[permaculture] changes at seed saver's exchange

Kathleen O'Brien Blair ktho at comcast.net
Sun Jan 20 17:05:54 EST 2008


Do I have it correctly that the new "board" changed the By-Laws to
remove voting rights from members who have had them all along? If so
that's grounds for a class action and a petition to the Iowa Secretary
of State.

Kathleen

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
Marimike6 at cs.com
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 11:38 AM
To: permaculture at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [permaculture] changes at seed saver's exchange

Here's some more info on the controversy:

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cornucop/msg0119143726856.html?
12

In all fairness, note the macmec comment (above), where he offers that
even 
if everything were above board, issues of liability intrude whenever
some 
rancorous action necessitates lawyers. And if you've fired someone for
cause, you 
can't tell anyone what that cause might be without courting the
possibility of 
a wrongful action suit.

That's just the way things are done in this country. Still, I have my
opinion 
in this. And the takeover sounds ominous. It would be hard to imagine a 
situation in which it was actually done for the good of the enterprise.
Laughably 
easy of course, is imagining it was done with the clandestine purpose of

killing off SSE.

IMO it would be a disaster for people discouraged by the putsch to just 
resign from SSE. Everyone who does this just makes it easier for some
unopposed 
Board to decide it would be "in the best interest of the organization
and the 
principles for which it stands" to turn the seed bank, the holdings and
the 
operation over to some large corporation to manage, so they could then
neglect it 
until it falls apart from disuse.

And there are certainly large agro-corps who would find the price of
buying 
this gem to be a very affordable way of drowning the competition. I'm
with the 
numerous posters connected to SSE--  the total lack of transparency
gives more 
than an impression of skullduggery in the way this has come about.

Here's a good article, from a more pleasant time, about SSE and the seed

saving movement generally:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48120-2004Aug30.html   
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