Can a motorcycle club founder be fired?
Motorcycle clubs are institutions whose members commit to lifelong brotherhoods united by a shared passion for motorcycle riding culture and membership in an all-encompassing outside family.
The local setting where various MC nations frequent is known as the MC Set. The Conjunto comprises all clubhouses, bars, parks, meeting places, and other areas of operations where these clubs meet, greet, and associate.
MC nations are loosely governed by a universally accepted set of spoken, but largely unwritten laws known as MC protocol. This protocol unites all clubs to freely associate as disparate organizations in peaceful coexistence. This peace is maintained because MC protocol requires mutual respect and common courtesy to be shown to all MCs and their members. Generally, if the MC protocol is followed, it works and the peace is well maintained.
Internally, MCs operate by a set of laws called statutes. Unlike the MC protocol, the laws are almost always written. The bylaws are the contract between the MC brotherhood, full patch brothers, prospects and club associates. The bylaws generally follow the same unwritten MC protocol that governs the Ensemble, but also define operations, traditions, rights, responsibilities, and privileges within the sorority specifically. These issues can vary radically from one club to another. For example, MC’s unwritten protocol requires that all MC officers be elected to office by club vote and stand for re-election annually. But an MC’s bylaws may allow such elections to be held more or less frequently.
When the MC bylaws follow the lines of the MC protocol, the brothers are generally satisfied and enjoy prosperous and successful careers within the MC. However, when MC bylaws conflict with accepted MC protocol, internal problems often arise to the point where clubs experience conflict, civil war, and ultimately club splits.
Such is the case when the founders of today’s emerging MCs create bylaws that promote their agendas and not necessarily the agendas of their clubs. This has become a symptom repeated many times seen by the explosion of new clubs in the Set in recent times. Many new would-be founders have abandoned the spirit of the MC’s projecting greatness charters, instead attempting to hold on to their status, titles, and privileges forever, instead only as long as the club continues to vote for them. office. They often catch potential brethren off guard who are unfamiliar with basic MC etiquette when joining these new clubs and aren’t smart enough to peruse the bylaws or ask the kinds of questions that would expose this nonsense before joining. .
One of the tactics employed by these slanderous founders is to surreptitiously register the MC name and logos under their names and not the name of the MC corporation. Then when they run afoul of the members, who may choose to remove them from power, they rush to court and either stop the brothers from removing them or legally force the brothers to surrender their colors and instead get them kicked out of the club! In this way they try to hold on to the reins of power within the MC by lie.
Please understand that this is not the way of the MC protocol. The protocol dictates that the club is governed by democratic vote and all matters must be presented before the voting brothers. It doesn’t really matter if a brother was a founder, “First Nine”, “Original 7” or something. Those are titles for the front of the cut. They should only be recognized as what the brothers may have done to help the MC prosper. Those patches will never equate to the colors on the back patch which signify what the club stands for and who its members are. Unless the MC considers it, there are no “Presidents for Life” and the MC never “belongs” to the founder, even if he put it all together, designed the patches and made it all happen. When the founder(s) offer(s) the MC to others, it becomes the property of the collective and no longer belongs to one. The founders need to realize that their “baby” became our “baby” when they included us in the club.
So yes, founders are subject to discipline. Yes, the founders are subject to being fired from the club and no, the founders do not have the right to remove the MC from the members. This may not be true legally, but it is true within the MC protocol. Prospects will do well to do their research to find out how their prospective clubs are set up before joining, and brothers in clubs set up as such should lobby leaders to change these bylaws until they reflect what is correct, according to Protocol. MC configuration.