Gonçalo, Goethe, and all: Thank you for your work, which I appreciate
dearly, and for the public discussion.  I can also imagine this was a very
hard letter to write.

Paulo, to your concerns:
> for a Foundation-run committee[3] that apparently wants to kill us at all
costs.

Euh... surely not  .v_v.
These troubles can come up in good faith, when two groups work intently and
separately on the same issue, ando d not talk openly to one another for
reasons of imagined duty + propriety.  Tossing insults back and forth just
makes it easier for people to shut down communication.

Somehow I suspect that invocations of The Law and the intervention of legal
anxieties (with their preoccupations with secrecy) has led to much of the
trouble here.  So Pine, to your point: /more/ legal counsel reporting to
only one of the parties involved might not help.  On the other hand, we as
a movement deciding to share more openly our internal discussions around
legal concerns — even if this means taking on slightly more legal risk —
would reduce some of these evident social risks.

Warmly,
SJ

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 8:47 AM Paulo Santos Perneta <
paulosperneta@gmail.com> wrote:

> Some time ago, a Wikimedian friend told me AffCom is like the physician
> that comes to help with the cure when an Affiliate is ill. But that's
> really what they were in this WMPT case? This is a very bizarre situation,
> of which I'm personally having a lot of difficulties finding rational
> answers to it, let alone any conclusion. All I can offer is a personal
> account of the situation, to those who would be kind enough to have an
> interest on this case.
>
> Last May we at WMPT were really not expecting seeing AffCom bursting
> through the room in an emergency intervention, fixing what didn't need to
> be fixed, and willing to moderate what didn't need any moderation. As in
> the proverbial Monty Phyton scene[1], they quickly became the problem
> themselves.
>
> Many of us at WMPT are long-term Wikimedian volunteers, some of us for more
> than a decade already, in perfect good standing in our communities, where
> we hold and held responsibility roles. It includes current and former
> bureaucrats, sysops, ArbCom members, very active contributors to a number
> of Wikimedia projects. Most of us are founding members or directly
> connected to WMPT since its inception in 2009.
>
> Last March, when we took on ourselves this mission of fix and rebuild
> Wikimedia Portugal, who had been dormant for about 5 years, we were not
> expecting to face such a mighty and impenetrable adversary as AffCom has
> proven to be.
> For six months already we have been embroiled by AffCom in this Kafkian
> suspension process, where we are generally not told what the accusations
> are, and much less who is accusing us. It has been extremely painful,
> exhausting, and frustrating for everyone involved.
>
> We reached our limit. A number of us are now seriously considering
> abandoning not only the chapter, but the Wikimedia projects entirely, if we
> continue not being treated with the fairness and transparency we deserve.
> It truly begs the existential question of what are we all doing here,
> dedicating countless and very valuable hours of our lives for a Movement
> that lets this happen, for a Foundation-run committee[3] that apparently
> wants to kill us at all costs.
>
> Personally, I'm still confident that we'll successfully pass through this
> probation, and everything will become again the very optimistic scenario we
> all had last April, when we successfully elected a working board, and
> started working with great dedication in the many projects we have now
> running here in Portugal. I can only imagine how painful it was and is
> being for Gonçalo, to came here making this situation public and sharing it
> with everybody. We all have our dignity, nobody at WMPT likes this at all.
> For many months we tried to cope with this discreet and silently. But
> everything has a limit.
>
> Regards,
>
> Paulo
>
> [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty_Python)
> [2] - As AffCom seems to be, despite what is written in their Meta page(
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee)
>
> GoEthe.wiki <goethe.wiki@gmail.com> escreveu no dia terça, 9/10/2018 à(s)
> 11:13:
>
> > The original message was rejected due to a filter rule match, but you can
> > access it here:
> >
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-October/002698.html
> > I am sending it below without the links. Please access the link above for
> > the full version.
> > __________
> >
> > Sorry in advance for the lengthy email – the tl;dr version is: Wikimedia
> > Portugal has done all it was asked to do, so the suspension that was held
> > conditional to performing those steps must be lifted accordingly. For the
> > sake of transparency, we are sending this out to not only the AffCom
> > mailing list, but also Wikimedia-l and WikimediaPT-l.
> > _________
> >
> > Dear members of AffCom,
> >
> > (cc to the Wikimedia Portugal mailing list, Wikimedia mailing list)
> >
> > Last 5th October we were again surprised by the content of your email
> > (quoted below) in response to us completing the roadmap we had agreed
> upon
> > in order to remove the suspension of Wikimedia Portugal. On that message,
> > you say you have once more received information whose substantiation is
> not
> > mentioned, from sources that are not disclosed. And still you seem to
> > accept it as the truth without even providing us with the opportunity to
> > get properly acquainted with it, let alone rebate or contradict it. While
> > you speak of transparency, that message is unsettlingly opaque, as have
> > been multiple such messages relayed to us in the course of this whole
> > process.
> >
> > As you are well aware, Wikimedia Portugal was faced in March with a
> > situation where the president of the Board, João Vasconcelos, became
> > demissionary without any previous warning [1]. It should be noted that
