Okay Jon, I’ll save you the trouble. Here it is.
Jack’s desperate detour (II)
On August 10, Jack Hearn presented a formal complaint charging me, “incumbent officers of the AMO administration” and AMO National Executive Board Member Charles Murdock (this is the correct spelling of the name, Jack) with “illegal actions,” “misconduct” and “abuse of authority and power.” The 2-count complaint was filed with the national executive board of AMO and with the U.S. Department of Labor.
I addressed Jack’s specific allegations in Count 1 — in which Jack charged me with “tampering with election nomination letters” — in detail in a separate post on this Web site [Jack’s desperate detour (I)]. This commentary focuses on Count 2, in which Jack alleged “violation of rights of union members … to assemble without interference of union officials and to exercise their right to the freedom of speech.”
Count 2 centered significantly on what Jack says occurred at a meeting Jack and two of his AMO Membership Committee (AMC) running mates hosted for AMO members in Newport News on July 27. A message posted on an anonymous Internet forum thread, an email to this campaign Web site and two statements on this site were also at issue.
But many of the developments Jack referred to in the complaint actually occurred during or followed an earlier meeting in Newport News — Jack apparently did not know which meeting was which, or who said what where.
Jack began Count 2 of the complaint by reporting that “a group of AMO union members” had assembled “at a public restaurant in Newport News” on July 27 for Jack’s “pre-arranged and reserved meeting to discuss election issues.” Jack added: “This meeting was open to AMO members interested in these issues.”
Jack then noted that Charles Murdock — who Jack said had “somehow” been notified of the meeting — arrived at the restaurant and asserted his right as an AMO member to participate in the meeting. Jack said he had “kindly” asked Murdock to leave because the meeting was political in nature, because Murdock is our candidate for inland waters vice president and because of Murdock’s “status as a union official.”
There is no real mystery to how Charles Murdock learned of the July 27 meeting in Newport News. Ours is a small world, and news travels quickly — almost as quickly as gossip and rumor.
More importantly, and by Jack’s own admission, the meeting was held in “a public restaurant,” open to anyone and everyone. Charles had every right to be in the restaurant, and Jack and his co-hosts — Chris Horn (this is the correct spelling of the name, Jack) and Jim Schwartz — had no right to ask Murdock to leave, “kindly” or not. By Jack’s own admission, the July 27 meeting was “open to AMO members interested in these issues” — and this alone certainly qualified Charles Murdock to participate.
While U.S. labor law does indeed guarantee members of all unions the right to “assemble without interference of union officials” and guarantees “their right to freedom of speech,” common sense dictates that these assemblies be held on private property to minimize the risk of public intrusion: in someone’s home, in what are often described as “private” clubs or lodges, by conference call or videoconference or in any other venue where there is little opportunity for gate-crashers — you should not assemble to talk union politics in “a public restaurant” at the dinner hour and not expect your opposition to observe the meeting without engaging in any peaceful and legal conduct during such a meeting.
“The additional concern openly discussed was that Mr. Murdock would use information from the meeting to further intimidate candidates and AMO members including, by example, the previous lawsuit filed against ‘AMC’ member-candidates by members of the AMO executive board in the 2008 election,” Jack said.
By many accounts, there was no “information from the meeting” on July 27— the handful of AMO members who attended in the hope of hearing something substantial about union policy and benefits from Jack and the AMC went home or back to their vessels disappointed.
And I have no idea what Hearn meant in reference to “the previous lawsuit filed against ‘AMC’ member-candidates by members of the AMO executive board in the 2008 election.” Neither I nor anyone working with me in the AMO administration has ever sued Jack and the AMC, and there certainly was no lawsuit filed from either side during the 2008 election — which was supervised by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The only lawsuit involving Jack and the AMC and the AMO executive board was the failed complaint Jack and the AMC filed in federal court against me, other individuals and AMO as a union in February 2007 — a case that cost our union more than $700,000 in legal fees.
“Mr. Murdock refused to leave and in fact took a seat at the meeting, interjected comments, and continuously typed unknown information into a cellular device,” Jack continued.
Charles “refused to leave” because he had the right to be there, and he indeed “interjected comments,” as we note elsewhere on this site.
As for Charles typing “unknown information into a cellular device,” we can only remind Jack that this is the worldwide techno-trend — if Jack Hearn does not see someone typing “unknown information into a cellular device” everywhere he goes, he should get out and around more often.
During the informational AMO membership area meetings my administration hosted recently in East, West and Gulf Coast ports, Blackberries were everywhere. But we did not make an issue of it, and we did not speculate about the possible content or possible recipients of the text messages.
At different points in these meetings, Schwartz and AMC Chairman Bruce Keller left the meeting rooms openly and often to use their cell phones, and they could very well have been “texting” while in the room. It is a safe assumption that several of the AMO members at Jack’s meeting in Newport News — including Jack, Jim and Chris — found time and opportunity to text.
“Mr. Murdock took the names of persons in attendance as evidenced by the fact that AMO member Jon Sprague was identified in ‘Why Change Now’ campaign material titled, ‘What’s your question, Jon?’ and posted on the Internet within hours of the meeting and on the following day, July 28, 2010,” Jack said.
