Warmshowers Is Far Worse than I Imagined

 

It needs to be reformed

Sang, a Korean cyclist who stayed with my family
under the Warmshowers program in 2017, as he rode
across the country. He ate a lot of curry.

 

          

            If you want to learn about Warmshowers and are not a member of that organization’s reclusive board, you need to get them to threaten you with a lawsuit.

          As I did.

          Let me back up a little and explain how Warmshowers, a 501c3 charitable organization, came to present me with a fully-formed libel lawsuit.

          Early in July of 2023, I wrote an essay about Warmshowers in my personal blog (which you presumably are now reading). For me, this blog is a kind of sketch pad where I try out ideas.

          I have 15 followers on my blog. It is called “The Cyclist,” and many of the pieces are about Randonneuring, the obscure, long-distance cycling sport I do. Sometimes I go on to publish pieces from my blog in more visible publications, and sometimes I post them to FB discussion groups (as I did in this case). And, sometimes, I just write these entries to work out my own thinking about something.

          In this essay, I recounted 15 years of mostly happy experiences hosting bicycle tourists in my home through Warmshowers. This had been a free service that matched cyclists with hosts so that they could have free housing, and sometimes meals and other help, as they traveled the country.

          All of this came to an end in June of 2023 when I got a strange query from a potential guest named Max. Max was upset that he had paid $30 for the service but could not find anyone to host him, and he seemed angry at me. He also told me that he was on the run from shopkeepers and the police, who insisted that he keep moving.

          I tried to ask Warmshowers for advice about how to respond to Max, both through the “contact us” function of website, and through the Facebook discussion group. I got no answer. I became upset when I looked at my profile on Warmshowers and realized that Max had my home address.

          Several days later, I got an answer from Tahverlee Anglen, after Max had presumably left town. She answered my concerns about security in a way that I found dismissive, and I wrote a sharp reply (more on this below). She threw me off the Facebook page, and out of the organization.

          Thus, my 15-year association with Warmshowers came to an abrupt end.

          Because I was puzzled about what had happened, I began looking into all of the public documents and discussions about the organization. I found a considerable community of dissidents. Some of them congregated around the Facebook group “An open alternative to Warmshowers,” but there were bits and pieces in Reddit, in preserved forum exchanges, and elsewhere.

          Some were dissidents because they objected to Warmshowers’s charge of $30 for membership in the organization, which began with those who joined in 2020 and after. Others objected to the way the organization abandoned a home-grown phone app, in favor of one provided by a third party. There was an especially bitter group of former volunteers who had worked on the app and felt betrayed by the organization.

          And some people complained about Tahverlee Anglen and claimed that they had been kicked out in a manner similar to what I had experienced.

          So, I wrote an essay entitled “Warmshowers Is Not What It Seems,” in which I argued, as I put it in the subtitle, that the organization had been taken over by “private interests.”

          In this essay, I focused on Anglen. In Warmshowers’s 990 tax filings for recent years, she is the only paid employee who is named. She was paid $73,738 in 2021 for 20 hours of work each week.

          She is also in many ways the face of the organization. She hosts a series of podcasts, mostly focusing on experiences of riders and their hosts. She moderates the FB page. And she appears in many on-line interviews representing the organization. And she kicks long-time members out of the organization.

          She also has a presence on the web well beyond Warmshowers. She is a self-proclaimed witch and is identified as the high priestess of Moon Temple School. In her capacity as High Priestess, she offers a variety of courses to the public on topics ranging from magic to spellcasting to alchemy. These courses range in cost from $79 to $3000, and many of them involve sizeable monthly payments. Sometimes she runs specials, though, and it is possible to purchase one of these courses at a reduced price.

          On her Linked-in page, and in some of her interviews, Anglen describes herself as a “social impact entrepreneur.” In my essay, I critique this concept, and suggest that we see a similar entrepreneurship in her witchery and in her management of Warmshowers.

          In Warmshowers, this is evident her approach to the FB page and the podcasts as marketing tools, always putting a positive light on the organization, and minimizing or dismissing any of the problems of the organization.

          My criticism was sometimes sharp, but supported, I thought, by the evidence available publicly. I described Anglen, for example, as a “hyper-capitalist witch,” and suggested that sensibility was at odds with the altruistic principles on which Warmshowers was founded.

          Clearly, parties within Warmshowers disagreed with this characterization, and with other claims in the piece. But disagreement is the beginning point for discussion and debate. Not libel lawsuits.

          I posted this essay on the “Open alternatives” FB page, stating that it was a draft, and that I was interested to hear suggestions and criticism. I had, in fact, intended to revise it, and soon after I posted the piece, someone offered to collaborate with me on a revision of it for print publication.

There were about 35 responses to the FB posting from about 20 different people. Many agreed with the piece and thanked me for it. Some thought the passages addressing Anglen’s witchery were irrelevant or overstated. Others defended those very passages.

    Four days after I posted the essay to FB, I received a “cease and desist” letter from a Colorado law agency, Baker Law Group. This letter was accompanied by an eight-page complaint accusing me of libel. The complaint was formatted as if it were ready to file in Colorado District court and carried the license numbers and names of two lawyers, Robert Harper (#48454) and Andrew Lang (#53929).

The letter was harsh and threatening. It began with this paragraph:

I [Andrew Lang] write today to provide notice that your false and defamatory statements discussed herein regarding Warmshowers and its personnel have caused damages for which you have incurred liability, and for which you will continue to incur further liability should damages continue to accrue. To mitigate your liability in part, Warmshowers hereby demands that you immediately retract any and all false and defamatory statements you have made or published concerning Warmshowers and/or any of its personnel, and that you cease and desist from issuing or publishing further false and defamatory statements or otherwise causing additional damages. Your failure to do so will result in legal action.

