Corruption attracts and begets corruption
...for all that I talk trash constantly about Wil Russoul, this retired architect and his sexual harassment of me is the reason I stopped attending meetings for the Main Street program for a time.
It's been some years ago, so the day after writing that I'm remembering more details I haven't thought about in a long time.
Well before I quit all my volunteer work and participation in various things in Aberdeen, I took a break for several months from attending public meetings of the Main Street program even though it was right around the corner from my apartment. The reason for that is because the architect whose name I don't recall was on the board of the local Main Street program and it was at one of their meetings that he physically blocked me from leaving at the end of the meeting because he wanted to chat me up.
He's like thirty-some-odd years older than me. He's from an era when men fairly often had illicit affairs with their secretary and people looked the other way and swept it under the rug.
These days, a lot of work places have rules against that because it's similar to statutory rape in that you can't reasonably claim she meaningfully consented knowing that if he hits on her and she turns him down, she can lose her job.
At the age of probably seven, my oldest son saw me face off with three rude, crude "friends" of my husband who tried to force their way into the house through our flimsy screen door when I lied and said my exhausted husband who was sleeping wasn't home and declined to let them in the house.
My son told me that when faced with three men bigger than me trying to physically force the door, my hand dropped towards the umbrella in the umbrella stand nearby. My son's takeaway: Don't mess with Mom when you get older and taller than her because she will pick up an equalizer if she has to and jack your shit up.
I stopped attending the Main Street meetings because I concluded this man is a polite rapist who isn't going to take no for an answer and I'm a woman highly inclined to pick up the nearest heavy object and violently defend myself if you mess with me.
I was new in town and newly off the street after years of homelessness. He was in his eighties and one of "the town elders." I absolutely didn't want to be put in a situation where my options were:
1. Allow him to sexually assault me
2. Or beat the shit out of him and explain myself to the local police.
I mean I don't want to ever be in that situation at all where I have been maneuvered into position for some rapey jackass to physically get up on my space, feel me up, threaten me etc. But given those additional details, I felt the most likely outcome if I continued to visit his turf where he had power and was in charge of shit was that I was going to beat the shit out of a guy in his eighties and the entire town would side with him and conclude I was a bad person and in the wrong.
He was also attending meetings of Our Aberdeen but not really in power there. I advised Michael Dickerson of the situation and he said "Don't hit him." while making noises about having my back.
Main Street America is a corrupt organization with policies in line with their criminal agenda to con towns out of money.
One of their policies is that locals are required to set up a local nonprofit organization and seek accreditation or affiliation.
So they nominally dictate some of your activities and policies etc. while taking no meaningful responsibility for anything you do. They have no meaningful oversight and the town has no meaningful oversight and neither Main Street America nor the local municipality are legally responsible for anything you do.
Franchises, like Burger King, are popular because locals own it, run it and can get rich from it but an existing national organization dictates all kinds of details and takes some degree of responsibility for outcomes and will kill it if you don't comply.
Main Street America appears to not ever kill any affiliation. They claim that you should create a style guide and this should be done early on but if you never do it, they don't delist you.
So there's absolutely no quality control at all of local Main Street programs and it's a model financed by conning the local municipality out of money while having no meaningful obligation to deliver results.
Anyone who is a piece of shit who has spent their entire life looking for loopholes and other means to get away with their shit will tend to be actively attracted to this program and tend to actively seek power in it and defend their turf, as Wil Russoul aggressively defended his job security and I believe was ACTIVELY making shit up about me being after his job while I desperately tried to tell the entire town I didn't REALLY want the job. I REALLY want to establish myself as a paid freelancer.
Predators will typically recognize more quickly than I did that this program is their cup of tea and will serve their criminal agenda.
This didn't end with me being raped by a member of the board or with me being thrown in jail for picking up the nearest chair and putting his ass in the ER because I have studied sexual assault and I know that the way you protect yourself is spotting trouble early and choosing a different path, not taking martial arts and waiting until some asshole sexually assaults you and hoping you can get other people to believe that your violent assault on him was justifiable self defense from a he said, she said sex crime unlikely to leave much in the way of hard evidence that you were his victim.
And someone who has been committing polite rape via social pressure and implicit threats etc for decades will be very well practiced at maneuvering his victims and leaving little to no opening for them to plausibly accuse him on the public record and file charges.