I begin by saying that I am grateful for every good and sacred being in my life. I am grateful to know that in this time of crisis, we can choose to be present to each other and helpful in every way we can. I also know this is a time when holding people to public account is necessary and urgent. From the local to the national – I will not be silenced. I prepare to enter 2025 in the self-care I have always practiced –speaking up about the elephant in the room. Elephants are as endangered as truth.
This particular telling is very personal for me. The Amherst Media Board of Directors (AM BOD) took despicable, unethical, yet legally protected actions against my husband, James Lescault.
After seventeen years as the Executive Director of the first independent media access station in the U.S., Jim was let go without notice, cause or severance commensurate with his time and quality of service. The BOD of this small non-profit behaved like corporate bullies and attempted to buy his silence with $4,000 if he signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement. There isn’t enough money in the world to silence a person who has always put the well-being and liberation of community first. A person who since his early years of life has taken risks for justice, not popularity, on a local, regional and national level. He still lives and works for and with ALL people, including the most marginalized – Jim has never needed mandates to embrace diversity, equity, inclusion, welcome and belonging for all. It is who he is and has always been.
The theft of another’s time, intellect and energy for personal gain and self-congratulations are acts of self-loathing and fear. Those who are among the “progressive” elite and the colonized people of Amherst, white and non-white, have always underestimated Jim Lescault. Some have found his directness and truthfulness to be an irritant to the overly polite public hypocrites, dainty as doilies, as well as the self-proclaimed, smug champions and saviors of the ones they consider disenfranchised.
Colonized BIPOC “leaders” and their white “allies” contribute to and escalate the social impoverishment and on-going condescension of those they consider to be in need of them as “champions” rather than partners and collaborators for the common good. Missionaries passing for visionaries. Of course, most of us want to have our champions – I have champions, but we are reciprocal partners who support each other, interdependent, not co-dependent.
Jim Lescault dedicated all of those seventeen years to build something urgently needed, now more than ever – the enduring legacy and sustainability of the oldest independent access media station in the country, Amherst Media (AM), originally named ACTV or Amherst Community Television. Independent Media is
different from Public Media, in that it is not beholden to corporate sponsors and free speech for all is guaranteed. There are 248 of these stations in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts alone. They are endangered. As people of integrity and action who were previously on the AM BOD either died or resigned, in my opinion, those who remain are not for the community, but for themselves. To date,
with few exceptions, the Amherst Town response has been the collusion of silence.
Ignored local injustices will, and do, metastasize into national ones.
The article below was originally posted as an Opinion Column in the Amherst Indy, the town’s only independent and weekly digital news source. Here is the story in Jim’s own words of what took place just as the new Amherst Media building was set to break ground in October and become the first building in Amherst to ever be named in memory of a Black woman who dedicated herself to the independent media for the benefit of all Amherst residents.
James Lescault for Amherst Indy, October 6, 2024:
“Faithful readers of the Amherst Media membership newsletter of Sept. 19, were able to infer a change in leadership by the absence of my name after seventeen years as Executive Director. This article described some of the major movements the organization had accomplished over the past twenty years and how it was time for a change. My leadership during seventeen of those years was erased.
Many people cautiously reached out to me. Worried by the absence of my recognition in that newsletter and not wanting to intrude on my personal life, they gently inquired about my health. At seventy-one years of age, people expect one’s health to be the potential problem; I assured them it wasn’t.
An article appeared in the Hampshire Gazette, September 27, 2024, in which I was described as “tight lipped” regarding my removal as Executive Director. In response I wrote an Op-ed piece which ran in the Gazette on October 7, 2024. I feel it is time to let the wider community know the truth of what occurred at Amherst Media. I have waited under advice of counsel, only to learn that Employment Laws are not created equal when it comes to small staffed non-profits.
In July, 2024, I was ousted without cause, notice or explanation. I must now question the organization’s current leadership for their lack of commitment to upholding the critically important objectives that honor the organization’s mission statement.
The current Board of Directors blatantly disregarded personnel policies and dedicated By-Laws to egregiously and summarily dismiss me. Free speech and transparency have been suppressed, manipulated and falsely portrayed.
Since 2010, I have been requested to help raise the necessary funds, facilitate design, creation, and lead the organization through multiple and exceptionally complicated steps in obtaining the land and building permit for our proposed new facility at Main and Gray Streets.
Within a June report to the Board of Directors, I informed them on how I was able to lower the construction cost to $1.2 million from the $3.5 million estimate; obtain bank financing, foundations and State grants — we were ready to break ground this October, 2024.
The Board’s response to this joyous news was a Personnel Committee meeting, where three silent Board members: President Vira Douangmany Cage, Personnel Committee Chair Jennifer Shiao and Treasurer Michael Burkhart, had their appointed attorney read me my “separation” document, offering me one month’s pay as severance in return for a “non-disclosure agreement.” I was coldly informed that as an “at-will employee” the Board could remove me without cause. My separation was immediate and I was escorted out of the facility. I did not accept the Non-disclosure Agreement and was immediately confronted by loss of my family health insurance compensation.
To date, I have not been formally told what provoked this ruthless action, but have heard from supporters that a grievance was launched at me by one of the two employees. Personnel Policies instituted to protect both the employees and employers were knowingly disregarded, eviscerating my right to answer any and all criticisms leveled against me. While I was unceremoniously removed after seventeen years of dedicated service, the complainant employee, Yanna Ok, was promoted to Interim Director.
My fundamental right to defend myself was violated. Free Speech is not for one side of an argument, selectively used to move someone’s agenda. For an organization that has always had Free Speech as its cornerstone, to internally suppress that ideal is extremely disturbing to me as it should be to you.
For forty-six years this small non-profit has stood for transparency and Free Speech – where are the organizational sign posts indicating those beliefs are being enacted? It’s the community’s right to know what Amherst Media is doing in its name. I worked and fought for the stability and ongoing growth of the organization enough to assure a new building that would have broken ground this month. A building that was to be named in loving memory of Dr. Demetria Rougeaux Shabazz, the former Amherst Media Board President, and a beloved member of the Amherst and all Western Mass. Communities.
It is now the responsibility of the Amherst Media membership, the Town and People of Amherst, to look beyond the self-promoting empty words and window dressing of this “new direction”, and find out what is truly going on fiscally, programmatically, and educationally at Amherst Media. Who does it now serve, and how exactly is that happening? What are the qualifications of the new leadership? What has happened to the new building that would have broken ground this month?
Lots of questions. I urge you, Amherst, do not accept silence, smiley faces and platitudes as the response. Amherst Media is part of U.S. history, and belongs to the People of Amherst and all who walk through its doors. Who and how will the doors be kept open?” ■
