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East Bay | Indymedia"We Have A Vision For KPFA" ?Concerned Listeners for KPFA 2007
This is last year's campaign promises of the KPFA Concerned Listener's group. Obviously they have been very successful in supporting the present management team at KPFA and Pacifica. Lets give them a few more years to work on implementing their "program". Their solution to most recent beatings at the station maybe to station a cop at the station permanently to "protect" the staff and community. "We Have A Vision For KPFA" ?Concerned Listeners for KPFA 2007
http://www.concernedlisteners.org/ Eric Drooker We Have a Vision for KPFA Warren Mar • Sherry Gendelman • John Van Eyck Antonio Medrano • Matthew "Dynamite" Hallinan Susan McDonough • Paul Robins • Dianne Enriquez We are the Concerned Listeners for KPFA, a group working toward broadening KPFA's listener base and cultivating dedicated and talented station leadership and staff who produce compelling programs that build audience. If you listen regularly to KPFA, you know it is the best source for alternative radio in Northern California and the Central Valley. KPFA offers information, music and culture, community affairs, and investigative reporting on events in the U.S. and around the world. Its point of view, critical of racism, militarism, and domination by corporate power, has never been more important. http://www.concernedlisteners.org/platform.php We believe in the philosophy of KPFA founder Lew Hill that dialogue among differing points of view should be fostered and honored. KPFA needs to embrace change. We need to cultivate visionary programming in public affairs, news, music, arts and the humanities. We want diverse, high-quality programming that serves the traditional listener-base, but can also attract new listeners. All this requires a board that is broad and representative of the diverse progressive community of the Bay Area. We are not running against anyone. We are running for a more powerful, effective, and influential KPFA. All of KPFA's listeners should have a voice on the board. If you want KPFA to be a place where political and cultural visions can be realized, a place that lives up to its mission of social justice and artistic diversity for labor, young people, people of color, musicians and artists, listeners outside the Bay Area, old radicals and new, then we ask for you to vote for our slate. We Will: Keep KPFA true to its mission of social justice and cultural diversity in these dark times. Distinguish between governance and administration. The board's role should be to keep the station true to its mission and vision, inspire management and staff, but not micromanage station operations and programming. Take seriously the responsibilities of fiscal oversight, fund raising and community outreach. Listenership and listener financial support remains stagnant. We must turn this around. Be a local board that respects competency and professionalism, and values civility and consensus building. Help KPFA embrace the new technologies of the 21st Century. Ballots are due on November 15! Mail yours in today! Contact Us We Will Broaden KPFA's Listener Base and Stay True to its Mission of Dialogue and Diversity for Social Change. 2007 candidates to vote for: Warren Mar is a faculty member at City College of San Francisco in the Labor and Community Studies department. Previously, he spent 20 years as a labor organizer with HERE, CNA, and the Organizing Institute of the AFL-CIO. Prior to his work with unions, he did tenant and youth organizing in San Francisco's Chinatown, where he grew up. Sherry Gendelman is a civil rights attorney who practices around the Bay Area, largely working with immigrant clients. As Chair of KPFA's Community Advisory Board, she led one of the legal actions that was key to saving KPFA from a hostile takeover in 1999-2000. John Van Eyck has been active in the worlds of art and labor for over 30 years. He's served on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts, working on its Community Program Policy Task Force, and on the policy panel of its Expansion Arts Program—a program designed to fund projects rooted in inner city, rural, tribal and other under-served communities. He has also served as the Regional Director of Actor's Equity Association, and a union representative for scenic artists, broadcast employees, and hospital workers. Antonio Medrano is a retired educator and long-time labor and community activist in Richmond and West Contra Costa County. He serves as Co-chair of Concilio Latino of Contra Costa County, is a member of the Rosie the Riveter Trust, and is actively involved in education and immigrants' rights organizing. Matthew "Dynamite" Hallinan is a long-time Bay Area activist and political organizer. He has spent the last four years working to break the Republican political stranglehold on our national government, founded the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, worked on the successful Jerry McNerney congressional campaign, and is dedicated to building a grassroots, progressive movement that can pull the Democratic party to the left. Susan McDonough now works with the Alameda County Central Labor Council, after nearly two decades of organizing with various unions in the Bay Area, both as rank and file and staff. In the 1980s, she organized medical aid and symposia in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Paul Robins lives in Redwood City, and works as a software engineering manager in Cupertino. He's worked for KPFA intermittently over the past 25 years—mostly unpaid—helping with everything from newswriting to managing the station's database. He's a long-time volunteer with the Zen Hospice Project. Formerly, he worked as a SF Muni driver, where he was active in the drivers' union. Dianne Enriquez works for Young Workers United, an organization in San Francisco dedicated to uniting the youth and labor movements to raise standards in non-union, low-wage jobs. She's also a former member of KPFA's First Voice Apprenticeship Program.
