May 17, 2009 meeting

At the May 17, 2009 annual meeting of the Riverside Church, a non-profit religious corporation, a young African-American gentleman sitting directly in front of me apparently asked Barbara Hampton, another African-American member of the congregation, sitting to my right, a number of questions about my qualifications as a lawyer. Had the gentleman asked me directly, I would have answered him, but he did not deign to speak directly to me.

To answer him: I hold degrees from Barnard College, Columbia University (in computer science and religion); and Manhattan School of Music (in harp). I began my legal studies on a generous scholarship at Boston University School of Law. During my 1L year, it came to my attention that a student in another section was using email to anonymously harass other students, using racially pejorative language. I contacted the Dean and demanded that he take all steps to discover the identity of this harasser, expel him or her from the school, and notify the Bar Association to ensure this individual would never become a Bar member. The Dean refused to take action. Additionally, I protested to the Dean of Academic Affairs that the required assignment of a misogynist moot court assignment was unethical. The brief I was assigned to argue was written like pornography, and had many factual and legal flaws. Following a car accident in which I was rear-ended, and missed nearly 20% of my first year classes due to a severe concussion and neck injuries, I argued the matter (in my neck brace) to satisfy my moot court requirement. The head of the moot court judge panel me that I presented the most effective oral argument in my 1L class. (I told him that he should have seen what I would have argued had I been arguing for the side of justice.) At the end of the year, the Dean of Academic Affairs agreed that this sexist assignment would no longer be part of the BUSL curriculum. However, because the Dean refused to address the racial harassment issue, I gave up my scholarship and left the school, not wanting my name associated with an organization that covered-up such egregious conduct. My GPA for my 1L year was 3.79.

I went on to complete my J.D. at New York University School of Law, then rated 4th in the nation (Yale being 1st, Harvard 2nd, Stanford 3rd, and Columbia 5th). I graduated magna cum laude, in the top 10% of my class, and was given membership in the Order of the Coif. I’ve been invited to join MENSA. I am a member in good standing of the New York and Massachusetts Bar Associations. I served as a prosecutor in Manhattan and Staten Island, and a Children’s Law Guardian in Brooklyn. In those capacities, I handled nearly 1,000 matters, and, in over 99% of these cases, the outcome was consistent with my advocacy, whether for the State, or the children who were my clients. Members of the Staten Island and Brooklyn 18b panels told me that my reputation among them was clear: I was known as extremely thorough, absolutely fair, and a tough and unflinching advocate for justice. As Rev. Jim Forbes and others are well aware, I advocated for justice even pressing defense attorneys to get drug treatment and other interventions for their clients, and pressing my own office to immediately drop cases in which I discovered constitutional and other investigatory flaws, even when defense counsel was unaware of these flaws. As Jim and others are also aware, I left one position in protest when the administration instituted internal rules that I believe violated the constitutional rights of their employees.

Prior to entering law school, I advocated pro bono and helped see introduction and passage of state and federal laws to protect children from child sex abuse and hold abusers legally accountable. For nearly a decade, I stood up to an international organization of accused and proven sex offenders who sought to discredit victims of sexual violence, and used a variety of threats to silence them. As a result, they vilified me using the media, the internet, and even textbook publications. In 2006, I published a law review article that exposes an effort to give abusive parents sole custody of their children. The article has been described as the seminal work on the subject and is being used to train judges around the U.S. and in courts in France, Argentina, and other countries. I am currently working on a book about sexual violence, and I handle a variety of pro bono matters. Currently, I earn my living as a harpist, and donate all my legal work pro bono. Last year, I earned about $30,000, gave 8% of that in cash to charities to help the needy, and donated the equivalent of approximately $100,000 in pro bono legal work to the needy.

I invite those Riversiders, including Dr. Braxton and others, who have publicly called me a “racist” and “worker of Satan” to contact my former supervisors in Manhattan, Staten Island, and Brooklyn, (Charles King, Quentin Smith, and Fredericka Bashir) and my dear colleague Tosha Foster, all of whom happen to be of African-American descent, as well as the many members of Riverside who know me, including the choir, the last two music directors and their assistants, various Church Council members, and Revs. Pat Lawson, Linda Terry-Chard, Bob Coleman, Fanny Erikson, Jim Forbes, Brenda Stiers, etc. who can address the question of whether I am “racist” and a “worker of Satan.”

