3 Rescue Pacifica candidates win seats on KPFA’s lsb
March 2019
KPFA election results
Three RESCUE PACIFICA candidates win seats
Dear KPFA and Pacifica Comrades,
Thank you for your support!
I was elected to KPFA's LSB (Local Station Board), along with two other candidates from Rescue Pacifica, James McFadden and Noni Session. The fourth candidate of our group, Don Macleay, is in line to get a seat if there are resignations, which there often are.
I think it's worth mentioning that two of us (Noni Session and myself) were among the top four vote-getters, elected in the first round. We did NOT just barely squeeze in by the skin of our teeth.
Our group, Rescue Pacifica, ran four candidates, and were optimistically hoping that two of us might win. So this is much better than we expected. Nevertheless, since 9 seats were open (6 of those seats went to the other side, the UIR), I'm not sure we can call this a "victory." We did make an unexpectedly strong showing, though on the board we'll be a minority. We'll see what we can do with this, and at this point I'm fairly optimistic.
(Parallel to the KPFA listeners election was the KPFA staff election, and the Rescue Pacifica allies who won seats as staff reps were Frank Sterling and Darlene Pagano.)
There are important lessons from this experience: We need to re-think the conventional wisdom of election campaigns, KPFA elections included -- that candidates need money in order to win. Money for a campaign postcard mailing to KPFA listener members -- it costs about $8,000 or more. Some of you may remember receiving a mailer from our opposition, the UIR, but none from us, Rescue Pacifica. We had very, very little money, about $600. That's right, we spent about $600. That went to a mass-emailing, leaflets, and setting up a website.
Don't get me wrong, I do think postal mailings are effective and I don't mean to totally dismiss them. I should say that as far as I know, NOBODY during the last 2 decades had ever been elected to the KPFA board without a mailer. NOBODY! We're the first! It appears that leafleting really does work! Grassroots organizing.
We leafleted at the KPFA Craft Fair, demonstrations, marches, and KPFA speaker events. One of those was Feb 25th, when Stephen F. Cohen spoke. I just finished reading his book "War With Russia?" and I recommend it highly. The author, a professor of Russian studies, counters the "Russiagate" propaganda which fills the corporate media and has even been creeping into KPFA airwaves. This topic, I should say, resonates with our project to restore KPFA's antiwar voice.
We had an excellent campaign manager, Greg Jan. And we received endorsements from many persons and also from Veterans for Peace East Bay Chapter 162 and other local organizations including the Oakland branch of System Change, Not Climate Change, several branches of the Green Party, and the Alameda County Peace & Freedom Party. Third parties need to back us, and we need to back them -- our opponents tend to line up with the Democrats, who are (with very few exceptions) liberal interventionists, or to put it less nicely, warmongers.
Meanwhile, another KPFA election is scheduled for this year, so please, everybody, please keep up your KPFA subscriber-membership (or become a member with a minimum annual contribution of $25) so you can vote. And please attend KPFA board meetings and speak during public comment. Also, will some of you please consider running as candidates?
Daniel Borgström
ex-Marine against the Wars
Member-elect of KPFA's Local Station Board
for RESCUE PACIFICA
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FOR MORE INFO
RESCUE PACIFICA rescuepacifica.net
PACIFICA IN EXILE pacificainexile.org
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DANIEL'S CAMPAIGN ESSAY
KPFA's Antiwar Voice
by Daniel Borgström
When people ask why I joined the Marine Corps (1959 to 1963), I tell them, "Because where I grew up, there was no KPFA or Pacifica Radio affiliate." There was just the constant corporate drumbeat of anti-Communism taking many forms, often pretending to advocate world peace, but always in one way or another campaigning against China and Russia.
During the McCarthy Era, KPFA bravely exposed Cold War propaganda for what it was. Throughout the war in Vietnam, KPFA had a genuine antiwar voice, loud and clear. But in recent years, except for a few excellent surviving programs, our station has increasingly echoed the corporate media's support for aggressive U.S. neoliberal policies, even offering justification for "humanitarian" interventions. Establishment groupthink is replacing KPFA's antiwar voice.
This turning away from critical, genuinely alternative programming is closely tied to the station's financial crisis.
For over a decade I've been attending KPFA's Local Station Board (LSB) meetings, watching the tragedy unfold from a back row seat. In 2005, I remember several LSB members warning that our station was living beyond its means, hiring more staff than we could afford, burning through financial reserves. Year after year, those warnings went unheeded.
When crisis eventually hit, and KPFA/Pacifica could no longer afford the excessive expenses, those in control of station governance tried to pin the blame on Pacifica. They also stole the name of an earlier group, wrongfully calling themselves "Save KPFA," and set out to tear our station away from the Pacifica Network and eliminate radio democracy at KPFA. Today they're calling themselves "United for Independent Radio," a new name, same old stuff, same goal of splitting the station away. If they succeed, will the last vestiges of Pacifica's national antiwar voice fall silent?
That is what we, RESCUE PACIFICA, are up against. We're a group of activists fighting for financial stability, transparency and responsibility, for preserving the Pacifica Network, and for promoting programming that digs into the roots of societal problems rather than just reporting the symptoms. Recently, KPFA management terminated a popular program, Guns and Butter, along with its seventeen years of archives. This was done without transparent process. Such decisions should be handled by a program council, which KPFA hasn't had for over a decade. For more on our platform, please see: rescuepacifica.net
KPFA's antiwar voice is worth fighting for, and that's why I'm running for the LSB. I took part in the Vietnam Era antiwar movement and wrote for the "underground" newspapers of that day; today I write for websites including Dissident Voice, CounterPunch and Global Research. I was an active participant in Occupy Oakland and many other events I've written about, including our struggle at KPFA; please see articles on this sitel
Daniel Borgström
ex-Marine against the Wars
danielfortyone@gmail.com
RESCUE PACIFICA rescuepacifica.net
PACIFICA IN EXILE pacificainexile.org
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.
