Nightlife in Focus: Saturday Night Massacre (on a Tuesday) at San Diego Pride
by: Jim Winsor | In the Scene | January 6th, 2010
The Executive Director of San Diego Pride has been fired and two other key staff have resigned over a controversial $5000.00 payment awarded to the Chair of the San Diego Pride board of directors.
The following is a letter sent by Executive Director Ron deHarte to the San Diego Pride Board of Directors on Monday, January 4, which pretty much describes the events leading up to that point in time:
And on Tuesday this seemingly rogue board came in and fired Ron deHardt. Immediately thereafter, two Pride senior staff members (Director or Development Ken St. Pierre and Production Assistant Jeffrey Redondo) resigned in protest. See articles here and here for details.
And the dominoes continue to fall. Protests and town-hall meetings are being organized (a “facilitated meeting will take place at The San Diego LGBT Community Center on Sunday, Jan. 10, at 6 p.m”), and many long time volunteers are vowing on Facebook that they will not re-volunteer this year if the current regime remains in place.
And it won’t be long, I predict, before we see donors and sponsors close their checkbooks in protest as well. In fact, it’s already begun to happen: Rich’s owner Nick Moede posted this message to Facebook today:
A wrongful termination lawsuit by deHarte at this point would not surprise me either…he would have an immensely strong case due to his “whistleblower” status at the time of his firing.
And what has been the Pride board’s response to all this? Amazingly, they are digging in their heels, and refusing to resign. “The Board of Directors of San Diego Pride has no intention of resigning,” they wrote in a letter this morning. “Instead we are going to apologize to our community and ask them to open their hearts to forgiveness.”
Unfortunately for the board, from what I’ve been able to gauge this community is not in a forgiving mood. It seems to me that the Pride board, in the face of this firestorm that they themselves ignited, have no choice now but to resign. If they don’t, San Diego Pride – facing the inevitable loss of both the human and financial assets they need to survive – will surely be destroyed.
Jim Winsor (jim@sdpix.com)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jim.winsor
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One Response to “Nightlife in Focus: Saturday Night Massacre (on a Tuesday) at San Diego Pride”
01/07/10
THello everyone,
If you know anyone that has volunteered for San Diego Pride.
Please ask them to come and show support for our leader.
Ron deHarte.
He was fired for standing up to the board chair Dr.P. Princetta.
Dr. Princetta want to go to the gay mardi gras in Sydney and Ron told him that it would not be a good idea for pride to spend that much money to send him there for that event. Ron has also ask that the money that was given to Dr. Princetta to be returned to pride and for him to step down from the Pride Board. witch lead to Ron deHarte to be fired. No one should be fired for doing their job. We all need to stand up For Ron and tell Dr. Princetta to leave Pride his is no longer required. As he and two other board members did to Ron. To let you know right now I am in Washington, DC. for meetings but I am flying back tonight to be there for the PROTEST and the Town Hall Meeting. This should show everyone how strongly I feel about this.