October 29, 2024
I joined the Spring-Nuts Facebook group on October 17, 2017, about two years after it began its existence, and when I launched this website last year, Letters To You "joined" and became an officially approved "member" of the group, as well, allowing us to connect regularly with many fellow Springsteen fans. After all, even now Spring-Nuts remains one of the largest (though no longer THE largest) of the Springsteen-focused Facebook groups, numbering over 18,000 members worldwide.
Much of what has occurred within Spring-Nuts over the past three-and-a-half weeks, however, has had me, as well as a significant number of other fans, greatly concerned. It's led me to question and think very differently about its leadership's actions (and, at times, inaction) around some very important issues, involving the treatment of both Bruce Springsteen and his fans with the respect and transparency they deserve.
It wasn't so much how the Spring-Nuts administrators handled the posting of (then un-posting and re-posting of) Bruce Springsteen's endorsement video for the Harris-Walz campaign, though I think that now-you-see-it-now-you-don't-but-wait-here-it-is-again approach definitely was bumbling at best. I mean, to this day, I fail to understand why it took so long for the Spring-Nuts administrators to decide to simply share Bruce's video on Facebook with comments limited or closed, if they didn't want to deal with the task of extensive, ongoing comments-moderation. After all, that's exactly how we at Letters To You (and at least a few other online Springsteen-focused groups) handled it, albeit with a much smaller number of viewers/commenters, but still...
It certainly seemed ironic - to say the least - witnessing the group's online administrators attempting to over-enforce its "No Politics Whatsoever" rule after already having broken it, all under their banner-posted group motto, "Taking Care of Our Own Since 2015," which of course paraphrases (or is that perverts?) one of Bruce Springsteen's most political songs ever. One also has to wonder if once Bruce's video got pulled from the Spring-Nuts Facebook page (an act that, regardless of whatever the administrators' intent was, ended up giving at least a temporary victory of sorts to those who opposed Bruce's message and wanted him censored for it,) it might never have appeared on that page again without Amy Lofgren's important role in putting a much-needed spotlight on the video's removal/absence. (Lofgren, who is of course the spouse of Nils Lofgren, also faced some extremely disrespectful and abusive flak online for having done so. I, for one, think that she handled all of that with nothing but bravery, reason, and dignity, much to her credit.)
Nevertheless, as I already noted above, what concerned me much more were the things that came to light after the endorsement-video drama ensued. In the midst of the various online debates and discussions about how Spring-Nuts handled the situation with Springsteen's endorsement video and some other recent issues of concern, several current and former Spring-Nuts members involved in those debates revealed that they had received abusive/bullying private Facebook messages from one of Spring-Nuts' "Group Experts." (As per Facebook's online community guidelines and procedures, "Admins can recognize knowledgeable members as group experts, making them stand out with a new badge." The Spring-Nuts Facebook group currently has 47 such recognized members.)
Each of the private messages from the Group Expert was a slight variation of the following: "I heard you left SN [Spring-Nuts.] Good riddance! You fucked with Howie Chaz [Howie "Howie Chaz" Chazanoff is the founder/organizer/key-leader of Spring-Nuts,] proving you are a loser. Howie is a good man and you are a fool." Another one, addressed to a current member who remains in good standing, read, "do us all a BIG favor and get the hell out of SN. You are a loser and a liar and there's no room for your constant negativity. Why stay in a group that you hate....JUST LEAVE!!!!"
The Spring-Nuts Facebook group has five basic rules. The first two posted rules are:
Be Kind and Courteous
No Hate Speech or Bullying
Yet incredibly, no serious consequences whatsoever appeared to have been issued to this Spring-Nuts Group Expert for his online behavior. Not only was/is he still a Spring-Nuts member, but as of this writing he still retains his Group Expert designation. About a week after sending those messages, he posted on the Spring-Nuts Facebook group page a public apology for his actions, including a general/collective apology to the members he had private-messaged. Yet two of the former members are unable to see such an apology, and none of the affected members has yet claimed to have received any kind of personal apology message from their bully.
Another online thread began questioning just how much of the money raised by Spring-Nuts through its annual "Spring-Nuts Seaside Serenade" in-person gatherings, merch sales, etc. actually goes to the charities that Spring-Nuts supports. The allegations made online, as well as the data and computations behind them, also raised more than a bit of concern on my part.
