KPFA/Pacifica: Lords & Ladies vs. the Peasants

The Legacy of the '90s at KPFA

at KPFA/Pacifica

Lords & Ladies vs. the Peasants


by Daniel Borgström
Sept 16, 2024

Longtime KPFA listeners remember 1999 as the year of the Hijacking, the Lockout, and the massive response. Ten thousand people marched through the streets of Berkeley chanting "Take back KPFA!" and "Save Pacifica!" The battle was waged in the station's studio, on the streets, and even in the courts. The good guys won, and the hijackers were thrown out. But acolytes of that regime remained, and their proteges are today very much back in control -- the gatekeeper clique at KPFA.

Sadly, the KPFA scenario is often repeated in the affairs of humankind. I missed the French Revolution, but I imagine it went much like the one at KPFA. The Bastille was stormed in a day, but the fight wasn't over. (Still isn't, in fact.) It often seems to follow a pattern: There's a dramatic moment, a historic victory, but then after everything finally seems to be on the road to eternal happiness, come months and years of intense strife. Issues get complicated, seemingly arcane, and it gets vicious. Why the ongoing conflict? people ask, wondering why the former dear comrades can't just be nice to each other and get along. They're all progressives, aren't they? (Or are they?)

The 1999 uprising at KPFA began, very much like the French Revolution, with a split among the power elite. Like Louis XVI of France, the headstrong monarch of KPFA/Pacifica quarreled with her courtiers, threw them out of the palace, locked the gate, and called in mercenary troops -- rent-a-cops. The station's disenfranchised nobility, losing their wits and acting out of sheer desperation, allied themselves with dissidents, appealed to the rabble, and called for mass demonstrations. The response was huge, and to the astonishment of everyone, the rebels emerged victorious. The intolerable monarch went into exile, leaving the kingdom to the triumphant radio-heads -- a motley assemblage of commoners, peasants and riffraff, together with nobility and bureaucrats from the old regime. Everyone pledged eternal loyalty to the ideals of the revolution, the Pacifica Mission Statement.

At first there was wild jubilation, dancing in the streets, and a huge amount of good feeling. All the worthy people were dear sisters and brothers, in a splendid state of living happily ever after. The bluebloods and bureaucrats from the old regime joined in the celebrations together with their low-class brethren, graciously tolerating the situation, putting a good face on it, and biding their time. The problem was that the ungracious mob now expected to have a say in the running of the show. So the lords and ladies were then faced with the daunting task of getting this horde of loud, smelly, cantankerous, meddlesome peasants to leave the castle, go back to tilling the lands, and give up their preposterous notions of involving themselves in governance of the station.

Major differences and animosities began to surface during the drafting of Pacifica's new constitution, known as "The Bylaws." Courtiers and bureaucrats from the old regime tried to bend the new document to their liking, intending to preserve whatever they could of their former status and privileges; and they did win major concessions. Nevertheless, the dissidents stuck to a vision they'd been nurturing for many long years during the decade preceding 1999. The traditional motto of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" was updated to include "democracy, transparency, accountability."

The outcome, beginning in the early 2000s, was a radically new system of radio governance, a "listener democracy." Listeners who donated $25 or more to the station became voters, choosing their representatives to sit on boards overseeing the KPFA station and the Pacifica radio network. In radio governance, this was a revolutionary concept; however the Lords & Ladies found it absolutely revolting.

There was a time (the good old days) when peasants knew their place. One can sympathize with the plight and anguish of the once proud KPFA aristocrats, courtiers, and bureaucrats, who were to find themselves sitting shoulder to shoulder with unwashed peasants who were elected to the new Local Station Board (the LSB).

KPFA's first board election was held in the winter of 2003-2004, and as spring became summer, the reaction against the new Pacifica Bylaws began. An opening shot was a letter from a patrician lady who declared, "I do think the bylaws are a disaster." Her ladyship, a show host at KPFA, was an enlightened aristocrat, one of capitalism's discontents who loved the downtrodden peasants and hated their oppressors. It was just that she didn't want to see peasants trooping into her castle, intruding on her domain, and stepping on her privileges with their muddy feet.

The newly elected board members took their seats on the newly formed LSB; and the division between the patricians and lower orders soon became apparent. A leaked email of September 1st 2005 revealed that a lord had called his group to a "general strategy session" .and among the topics on his agenda: "how do we make our enemies own the problems that are to come?"

"You consider us your 'enemies'?" fellow board members asked the author of the email. His reply was evasive.

Among other strategic topics listed in that Sept 1st email was the "Roy issue." That referred to a disagreement between the bluebloods and station's general manager (GM) over the scheduling of a popular show, DN! Such a disagreement might seem rather insignificant, but it suggested that the manager was not a yes-man, inclined to do the do the bluebloods' bidding. So grounds had to be found for his dismissal.

They charged the manager with sexual molestation, a charge which did not hold up under investigation. Although the manager was cleared of charges, the accusations created an unpleasant, or even toxic atmosphere. Eventually, in Jan 2006, the mgr. was fired, but for undisclosed reasons. That became a landmark victory for the lords and ladies, and every general manager since then, from 2006 to the present (2024) has been more or less in their pocket.

According to the Bylaws, the LSB has considerable power in its job of overseeing the station. It plays a role in selecting the General Manager, and is required to do a yearly job performance evaluation of the manager. In practice, the bluebloods on the board have been able to avoid such obligations and render the board ineffectual. In 2020 it was discovered that property taxes hadn't been paid on the station's studio building for over 6 years, and the Alameda County tax office was about to seize the property and auction it off. That upset some listeners who urged board members to hold the station's manager accountable. However, the lordly faction, which held a board majority, came to the manager's defense, and passed a motion (11-20-2020) reading:

"The KPFA Local Station Board finds that due to numerous false and/or misleading accusations made about the KPFA General Manager, it is not possible for the KPFA Local Station Board to conduct a fair and unbiassed evaluation of the KPFA General Manager at this time." (And in their motion they misspelled "unbiased.")

At first glance, this might appear to be a worker-run collective, a socialist ideal. Sadly however, that is not the reality at KPFA. The bluebloods who became the gatekeepers of the station are a relatively small clique of holdovers from the hijacker regime of the 1990s which was linked to the Clinton Administration. They and their acolytes, though few in number, are well connected to entities outside the station. Most of the unpaid staff, who in fact produce most of the programming, are excluded from the ruling clique, as are some of the paid programmers. They're part of the peasantry.

Their faction which represents them on the LSB has used several names over the years; currently they call themselves the "Protectors," and they openly state that they protect the staff and management -- which they do. (That is, they protect members of their in-group and mgrs. who align themselves with the lords and ladies.) And they boast that the station is doing great.

In reality, the station is surviving -- but not doing great. Listener subscribership has fallen to about half of what it was a decade ago. This problem is not unique to KPFA -- public radio stations almost everywhere are losing listeners. Young people turn to podcasts, and other online sources of information. KPFA must do more to adapt to technological change and new ways (some now not-so-new) of accessing media. KPFA's archives must be searchable; otherwise they're like a library with no catalog. Multimedia is no longer the future; it's here. More programming must include video -- those are a few of the things that reformers are urging. However, the bluebloods have been slow to make such innovations; perhaps that's the nature of a status quo group.

Meanwhile, the whole purpose of having a radio station is its programming. Since 1949 KPFA has stood up to Joe McCarthy and HUAC, opposed the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and promoted progressive causes. Today many excellent programs at the station are still reporting on a wide variety of events including the genocide in Gaza. Nevertheless, not everything on KPFA is progressive. For over a year the station has been giving nine hours a week to Ian Masters, a show host who has lambasted Venezuela and Cuba, and attacked Mumia Abu-Jamal. Masters calls Mumia's supporters "gullible."

In attempting to describe the situation at KPFA, I've been using the analogy of Lords, Ladies and Peasants; though some observers with a somewhat less medieval mindset might prefer to call it "class struggle." Call it what you may, the station is run by a power elite who lord it over the rest. And though this is a leftwing radical radio station where almost everybody would consider themselves "Progressives," I would suggest calling them "establishment progressives." The operative word here is "establishment."

At the root of the problem is a legacy of the hijacker regime of the 1990s that never got resolved. The picture is not encouraging, but I don't think it's impossible either. I'm just saying that we have a long and hard battle ahead of us.


DANIEL BORGSTRÖM


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Right now the station is having an election for the LSB. Although I call it a struggle between the Lords and Ladies vs. the Peasants, it could also be called a struggle between the status quo folks and the reformers. The reformers, known as "RESCUE PACIFICA are presenting these eight excellent candidates, or as I might call them: uncommon commoners.