I hope this answers the young gentleman’s questions, and would hope that in the future anyone who has a question for me would ask me directly. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached that he dreamed of a society in which no person’s character would be judged by the color of his or her skin. I share Dr. King’s dream. In contrast, Dr. Braxton has used the Riverside pulpit to call Dr. King’s dream a “lie from hell.” It begins to appear that Dr. Braxton’s leadership is increasingly resulting in Riversiders’ characters being judged on the shade of their skin—a genetic factor of melanin levels due to recent ancestry over which they have no control, and no reflection of their original human ancestral roots back in Ethiopia some 50,000 years ago.

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Prior to the May 17, 2009 meeting, the Council announced that Rikk Stone, a fellow church member, had submitted a resolution for the meeting, but that the Council would not entertain it. The Council published their reasons in an email message, and further announced that all other new business must be submitted to the Council by Friday, May 15, 2009 at noon. I duly submitted a resolution to rescind a vote taken at the March 1, 2009 meeting due to voter fraud. I brought documentary evidence to prove the voter fraud and was prepared to call on Rev. Terry-Chard to provide further testimonial evidence supporting this claim. Since the vote on the 2009 annual budget rested on this prior vote based on voter fraud, the matter of this voter fraud is of central ethical and legal importance. Ms. Kathleen Zbylut emailed me to remind me to bring copies for the entire congregation, which I did and distributed duly at the May 17 meeting. At no time did any member of the Council indicate that my resolution would not be entertained.

At the meeting, another resolution was entertained and defeated by a vote of the present members. Dr. Jones gave the author of that resolution leave to amend his resolution during the meeting prior to that vote. Despite the fact that the resolution in question raised questions of infringing members’ First Amendment and Due Process rights, Dr. Jones claimed that this resolution had been vetted by corporate council.

When I stood to bring my resolution, Dr. Billy Jones, head of the Church Council, told me for the first time that the Council would not entertain my resolution. I pointed out that under Robert’s Rules, a motion to rescind a vote for voter fraud is always in order. While Dr. Jones had given the prior resolution’s author leave to amend his resolution, Dr. Jones refused to allow me to amend my resolution to include the term “rescind” or “voter fraud,” and refused to honor Robert’s Rules that state that motions to rescind are always in order. Dr. Jones further accurately observed that addressing this voter fraud issue would result in re-opening the vote on the budget. When Dr. Jones attempted to silence me from speaking, I pointed out that he had allowed other members to make observations from the microphone. I then cited Riverside’s history in fighting for social justice to end apartheid, fight for civil rights, and against the injustice of voter fraud in every other instance. I pointed out that the Council’s refusal to allow me to present evidence of voter fraud within the church proceedings, left no other option but to present the evidence to a wider legal and public audience. At that point, loud jeering and yelling broke out. Despite Dr. Jones’ prior insistence that there be no clapping or yelling during the meeting, he made no effort to silence the jeering, violating the rules he had cited at the beginning of the meeting regarding member conduct.

In every instance when I have raised a question about the church’s new theological and leadership direction I have done so openly. (For the record, I am neither the author of nor a member of the distribution list of the Friends of Fosdick, and have only read a few of their publications which have been passed on to me by other Riversiders.) Having attempted to bring the serious legal and ethical issue of voter fraud to the attention of the members of the corporation, and having been silenced in violation of Robert’s Rules by the head of the Church Council, I now bring this evidence, as I openly promised to do at the meeting on May 17, to the public. All of us have witnessed the devastation wrought by voter fraud whether in Zimbabwe or in the U.S. under the Bush administration. Voter fraud is a tactic used to undermine democratic process. The fact that the Riverside Church Council, with the apparent assistance of corporate counsel, has acted to defend and hide this fraud raises serious legal and ethical questions about the present leadership of our religious corporation.

For the record, on March 1, 2009, I did not vote in either the vote on the resolution or the budget because I had to leave the meeting shortly after 2:30PM to go to perform. Rev. Pat Lawson, Diana Solomon-Glover, Brenda Clarke, and others who sat near me can verify this fact. I have thus raised the voter fraud issue solely because voter fraud offends the very nature of democratic governance, and not because the fraud had any impact on any vote I personally cast as a legal member of the corporation.

