Intimidation, suppression, and fear of reprisals. Are we talking North Korea? Chile under Pinochet, perhaps? Guess again. According to inside sources speaking at what they believe is great risk to their standing, that’s the current environment at the Saints, Chicago’s unique all-volunteer performing-arts support group—source of all those polite, penguin-uniformed ushers who keep things moving at thousands of performances in practically every nonprofit theater in the Chicago area. What they describe is a bitter battle among the directors on the Saints’ board, with the party in power shutting down dissent.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The Saints, now about 1,900 strong, is full of folks who love theater and are fiercely devoted to the organization, which allows them to enjoy free shows in exchange for their labor. Those opening up about problems say they’re only doing it because the group’s future is on the line. Chief among them is 24-year Saint and two-term board member Deborah Granite, who sent an e-mail to 65 Saints leaders (board members, committee chairs, and the coordinators responsible for assigning ushers) on June 2, offering what sound to me like pretty reasonable suggestions to improve the organization—things like open board meetings with Q & A periods and the timely posting of agendas and minutes. The board responded by voting her out of the organization a week later.
The Saints—which has no paid staff, runs on an annual budget of about $100,000, and has grown rapidly in recent years, thanks in part to Granite’s work as membership chair—is grappling with questions like how and how fast its money should be spent. And its financial record-keeping had become so confusing, Venskus says, that they were still working on standardizing it when the fiscal year ended May 31. But the issues Granite says are critical right now came to a head last spring, when board members and coordinators were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement that was surprisingly different from the one they’d signed in previous years.
On July 27 Granite sent the board a letter advising them that she still considers herself a board member because the meeting at which they booted her was never announced to the membership, the agenda for that meeting was kept under wraps, and only a vote of the membership can remove her from the board. She gave them until July 31 to respond, adding that she was “prepared to seek legal counsel.” At press time, she still hadn’t received a reply, and she’s looking for a lawyer. Meanwhile, she’s launched a blog, saintsushers.blogspot.com, where you can read the letter that got her sacked.