Rabab Abdulhadi - Professor at San Francisco State; Palestinian scholar / activist

Donna Carter - Retired nurse and California Nurses Association contract negotiator

Stan Woods - Oscar Grant committee member; former ILWU Local 6 board member

Virginia Browning - Former radio reporter / producer / program host

Felipe Messina - Modesto Cop Watch member; IBEW member; clean-air campaigner

Pathma Venasithamby - Jewish Voice for Peace member

Phoebe Thomas (Sorgen) - Social Justice Committee of Berkeley Unitarian-Universalists

Michai Freeman - Disability-rights organizer; former Berkeley City Council candidate

These Rescue Pacifica candidates are endorsed by past and present KPFA staff members, including Andres Soto, Peter Phillips, Joy Moore, Ann Garrison, Frank Sterling, and Anthony Fest, as well as many peace and justice advocates. Please read more at rescuepacifica.net



Your "STV" ballot allows you to vote for multiple candidates; please vote for all eight Rescue-Pacifica candidates. Thanks for your support!



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KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 160 affiliate stations.



Vote for Rescue Pacifica

rescuepacifica.net

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This is an updated and expanded version of an article I wrote years ago.
Daniel

KPFA's LSB Jan 11, 2020

Between the Minutes
at KPFA on January 11, 2020


Notes on what's happening at KPFA
-- Getting Tom Voorhees on the PNB
-- Rejecting the Bylaws change
-- Another program taken off the air

by Daniel Borgström


Saturday, January 11, 2020 -- KPFA's Local Station Board (LSB) meeting.


Not a lot of drama at this day's meeting, but two important things were decided. First of these was to choose four reps to the PNB (Pacifica National Board). That is one of the most important decisions the LSB makes each year. Other LSB tasks are to evaluate the General Manager and also the Program Director -- neither of whom have been evaluated for some time.

There are 24 seats on the board, and our affinity group, Rescue Pacifica, has 8 of these seats. So logically we could get one of our people, Tom Voorhees, on the PNB. But there was a potential glitch -- the majority faction, the UIR/SK, had made multiple attempts to force Tom off the PNB. First, a couple of years ago, they had launched a series of lawsuits. I'll spare you the excruciating details on that and just say they failed, and Tom kept his seat on the PNB. Then, during the takeover of WBAI in New York, one of the takeover-team (Donald Goldmacher) attempted to remove him from the PNB. No grounds for that were ever given, and the matter was dropped, but it was quite clearly because Tom was one of the PNB members who refused to go along with the takeover of WBAI.

So we considered it possible that the majority faction, (the UIR/SK) might find a pretext to block Tom from running. Well, they didn't. So today Tom Voorhees was elected to another year on the PNB without any fights or drama.

(UIR/SK is United for Independent Radio/SaveKPFA; both UIR and SK are deceptively named, adapted from the names of opposing groups.)

The other two listener reps chosen today for the PNB were Chris Cory and Akio Tanaka, both of the UIR/SK. (Donald Goldmacher, who'd been one of their PNB reps last year and played a prominent role in the takeover, didn't run for the PNB this time.)

One staff rep was reelected: Sabrina Jacobs. She was the acting chair of the PNB during the takeover of WBAI in New York.

(Please note that I'm trying to use a neutral term for the month-long takeover of WBAI. The takeover team euphemistically calls it "the October attempt to save Pacifica," and we call it "the coup" or "the hijacking of WBAI.")

THE PACIFICA RESTRUCTURING PROJECT

That concluded what is normally considered one of the LSB's most important tasks of the year. Then we had another agenda item of major importance. That was a motion to endorse the "Pacifica Restructuring Project." If enacted, this project will bring about a total change in Pacifica's bylaws, replace elected boards with ones where most seats will be appointed. LSBs of the other Pacifica stations are also voting on it; WPFW and WBAI have already rejected it unanimously.

The motion was presented by LSB members Susan da Silva, Akio Tanaka, and Donald Goldmacher. Donald participated remotely by speaker phone. The motion read:

"Be It resolved that the amended Pacifica Bylaws submitted to the Pacifica National Board in September 2019 by more than 1% of the Pacifica members, and subsequently accepted by the Pacifica National Board, be enacted as soon as possible."

Although almost everyone recognizes that the PNB is dysfunctional, the proposed restructuring will take out the democracy without remedying the problem. That was our view, so we opposed it. However, there were only 8 of us, and while I can't say what the others of our affinity group may have expected (after all, nobody likes to say a fight is lost before you fight it), I thought this awful thing was certain to pass. After all, the deep station at KPFA was home base for last fall's takeover of WBAI, and now this.

Discussion on that began at 1 p.m. and continued for nearly an hour. Everyone spoke, and as they spoke, one after another, it began to look like we were not totally alone in opposing it. To my surprise, even Sabrina Jacobs (former spokesperson for the takeover of WBAI) opposed it, as did several others of the LSB majority. So as the discussion drew to a close, it looked as though this just might be close to a tie.
(There is just too much said in that discussion to even try to quote here. I recommend listening to it on the archive at kpftx.org)

Then came the vote:
4 in favor
13 no
4 abstained
Motion failed.

This should've been a roll call vote. It was not. Three of four who voted yes were Susan, Aki, and Tim; I'm not sure who the fourth was. Quite strangely, it appears that Donald Goldmacher hung up and left without bothering to vote for that motion which he'd put so much of his efforts into.

So KPFA's LSB did not endorse the Bylaws changes, the "Pacifica Restructuring Project." Nevertheless, our station's General Manager Quincy McCoy announced over KPFA's airwaves: "Members of the PNB voted on the proposed new bylaws & the LSBs are now voting and so should listener-members" -- possibly giving the erroneous sense that the proposal was well received.

There was also a second motion by Susan, an addendum to the first: "Be it resolved that the delegate members of the KPFA LSB believe the Pacifica membership should have a right to vote on the current bylaw proposal submitted by membership petition in September 2019."

Discussion opened and James McFadden of Rescue Pacifica said, "I recommend that we abstain on this motion. It is meaningless grandstanding that wastes LSB time. The current bylaws define when a listener election is required. This is an attempt to include propaganda."

No one else spoke on that motion, and we voted: 5 in favor.
14 abstained.

It was two o'clock. The meeting took a break, then continued on for another hour. Next on the agenda was "Public Comments," which is normally near the beginning of the meeting. Two people from the audience spoke: Stan Woods and Anthony Fest, both former LSB members.

"First off I want to congratulate the board for voting down the Corporate Model proposed Bylaws," said Stan Woods, and then commented on the station's sparse coverage of the antiwar movement. "KPFA has always been known as the antiwar station. Not so much anymore! ... KPFA has rarely had genuine anti-imperialist, antiwar activists on the air recently, instead preferring guests that MSNBC or NPR would have no problems with. One blatant example is the frequent appearance of Professor Karen Greenberg [Director of The Center on National Security] who in response to a question from myself stated, 'We should never forget that the FBI or CIA are there to protect us!'"

Across from Stan sat board member and KPFA show host Philip Maldari. Just the previous Sunday, Philip had hosted Karen Greenberg on his show, but she's been on at least once since then. Some have joked that she's on so often she might as well have her own show.

The second speaker, Anthony Fest, talked about KWMR, a community radio station at Point Reyes and Bolinas, which operates on $400,000, only about 12% of what KPFA spends. Not peanuts, but it showed that a community radio can run on a lot less than we might think necessary. In addition to about 95 adult volunteers, the station also had junior high and high school students performing as deejays. Maybe KPFA should consider something like that; it could generate interest among young people.

General Manager Quincy McCoy was absent. Business Manager Maria Negret wasn't there either. So treasurer Sharon Adams gave the treasurer's report along with a bit of obligatory WBAI bashing. There were no financial spread sheets.

Chris Cory, chair of the PNB's National Finance Committee, reported that Pacifica has hired a new iCFO, Anita Sims. She works for NETA (National Educational Telecommunications Association), and was the supervisor of her predecessor; so Ms. Sims is familiar with Pacifica.

Near the end of the agenda was an item listed as: "Old Business: Motion concerning PNB Directors." That's the way the secretary listed it, giving no indication that it's a motion Rescue Pacifica introduced in December; the item should have read: "Motion to consider the censure of Donald Goldmacher for accusations that could have tarnished the reputation of fellow PNB member Tom Voorhees during a Pacifica election." The LSB didn't get to it last month, nor at this meeting. So it'll just continue to stay there, possibly to the discomfort of some.

The meeting adjourned at 3:15, having lasted 4 hours.
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THE MONDAY MORNING AFTER
On Monday the 13th, just two days after the LSB meeting which General Manager Quincy McCoy did not attend, he took yet another show off the air. This latest target is "Work Week," hosted by Steve Zeltzer, the only show on KPFA devoted to labor issues and probably one of the very few if not the only show specifically on labor in the Bay Area. For a so-called progressive station to terminate coverage of such an important and under-covered subject indicates that KPFA is joining the class war on the wrong side.