So I decided to contact Howie Chaz directly about all of this. Not only have I known of Howie since I joined Spring-Nuts seven years ago, but I've also known him informally as a friendly acquaintance since my days as a Backstreets Magazine/website contributor, etc.
In the early afternoon of Friday, October 18, I emailed Howie an official media/press inquiry in my capacity as Editor/Publisher of Letters To You. I asked him, as the leader/organizer (aka "The Warden") of Spring-Nuts to provide on-the-record replies to the following five questions:
1. What consequences/penalties, if any, has or will [the Group Expert in question] receive(d) from Spring-Nuts for his bullying, inappropriate messages to several other Spring-Nuts members, past and present? (It appears that as of this writing, [he] has yet to receive from Spring-Nuts any consequences whatsoever.)
2. As you can see from the attached screenshots, some serious questions have been raised regarding the level of Serenade 6 charitable donations, in comparison to how much Serenade 6 money actually was collected through ticket-sales, etc. for an event that was advertised as one in which "All proceeds will go to" charitable organizations. It's estimated that ticket-sales alone generated much more than $36K, given Asbury Lanes' capacity, yet only $36K in donations was announced. Why such a discrepancy? Exactly how many Serenade 6 tickets were sold? What exactly happened to all of the Serenade 6 money generated by those ticket-sales, sales of merch and/or other items, etc.?
3. I also have attached several Spring-Nuts online-store screenshots of Spring-Nuts apparel items that incorporate photographic images of Bruce Springsteen. Did Springsteen and/or his representatives give approval for the use of his likeness in this way? I'm especially curious/concerned about this because none of these items - not even the Serenade 5 item - have explicit statements on their website pages indicating that any of the money from sales of these items gets earmarked for any charitable items:
4. Where does all of the money raised from sales of the apparel items referenced in my third question go?
5. A full week has now passed since Spring-Nuts attorney Jane Weisbecker Arnone tweeted, "A full post of Spring Nut charitable contributions will shortly be linked to the FB page." Have I missed the occurrence of such a posting? If not, how much more time is expected to pass before this promised posting occurs?
As of 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday October 22nd, Howie had not replied to any of these questions, so I sent a follow-up message informing him that if I received no response from him within the next twelve hours, I would presume that he had declined to reply. At 11:42 a.m. that day, I received a message from Howie simply asking me to call Joe D'Urso of Rockland-Bergen Music Fest, Spring-Nuts' organizing/presentation/promotional partner for at least some of its events. An hour later that day, Joe also called the Letters To You office and left a voicemail message explaining that he could answer "one" of my five questions. In a pair of followup email messages to Howie, I explained that before I spoke "on-the-record" with Joe about any aspect of this matter, I first needed Howie to confirm specifically in writing (via reply email) that he was designating Joe to be his official spokesperson on one of the five questions I was asking, and for which specific question he would be doing so.
Howie never provided any such confirmation to me. Instead at 5:34 p.m. on Wednesday October 23rd, he posted openly on Facebook approximately two-and-a-half pages worth of what reads very much like he wrote it in response to my emailed questions listed above, though of course neither Letters To You nor I ever get mentioned specifically in what Howie wrote. (If you're a member of Spring-Nuts, you can read for yourself what Howie wrote by clicking here.)
Far more important, there's a LOT more than just the words "Shawn Poole" and "Letters To You" missing in what Howie's written in his Facebook "reply." First off, he claims that when they first posted Bruce's Harris-Walz endorsement video, somebody on the administrative team at Spring-Nuts somehow forgot to do so with the comments option turned off, even though - as he also claims - the no-comments policy is and always will be Spring-Nuts policy in regards to any posts concerning political statements by Bruce Springsteen. Then, according to Howie, in order to correct this incredible administrative oversight via apparent amnesia, they took down Bruce's endorsement video "temporarily," and re-posted it/pinned it without the comments option. Yet he never gets around to explaining exactly why it "temporarily" took more than twenty-four hours after the video was removed for it to get re-posted, and - interestingly - only about five hours after Amy Lofgren had publicly criticized the absence of any version of Bruce's Harris-Walz endorsement video on the Spring-Nuts Facebook page.
As for Howie's defense of how he handled the case of the bullying Group Expert... Well, giving the bully a second chance and keeping him in the group doesn't necessarily mean that you also have to let him keep his Group Expert title, especially when it took him almost an entire week to issue any kind of apology for his actions, and a very weak one at that. (And again, as of this writing, he has yet to apologize personally to any of the bullied folks whom I interviewed, even the ones who are no longer Spring-Nuts members and can't see directly the apology he posted on the Spring-Nuts page.) But apparently Howie and I have very different measures of what indicates someone truly understanding that what they did was unacceptable and reprehensible.