> when
> > Vasconcelos was elected as president of the Board back in 2015, he wasn’t
> > elected based on any background as a Wikimedia editor, as he has no
> history
> > of contribution to any of the Wikimedia projects, but rather on his self
> > proclaimed merits on organisational and conflict management (!). Despite
> > the best efforts of several people from Wikimedia Portugal over the
> years,
> > Vasconcelos sadly never really integrated well neither on Wikimedia
> > Portugal, nor in the Portuguese Wikimedia community.
> >
> > So, in light of what looked like an existential threat for WMPT, I and a
> > number of other WMPT members have publicly and transparently mobilized
> > ourselves to organize an extraordinary General Election to elect the new
> > Board. Vasconcelos was probably expecting/hoping that we would ask him to
> > stay. But we have seen this sort of behavior elsewhere [a].We didn't.
> > Instead, we handled the situation cooperatively, as a group, openly.
> > Vasconcelos never voiced any desire to take part on this collective
> > solution-building, as evidenced by his silence from the discussion on the
> > Wikimedia Portugal mailing list in March [2] and April [3]. He was
> welcome
> > to do so. His only message to the mailing list was two days (13 April)
> > before the 15 April General Assembly, announcing that he considered the
> > planned General Assembly null [4]. Given the lack of legal standing for
> > that claim, we carried on with the General Assembly (the transparent,
> > inclusive, democratic governing body of associations), summoned according
> > to our by-laws. This General Assembly successfully elected new governing
> > bodies, including the Board of Directors.
> >
> > In May we were surprised by a message from AffCom demanding that we stop
> > taking part in a conflict, and "refrain from representing ourselves as
> > representatives of Wikimedia Portugal" (see quoted message in [5]
> > <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediapt/2018-May/002621.html
> > >).This
> > was the very first time the Committee contacted Wikimedia Portugal about
> > this case. The message provided no legal precedent or framework for this
> > demand, no indication of what this conflict was, or why AffCom thought
> the
> > Board was a part of it.
> >
> > From what we understood, Vasconcelos went to the Wikimedia Conference in
> > Berlin, where he seems to have convinced AffCom that our General Assembly
> > of 15 April was legally void.
> >
> > We have repeatedly provided concrete evidence that t it was not the case,
> > including quoting relevant court decisions backing this [6]
> > <
> >
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/(https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/private/wikimedia-pt-internal/2018-July/002414.html
> > >.
> > In response, AffCom reported having no time to read through legal texts,
> > and therefore not being able to assess the validity of our declarations,
> > but that is beyond our control. And yet AffCom accepted Vasconcelos’
> > version without question. It is a legal imperative to be held innocent
> > until proven guilty, and until it is legally proven there was some
> > wrongdoing, General Assemblies are valid and binding.
> >
> > After the April General Assembly we were working, in addition to our
> > activities and programs, to put the association in order in terms of
> > obligations to the Portuguese state and the tax authorities, providing
> > access to WMPT’s bank account to the persons designated on the 15 April
> GA,
> > and so on. Things were getting on track...
> >
> > We were surprised again in July by a message from AffCom temporarily
> > suspending Wikimedia Portugal’s recognition as a Wikimedia chapter [7].
> In
> > that message for the first time you laid out a concrete roadmap that, if
> > followed (as we understood), would lead to lifting the suspension. The
> > roadmap set out a list of demands from AffCom which we diligently
> > fulfilled, even well ahead of the required deadlines. We organized and
> held
> > a new General Assembly in September, summoned according to the
> > interpretation of the Portuguese Civil Code that AffCom relayed to us
> (with
> > the exception of anything we believed would make the proceeding illegal,
> > which was communicated in due time to AffCom). This General Assembly had
> > the same result as before [8]. The Assembly was normally held, despite
> > severe attempts of sabotage from Vasconcelos, reported in due time to
> > AffCom, Legal and the Safety team. In addition to the minutes [9], an
> audio
> > recording of the assembly is available in Commons [10] ; video recording
> is
> > also available on request.
> >
> > We then submitted our overdue Financial Report [11], demonstrated support
> > from the community to the continuation of the chapter [12], and wrote a
> > plan for improved chapter capacity [13]. All should be good now...
> >
> > Having done all this, despite our disagreement that a new Assembly was
> > needed in the first place, we are now again surprised by the reception of
> > the opaque message I mention in the beginning, sent by AffCom to my email
> > (quoted below) affirming that the Committee had received reports from
> > unstated persons with unspecified concerns about the General Assembly and
> > the capacity of Wikimedia Portugal to run as a chapter. The message
> claims
> > that "there were a number of issues with lack of transparency [as well as
> > with] providing an opportunity to participate in an open, organizational
> > process" while not specifying these issues at all. Your message questions
> > whether we are "prepared as an Affiliate to prevent disruption in [our]
> > organization's collective pursuit of the movement’s mission", even though
> > we have so far been able to handle every attempt at disruption from
> > Vasconcelos.
> >
> > If we rolled up our sleeves to activate the scattered energies of a stale
> > organization in order to prepare and execute April’s General Assembly, it