Lacking any explanation from the GM, this could be seen as a retaliatory measure; Steve is a former LSB member who raised uncomfortable questions, and recently he was interviewed on WBAI in a discussion of the Coup.

During the last couple of years, General Manager McCoy has taken several programs off the air; these include "Guns & Butter," "Discrete Music," and "Twit Wit Radio." McCoy's biggest takedown was last October at KPFA's Pacifica sister station in New York, WBAI 99.5 FM, where former iED John Vernile appointed him "Consulting Programmer of Pacifica Across America." In that capacity McCoy replaced all local programming on WBAI's airwaves with piped in programs and awful machine music.

KPFA is now playing a cart with the lines, "Quincy McCoy, our terrific general manager."

This "terrific" GM needs to be evaluated by the LSB. That's one of the duties of the LSB, long overdue.

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Here are KPFA's current officers and new PNB reps:
LSB chair: Christina Huggins -- UIR/SK
LSB vice chair: Marilyn Langlois -- Rescue Pacifica
LSB secretary: Carol Wolfley -- UIR/SK
LSB treasurer: Sharon Adams -- UIR/SK

KPFA's Pacifica National Board (PNB) reps:
Tom Voorhees -- Rescue Pacifica
Chris Cory -- UIR/SK
Akio Tanaka -- UIR/SK
Sabrina Jacobs -- UIR/SK

The eight RESCUE PACIFICA persons on the KPFA LSB are: Frank Sterling, Marilyn Langlois, Tom Voorhees, Karina Stenquist, Mantra Plonsey, James McFadden, Christine Pepin, and myself Daniel Borgström.


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DANIEL BORGSTRÖM
member of KPFA's Local Station Board
with input from members and supporters of Rescue Pacifica

For updates, reports, audios, & essays about KPFA/Pacifica, please visit these websites:

RESCUE PACIFICA rescuepacifica.net

PACIFICA IN EXILE pacificainexile.org

AUDIO ARCHIVES of LSB meetings kpftx.org

DANIEL'S SITE Daniel's Free Speech Zone



KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington, DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 250 affiliate stations.








DISCLAIMER: This is not an official Pacifica Foundation website nor an official website of any of the five Pacifica Radio Stations (KPFA Radio, KPFK Radio, KPFT Radio, WBAI Radio, WPFW Radio). Opinions and facts alleged on this site belong to the author(s) of the website only and should NOT be assumed to be true or to reflect the editorial stance or policy of the Pacifica Foundation, or any of the five Pacifica Radio Stations (KPFA Radio, KPFK Radio, KPFT Radio, WBAI Radio, WPFW Radio), or the opinions of its management, Pacifica National Board, station staff or other listener members.

The Best & the Brightest, at KPFA

by Daniel Borgström
December 13, 2010

For over five years I've been attending KPFA's board meetings, and one thing that's impressed me is how accomplished the people in and around KPFA are. Extremely intelligent people, all of them, from the staff to the board members to the listener-activists. At KPFA I feel I've stepped into a gathering of the best and the brightest.

And saying that, I am reminded how it was supposedly the "best and the brightest" who took us to Vietnam.

Today KPFA and Pacifica are broke, close to bankruptcy. It was ostensibly the best and the brightest of KPFA's staff and their supporters whose financial planning and policies have brought KPFA/Pacifica to the brink of fiscal disaster. I'm thinking of the unsustainable budgets of the last five years or more, the $375K check that was left in a drawer, and the continuing effort to defund KPFA/Pacifica. Several of KPFA's own show hosts and newscasters have recently been using their air-time to trash the network and discourage donors from contributing.

Pacifica holds the licenses to stations in five major cities, and if the network crashes, those frequencies will be sold, lost to community radio, and replaced with who knows what? Maybe Rush Limbaugh. There are also over 160 affiliates which depend on Pacifica for much of their programming; they would face an uncertain future.

Non-corporate community radio plays a necessary role in this country, delivering information and cultural programming not heard in mainstream media. It also creates a sense of social connectedness, enabling people to break out of isolation, letting them know that they are not alone in their thoughts, tastes and opinions, which may run counter to lies and spin promoted by Wall Street, the arms industry and the political elite.

All of us who listen to Pacifica radio have personal stories of its significance in our lives. My story is one I've told a hundred times, but I'll tell it again. When I was 18, I joined the Marine Corps and served 4 years. When people ask me why, I explain that where I grew up there was no Pacifica radio, nothing like KPFA or any of its sister stations. Only one point of view was heard. I was so brainwashed by it that I thought I had to go out and save my country.

And having finished my 4 years in the USMC, I spent the next several years of my life struggling to understand what it was that I'd really been defending as a Marine. Pacifica Radio would've been very helpful to me back then.

Today the situation is somewhat different. Pacifica Radio does broadcast in many parts of this nation and its message is available for the 15-, 16- and 17-year-old Daniels who might be thinking of joining the USMC. It's also there for the 23- and 24-year-old Daniels who, like myself at that age, are now struggling to make sense of their military experience, of what they took part in and saw.

I would like to see Pacifica Radio continue to be available for the countless Daniels across this country. Is it too much to expect the best and the brightest to understand this?

DANIEL BORGSTRÖM, ex-Marine against the Wars
December 13, 2010

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Post Script, half a year later

It's now half a year since I wrote the above essay, and the outlook has become considerably more optimistic. Financially the station is doing better--not great, but at least a lot better. This is in large part thanks to Executive Director Arlene Engelhardt who finally stepped in at the last minute to reign in expenses, laying off several of the staff. That has not gone over well with some of the "best and the brightest" who've been working to undermine this in every way, even misappropriating KPFA's airwaves to attack and vilify Arlene and others who get in their way, and when a new General Manager was hired in January, they drove him out within a month. They also tried to drive Arlene out, and had she left, it could well have been the end of the end of the Pacifica network. She has courageously withstood the attacks, done her job well, and among other things found a new interim General Manager, Andrew Phillips, who is turning out to be an excellent manager.

Along with Arlene and Andrew, many activists, both listeners and staff, have been working hard to support the station, to keep it in Pacifica and keep Pacifica alive. Thanks to the efforts of these people, things look a lot better now. Better, yes, but it's not over; the struggle for a democratic Pacifica continues, and needs our ongoing support.

Daniel Borgström
May 28, 2011


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REPORT FROM THE FUND DRIVE,
which ended May 25, 2011

KPFA's spring fund drive raised $743,000.
The total of $743,000 in listener support from the just-completed on-air fund drive is *$83,000 MORE* than the Spring 2010 fund drive of 12 months ago - which totaled only $660,000 in listener support.
KPFA continues to make slow and steady progress towards regaining economic stability after posting a 1.2 million dollar loss in the period between 10-1-2008 and 9-30-2010.

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independent auditor's report
Pacifica Foundation financial statements for the year ended September 30, 2010

Click here to view 10 Years of KPFA Finances - from audited financial statements

and, presented as a GRAPH, the same data:
10 Years of KPFA Finances GRAPH

for more information and updates please visit United for Community Radio at unitedforcommunityradio.org/

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Between the Minutes
Scenes & Sketches from KPFA board meetings
a series by Daniel Borgström

"You are a chickenshit coward!" --After the Minutes on January 13, 2011

Intimidation between the minutes March 7, 2010

Siegel: "You're suing me!" March 7, 2010

The Split Between the Minutes Dec 5, 2009 & Jan 11, 2010

The "RAID" August 8, 2009

KPFA's manager attends a board meeting: March 14, 2009

Between the Minutes: January 10, 2009

Between the Minutes: June 14, 2008

Between the Minutes March 24, 2007

Between the Minutes February 24, 2007

Between the Minutes January 13, 2007

Parliamentary Addiction: Roberts Abuse at the LSB April 22, 2006

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Updates, reports & essays about KPFA & Pacifica Foundation Radio at
UNITED FOR COMMUNITY RADIO


KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 160 affiliate stations.










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Robbie Osman - Democracy at KPFA

The Value of Democracy at KPFA

by Robbie Osman, of Across the Great Divide
August 2010

. . . some people are arguing that democracy itself is dangerous for KPFA and that the reforms instituted after the station's staff and listeners successfully resisted a board coup in 1999-2001 ought to be rescinded. Here, for any who might be interested (and who might have the patience to read this long essay) are my thoughts on some of the questions before the station and its supporters.

For those with less patience I'll begin with my conclusion. Listener participation is necessary to KPFA's health and effectiveness and the station is weaker when it is absent or excluded. . . .

for Robbie Osman's essay click here

Parliamentary Addiction

This was my introduction to KPFA's board (LSB) some years ago.--Daniel


Roberts abuse rendered KPFA's Local Station Board dysfunctional. The following report from 2006 recommended enrolling acutely addicted board members in Parliamentarians Anonymous for rehabilitation.

