here is what we have decided to do’. His presentation was based on telling to the membership what was going to happen, rather than presenting supporting material so that LAMA members could make an informed decision. In small-party politics, the technical phrase for this approach to decision making is ‘democratic centralism’.
No arguments opposing the merger were circulated to the membership. At the joint convention, as soon as each of the four merger motions was made, the same eastern Massachusetts resident rose and moved the previous question, preventing any debate at the convention on any of the four motions involved in the merger. It is not clear that debate would have made any difference, because most people at the convention had no idea that there were opposing arguments. The only permitted debate was over a point of order.
Recently, it has been learned that during this period debate on the LPMA e-mail lists, on which more anon, was also censored. Writing in a spring 2002 issue of Let Freedom Ring!, the PVLA’s nationally circulated newsletter, former LNC Treasurer and Massachusetts resident Mark Tuniewicz observed:
“Regarding the censoring and closure of the LAMA email discussion list, this certainly isn’t the first time this has happened. During the months leading up to the 2000 LP Convention, LPMA list-manager Muni Savyon would routinely review messages before they hit the list and delete those with political discussion that was critical of Browne, Bergland, Howell, and Cloud. I know, because it happened to my postings repeatedly. When I brought it to LPMA Chair Elias Israel’s attention, he refused to take any action against Savyon. This is a extension of the national LP leadership culture that says it’s OK to silence or ignore your internal LP opponents (either in email, LP News, or at events) rather than engage them in open, honest debate. It’s anti-libertarian, as are those who promote it…plain & simple”
The most important consequence of the merger was buried in state election law. The LAMA state board had been elected by the membership at the annual state convention. The LPMA State Committee, one man and one woman from each State Senate district, was under state law elected during the Presidential Primary (February or so of the Presidential election year) for four year terms. These elections had taken place before the merger. Until the merger took place, the LPMA State Committee did nothing except appoint Presidential electors and, if they so chose, raise money for state party candidates. Because the Party State Committee was so unimportant, almost no one ran for it. Indeed, in 1996, no one at all ran for the LPMA State Board.
However, after the merger, the Massachusetts Libertarian organization was totally controlled by the LPMA State Board, whose regular members had run for office months earlier, back when most Libertarians Massachusetts viewed the LPMA Board as an obscure, insignificant fundraising group. Under State Law, the four year terms of State Committeemen and State Committeewomen ran until 2004. As a result, State Chair Eli Israel and the other LPMA state officers who engineered the merger had a four year lockhold on their control of the state party.
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