The problem for Jack Hearn is that the meeting referred to in “What’s your question, Jon?” was NOT Jack’s meeting in Newport News on July 27. It was the annual AMO membership area meeting my administration hosted in Newport News more than two months earlier on May 26. Jack Hearn did not attend this meeting, so he has no first-hand knowledge of what had occurred between Jon Sprague and me that evening.
“What’s your question, Jon?” was posted here in response to signed email Jon Sprague sent to this site on July 27, the day of the meeting Jack hosted in Newport News. In the email, Jon called me “gutless” and challenged me to answer questions.
But Jon by then had not asked me any questions at all since the area meeting on May 26, when I addressed every concern and answered every question Sprague raised to me. I knew that Jon — who is not a candidate in this election — was telling everyone he knows in our union that I do not answer questions, so I responded to the email in a very public way so that all AMO members could know both sides.
“The campaign material titled ‘What’s your question, Jon?’ is also an Internet attack directed at the meeting and, in particular, the attendance of union member Jon Sprague,” Jack continued, apparently unaware that the meeting in question was held on May 26, not July 27.
Again, Jack was unable to distinguish between the meeting in Newport News on July 27 and the meeting in Newport News on May 26. And Jack was plainly unaware of my commentary’s relevant line — “In one recent post (on an Internet forum thread), Jon, using the screen name “Mainiac” … distorted an exchange he and I had had the night before during the informational AMO membership meeting in Newport News.” This was the article’s only reference to any meeting in Newport News.
Jack would not trust me on this, but I would never “attack” a meeting I had chaired.
“Mr. Sprague was used as an example and in an effort to intimidate other union members from their Constitutional right and freedom to attend such meetings and from exercising their freedom of speech at these meetings and in independent Internet forums,” Jack said.
This was the third time that Jack confused what occurred or did not occur during a meeting in Newport News on May 26 with what occurred or did not occur during a meeting in Newport News on July 27. For things to have happened the way Jack wants you to believe they happened, I would have had to have been at Jack’s meeting on July 27, when I was nowhere near Newport News.
“Members attending this meeting or other meetings may be identified by union officials and/or incumbent candidates as supportive of political opponents and also, they may be publicly attacked in campaign material as evidenced by the facts listed herein,” Jack went on, unaware that he was mixing one meeting up with another for the fourth time.
Now bogged down by his own carelessness, Jack plodded on.
“On July 28, 2010 the incumbent Web site ‘Why Change Now’ published a personal attack upon AMO union brother Jon Sprague,” Hearn wrote. “The article identified Mr. Sprague from (1) his email response to unsolicited email from ‘Why Change Now,’ (2) material published on an independent Internet forum called ‘gCaptain’ which is used by professional mariners to share information and additionally, (3) Jon Sprague’s attendance at the meeting in Newport News, Virginia on the evening prior.
“Mr. Sprague used a pseudonym in his posts on gCaptain forum to protect his personal identity,” Jack continued. “Somehow, Mr. Bethel has identified Mr. Sprague with this pseudonym and used this supposition to additionally attack Mr. Sprague.”
The truth here is that Jon Sprague gave his screen name secret away in a gCaptain post on June 24 — more than a month before the meeting Jack and the AMC hosted in Newport News, the meeting at the heart of Jack’s Count 2. This was the fifth time Jack was unable to distinguish between meetings.
“At a recent informational meeting in Hampton VA (Newport News), I asked Bethel why can’t we have a fair election and let all those running use the union newspaper to put their opinions out,” Jon wrote June 24 on gCaptain. “He looked at me and said ‘Fuck NO, that is MY newspaper!”
The exchange between Jon Sprague and me did not go the way Jon described it, but that is beside the point. I knew when Jon rose to speak in Newport News on May 26 that this was Jon Sprague, and our ensuing exchange was not one that either of us would forget easily or quickly. When I read the gCaptain post by “Mainiac” on June 24, I knew from the subject matter that this, too, was Jon Sprague, the only AMO member to ask that specific question during the area meeting circuit — nothing complex like deductive reasoning here, just a simple case of two plus two equaling four.
Of course, there is nothing to prevent Jon Sprague from taking a new screen name and returning to his undercover Hearn-AMC campaign work.
I could tell from the constant yet oddly confident confusion and the slipshod construction of the complaint that Jack wrote this document himself, and that Jack had done nothing to confirm what he had been told by others or what he had supposed on his own. If I were on Jack Hearn’s slate, or if I were supporting the Hearn-AMC campaign, I would be embarrassed by Jack’s sloppy approach to important matters and his failure to draw distinctions between two meetings two months apart not once, not twice, but several times.
Of course, Jack and his diehard supporters would argue in Jack’s defense that Jack did not even know about the informational AMO membership area meeting in Newport News on May 26. But that would confirm Jack’s inattention and indifference to AMO business — and that would be a far more damning truth about Jack Hearn as a potential president of American Maritime Officers.
Tom Bethel