(It should be noted, however, that later studies traced the addiction to an uncontrollable compulsion on the part of a small clique of station staff, backed by local Democratic Party clubs, to prevent a transparent presentation of the budget, and to control all programming at KPFA.)

Descent into the gnarly tangle: the epidemiology of advanced parliamentarianism at KPFA--a year-long empirical study in causes and possible treatments

by Daniel Borgström,
(updated piece from 2006).


About nine years ago I took up board watching. As a KPFA listener I began attending the monthly public meetings of the Local Station Board (LSB), and I have to admit that for me it's often like looking into the insides of my computer and trying to figure out what's going on in there. Just keeping up with the names and faces of the LSB members and the roles they play is an ongoing process. There's also a host of other players in this drama, many of whom I've met or at least seen, and a lot more who just seem to be out there somewhere, exerting their influence on events. Names without faces. And of course there are the hijackers of the 1990's, ghosts of the past, who still cast their nefarious shadows over KPFA and Pacifica Radio.

The board has 25 members, at least 20 of whom are normally present, but they don't always work together in harmony. The dysfunction has often been subtle, but frequently blatant, as on Saturday, April 22, 2006, the day the LSB met in San Jose, and where I really first saw this dysfunctionality manifested. For me, in my career as a board watcher, it was a rite of passage.

I arrived late and walked in the door fearing the meeting would be nearly over, but my concern was unfounded. To my amazement and disgust, it hadn't even begun. After three hours, the board members were still haggling over what items to include on the day's agenda.

The entire session was dominated by Robert's Rules of Order--in all its glory. Someone would speak and someone else would interrupt, saying, "Point of order." The point-of-order guy was Brian Edwards-Tiekert. Brian had points of order on this, and points of order on that.

The purpose for holding this meeting in San Jose was to include listener-activists from the South Bay Area, to hear their input, and involve them in the KPFA process. At least the first part of that plan had been a success; the room was nearly full, some fifty local people attending. But by the time the agenda was finally approved, most of the audience had gone home. For those who remained, it was time for public comments, an opportunity for these people to address the board. Not surprisingly, they got up one after another and castigated the LSB for the horrendous, time-wasting display of parliamentary procedures they had just been subjected to.

At long last, having worked out an agenda, and having received well-deserved scoldings from what remained of the audience, the board could finally settle into the business of the day. However, the hall had to be vacated by five o'clock, and it was now already after four. So, most of the agreed-upon agenda was jettisoned in hopes of dealing with one supremely urgent issue, a matter concerning the Pacifica National Board (PNB).

There was one more hurdle. Although they had rented the hall till 5:00, the meeting was scheduled to end at 4:20. They needed to extend the meeting time; naturally this had to be done according to Robert's Rules of Order.

And, of course, Brian Edwards-Tiekert was there to complicate matters. All afternoon he'd been bringing up arcane points of order, and now he did more of the same, seemingly impervious to the intense anger and disgust that had just been expressed by listeners who'd attended this meeting in hopes of seeing something done. Of course Brian's points were correct, according to the revered rules at least, but they were pointless points.

"Brian! What are you doing!" gasped a fellow board member. And Brian promptly responded with a rule to show that her rebuke was out of order.

I and other listeners in the audience sat there, helplessly watching the clock and groaning as the precious minutes ticked away. Five minutes wasted, then ten. Another five, and, finally, after twenty of those last minutes had been squandered, the chair overruled him and called for a vote. The meeting was extended to 5 p.m.

That single crucial item--concerning the national board of Pacifica Radio--was then quickly discussed and the vote was unanimous, Brian being part of the unanimity. The meeting then adjourned, having spent less than half an hour of that long afternoon on actual business.

So why had Brian gone off on such a parliamentary binge? He's a capable KPFA news reporter, and had aired some excellent, well researched reports on environmental topics, which made it even harder for me to understand his disruptive use of the rules of order. It seemed a bizarre and inconsistent way for an intelligent person to act. He seemed a likable person; I couldn't imagine him being so incredibly inconsiderate to all the people at that meeting. The big "why" of Brian's actions kept puzzling me as I remembered him sitting there, desperate to make yet another point of order, his hand reaching out compulsively for a microphone, like an alcoholic grasping for a drink.

The sickness and abuse of parliamentarianism. Brian Edwards-Tiekert was clearly addicted to Robert's Rules of Order, and, like so many addicted persons, he created problems for people around him. "Parliamentarians Anonymous," I kept thinking, might be the answer.

Addictions are said to be a symptom of underlying problems in the family, in this case the KPFA mgmt family. There is a faction of this board (the "SaveKPFA" slate) which represents the station's dysfunctional mgmt and maneuvers to render the board irrelevant, leaving their control issues untreated. Brian Edwards-Tiekert is the favored child of station mgmt, essentially their voice on the board, and a leader in this faction, which enables him in his parliamentary binges.


DANIEL BORGSTRÖM



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for updates, reports & essays on KPFA/Pacifica,
please visit these websites:

UNITED FOR COMMUNITY RADIO

PACIFICA IN EXILE

ANN GARRISON, A KPFA REPORTER

LORDS & LADIES vs. the PEASANTS at KPFA


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KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 160 affiliate stations.



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.

What's Really Happening

at KPFA 94.1 fm
A Labor Perspective - 2010

There is a disinformation campaign going on at KPFA and many people are being taken in by it. Who would not believe their favorite progressive programmers? For an explanation of why some otherwise excellent paid staff might be advancing disinformation, skim or read the letter from staff member Robbie Osman. And read on:


Myth: Pacifica Foundation has eliminated the popular Morning Show from KPFA because they were in conflict with the hosts, and fired them.

Fact: Pacifica had to step in to save KPFA's financial situation. After 3 years of unbalanced budgets, KPFA had spent down a million dollars reserve fund and had to borrow money to meet payroll. It owes Pacifica much money, which threatens the entire Pacifica network. KPFA's budget proposal for this year was way overdue. Elected representatives of this independent Pacifica network that includes 5 stations, 160+ affiliates and their voted in, legally-responsible Executive Director, asked all 5 Pacifica stations to cut down on paid staff 2-3 years ago, as the only way to meet escalating deficits. KPFA's 4 "sister" Pacifica stations have already done this. Only KPFA continued to employ more paid staff than it can afford. Pacifica had to cut down on KPFA's paid staff for them, or risk losing the network.


Myth: Pacifica cut staff outside of specifications by the union contract, ignoring the contract, union busting, and choosing to fire those they considered their enemies.

Fact: Pacifica's layoffs are strictly by the CWA-KPFA contract, using seniority and "skill set" as the primary criteria for layoffs, and have nothing to do with programs or politics. (Former KPFA management allied with Save KPFA actually did propose a plan to eliminate programs they disliked.)


Myth: There was an alternative budget proposed which made other cuts and would have preserved jobs. It was ignored by Arlene Engelhardt, the Executive Director, who is making these unnecessary cuts anyway.

Fact: This budget was examined by the Pacifica Finance Committee and the Chief Financial Officer, very experienced in this process, and was seen to have saved only a fraction of expenditures. Staff cuts were the only way. Check out the legally-mandated 2010 audit report, including the footnotes, for the sobering reality of KPFA finances.


Myth: KPFA's union leadership is challenging the layoffs, so Pacifica must be anti-union.

Fact: Arlene Engelhardt was following the seniority list, as CWA had previously instructed her to do. The faction on the Local Station Board of KPFA aligned with the side protesting the layoffs (the Concerned Listeners/Save KPFA), unanimously voted down a proposal (by a member of the slate supporting the Pacifica decision), to make the cuts in compliance with the CWA contract! Who is antiunion?! Why is the union challenging the layoffs? -- this union's leadership is aligned with the faction which is refusing the cuts - the core entrenched staff/"KPFAworker"/"Concerned Listener"/"Save KPFA" faction. Some unionized staff members, including Flashpoints programmers, support the actions of Pacifica management.


Myth: Arlene Engelhardt opted out of taking the case to litigation because she'd lose, so she was forced to rehire Edwards-Tiekert, with back pay, but they went on to lay off John Hamilton.

Fact: Brian E-T had the option to move to another department and bump a paid staff member with less seniority, but chose to try to get his Morning Show back. When this wasn't happening, he chose to bump, and Hamilton got bumped. There are recordings of Edwards-Tiekert admitting he could bump Hamilton from back in November. Pacifica granted him the back pay he was trying to get - though it was his choice not to bump for 3 months - because it was cheaper to pay him than to litigate and Pacifica could not afford the expense of litigation.


Myth: The Morning Show and its hosts are the most listened to and by far the best fundraisers at KPFA and this will deprive the station of all that money.

