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 outer family.
The local environment where various MC nations frequent is known as the MC Set. The Complex comprises all of the clubhouses, bars, parks, meeting places, and other areas of operations where these clubs meet, greet, and associate.
MC nations loosely abide by a universally accepted set of spoken, but largely unwritten, laws known as the MC protocol. This protocol binds all clubs together to associate freely as disparate organizations in peaceful coexistence. This peace is maintained because MC protocol requires that mutual respect and common courtesy be shown to all MCs and their members. Generally, if the MC protocol is followed, it works and the peace is well kept.
Internally, MCs operate by a set of laws called statutes. Unlike the MC protocol, the laws are almost always written. The statutes are the contract between the MC brotherhood, full patch brothers, prospects and associates of the club. The bylaws generally follow the same unwritten MC protocol that governs the Ensemble, but also define operations, traditions, rights, responsibilities, and privileges within the brotherhood specifically. These themes can vary radically from club to club. For example, the 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 MC bylaws follow the lines of MC protocol, siblings are generally content and enjoy prosperous and successful careers within 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 further their agendas and not necessarily the agendas of their clubs. This has become an oft-repeated symptom seen by the explosion of new clubs on the Set in recent times. Many new would-be founders have abandoned the spirit of the charter that projects MC greatness, instead attempting to hold on to their status, titles, and privileges forever, instead only as long as the club keeps voting for them. office. They often catch unsuspecting would-be siblings who are unfamiliar with basic MC protocol when joining these new clubs and aren’t smart enough to thoroughly vet the bylaws or ask the kinds of questions that would expose this nonsense before joining. .
One of the tactics employed by these smear founders is to surreptitiously register the MC name and logos under their names and not under the name of the MC corporation. Then when they run afoul of the members, who may choose to remove them from power, they run to court and stop the brothers from removing them or legally force the brothers to surrender their colors and instead get kicked out of the club! In this way they try to hold on to the reins of power within the MC by lying.
Please understand that this is not the way of the MC protocol. Protocol dictates that the club is governed by democratic vote and all matters must be brought 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 back patch colors that 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, he becomes the property of the collective and no longer belongs to one. The founders must 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 would do well to do some 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 the right thing, according to Setup Protocol. of MC.