For those who did not get a copy, here is my resolution:

Whereas, at the March 1, 2009 meeting of the corporate membership of the Riverside Church a Budget Resolution [“Budget Resolution”] was duly proposed and seconded to separate the salaries for the positions of Chief Programming Minister and Director of Administration from the general budget; and table any and all actions on the salaries for the positions of Chief Programming Minister and Director of Administration in the 2009 budget, and said motion was replaced with a substitute motion to eliminate the salaries from the budget which was defeated by one vote, and

Whereas, we Riversiders are committed to the ethical and moral beliefs of our faith tradition, as well as the fundamental fairness inherent in the democratic civil laws that govern our religious non-profit corporation, and

Whereas, under the civil law and the moral dictates of our faith only lawful members of our corporation can cast legal votes on corporate matters, and

Whereas, the names of those individuals who have fulfilled their obligations and have officially become members of the Riverside Church are published contemporaneously with their joining in the official Church Bulletin, and

Whereas, Dr. Braxton announced his hiring of Ms. Kathe Hammond on November 2, 2008 (see Church Bulletin), and

Whereas, Ms. Hammond was not a graduating member of either the November 16, 2007 or January 18, 2009 membership classes (see Church Bulletins), and was not a member of the Riverside Church prior to being hired by Dr. Braxton, and

Whereas, no other new members were announced in the Church Bulletin prior to the March 1, 2009 congregational meeting, and

Whereas, at the congregational meeting on March 1, 2009, Ms. Kathe Hammond registered to vote as a member on the sign in sheet despite the fact she was not a lawful member of the corporation (see Sign In Sheet), and

Whereas, Kathe Hammond was observed casting an illegitimate vote against the Budget Resolution at the March 1, 2009 meeting, and

Whereas, Ms. Hammond’s illegitimate vote was improperly counted along with the votes of lawful members of the corporation, and

Whereas, deducting Ms. Hammond’s unlawful vote, and including the vote cast by Dr. Billy Jones, the final tally on the Budget Resolution was in fact a tie, and the Budget Resolution was not in fact legally defeated, and

Whereas, our commitment to fundamental fairness and Christian ethics is evidenced by our commitment to full and lawful democratic participation of all legal members of the corporation to protect against counter-majoritarian threats to our democratic operation, and

Whereas, as a congregational church, it is the obligation, duty, and honor of all lawful members of our corporation to govern our religious corporation; now therefore, be it

Resolved that the March 1, 2009 Budget Resolution remains an unresolved matter of old business that has not been lawfully concluded by a majority vote of lawful members of the corporation, and thus remains a matter of unresolved corporate business, and

Resolved that said March 1, 2009 Budget Resolution requires an immediate vote by the legal members of this religious corporation to facilitate our congregational duties both under civil law and the dictates of our faith to exercise responsible and ethical fiscal leadership over our church and management of our resources during this period of international economic crisis.

Resolved, that the salaries of the Chief Programming Minister and the Director of Administration be taken out of the budget.
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I am posting the relevant Church Bulletins (official publications of the Church available in the church library and archives) which show that Ms. Hammond is not a legal member of the corporation, as well as the March 1, 2009 sign in sheet (an official corporate document available in the Church library) that includes Ms. Hammond’s signature. I invite readers to contact Rev. Terry-Chard in the membership office, as she can further attest to the fact that Ms. Hammond is not a lawful member of this corporation. Dr. Braxton hired Ms. Hammond as his personal assistant. He has made no effort to expose or rectify her illegitimate voting on March 1.

In closing, I will reiterate what Dr. Jones acknowledged (available on the tape recording of the May 17, 2009 meeting): The March 1, 2009 members’ vote on the 2009 corporate budget was taken following the vote on the March 1, 2009 resolution. The budget vote was taken based on the understanding that the resolution had been voted down. However, the resolution was not in fact voted down. The deciding vote was the illegitimate vote of non-member Hammond. Thus, the vote on the budget was also invalid since it failed to take the salaries of the Chief Programming Minister and the Director of Administration out of the budget.