Fact: The show is in the morning drive time, the most listened to time of day for all stations. (Democracy Now is doing even better in that 7:00 a.m. slot.)


Myth: Laying off these hosts is the same as destroying this program.

Fact: These hosts are fairly recent to this program. Many of us appreciate the skills and hard work of those who were laid off. KPFA has had many hosts on this and other shows, who sometimes started as inexperienced volunteers and grew, sharing their skill, warmth, and resources.


Myth: These layoffs caused 7 programmers with more seniority to quit, and they were mostly people of color, so these layoffs are racist.

Fact: This is a logical fallacy. Also, the 7 were taking advantage of severance offers.


Myth: Pacifica takes KPFA's money for its expensive staff, and does little or nothing for stations.

Fact: Pacifica's "central services" range from providing Democracy Now and FSRN News to insuring the stations plus at least 3 other essential services. Were KPFA to pay for these services on its own, a recent estimate puts the costs at $200,000 - $400,000. Pacifica's maximum staff salaries are $90,000, a low figure for these positions. Pacifica cut its own staff drastically in the last few years and the Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer have been working extra hours as a result. FSRN News, which provides around 1/2 of KPFA's news, is threatened because of lack of payments.


Myth: KPFA would be better off without Pacifica.

Fact: Besides losing the above services, Pacifica itself would go down, and we would lose an entire network of 5 stations and 160 affiliates, spreading information worldwide. Is that something progressives want to do? What would happen to KPFA after Pacifica's invaluable broadcast license goes up for sale? Get bought by Clear Channel? Or a rightwing religious group?


-------------------------

Fact: The faction making these claims have had leverage to continue this disinformation because they know Pacifica must move carefully in the PR war their side has created. Many staff members disagree with their analysis. The listeners by and large have been kept in the dark about KPFA and Pacifica governance, trust their familiar progressive radio hosts, and have heard only one side.


For a fuller account of the issues referred to here, please take a look at articles on this website and also those which are linked to here.




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for updates, reports & essays on KPFA/Pacifica,
please visit these websites:

UNITED FOR COMMUNITY RADIO

PACIFICA IN EXILE

ANN GARRISON, A KPFA REPORTER

LORDS & LADIES vs. the PEASANTS at KPFA


*** *** ***

KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 160 affiliate stations.



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.

Tracy Rosenberg responds

The following is in response to efforts to recall Tracy Rosenberg from the KPFA Station Board and the National Pacifica Board of Directors. Questions were answered first by Tracy herself and secondly by listener-activist, Mara Rivera. (For more on this issue, visit: Stop the KPFA Recall.org and Support KPFA.org. Also, you can listen to an archived audio of the On-Air Live Debate, broadcast Friday, June 29th, at 1 PM, between Tracy Rosenberg and recall proponent Margy Wilkinson. To hear it click here.)


1) Did Tracy Rosenberg draw up a "hit list" targeting KPFA's old Morning Show?

Tracy Rosenberg: The only list I am aware of is the union seniority list, which was not "drawn up" by me, but exists independently of me. The most dozen recent hires would have been the dozen employees on the lower half of the list (that is what seniority means). They are the ones who might have been affected by layoffs as Pacifica struggled to address KPFA's two years of $500,000+ operating deficits for the fiscal years ending 9/30/2009 and 9/30/2010 and return KPFA to solvency. KPFA's financial position as of September 30, 2011 is at least $550,000 improved from the financial position of September 30, 2010.

Mara Rivera: Although the layoffs in the Summer of 2010 were difficult, there was never anything improper about the decisions by Pacifica's Executive Director, Arlene Englehardt. Brian Edwards-Tiekert claims that he and Aimee Allison, the other host of the Morning Show were treated unjustly. Brian has always had the option to "bump" another employee - and finally did so when it became clear union arbitration would not uphold his stated goal to return to an AM host slot.

Pacifica did give Edwards-Tiekert back pay to avoid another round of costly litigation but no guilt was admitted or should be assumed. His colleague Aimee Allison pursued an arbitration hearing and lost, receiving neither restoration to a position at KPFA nor back pay.

2) Did Tracy Rosenberg try to overturn election results?

Rosenberg: The motion referred to was not written by me. It was authored by then-Houston PNB director Richard Uzzell. 2010 PNB chair George Reiter asked me to introduce the motion under the Coordinating Committee report section of the meeting, so I did. His reasoning was the motion was time-sensitive and as an earlier Coordinating committee motion had expired, this motion needed to be dealt with by the board in a timely manner. As with any motion presented to the full board, the motion was subject to a vote by the Pacifica National Board. It passed easily and represents the will of the duly-elected directors at that time.

Mara Rivera: After the 1999 attempt to take over Pacifica by Washington based political figures the new by-laws were written to prohibit political appointees and public office holders from serving on the Pacifica Local and National Boards. (Article Four, Section 2.A, and Article Five, Section 1.B). Dan Siegel implied in nationwide media that he was an important appointee in Mayor Quan's office. It was reasonable to assume that his long collaboration with Mayor Quan and frequent meetings with her could present a conflict-of-interest as a Pacifica National Board member.

* A year ago the National Board determined that under the Bylaws Dan Siegel's acceptance of appointments to the Mayor of Oakland's administration disqualified him from service on the KPFA LSB and the National Board

* The question of Siegel's eligibility was sent to the Pacifica National Board for a determination by the PNB Coordinating Committee, which sets the agenda for the board meetings to insure that time-sensitive matters are considered by the board. As a board officer (Treasurer) Tracy served on the Coordinating Committee and presented the issue on behalf of the committee. This is normal operating procedure for the board.

* Siegel and several KPFA LSB members took the matter to court. In December the court ruled that Pacifica's Bylaws should be narrowly construed to only apply to holders of "public office" as that term is defined in California case law, and that Siegel is eligible to serve.


It is strange that Save KPFA is so concerned about costly lawsuits, when they have filed so many bogus ones themselves. Currently, four complaints to the National Labor Relations Board that originated from the Save KPFA faction have all been dismissed.


3) Did Tracy Rosenberg steal an email list?

Rosenberg: The email was designed and authored by KPFA staff, provided information about upcoming and archived shows on KPFA and directed people to the KPFA website to make donations, which about 20 people did. All I did was loan a Salsa account on request. Had I not done so, the staff involved would probably have accessed mail chimp or another similar free service.

Rivera: . All the other stations and Pacifica National itself went through their own layoffs mandated by Pacifica.
The Concerned Listener/KPFAworker/SaveKPFA faction has been manipulating listeners with disinformation to get them to support its self-serving aims, to the detriment of the station and entire network. They have chosen Tracy Rosenberg as their target, in a situation where they are losing throughout the rest of the network. She, as a member of the National Finance Committee, has an understanding of the true financial picture and the manipulations which they were/are involved in, which almost brought the network down.
This baseless recall action is estimated to cost KPFA Big Bucks!


Tracy Rosenberg is a knowledgeable media professional and a Pacifica financial expert whom we've been lucky to involve in the governance of KPFA and Pacifica.


For history on the email accusations, you can read this older article from May, 2011


Tracy Rosenberg responds to email accusations

May 1, 2011

To make a long story short (or maybe just shorter), the email list in question was sent to me twice. The first time was in January at with regard to lawsuit # RG10549212 in Alameda County Superior Court. I was actually sent two lists, one with about 5,000 emails, the other with about 1,000. They came without my knowledge, accompanied by a request to send unsolicited communications to these lists via electronic messaging or the Pacifica Foundation would face a petition for $33,000 in attorney's fees.

The request was to send an email to 6,000 email addresses relating to a 5 month old staff election, one in which none of these listeners participated in and one which most of them probably knew or cared nothing about. I really couldn't imagine a stupider way to annoy and mystify our subscribers, but of course, KPFA and Pacifica often fail to operate in their own self-interest.

Mass emailing is most easily done with software resources, and like most not for profits (except KPFA apparently), the one I work for and direct has an account. Unlike KPFA, we send out regular newsletters to a large mailing list that includes about 10,000 subscribers and a press list of about 800. From time to time, my nonprofit helps out those with less resources by sharing the software for a press release or communique for a worthwhile cause. In the past, we've done so for the Committee to Free the Sf8, the anti-smart meter folks in the beginning of their movement, the Free Palestine Movement during the last sail to Gaza, Common Frequency, and the Committee to End FBI Repression. I consider that a part of being a community organization that is allied with and supportive of social justice movements in this country. We share resources and help each other. Pacifica was assisted with an Al Jazeera announcement at the end of last year on a similar basis. Obviously, these communiques are not Media Alliance-branded - they belong to our friends and allies and we are simply aiding with distribution.

