What Should My Response Be?

Before we start, I think something needs to be explained about me. Since highschool, some earlier, I have been accused of having a problem with authority. I spent an entire semester in detention (which was called J.U.G. where I went to school) rather than agree that a teacher was right and I was wrong. (It was later demonstrated that I was completely and totally in the right in the situation and the teacher was completely and totally wrong).

I suppose you could say that my instinctual reaction to stupidity and being pushed is to push back. Hence why I no longer work for others.

As you might have noticed, I do a fair amount of work on behalf of tenants in San Francisco. I also belong, if you could call it that, to what is, in my opinion, a dysfunctional group of tenants right's activists. My opinion as to their dysfunction goes to their organization, not what they provide in service to tenants in the community. But that is not the issue.

Recently, this group started a listserv. I joined it. I participated in it. And I have now been kicked off of it. Why? Because apparently they don't like the name which I chose for my account. Now this is not the email address that appears in the message, but rather the login to gain access to the litserv. The name used is not offensive. When I signed up, I was not informed that I could not use it. I was also not informed that there was a special format that I had to conform to for my name.

So today I received not one, but two (that's right two) emails telling me that my privileges were revoked until I 1) gave them my contact information 2) provided bona fides as to my commitment to tenant's rights and 3) changed my screen name.

Now, they have my contact information. They also have my bona fides. As for the third thing... I know this will sound silly but I just cannot change it. Not because I am attached to it, but because the request is STUPID.

Anyways, click here if you want to see my response to this inane idiocy. Yeah, I know, not classy but I'm not in the mood to conform with their arbitrariness.