Recapping from the last few communications included in The Conspiracy, on June 8th, 2023 I sent the entirety of the communications I had with NASPA and everything I received from WGPO and CoCo to both ABSP and WESPA. From the beginning, ABSP President Wayne Kelly was supportive of me, telling me in an informal conversation that my “standing in the UK was beyond question and that we would allow you to play in the UK,” and then informing me that he had delegated Chris Harrison to write up ABSP’s official stance.
Meanwhile, WESPA was unhelpful and downright obstructionist, refusing to take any action to counteract NASPA’s wrongdoing and dragging their feet in responding to my requests for them to handle an appeal.
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
Elie Wiesel
On June 17th, nine days after Mina had forwarded my email to the WESPA Executive Committee, she told me that I should hear from formal WESPA channels that day, but I heard nothing for several more days. Furthermore, I had no way of seeing who was even on the WESPA Executive Committee, as the website was out of date and there were no email addresses for reaching the committee members who were listed.
I knew who some of the committee members were, and I asked around to gather what information I could about who else was on the committee. Some committee members were helpful in giving me names and email addresses, but one person was completely unhelpful: the Treasurer Jason Broersma. On June 20th, I flat out asked him, “Can you tell me who exactly is on the WESPA Executive Committee currently, since the website appears to be out of date?” and he evasively answered, “The committee is about to disband anyway – new committee at BGM.” (The BGM is the Big General Meeting of WESPA that happens at the World Championship, which was about to take place in Las Vegas a month from then.)
When I followed up with, “Thanks, I’d still like to know the current membership,” he ignored my request and just said, “Your communication will come from the secretary (Carol). Instructions were sent – I assume she’s just busy.”
What Jason did not know was that a source on the WESPA Executive Committee had already sent me the full one sentence text of the email that the committee was supposed to send me, along with that source’s own exasperated comments about me not getting it yet, as apparently the President Chris Lipe had already days earlier put instructions in the WESPA mailing list telling the Secretary Carol Johnsen to email me exactly that text.
Over the next couple of days I continued to inquire with more helpful Executive Committee members, who confirmed that Carol was already supposed to have sent me the email. I eventually learned that the supposed story in the mailing list was that Carol’s computer had been hacked and sent in for repairs, which was why she could not send the email. When I asked one committee member why the email had to come from Carol rather than anyone else on the committee, the response was, “I was wondering too.” Another member commented that there was grumbling among the committee about why it was taking so long to email me.
After I showed the communications from the WESPA committee members to Marc Mohan, who was at that point still representing me, he sent a litigation hold email to the Executive Committee on June 22nd, and a few hours after that Chris Lipe finally sent me the official WESPA response. The email itself was of course completely obstructionist and unhelpful. Even if I had gotten it a few days earlier without my lawyer having to email WESPA first, it would not have changed any outcomes for me.
So why were there several days of delays, interspersed by nagging of multiple Executive Committee members, in sending me an email that had already been written and shared on their mailing list? I can only think of two reasons: pettiness and intentional bureaucratic delay to reduce the chance that I could get any motion on this issue before the upcoming World Scrabble Championship.
There was a significant change in the message I got from Chris Harrison on July 1st from the previous communications I got from ABSP. Though Chris attempted to phrase it in a politic way, the letter was bad news. WESPA had interceded and told ABSP that I could not play in WESPA rated tournaments in the UK.
This was ridiculous, of course. NASPA had given WESPA no reason for my suspension, and the WESPA Executive Committee had even complained to NASPA about that and told me so. Yet WESPA was still enforcing a reciprocation of my NASPA suspension for tournaments outside of North America.
Frankly, I could have included the WESPA Executive Committee on the list of The Abusers for that, but I decided to hold back since I was still hoping to eventually get a fair appeal from them.
Two months later NASPA finally provided a “rationale” for my suspension in their long overdue response to my appeal, which I believe they never would have sent me if not for pressure from WESPA. They had already been ghosting me for more than a month before they sent it.
A few days after I published The Smokescreen, The Circus, and The Abusers, I then followed up with the WESPA Executive Committee to ask for them to finally hear my appeal, since they could no longer use the excuse that NASPA had not finished their appeal. There had been some changeover in the membership of the Executive Committee since the election at the World Championship, and I diligently tracked down the email addresses of the new members to add them to my list of recipients.
There were others who I was aware were no longer voting members of the committee but who were still active members of the mailing list discussions, according to one of my inside sources. I decided to include everyone who I believed to still be on the mailing list even if they were not technically a current voting member. A couple of them responded individually to my email asking to be removed from future emails and even volunteering the information that they were removing themselves from the mailing list or from other WESPA committees.