While happy to do so for causes that are compelling and move forward mobilizations for justice and democracy, it was a bit less compelling to provide assistance for the distribution of largely-unwanted material that served no purpose but internal KPFA turf wars. Being a national board member, I felt uneasy with failing to comply with a direct request, so I consulted an attorney privately as to whether or not it was within my duties as a board member to fulfill this request. I was told (twice) that I was under no obligation to do so and therefore declined to fulfill the request. I did not find it to be in the best interests of KPFA or Pacifica and while I could not stop them from complying with the demand to avoid financial stress, there was no need to be the agent of distribution.

So that was the end of that for a while and of course, the lists I had been unwillingly sent were used for nothing at all.

At the beginning of March, I was contacted by some KPFA staff working on the Morning Mix program who thought it would be a good idea to help along the fund drive process by doing some outreach. As a long-time proponent of outreach and having been long gob-smacked at KPFA's utter failure to engage in any meaningful promotion or communication to its listeners and members about the radio, I was pleased as punch that *someone* was showing a little initiative. They had an email template and text prepared, text that covered a week of upcoming shows, links to an archive from a particularly wonderful show Nora Barrows Friedman had hosted and a request for website donations to KPFA. All constructive, positive and in line with healthy promotional efforts. It seemed way too functional to be a KPFA-originated effort. They just needed a distribution engine, asked me for a partner send, and I said sure. Send me your list of recipients. On receipt, the number of emails looked familiar and lo and behold, it was the same list I had already been sent - with a different file name.

Using the standard that KPFA's lists should be used to promote KPFA programming and solicit donations to KPFA, not to circulate internal politics, this request seemed quite in line with the standards applied consistently to any other partner email distribution done in the past. So I was happy to fulfill this request. I just asked them to maintain their own unsubscribe list to lower the admin demand on me and they set up a gmail account for that purpose. I can only assume that they believed KPFA's email personnel either would not or could not assist them to distribute program announcements.

The good news is that the mails had a bumper response rate of 20%+ opens, got about 20 online donations, lots of click throughs to the archives and an extremely low unsubscribe rate - 3% of recipients asked to be removed, 97% did not. If you know anything about email marketing, that's an extremely positive response rate. Way higher than average.

Which is an excellent argument for the case I have long made which is that promotion of programming and regular communication with members is essential for every community media organization, and KPFA's inability and unwillingness to do this basic thing has cost us dearly in declining audiences (as we have seen from 2007-2010), Pushing internal politics instead of radio is a losing strategy if what we care about is the institution surviving and thriving and I appreciate the Morning Mix staff for being clear on that and having the energy and freshness to take action. I wish more of the station was so enterprising. Maybe in time they will be. Certainly the two weeks of promotions proved that it's a good thing to do.

So a few final thoughts:

The election-related lawsuit is the reason for the "release" of email lists. In addition to being released to Salsalabs, the request when completed, also resulted in the upload of mailing lists to the "Mailchimp" email service. If KPFA is concerned about keeping lists internal to their own servers, then such requests should not be made to support power struggles around elections.

It is really not possible to steal something that is emailed to you by its owner. It is only possible to misuse it against the better interests of those who sent it to you. By choosing not to distribute internal politics and choosing to distribute material that *encouraged* people to listen to the radio station and to donate to it, the unsolicited lists were used to benefit KPFA, not to harm it.

Since I presume the election-related emails will eventually be sent by some other distribution module, (as they were on April 27th) KPFA members are encouraged to ignore the communique.

Finally, I really could care less about Save KPFA and their "censures". In my opinion, they have conclusively demonstrated in their Concerned Listeners guise profound financial irresponsibility towards KPFA and a willingness to damage an institution that I care deeply about if they cannot control it absolutely. In my opinion, they are inimical to everything community radio is supposed to be about

Long live community media.

TRACY ROSENBERG
ED, Media Alliance
Listener Rep, KPFA LSB and Director, Pacifica Foundation



Stop the KPFA Recall.org

Indybay article


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Updates, reports & essays about KPFA & Pacifica Foundation Radio at
UNITED FOR COMMUNITY RADIO


KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 160 affiliate stations.

Stealing Save KPFA

Stealing Save KPFA: erasing history

by Jeffrey Blankfort, Maria Gilardin, Curt Gray, Marianne Torres, & Sasha Futran
September 21, 2010

I have learned that a group that had formerly called itself the Concerned Listeners, a faction in the community that are partisan supporters of the status quo controlling clique that runs KPFA and which oppose accountability and participation of 'outsiders' in the station, is now calling itself Save KPFA. The choice of this name is an ahistoric action that speaks of an arrogant sense of entitlement, and a lack of knowledge or interest in how KPFA has developed and changed through its history as a ground-breaking community radio station.

The sad irony is that the original Save KPFA advanced ideals and goals that were and are in moral opposition to what this current group seems to be supporting. The original Save KPFA championed democracy, transparency, community participation, and accountability for KPFA, as a vital and irreplaceable resource of the Northern California progressive community. The real, original Save KPFA came out of large public meetings held at the Ashkenaz Folk Dance and Music Hall on Berkeley's San Pablo Ave. The meetings were called by a group of listeners and unpaid KPFA programmers in response to station management's unilateral actions to cancel a swath of community volunteer produced programming without notice or discussion. In the Winter of early 1993 there were meetings attended by more than 200 people, both listeners and programmers, and all expressed growing concerns about the direction that KPFA was headed and a fear that the community that both supported and depended on KPFA was being pushed aside.

Those early meetings of hundreds of listeners and activists and a scattering of staff led to more than a year of intense organizing and a harsh education on the widening distance between what supporters of KPFA believed Pacifica was, and the reality behind the image. It was the first time that many had a chance to tell and share with the larger community their knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes, information that was kept off the air and out of the printed program guide, the Folio. Coming together in these early meetings, gaining knowledge by sharing information, developing a more sophisticated understanding of who and what was shaping changes in the radio station that they had supported and relied on for so long, this was one of the beginnings of a nation-wide Free Pacifica movement.

At these town hall style meetings on those rainy Winter nights in the darkened nightclub we learned for the first time about Pacifica's Strategy for National Programming document, that over time called for more and more local volunteer produced programming to be replaced by national programming produced by radio professionals. It also called for Pacifica to go after big money grants to fund all this programming, with a stated aim to become 'partners and players' with the largest corporate foundations such as Pew, Ford, Carnegie and Reader Digest Foundations.

There were plans for a national morning show and a national over-night call-in talk show with big name celebrity hosts. We recognized that this abandonment of local and volunteer produced programming as a fundamental turning away from what makes community radio what it is supposed to be. We called it what it was, NPR-ization of community radio. These plans were moving forward with little or no knowledge or input from listeners or the average programmer.

For the first time in a long time a group of listeners were learning how KPFA really worked. We learned that there was a Program Council that consisted of programming dept. heads that met every week at the station. We learned that there was a local station advisory board that met quietly at the station every month, which should have been a venue for community input, if listeners had been encouraged to attend or even knew it existed. The local board was self-selected and had the power to seat their members on the Pacifica National Board, the real holder of KPFA's license that only met 3 or 4 times a year in different parts of the country. Pacifica was and is a network with 4 other stations that also shares programming with many other affiliate community stations. A lot of the real power to decide the direction of the network seemed to be in the hands of the Foundation's Executive Committee, and smaller power cliques within each station. There was no mechanism for any accountability to the people at the grassroots, the volunteer programmers and the subscribers and listeners.

At the core the station supporters in the public meetings at Ashkenaz loved KPFA and were fighting to defend it, especially its most progressive programming. But they started to realize that their interest and concerns were viewed somehow as a threat by an insular insider culture within the station's management, staff, and local and National boards. Out of the larger town hall style meetings KPFA's new listener activists started to coalesce into the form of the organization named Save KPFA with a smaller, dedicated steering committee. Attempts were made to communicate, to share concerns, to work together with the other stakeholder groups, management, paid and un-paid staff, the station and foundation boards, to both protect and improve KPFA. These attempts were met with a disturbing mix of fear, suspicion, contempt, and disdain so frequently that the impression was communicated very clearly that only compliments were allowed and that any mere listener with a critical opinion was viewed as an enemy of the station as a whole. Not for the last time the listener activists had come together to defend programmers' rights, but programmers did not return that solidarity by supporting the concerns of listeners.

A listener who politely tried to attend a Program Council meeting to suggest ways to use the station's airwaves to educate listeners about internal station issues, as well as about larger media issues involving the FCC and the CPB, and was suggesting that perhaps the Program Council might benefit from having listener representatives attend, observe, and contribute to station programming decisions was angrily shouted out of the meeting, because " listeners do not belong at Program Council meetings". When members of the new listener group Save KPFA, started attending local and National board meetings the members of these boards seemed disturbed to have actual listeners in the audience at their meetings. Any discussion of the issues raised at the listener meetings was mostly suppressed on station call-in shows and the letter section of the printed program guide, the Folio, making it difficult to include the larger listener community in the discussion.

