Posted by panch from ? (204.120.48.3) on Sunday, May 19, 2002 at 2:58PM :
John Nimrod first blocked the Shumirum for Chicago back in '96 when he objected to the fact that some of the Black people congregating around the AUA toilet...were also to be seen on the campus of the University of Chicago...so he didn't want it there. Three years later, after he found not a single alternate site, as he'd demanded the city allow him time to do...Chicago decided to go ahead and install it where they said it should go.
By then I was suing the Putz in another unrelated matter...but he snared the Shumirum into the mess by implying that a counter suit he was about to bring against me...a personal thing between the two of us, "might" embroil the city as well...and did they want that? They didn't, and the Shumirum has been shelved since then. Incidentally the Putz settled with me out of court and has yet to counter-sue...and never will...it was just a dodge to get me to drop my suit against Helen's estate, which implicated him in some pretty shoddy stuff.
He'll never write the letter the city asked for, holding them blameless if they go ahead and install the Shumirum his sister died waiting to unveil in Chicago. He wont do it because it will "look bad" now...make HIM look bad...as if he could appear any worse than he is.
Fast forward to last year's convention...to March actually, when Jackie said she could get the Shumirum installed in San Jose...what did I think? I said it would be fine if she could do it to co-incide with the upcoming convention on Labor Day. That gave us six months almost...plenty of time if you wanted to install a monument... but not enough time if you wanted to BE a monument. She agreed and set to work... kept telling me she was hard at work etc...right up to August 10, three weeks before the convention, when she hadn't attended any but one of their meetings.
She attended one meeting of the Arts Committee of San Jose in April, then never came back for another one...not in May, not in June, not in July and not in August. What she DID do was go visit everyone in local government she could, have lunch with several of them, let them all know that she, Jackie Bejan was going to do this great and wonderful thing, this nearly impossible thing...plan strategy, mail-in campaigns, postcard campaigns...when all the time all she had to do was present the project, and follow up on all they asked...a simple thing we had done twice already in two cities at LEAST as complex as San Jose...San Francisco and Chicago.
When it became obvious she was either stalling to have me leave for Mexico, as I'd postponed our move in order to finish the monument and prepare for a show at the convention...or had lost interest and wanted it simply to go away...I told her she could forget about the Shumirum...and just barely managed to get the monument back from a deal I'd made with the foundry to get the work done immediately pending our paying them back when Jackie was ready...because I believed all along she was working to get the monument to San Jose.
I put off our planned move for six months to help her get the work done...yet in all her meetings she never included me so that her minions and she were not able to answer simple questions about the monument or subject. I also postponed other projects, working instead on preparing a show for the convention...something I wasn't interested in doing, or intended to do until she had me stay. I once questioned her on plans she was making for an elaborate unveiling ceremony to include the Mayor and anyone else she could get...also as to why only her brother could sing. This, I believe, made Jackie think that I might be as "difficult" to work with...meaning run over...as John had found me to be "touble" because I wouldn't let HIM run all over another project and make of it an AUA thing dedicated to boring and embarrassing the rest of us while he posed and strutted. In both cases, I was not about to let people who understand less than nothing about these metters, take them over and put them to their own personal use at the last minute.
As result, Jackie went ballistic, said I was not welcome at the convention and so THERE. I came anyway, got handed a bogus contract and the rest is dismal beyond belief.
Just before the convention my lawyer wrote her and her club a letter, copy to Atour Golani, that they should not proceed and bar me because at this late date it amounted to unfair and damaging whatevers. I have been welcome at all AANF conventions aince 1978, UNTIL Nimrod and then Bejan and Golani decided I was a "troublemaker" because I wouldn't let them hurt or hijack my work and OUR monuments.
Jackie never shared the letter with her Executive Board or General Membership Body. She acted on her own, told them nothing and proceeded to craft a fraudulent and discriminatory contract whose sole purpose was to damage me and ruin my fundraising efforts for the Hammurabi Monument.
Now that she is suing Jeff and I for Two Million dollars...in part because she claims I slandered her and defamed her when I said she acted negligently by not informing her club of the possibility of a lawsuit if she went ahead and made good on her threats to bar me...I am forced to sue her Club to prove that I did NOT slander her, because here we are in a lawsuit that I don't believe her membership would have allowed her to get them into...had they been given the chance to see the letter from a lawyer...or to have known of the contract she made up.
I have now asked her Club for a letter from their Executive Board merely stating the truth, that she had not informed them of the letter and, they had no hand in crafting the contract ON me. In addition, to tell me what their reaction would have been had they known back then.
It seems NOW all the proper mechanism must be put in place...first an Executive Board meeting to discuss my request for the letter...then an Advisory Board meeting after that at which past presidents of the club will meet to discuss the situation, and finally a full meeting before the membership. In other words...they are about to prove I was correct when I said she was negligent because she never bothered with any of this procedure when it would have been time to AVOID all of this...only bringing up the entire and correct procedure now...when it is too late...when her own lawsuit against me will not give me the time to wait for their procedures to play out. This will now be presented to them as proof positive that I am "sue happy"...and just wanted to sue them all along.
Weaker headed ones will see it that way no doubt. I am not interested in the club's money or property...assets that were earned a bit at a time from bake sales and picnics over the years...efforts made by countless older men and women of ours, including members of my own family... an Association I have given sculpture to and spoken before on several ocassions before Ms Bejan made a couple of bucks and let it go to her head. That was the entire point...that she should not have placed them all in such a position because her nose got pushed out of shape. Sounds a lot like negligence to me.
I am suing in order to defend myself against the charge of slander she brought against me for simply telling the truth about how she mishandled this whole thing from the beginning. I wont get run over by anyone...least of all a half-breed.
-- panch
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