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Friday Aug 29th, 2008 2:21 PM
Maybe KPFA should take this opportunity of trying to encourage listener support, to attempt to identify our stance on police brutality and liberal racism in this time of attack on the Bay Area's Black population. Then survey our advice on how KPFA can best reflect our outrage over the station's virtual silence over such urgent matters compounded with its own attacks on its KPFA's Black programmers. The most recent, abhorrent situation being KPFA employee invitations to the Berkeley police to come into the station to attack Black station programmer Nardra Foster on August 20th.
We're seeing a steady drift of KPFA into the world of institutionalized racism (particularly against Black people) on every level of the station's practice, programming, and organization. We demand an immediate investigation into the attack on Nadra Foster, KPFA policies and strategic plan for ending racism and policies for reprimand or termination of employees who commit racist acts in the course of KPFA's day to day functioning and decision-making procedures. We will be in touch in the near future. See this report on the staff-initiated attack on 10-year KPFA apprentice Nadra Foster. Police Terrorize Black KPFA Programmer in the station Written by Minister of Information JR Thursday, 28 August 2008 On Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, between 1 and 2 p.m., Nadra Foster, a young Black woman programmer and single mother, was beaten to the ground by the Berkeley police, arrested, hog-tied and taken to jail, after the management of KPFA radio and the Pacifica Foundation had called the police on her, falsely accusing her of being "banned" from the station. The incident started when Nadra, a graduate of the KPFA apprenticeship program who hosted the program Elemental Roots for several years at KPFA and often works with other programmers, came to the radio station to work on the KPFA jazz radio show Transitions on Traditions. She was working in the studio called Ujima, which means collective work and responsibility in Swahili – a studio that signifies racial justice. Michael Yoshida, KPFA's chief engineer and a member of KPFA's management team, had personally let her into that studio the previous Friday. Vini Beecham, a member of the paid staff, contacted Lois Withers, the KPFA business manager, aka accountant, telling her that Nadra was in the building using station resources for her personal benefit. Lois, another member of KPFA's management team, contacted Michael Yoshida to escort her while she kicked Nadra out of the station. When the two arrived at the door of Ujima, Nadra stated that she refus ed to leave because Lois does not have the power to kick her out. According to Yoshida, Lois called Dominga Estrada, the human resources director of the Pacifica Foundation – which is in charge of the Pacifica network of five major radio stations and dozens of affiliate stations around the country – to ask how to deal with the situation. Dominga authorized Lois to call the police. According to Nadra, Lois told the police that she was the general manager of the station and that Nadra was a fired employee who refused to leave. In reality, Lois is the business manager and Nadra is a volunteer at the station and a member of the Unpaid Staff Organization. Two male police officers slammed Nadra to the ground, kneeing her in the groin in the process, as well as severely spraining her arm. A number of KPFA broadcasters saw what happened, including Anita Johnson of Hard Knock Radio, who was in tears pleading with the management and other people at the station to get involved and help Nadra, to no avail. Weyland Southon of Hard Knock Radio taped Nadra's chilling screams as the police were slamming her to the ground and twisting her arm. He also taped Nicole Sawaya, the executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, slapping his camera out of his hand on the scene. Interim Program Director Sasha Lilley was also an eyewitness to this act of management initiated police terrorism, yet did nothing in defense of20Nadra's human rights. Initially charged with several felonies, her bail set at $81,500, Nadra spent two days in jail and is now facing five misdemeanors, including trespassing, two assault on a police officer charges and two charges of resisting arrest. The Prisoners of Conscience Committee, along with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Black New World and producers from the Voices of the Middle East radio show are organizing in the Black and Brown communities of the Bay Area and throughout the media to expose this grave injustice. We invite everyone to express themselves about this outrageous act of police terrorism in our community and get involved in organizing to get the charges against Nadra Foster dropped, get KPFA to pay all medical and legal bills, demand that they acknowledge that they didn't follow any due process or protocol as laid out in the handbook in relation to "banning" somebody, demand that the Unpaid Staff Organization be reinstated and a transparent grievance process be established, among other things. People should also start to think about organizing to get this interim administration at KPFA removed from power and a Black public affairs show broadcast during prime time on the airwaves of KPFA that talks about the domestic affairs of Black people in this country. Consider that KPFA and the broader Pacifica network of radio stations uses Black voices like James Baldwin, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the Black Panthers to raise money, but the reality is if these people were alive today they would not have a show on the KPFA airwaves that is dedicated to the people they were organizing. Although most people would expect KPFA to have done this decades ago during the Civil Rights Movement, still today no such program exists on the KPFA schedule. After the Block Report broke this story on KPFA airwaves Thursday, Aug. 21, and followed it up with Block Report coverage on Friday, Aug. 22 – listen at http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?show=9 – Interim Program Director Sasha Lilley, Lois Withers and Vini Beecham went on vacation for two weeks. On Aug. 22, KPFA Interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio issued a statement on the incident. It reads in part, "It is important for you to know that the Berkeley Police acted independent of direction from KPFA." Considering that Rijio is an African woman, can you believe that she or any Black person who is connected to the Black community would call the police thin king that after the police arrive she can control their actions? This incident and the writing of the press release exemplifies the incompetence of this current KPFA administration led by Lemlem Rijio, as well as that of the current Pacifica administration led by Nicole Sawaya. Aileen Alfandary, the white news director of KPFA, told me personally that what happened to Nadra was not newsworthy, and that is why KPFA News did not cover the issue on Thursday. The disabled white executive producer of the KPFA Morning Show, Mitch Jeserich, also told me on Thursday, a day after the tragic incident, that it was not newsworthy. And Andrea Ali, the manager of Guerrilla Cafe, told me, when asked if we could have a community meeting there regarding the incident, that she was on a spiritual quest and did not want to deal with KPFA's negativity at Guerrilla Cafe. Community, support those who support you and don't support people who don't support you! If you did not get a chance to hear the audio accounts from people who eyewitnessed the police terrorism inflicted on Nadra Foster, you could go to http://www.blockreportradio.com and stay updated on the community organizing surrounding this topic.