Through 1993 KPFA's new listener activist movement moved from town hall meetings to taking action. The show of listener concerns at the first noisy public meetings at the Ashkenaz dance club resulted in the threatened programming changes being temporarily withdrawn, and KPFA's verbally abusive and divisive station manager Pat Scott was kicked upstairs within Pacifica. She was replaced by her assistant, and within months the iron-fisted Scott would become Pacifica's next Executive Director. As the group recognized that the powers-that-be within Pacifica were not interested in allowing open discussion or debate of the listening community activists' issues to reach the larger KPFA audience via any free exchange of views on the air or in the program guide, other ideas for getting the word out were tried.

Some Save KPFA activists tabled at progressive events, creating surveys to try to get feedback from KPFA listeners. Some started to set up pirate stations, to create an alternative way to get information out. Listener activists tried to call-in on KPFA shows and wrote letters to the local press about the issues within the station. And we started a mailing list to disseminate hidden information to interested listeners through newsletters. We invited representatives of KPFA management and the station board to attend and address our meetings. There was little interest at the station to acknowledged Save KPFA or the community concerns it represented. In fact, a narrative quickly took hold that alternately trivialized the station's critics as out-of-touch-60s-leftovers, or demonized them as violent and out-of-control.

Save KPFA decided that if KPFA would not allow dialog on the air or in the pages of the Folio that the listener activists would buy an ad in the program guide to address the whole KPFA community, inside and outside the station. One of the activists was moved enough to donate the cost of the advertisement from his inheritance from his recently deceased mother. We filed a fictitious name application, opened a bank account and got a P.O box. The Folio editor assured us that our ad would be accepted. So Save KPFA met and worked on statements to outline our group's concerns, positions, proposals. The group collaborated on statements that called for elected station boards and on-air discussion of internal station issues, for the station to depend on its listeners for its funding, not foundations, to stay a voice for dissent that was not afraid to be critical of the powerful. And to keep the station close to the grassroots community of programmers and listeners who had supported it for decades.

Yet, when we submitted the advertisement and the money, suddenly the station refused the ad without explanation. Immediately Save KPFA created a flier featuring the text of our ad and asking why the station was censoring our Free Speech and distributed it that night at a large public event sponsored by the station. Station management then reversed themselves again, saying that they would not allow us to run the advert as we had designed it, but we could publish it as an 'Open Letter' if we modified and edited it to fit into the space they allowed us in the Folio.

In our 'Open Letter', Save KPFA called for local station boards to be elected by subscribers and staff, and for a regular, listener-run call-in show dedicated to discussing internal KPFA and Pacifica matters. This pressure from Save KPFA caused station management and the local advisory board to very tentatively allow an election among subscribers for a small minority of seats on the advisory board.

Even so, the people controlling KPFA and Pacifica acted out their internalized conflict between the hollow on-air rhetoric promoting democratic empowerment for everyone else in the world, and the need to protect their effective total internal dominance of the station. First management announces the election in the program guide, but no discussion or candidate forums on the air, then they announce that the election is canceled for lack of candidates, even after a handful of listeners submit candidate statements. Then they change their minds, but now the voting period was during the on-air fundraiser, and their policy was to not mention the election while pitching for donations on the air. In the last week to send in the ballots an unenthusiastic recorded message is aired reminding listeners of the advisory board vote. On one morning a paid staff member is reported to shout at a volunteer programmer in the control room, "don't play that when my audience can hear it, we don't want any of those idiots elected to the board." The seeming attempt to stifle the election goes from bad to worse, the actual ballot is the thin newsprint of the back page of the program guide, which the listeners must cut out with scissors, mark their votes, fold and tape the ballot together, and send through the mail. Many of the returned ballots were destroyed, torn to tatters by the Post Office sorting machinery, arriving in the station mailbox in little plastic body bags supplied by the Postal Service.

KPFA has so little respect for the election that ballots are collected in an open unsealed mail cubby where they spill out onto the floor like so much trash near the front door. When the time comes to count the votes, ballots are found scattered underfoot down the hall, blown by a draft from the street. None of the candidates or any representatives are allowed to watch the count. It is announced that not enough votes were cast for the election to be valid. The votes are not counted, and where the ballots wind-up is a mystery. Mention is made that some voters had written comments on their ballots, but the ballots disappear without being further examined. In an announcement in the next Folio, the listeners are told that there were not enough votes, but that the advisory board might seat some of the candidates on the board anyway. But that was not a true intention, and none of the election candidates were ever spoken to about sitting on the advisory board, even though they continued to attend the monthly meetings as members of the audience.

In the same period, the station staff had been demanding elections for the staff's own representatives to have a couple of seats on the station advisory board. The station staff voted and elected Maria Gilardin, an un-paid staff member who was a leader of Save KPFA and one of the few staff critics of Pacifica's leadership and policies to be one of the first station staff representatives on the board. But before Maria could take the seat she had been elected to fill, she was banned from all Pacifica properties without any appeal on trumped up charges of inciting violence at a Pacifica National Board meeting in Los Angeles. The KPFA station staff seemed to meekly accept the effective gutting of their vote by the Pacifica board without protest.

These and other events are the legacy of Save KPFA in the year of 1993 at the beginning of the long struggle to democratically reform Pacifica and try to bring some accountability to KPFA and the network. It is the foundation of what became a movement and where many hard facts about the reality of Pacifica were learned. SAVE KPFA IS PART OF PACIFICA'S HISTORY, AND THAT HISTORY STILL MATTERS NOW. It is a history that is preserved in Mathew Lasar's book about the Pacifica struggle, Uneasy Listening, and on websites and e-mail lists.

In 1995 Pacifica moved ahead with its plans to transform itself into a professional media organization by purging hundreds of volunteer programmers from the Pacifica stations, some of whom had donated their time and work to build the network for decades, before being tossed aside as Pacifica tried to become more respectable. In response to the mass purge of programmers the leadership of Save KPFA started a new organization, Take Back KPFA! TBK! carried on the struggle to reform Pacifica and KPFA for the next few years as similar organizations sprang into being at the other Pacifica stations, and a truly national movement evolved. Take Back KPFA! has its own history and accomplishments, and the struggle to reform KPFA and Pacifica continued to be difficult. And just as Save KPFA from 1993 led to Take Back KPFA! in 1995, when events started to build in 1999 towards Pacifica's corporate take-over and the KPFA lock-out, members of Take Back KPFA! helped form a new organization with its goal right in its name, the Coalition for a democratic Pacifica. The CDP was and has been a frontline organization in bringing about the elections for the KPFA Local Advisory Board, and pushing through the new reform bylaws for Pacifica that made subscribers and staff members of the Pacifica Foundation who elect station boards with oversight powers.

This history is too important to be allowed to be forgotten or erased. It is a story of a long exhausting struggle for needed progressive reform in the face of every kind of underhandedness, mean-spiritedness, hypocrisy and deceit. The long fight for elections within Pacifica was finally won, but the same internal struggle for control of the stations and what sort of stations they will be continues. The difference is now those conflicts are out in the open light of day, because elections necessarily lead to more openness. And most unfortunately, there are still those in and around KPFA who hate that openness, and want to keep 'the audience' at arm's length.

Clearly, not only is this history at risk of being erased, but the democratic reforms themselves are under attack. The same culture within the station that feared listener activism and opposed any accountability or oversight has continued to try to undermine the new democratic structures. The status quo faction works to protect the station's patronage culture by using their power within the station to recruit and elect slates of candidates that work to keep the democratic structures from functioning as they were meant to. For the last few years, the anti-reform slate has called itself the KPFA Concerned Listeners, now, in order to confuse and to hide from its own record of voting to block accountability, it has taken the name of Save KPFA.

We, members of the original Save KPFA's steering committee strongly object to the use of our name. We have not endorsed this election slate, nor were we asked. We believe that the use of our name dilutes its historic meaning, and is likely to confuse some voters, who may believe this slate stands for the same things we did. We demand that this election slate stop using our name, or at least take steps to let any voters they have contacted know that it is separate group and not endorsed by us. We ask Pacifica also to take reasonable steps to make clear to subscribers that this election slate is a separate entity, and not related to us or our positions in any way, and certainly not endorsed by us.

Jeffrey Blankfort
Maria Gilardin
Curt Gray
Marianne Torres
Sasha Futran


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for updates, reports & essays on KPFA/Pacifica,
please visit these websites:

UNITED FOR COMMUNITY RADIO

PACIFICA IN EXILE

ANN GARRISON, A KPFA REPORTER

LORDS & LADIES vs. the PEASANTS at KPFA


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KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 160 affiliate stations.



