Verboten to say at KPFA's board

Three things are
Verboten to say
at KPFA's board


by Ann Garrison
(This was written in 2019, and it's as true today in 2024 as it was then)


Ever since the LSBs were created, management, paid staff, and their unpaid staff allies have made every effort to disempower them. There are three things that they've made all but verboten to say: 1) Paid staff has to be cut to balance budgets, and 2) LSBs should have a say in management and/or programming, 3) KPFA should have a program council. (There is in fact a secret program council, so why would its members want to compete with an out-in-the-open program council?)

The same people who've made these statements verboten have also tried to reduce the LSBs to fundraising boards, even though they are elected to represent staff and listeners. Several of them even tried to say that fundraising should be the purpose of the unpaid staff organization (UPSO), even though UPSO's members already give huge amounts of their time and energy to KPFA and make sacrifices to do so.

If the LSB's job is simply to fundraise, then why should we have elections instead of creating a fundraising committee or hiring a Development Director? (I think there is a Development Director now, so if the board's only job is to fundraise, why not ask the Development Director to put a fundraising committee together instead of holding elections?) Neither listeners nor staff vote in the elections because they're concerned about how the board goes about fundraising. They care above all about two things: 1) the programming, and 2) the survival of the station. There are different ideas about how to go about both, which is why we have elections.


ANN GARRISON
Independent Journalist
February 17, 2019

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The specific powers and duties of the board are defined in Article Seven of the Pacifica Foundation Bylaws.