The first active member of the committee who emailed me back and copied the rest of the recipients was Jason Broersma. He asked me not to email him again and attempted to dissuade me from appealing to WESPA, suggesting I continue to deal with NASPA instead.
I already explained in The Abusers how unacceptable NASPA’s response to my appeal was. I will never accommodate any of the abusive conditions that NASPA put on me. Furthermore, the terms of NASPA’s decision included that I would be permanently on probation, limiting the period during which I could sign up for tournaments and requiring me to notify directors of my status. I will only accept a full reinstatement with no conditions on me to achieve that reinstatement nor thereafter, since I have done nothing wrong.
I then wrote back to the WESPA Executive Committee requesting that they proceed with my appeal of NASPA’s decision, and I further requested that both Jason Broersma and Chris Lipe be recused from the process. I cited evidence from the court case showing that Chris was not an objective third party.
Finally, on November 4th, 2023, I received an email from the WESPA Secretary Carol Johnsen, my first ever email from her, despite being told nearly half a year earlier that she was my contact person. To Carol’s credit, the emails I received from her over the next month and a half were professional and seemingly transparent about the process. She mentioned that both Broersma and Lipe had been recused.
On December 18th Carol told me that the Executive Committee was voting on a recommendation made by a committee of disinterested New Zealanders and Australians.
Five days later, I received an email from Carol’s account which purported to be from her daughter, telling me that Carol had been in a car accident and Lukeman would be taking over as my contact person.
Lukeman responded to my emails politely a couple of times telling me that things would take longer, and finally on January 7th I received a signed letter saying, “the WESPA Executive Committee does not have the constitutional power to accept your appeal.“
WESPA specifically told me half a year earlier that they had to wait for NASPA’s appeal to finish before they could handle an appeal of the decision, and then appointed a separate committee, which took about a month to review the case and make a recommendation, and then the Executive Committee took three weeks after that, only to tell me they were not allowed to adjudicate my case in the first place.
If WESPA has the power to overrule ABSP from letting me play in WESPA rated tournaments in their country, they certainly have the power not to do that.
Later that same evening, I wrote my response to WESPA:
Dear WESPA Executive Committee:
This is not acceptable. WESPA is pretending that it is not taking action, but it has already taken action against me.
Wayne Kelly told me on June 11th, 2023 that my “standing in the UK was beyond question and that we would allow you to play in the UK.”
However, the official follow-up statement that I received from Chris Harrison of ABSP on July 1st, which is publicly posted at https://splenetic.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023-07-01.ABSP-follow-up-to-David-Koenig.pdf, states:
For events which are rated under both ABSP and WESPA systems – typically those wanting to attract a more global field, WESPA will not sanction the participation of any currently banned NASPA player and so an organiser who applies for ABSP rating for one of these events will be informed of the ban and you will not be able to participate.
WESPA has strongarmed ABSP into disallowing me from playing in WESPA rated tournaments in the UK, even though ABSP recognizes that I have done nothing wrong and wishes for me to have unencumbered access to their tournaments.
The neutral sounding tone of your statement belies the complicity of the WESPA Executive Committee in supporting the abusive behavior toward me that has already been done by the leadership of the NASPA, WGPO, and CoCo organizations.
Since there is no higher authority to appeal to in the world of tournament Scrabble leadership, I assure you that my next steps will be to escalate this story to the press. I promise you that this entire story will be told in the news, and possibly in written literature and film.
Every person who continues to support this abuse of me will have the full details of your behavior on display not only to the few thousand competitive Scrabble players in the world, but also to millions of other people around the globe. I believe it is likely to get a lot more media attention than our World Scrabble Championship and other major tournaments. This will be your legacy in this game. You will be remembered by history not for anything good you did for Scrabble, but for your abuse of me.
This is not just about playing Scrabble to me. My morality and character have been besmirched by people who have behaved massively worse toward me than I have ever behaved to any person in my life. If you do not relent and apologize to me, I guarantee that all of your immoral characters will be exposed to the world for what they are.
If you had any morality, if you were decent human beings, you would not only remove all punishments from me, but you would also at very least publicly censure Evans Clinchy, Jennifer Clinchy, and Lola McKissen for the massively damaging lies they told about me. Your failure to take such a course of action is a moral indictment of you.
Sincerely,
Email from me to Lukeman Owolabi, january 7th, 2024
David Koenig
The next day I had this conversation with Wayne Kelly:
There you have it. The President of the Association of British Scrabble Players is concerned that if he stands up against this injustice WESPA may revoke ABSP’s membership or refuse to rate UK tournaments. These are the thugs that are running tournament Scrabble.