Censorship Rears It's Ugly Head At The Roosevelt Island Residents Association January Meeting And Wins - For Now

 Image of January 2011 RIRA Meeting From Trevre Andrews

As a result of this post in which I published Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) Committee Reports provided to me by RIRA President Mathew Katz (which I have done many times before without any objections), the RIRA Common Council approved a resolution last night to restrict the distribution of committee material to the media and others unless approved by a 2/3 vote of that committee. I will have more on this later and am awaiting receipt of the resolution from RIRA so I can have the exact wording of it and then post on blog. I believe the vote was 17 to 12 in favor of censorship. (UPDATE 1/10 - CLICK here for the two RIRA resolutions and spreadsheet of how each RIRA member present voted)

In the meantime, here are some thoughts about the meeting from a relatively new resident of Roosevelt Island, Trevre Andrews, who was attending his first RIRA Monthly Common Council. From Mr. Andrews:

Last night after getting off work I stopped by the Sports dome for the monthly RIRA meeting.  I have lived on the island for a year and this was the first RIRA meeting I have attended.  After a slow start the meeting focused mostly on committee reports and why/when/how they should or shouldn’t be provided to the island residents.  There seemed to be a lot of confusion about the purpose of the committees, their reports, and their availability.  This culminated in a resolution to try and define and limit information generated by RIRA and its committees which was adopted by the RIRA council.  

I have yet to see the text of the resolution, I just heard it described verbally and for that matter there is little electronic documentation available anywhere on RIRA except small pieces on various websites none of which are RIRA websites.  Supposedly, as reported in this meeting, a website is being created to fix this and make all/most RIRA documents electronically available.

Based on what I saw last night I don’t think many rooseveltians would take RIRA very seriously, but there is always hope for the future. I dare you to join us next month and see what I mean. 

Mr. Andrews also provides this video of the censorship motion's introduction at the RIRA meeting.


You Tube Video Of RIRA Censorship Motion

Concerning this situation, a reader of the objectionable post commented:

I can see the above poster's point. The real issue is that Rick was given this information by the RIRA President. If it was not intended to be made public, Matt Katz should have never given it to Rick. As the President, he should be more careful of what information is made public and he was irresponsible not to provide the full report of the actual meeting that took place.

That being said, if someone gives information to Rick, and then they realize they shouldn't have and ask him to remove it, he should have the courtesy to do so. If he doesn't, he runs the risk of them not sharing information with him in the future.

To which I responded:

This has nothing to do with courtesy. Once information is given to me that is not off the record or told in confidence and is posted - it is news and will not be taken down because it is embarrassing to some or inconvenient to have been made public.

The information was lawfully obtained, was not defamatory towards anyone and was an issue of public concern to the Roosevelt Island community.

As a result of this post, the RIRA Common Council voted last night to restrict the distribution of committee material to the media and others unless approved by a 2/3 vote of that committee. I will have more on this later and am awaiting receipt of the resolution from RIRA so I can have the exact wording of it and then post on blog.

Stay tuned for more.

UPDATE 4:20 PM - I neglected to mention that approval of a second resolution was sought to impose some form of sanction against any RIRA member who disclosed information not previously approved for distribution. Fortunately, that resolution was defeated.