> > was because we were convinced that Wikimedia Portugal had a viable future
> > ahead, and was of value to the Wikimedia movement. At the time, the
> actions
> > of Vasconcelos were so absurd that the reaction to them even spurred some
> > founders and (by then) inactive members of WMPT to offer their help in
> > reestablishing a functional organization. Along with the help of a number
> > of historic as well as new members who have been steadily returning and
> > joining our ranks, that’s precisely what we are achieving.
> >
> > That’s why we’ve been working on fulfilling the AffCom roadmap requests,
> > even if we didn’t like or agree with some aspects of it. All things
> > considered, it was a clear path to resolving our situation, and we found
> > that parts of it could be useful to the chapter. But AffCom’s validation
> of
> > Vasconcelos’ actions and claims, even if unintentional, have real
> > consequences for the mental state and safety of our members.
> >
> > Back in March, when Vasconcelos claimed he had requested our bank to lock
> > the chapter’s bank account, started a process at the Public Prosecution
> > Service, and he had talked with an attorney on that subject, can you
> > imagine what André, our treasurer, felt waiting in line in the bank until
> > he found what really happened? In the end, the bank account had not been
> > locked because of any court order or legal reason as Vasconcelos implied,
> > but rather because someone had tried to access the bank account without
> the
> > proper credentials, and the system automatically locked the account.
> >
> > Before the General Assembly in September, Vasconcelos sent out legal
> > threats and even menaces of police intervention to anyone participating.
> We
> > still went through with it, but can you imagine how we felt, the pressure
> > that was under some of us? It was all a bluff in the end, but this is
> what
> > you put us through.
> >
> > Notwithstanding, WMPT activities were happening in parallel. They are
> > listed on our activities plan for anyone to see [14], and more are
> planned.
> > After several years of inactivity, we are happy to be on a sustainable
> > growth path, gradually building capacity and doing the best we can with
> the
> > resources available to us. We’ve also been using our personal contacts
> with
> > other movements in order to increase our organization’s capacity. Ana,
> > newly appointed to the Board, has just returned from Wiki Takes Zamora,
> > where she was learning from Wikimedia Spain, relaunching the
> collaboration
> > between both chapters. Two of the events we have planned for November are
> > using this paradigm. We’ll celebrate Wikidata’s sixth anniversary with a
> > local group of data enthusiasts in Porto, and near Lisbon we’re helping
> > with the organization and will participate in a FOSS event, so in both
> > cases we’ll also acquire event organization skills. This growth path is
> in
> > peril if you continue to undermine our efforts.
> >
> > Over the last half year we’ve been attacked, offended, insulted, received
> > multiple threats of judicial action by Vasconcelos, and even an actual
> > intimidatory letter from a lawyer working for him (but purportedly on
> > behalf of WMPT); and during this entire time we’ve tried not to escalate
> > the situation, not to engage with such attempts at direct confrontation,
> > nor make them public. You force us now to disclose this in order to clear
> > our name and set the record straight. With the help and support of the
> > legal and security departments of the Wikimedia Foundation, we have dealt
> > with the actions of Vasconcelos so far. And we will follow the
> disciplinary
> > procedures foreseen for these situations in our bylaws which may result
> in
> > his removal from the chapter.
> >
> > We’ve repeatedly complied in unusually strict terms with legal
> > requirements, and with AffCom’s roadmap, while dealing with Vasconcelos’
> > actions as privately as we could in order not to affect the public image
> of
> > the Wikimedia movement, nor its community – but honestly, we’re reaching
> > the point of exhaustion in light of AffCom’s puzzling behavior along this
> > process. We understand that AffCom may have reserves regarding our
> future,
> > but the way it is dealing with the situation is clearly
> counterproductive.
> > How can AffCom keep making new accusations without at least asking us for
> > information or confirmations?
> >
> > Currently, our major source of disruption, distress and anxiety is each
> new
> > message we receive from AffCom, as they repeatedly defy our expectations
> of
> > a partner claiming to be attempting to help us getting back on our feet.
> We
> > are actually wary that the next address could be an announcement that
> > Wikimedia Portugal has been de-recognized, even after we have passed our
> > “road of trials”, due to the ever moving goalposts. Several of our key
> > people have reported insomnia, including myself, after receiving your
> > communications. We’re reaching our physical, psychological, and
> > motivational limit, in great part due to AffCom’s actions and
> inexplicable
> > lack of support and transparency.
> >
> > It is time to stop this! Despite what we still believe were your best
> > intentions, AffCom has inadvertently caused significant destabilization
> for
> > Wikimedia Portugal.
> >
> > Please honor your part of the compromise, lift this suspension and let us
> > proceed in the productive pursuit of our collective mission.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Gonçalo
> > Gonçalo Themudo
> >
> > *Presidente*
> > *Wikimedia Portugal*
> > *Email: *goethe.wiki@gmail.com
> > *Website: *http://pt.wikimedia.org <
> https://sites.google.com/view/themudo>
> > *Imagine um mundo onde cada ser humano pode partilhar livremente a soma
> de
> > todo o conhecimento, na sua própria língua.*
> > _______________________________________________
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