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Intimidation Between the Minutes

YouTube video of March 7, 2010 drama

"He advanced on me yelling and shaking his finger during a meeting I was chairing. I thought he was going to hit me." --Sasha Futran

by Daniel Borgström

Board meetings can be dull, but not the one held on March 7, 2010. Sasha Futran was chairing, and Conn "Ringo" Hallinan spoke out of turn, interrupting Tracy Rosenberg. Sasha called him to order, and he bellowed back "YOU are out of order!"

Conn Hallinan had been board chair till last fall, when his faction, the CL'ers ("Concerned Listeners", now "Save KPFA") narrowly lost their majority in the KPFA election. They were unhappy about that, and, despite being the minority, were agitating to reclaim some or perhaps even all the officer positions of the board, an agenda which might enable them to reassert their control of the station and continue their opaque, top-down style of management that has gotten KPFA into financial jeopardy. As always, the CL'ers were in lock step, taking turns presenting their case, some being nice and some nasty. A good-cop-bad-cop sort of thing. It began to look as if this had been planned out, with Conn assigned to the nasty-guy role.

The outburst was brief and discussion returned to a calmer manner. But the subject had not changed, the CL'ers continuing to take up meeting time pushing their agenda. After two or three CL'ers spoke, Sureya Sayadi defended her side, the ICR ("Independents for Community Radio"), who are the new majority on this board.

"This sounds like bullying to me," she said, referring to the CL'ers' agenda. There'd been an election, she reminded them, and saw no reason to hand the board offices back over to the CL'ers. "You guys were controlling finances--" and she was interrupted by Conn Hallinan, his second outburst that day.

"Call the fucking member to order!" Conn shouted into the mike.

"Conn! Conn!" said Sasha. "I'm going to call YOU to order. Okay?"

"You can TRY!" Conn yelled back at Sasha, going on to accuse Sureya of abusive, personal insults.

"What was personal about that?' Sasha asked, and, not getting a satisfactory answer, repeated her question. "WHAT was personal about that?"

Conn left his seat at the far end of the table and advanced pugilistically towards the chair, pointing his finger at her and shouting as he approached.

"Sit! Sit! Sit!" Sasha ordered. In her other life she's a dog trainer, and at this moment she looked to be on automatic pilot. "Do I need to use positive reinforcement dog training on you? Sit!"

Conn did not sit. He continued his menacing advance, his voice resounding off the walls and filling the room with apprehension. Finally, with only a narrow table between them, Conn halted and stood there shouting at Sasha, point blank. Sureya had engaged in a personal attack, he boomed out, waving his finger.

"That was NOT personal!" Sasha told him, but Conn kept yelling. "Who did [Sureya] name?" Sasha demanded to know.

Watching from the back of the room, I sat there stunned, feeling I should do something. Maybe the rest were as immobilized as I was. The scene might have lasted thirty seconds, but time slows down at critical moments. After an eternity, someone in the audience had the presence of mind to call out, "Conn, you're being videotaped!" I think it was Richard Phelps.

"WHO did she name?" Sasha repeated her question to Conn.

Pointing now at Andrea Prichett, Conn barked, "ASK HER!" And with that, Conn turned about and marched back to his seat, leaving us all to wonder what he meant by telling the Chair to ask Andrea. (Later I asked Andrea, and she didn't know either.)

There was a flurry of comments and expressions of relief. Joe Wanzala and Akio Tanaka murmured words of comfort and reassurance to Sureya. Brian Edwards-Tiekert strode across the room to Conn, put his arm across his shoulder and said a few words, then returned to his seat. There was a brief lull after the storm. It was still only 20 minutes into the meeting.

Then Chandra Hauptman took up a mike and said in a slow, calm, measured tone: "If a member cannot conduct themselves in an orderly manner they should leave. They should be asked to leave."

"Sureya should leave!" yelled a CL'er. I think it was Diane Enriquez.

"Sureya should leave!" chorused another CL'er.

"Okay folks, that's enough!" Sasha told the CL'ers. "THAT IS ENOUGH!"

Sureya was still holding a mike in her hand. "Someone should take a picture of you," she said to Conn.

Sasha turned to Sureya. "There are photos. It's all videotaped."

And indeed it was. It's there for the record. In Sureya Sayadi's speech that Conn interrupted, there are no personal attacks, and, the video shows Conn advancing on the chair.

"Ringo" is Conn's nickname, probably after a prize fighter by that name, considering his father's preoccupation with boxing. All the Hallinan brothers have macho nicknames, like Dynamite, Kayo, and Butch, and they've always prided themselves on being tough guys. Now in their 60's and 70's, it appears the brothers still haven't outgrown that aspect of their youthful image. It seems to be part of how they get their way, their Plan B for use when having a board majority isn't an available option.

I do not for a minute believe that Conn "Ringo" Hallinan was truly out of control that day. I think it was part of his act, an unconscious, learned, strategy. An acquaintance of mine who knew several of the Hallinans well during their teens attests to their pugnacious behavior on many occasions, both at Tamalpais High School, and, a few years later, during summers at Camp Mather. Although they could be pleasant on many social occasions, they were also bullies, even back then, and nobody with any sense was foolish enough to tangle with them.

"Ringo" finished the scene by yelling "Ask her!"--a puzzling exit statement. It looked to me like a clever way of tossing the ball into the other court. That seems to be the way intimidation works. And it did work. Conn was not formally reprimanded and there was not even a motion made to that effect. There was just a brief moment of quiet as people caught their collective breath. Then the CL'ers started in once more with their agenda, and, though they didn't manage to push it all the way through that day, they succeeded in getting it on the schedule for future meetings.

How can the CL'ers get away with stuff like that? It's because Conn Hallinan is more than just a barroom brawler, he's also a prominent member of the progressive community, scion of a famous and wealthy family. He's been a newspaper editor and currently writes articles on foreign policy matters. Conn has considerable status, and when a person with status blows his top and yells and screams and makes a threatening advance, it's often excused and assumed that he has an acceptable and legitimate reason for doing so.

I thought of calling this dramatic episode "The Barroom Brawler vs. the Poodle Dog Trainer," but such a title could obscure the real theme, which goes far beyond questions of who is the biggest, the toughest, the meanest, or the nicest and the most Roberts Rules abiding of the players. The real story in this scene is the struggle between two opposing views of how to run KPFA/Pacifica:

One is the ICR, Peoples Radio and VFJR view that there be financial transparency and accountability--woefully lacking during the years of KPFA/Pacifica's growing financial crisis. To remedy that and also to create more community-building media, we need participation by station staff and listeners through board elections and through bodies such as the Unpaid Staff Organization and the Program Council. These structures, already mandated by the Pacifica bylaws, have been consistently opposed and often thwarted by the CL'ers, who believe a tiny management clique should make all major decisions on their own.

The CL'ers assert that KPFA elections are expensive and cumbersome. But to the extent that this is true, problems have been hugely exacerbated by station management's playing an obstructionist role in every election. While it's true that democracy isn't easy, and isn't cheap either, the alternative is a top-down station management without transparency or accountability. That, in effect, is what we've had for the last several years. The ICR, who are now the board majority, are working to change this, while the CL'ers are defending the status quo. That is what all the yelling and screaming is about.

DANIEL BORGSTRÖM
from KPFA's LSB of March 7, 2010
updated September 13, 2010


Later at the same LSB meeting on March 7, 2010 another CL'er, Dan Siegel, invited Richard Phelps to step outside for a fist fight.

YouTube video of March 7 drauma

Also see: Conn Hallinan & a revealing email exchange

UPDATE

The "Concerned Listeners" (CL'ers) have changed their name to "Save KPFA." But that name belongs to an earlier group. Folks of the original "Save KPFA" fought the good fight for listener democracy for many years in the 1990's, starting in 1993. "Save KPFA" is their name; they earned it, and they have asked the CL'ers to immediately stop using it. But the CL'ers have still been calling themselves "Save KPFA."

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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES from March 7, 2010

AUDIO from KPFA's LSB of march 7, 2010
AUDIO from KPFA's LSB of march 7, 2010

SUREYA SAYADI's talk transcribed from the audio.
Here's the full text of what Sureya said till she was interrupted by Conn:

"I mean this sounds like bulling to me.
Because there's law where you have vote.
When you vote you can't cry about it.
It's just like 'We didn't win.' You know?
Because in the 3 years I've been here
you guys did every single thing even about
how to go to Fresno. Not to go to Fresno.
We don't want to go back to that.
That's why we are being so bad.
Because you guys were controlling
finances--"
(interrupted at this point by Conn Hallinan)


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Updates, reports & essays about KPFA & Pacifica Foundation Radio at
UNITED FOR COMMUNITY RADIO


KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 160 affiliate stations.















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