To construct the eight-page formal complaint, the law firm had combed through the FB exchanges, and provided the most trivial and spurious examples of my purported libelous falsehoods. They accused me of falsely stating that Anglen was the only employee of the organization (but no one has named another one). Strangely, they also accused me of calling for an IRS investigation of the organization. This was completely untrue. And, like many of the actions described in the complaint, it would not have been illegal or libelous for me to have done so.

          Much of the complaint focused on what I had written about Anglen and accused me of “mocking her sincerely held spiritual beliefs.” This is not what I saw myself doing in the piece, but, even if it were true, this would not be libelous.

          Over the next two weeks, I armed myself for legal battle. I did not think there a shred of merit in the complaint, but, like anyone addressed as a "defendant" in a document designed for the court, I was anxious about the fact that considerable resources, in the form of two attorneys, a paralegal, and the support of a whole office were being thrown at me. A suit like this is calculated to scare the bejesus out of its target and overwhelm them with legal verbiage.

I researched Colorado state law and prepared to file a motion to dismiss the suit under the state’s Anti-SLAPP statute (Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation). This statute is designed to stop this kind of lawsuit, which is calculated impair free speech. I felt confident that I would succeed.

In the meantime, a volunteer from within the organization reached out to me to try to find an informal resolution to the matter. This person told me that there was more going on in the organization than was visible publicly. There was work on a new website that would address some of my concerns. In particular, the organization was addressing some of the safety concerns I had raised and was working on a plan to stop listing members’ home addresses by default in the system.

I had already offered to take down my web post in order to negotiate a resolution. This person suggested that I also apologize to Ms. Anglen.

There is one part of this whole affair that I do regret, and I could easily apologize for. In my sharp email message, I had addressed Ms. Anglen as a “blood sucker.” In the message itself, I made clear that I was using this metaphorically; I wrote, “You are a kind of corporate raider of non-profit organizations. You take them over, and then suck them dry for your own benefit. You are not a cyclist, and you only pretend to care about this community.”

Even though this was written in a private message and could not be considered libelous because it was not published, and even though I meant the term metaphorically, I actually did want to apologize for it.  No one deserves to be called a “blood sucker.”

I also apologized for “anything in my blog post that seemed to mock your religion,” but I could not apologize for the substance of what I had said.

As a result of these negotiations, the lawsuit was withdrawn.

While I am relieved, I am also left with many troubling thoughts as a result of this unhappy experience.

First of all, my theory that Warmshowers has been taken over by private interests was only strengthened by this incident.  This lawsuit served private, not public interests.

Secondly, I have learned that Warmshowers is a secretive and non-transparent organization. Throughout this period, I asked for a list of the current members of the board of trustees, and never received one. An organization that will not even make public the members of its board would seem to have a lot to hide.

          I also asked for, and did not receive, a statement from the board president, Lance Bickford, that this was a legitimate action of the board, and not the illegitimate action of some rogue element of the organization. And I asked for, and thus far have not received, the bylaws that would help me to understand how the decision to take legal action against me was made.

          As a 501c3 organization, Warmshowers is required to file and maintain bylaws. Many organizations post these on their website in order to be transparent and show how they operate. And they should make these bylaws available to anyone who asks for them. Warmshowers does not.

          Frankly, I don’t know if it would be worse if this action were an official one of the board or the action of some rogue element within the organization. If it were a rogue element, then the organization is not being governed by the body that is legally responsible for it. The board is negligent.

          If, on the other hand, it were a legitimate action, then the board is seriously deluded about its mission and its legal responsibilities to the organization. The board is negligent.

          Charitable organizations, especially those enjoying 501c3 status, occupy a position of trust in our society. They can solicit and receive donations, with the understanding that the donors may deduct the donations from their taxable income.

          In this way, 501c3 organizations are indirectly supported by our government. And they serve a public, not a private interest.

          I don’t know how much money went into the legal complaint against me, but it clearly involved many billable hours. It might have been $3,000 or it might have been $10,000 or more. In any case, it was a lot.

          And the funding for this lawsuit came from donors and from fees paid by members.

          In my opinion, then, the threatened lawsuit, and the money that went into funding it, is a betrayal of the public trust that Warmshowers enjoys.

          I have never denied that good things happen under the Warmshowers umbrella, or that good things will continue to happen. There is something magical that can happen when hospitality is freely given and received.

          But the Warmshowers organization itself is sick and needs to be reformed. It is being operated more as a private, closely held corporation than as a membership organization serving the public good.

          One thing that can happen to charitable organizations over time is that the board can become ingrown and develop views that are cut off from the membership it serves. This is especially the case with self-perpetuating boards, like Warmshowers has, where the board itself chooses new members, without an election or other public process.  The board is not held accountable by anyone.

          In my opinion, some of the energy that is now being directed toward alternative organizations should, in fact, be directed toward reforming Warmshowers. Warmshowers has an infrastructure and public recognition that would be hard for a new organization to replicate.

          But members cannot help to reform the organization if they are effectively locked out of it, not even knowing who is currently on the board, or how to place new members with a different perspective onto the board.

          So, it is my hope that somehow, some way, people of good will can find a way to open up Warmshowers in order to make it more transparent and more responsive to its members.

          This, then, is what I learned through Warmshowers' threat to sue me.