తానా పాట; తామా బాట; ఇపుడు ఆటా వంతా

Fellow ATA Members:

As you know, American Telugu Association was founded in 1990 by a group of people who could not tolerate the arrogance and power mongering by a bunch of people controlling the sister Telugu organization. Unfortunately a similar type of thing is happening at ATA in the last few years, headed by a group of people from Chicago. You might have received a telephone message from a person asking to talk to an ATA Board of Trustee or an ATA regional coordinator in your area about having a conference in Houston this July. What they did not tell you are the reason why the conference is not happening and majority of the ATA members do not know the truth. Below is the summary of what is going on inside ATA board for the last several years, and reasons for ATA to come to this stage today.

The whole thing started a few years ago by one person from Chicago, whose followers call him "KING MAKER", and he wanted to control ATA. He systematically made sure that his friends and some rowdies get elected to the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee (who need to be ATA Board members). He manipulated the whole election process in 2008, starting from selecting a nominating committee, election committee and the election process to elect the board of trustees. There were several irregularities in the election process, which have been brought to the notice of the board of trustees. The board is unable to take any action because of the divisions within the board. The process went to its heights at the board meeting in Las Vegas in selecting executive committee, committee chairs, convention convener, coordinator and regional coordinators. Some of these Rowdies totally ignored the President and in spite of his objections they went ahead and picked people for all positions, which is totally unconstitutional.

Some of the major mistakes that happened at the Las Vegas board meeting were the election of secretary and treasurer, who were not qualified candidates as per ATA constitution. Due to the behavior of some rowdiness in the meeting, some of the important members of the ATA walked out of the meeting after pointing out what has been going and has to stop. The President of the ATA was ridiculed, insulted, and was not allowed to do anything, according to his wishes.

Since January of 2009, several attempts were made by some of the senior members of the ATA to correct the mistakes that happened in the January board meeting which were against ATA constitution and bylaws. In May of 2009, a special meeting was called in New Jersey by the majority of the board and rectified some of the things that happened in January, 2009 Las Vegas meeting. The Chicago gang took the ATA to the court, which cost the ATA around $100,000 in legal fees. In September of 2009, after manipulating the board to their majority, the Chicago gang had a meeting in Chicago and withdrew their case from the court. Currently there is another lawsuit pending about the legalities of the Chicago meeting in court.

The president reserved the best convention center in Houston, blocked hotel rooms and made several preparations to produce one of the best conventions ever.
The president has been trying hard to work with the board to conduct the conference for the last 15 months and presented several proposals. But the Chicago group in the board has been giving problems, starting from selecting the convention convener, coordinator and committee chairs. They wanted to pick all the above people and run the conference in Houston without the president's approval. President tried to call for a board meeting to discuss the status of the conference but he could not get the quorum to conduct the meeting.

The Chicago group basically made it impossible to conduct the conference. Now they want to blame the president by sending a phony phone message to all the members. How can we conduct the conference when there is only two months time left with no money in hand or a conference team in place? Still the president is willing to do the conference if he can get full cooperation of the board and help to raise funds and give him the option of selecting a good local team to run the conference.

There are several issues that need to be resolved prior to thinking of a conference.

Democracy in the organization: There should not be a one-person show. We need to get rid-off the rowdy people from the organization.

Fair elections: We need a third party to conduct elections and the slate system of selecting the candidates has to be abolished.

Financial Transparency: This is the major problem in ATA. There is no need to have a treasurer from Chicago all the time. In this electronic age, using teleconference anyone from any part of the USA can take care of the bank statements and financial issues over the Internet. The present so-called Treasurer does not want to give financial details to the board in spite of the request of the ATA members, Board of Trustees or the President. Writing checks and moving money around into different accounts and opening of new accounts without the knowledge of the board or the President for the last two years is a big problem. Because of lack of transparency there is a court case pending filed by some of the members of ATA to get the financial details from the ATA office.

Chicago Office: We need to move the office from Chicago as most of the ATA problems started there.

We all wanted to have a biannual conference in Houston this July, more so by the president, but we need to see what will be the out come? When most of the senior ATA members involved in NJ conference in 2008, with 2.6 million funds, we had a lot of problems and a deficit of $200,000 as per the Chicago gang. How are we going to do a conference with no cooperation among the board members, or convention team in place, no money at present with only two months time left to do the conference? It would be better to loose some money to the conference center and pay the hotel penalties, rather than doing a poor conference and get a bad name to ATA.

It may be wise to take care of some of these burning problems in ATA and get rid off some of the rowdy elements from the ATA and plan a future conference.

Thank You

Regards

Concern ATA members

Sudigundaalu -- The Sequel

An Update

Since "Sudigundaalu 1" there have been quite a few developments at the temple. We would like to bring to you some of the points which are relevant to the situation.

What is more important? Gold or Sentiment? - It has come to light that all the Jewelery and ornaments that were put at the base of Baba's statue before it's installation, the overwhelming emotion among the devotees being that these will remain forever under Baba's statue, were removed that very day and deposited into a bank. The only parties privy to this transaction were the then President and the then Treasurer. The explanation goes that the pujari removed the gold and tied it into a bundle and the bundle was then deposited into the bank. Now for people who did part with their jewelery willingly the gold itself may not be of much importance but what of the sentiment attached with the act. Here were devotees who put the gold under the impression that it will remain under Baba's feet forever and here is news that it did not even remain for a short period of time. There may be extenuating circumstances why this may have been done. But don't the parties to this transaction owe a responsibility to the devotees? To let them know what transpired? The level of ego and recklessness is amazing. Apparently none of the EC knew about this till recently.

Politics takes it's toll, Good and Shady alike - It looks like there have been a spate of resignations among the executive committee and the other committees in the temple. A member of the Constitution committee, a level headed and balanced gentleman resigned and there is no news as to why he resigned. The entire Treasury department resigned, hot on the heels of the audit. What is going on? The politics of the temple seem to have taken sacrifice both the good and the shady members of the committee.

Unkept promises? - Then there is the issue of promises made to the devotees by the EC to collect donations. What is the delay in taking care of these promises? The leaf program, the constrution plaque program etc etc. Why promise if you cannot deliver? What galls everyone is the lack of communication to anyone as to what is going on with these programs.

Even Baba is unaccessible nowadays - The fact of the matter is that God is in one's mind and not in any statue anywhere. However we are humans and as such tend to visualize God to give us the feeling of comfort and the feeling of a personal God. So what is this practice of not touching Baba? Even in Shirdi one is allowed to touch Baba's feet. It looks like our Secular Baba wants to be more like an Orthodox Baba after his newly acquired wealth. He was so accessible in the small house which is akin to Dwarakamayi. Of course it is not really Baba's deeds but those of his devotees in his name. We wish that Baba's captors release him to the general public, whom he longs to be with.

One bright spot in all of this of course is the spirit of volunteerism that pervades the temple. Good and bad alike come together to do service, whatever their motives may be. It is not the EC or the Board of Trustees that are to be commended but the volunteers themselves. The volunteers who commit their time to cook and distribute food. The volunteers who brave rain or hail, snow or sleet to regulate parking, the volunteers who prepare the temple for special occasion. We doff our hats to them. There is hope for all of us indeed.