Nevertheless, hands-down the most mind-blowing part of Howie's October 23rd Facebook post is his response - or more accurately the overwhelming lack thereof - to the questions about Spring-Nuts' Serenade 6 charitable donations, merch sales, and financial transparency in general. Four of the five questions we asked Howie to answer had to do with these subjects, yet he only responded to the one about the Serenade 6 charitable donations.
And what he wrote in response ain't exactly reassuring. $27,397 in expenses for a single fundraising event?! Seriously?! Dude, that is an absolutely ridiculous, virtually impossible-to-believe amount. You're telling us that more than 43% of the money you raised at what was billed as a charitable event went to yet-to-be-itemized-publicly "expenses?!" And incidentally, any experienced, reputable organizer of such events should know the difference between using the phrases "All proceeds (meaning all $63,397 raised will go to...") and "All net proceeds or all profits (after covering more than $27K in expenses) will go to..." But in either case, claiming $27,397 in expenses related to having only about 500 folks gather basically to just eat (at an inexpensive buffet,) drink (at a cash bar,) score a t-shirt that probably cost around $5 to produce in bulk, and dance/sing to recorded music for several hours at a relatively small Asbury Park venue, on a date/time at which the venue normally wouldn't be making much money anyway and therefore likely to be very open to negotiation, is still just... ludicrous.
Since Howie's Facebook post also confirmed openly (finally!) that Joe D'Urso/Rockland Bergen Music Festival, Inc. is the person to whom any follow-up questions about Spring-Nuts' Serenade 6 expenses, donations, etc. should be addressed, I attempted to do exactly that. On the afternoon of last Friday, October 25, I called Joe at the number he left for me in his October 22nd voicemail message. This time I got Joe's voicemail, and left a message for him, stating that Letters To You had several follow-up questions related to Howie's October 23rd Facebook post, and that I wanted to arrange an on-the-record interview with him. Joe has yet to respond to my request. Yesterday afternoon, I also emailed Howie to inform him of my attempt to arrange an interview with Joe. Howie simply replied that he has no control over Joe's availability to answer or return phone calls.
And left completely unaddressed, by either Howie or Joe or anyone else at this point, are our questions about whether Spring-Nuts has any permission from Bruce Springsteen or his representatives to use Bruce's likeness on some of the Spring-Nuts apparel sold in their online store, and what happens to the money raised from the sales of such apparel. (Sales of these items, incidentally, appear to have been very successful, with several items listed as being at or near sellout status. Selling such Springsteen-image-adorned apparel at prices ranging from $35 to $50 each, when each item costs far less than that to produce, can generate much additional revenue indeed.) Furthermore, the "full post of Spring Nut charitable contributions," promised by Spring-Nuts attorney Jane Weisbecker Arnone almost three weeks ago, still doesn't appear to have been posted on Facebook or anywhere else, for that matter. (Incidentally, regarding those charitable contributions, it's worth noting that since Spring-Nuts isn't a non-profit corporation, as Howie himself confirmed in his posted statement, nobody who bought a ticket to the Serenade can get a tax-deduction for any portion of their ticket purchase from Spring-Nuts. But Spring-Nuts itself can still write off any and all of the charitable donations they make to non-profit organizations from their Serenade ticket-sales. Not a bad little deal for the Spring-Nuts corporation, eh?)
Therefore, at this point, in light of all that I've witnessed, experienced, researched, and reported above, I feel that I have no reasonable choice other than to terminate both my individual Spring-Nuts membership and Letters To You's institutional "membership" in the group. This was by no means an easy decision to make, and I hope to maintain my personal connections and friendships with many other folks who may choose to remain members of Spring-Nuts, whom I consider to be fine folks and fellow fans. Some even may contribute to this website, as well, and will remain welcome to do so, of course. But I no longer can have myself or this website be officially connected in any way to a group with leadership that has repeatedly failed to provide any serious answers to most if not all of the reasonable questions listed above, and appears to have strayed way too far from what it means to be a fan of Bruce Springsteen and his key collaborators. Bruce, his associates, their many fans worldwide, and the various charitable organizations that they/we support deserve far better than this.