Saturday Aug 30th, 2008 10:10 AM
A staff meeting was held and a lot of people attended, first person accounts of people who were there, were given.
Nadra was not supposed to be there and and refused to leave. What would you do if someone, who had been previously banned (as Nadra had) came into your workplace and refused to leave ? She had been asked politely, told the cops would be called (she said she didn't care), and then the cops were called. The cops asked her to leave and she wouldn't. So they have to move her out. If she and you have a problem with that take it up with the cops, but she was given every opportunity to leave,
Saturday Aug 30th, 2008 11:28 AM
1) Why was the volunteer "banned" after over a decade of involvement?
2) Was the "banning" documented with a letter or a notice? 3) Did Nadra contest or appeal the "banning"? 4) Is there any procedure to contest, appeal or further discuss a "banning"? 5) Why was a regular Monday night programmer assigning her work if she was "banned"? 6) Why were the police told she was a "fired employee" when she was in fact a "banned volunteer"? 7) Why did the police record a call from the "General Manager" of the station when in fact the general manager of the station was not on the premises that day? Just a few questions that come to mind.
Sunday Aug 31st, 2008 4:14 AM
Why, specifically, was she banned or "fired"?
Lackluster work performance, rude to co workers..what? Understand I'm reserving personal judgment on this until the facts become a little more clear, because the situation is very strange.
Sunday Aug 31st, 2008 10:16 AM
This fascist police state tactic of banning at KPFA must end. I tlooks like it will end with KPFA as KPFA has nothing to offer this Labor Day Weekend, not even labor programming as it is too busy promoting the Republican drinking party. Ms. Foster was "banned" long time ago because she used the photocopier to make copies of paper for her kids to color on to keep them busy. Anywhere else, this is not a problem. If it were more serious use of the copier for personal use, Ms. Foster should have been told not to use it for personal use. If there was a union contract, then a written notice would be required. Banning is fascism. KPFA is a fascist police state. Keep away from it. The question above is good: Why did the police record a call from the General Manager when there was no general manager on the premises? All the other questions and the fact that several members of management are all suddenly "on vacation" demonstrate that this INCIDENT WAS PLANNED BY KPFA MANAGEMENT TO COMMERCIALIZE KPFA. There are no coincidences. WE ARE NOT LISTENING TO KPFA 9/1-9/4 EXCEPT GUNS AND BUTTER ON WEDNESDAY AT 1 P.M. BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING TO LISTEN TO ON KPFA BESIDES G&B until 5 p.m. 9/5 Flashpoints. AND WE CAN SKIP THE OCTOBER FUNDRAISER BECAUSE IT IS TOO LATE TO PAY $25 TO VOTE FOR THIS YEAR'S LOCAL STATION BOARD CANDIDATES. So, KPFA Management can pay for its own police state, and so can their liability insurance once they get the urgently needed LAWSUIT. A police brutality lawsuit against KPFA, Nicole Sawaya, Lemlem Rijo, Sasha Lilley, Lois Withers, Dominga Estrada, Vini Beecham, the Berkeley Police and the City of Berkeley will put KPFA's insurance on notice that there is something fundamentally wrong with the station, give much needed compensation to Foster and force the firing of lots of people. Those people should include: Nicole Sawaya, Lemlem Rijo, Sasha Lilley, Lois Withers, Dominga Estrada, Vini Beecham, Aileen Alfandary, Mitch Jeserich, and Andrea Ali. UNTIL THEN, KPFA WORKERS NEED TO GO ON STRIKE AND SHUT DOWN KPFA, DEMANDING ALL THESE PEOPLE BE FIRED. There is so little on KPFA, we can easily do without it, and I do most of the time.
Sunday Aug 31st, 2008 8:14 PM
It is NOT too late to vote in the next election for KPFA's board, which will be in 2009. So I strongly encourage those who want to have an impact on the next board election to subscribe at the $25 level at the next fundraiser or the winter one and in fact they will need to to maintain their voting rights.
Monday Sep 1st, 2008 8:21 AM
If the election were held this year, the October contribution would not qualify for voting. The fact remains, every dollar you give to KPFA clearly supports a police state and the complete lack of quality programming. Instead of labor coverage on Labor Day, we get the Republican drinking party. We had our programs for which we pay cancelled for the Democrats' drinking party and will this week too. We have 2 weeks of no KPFA for most of us. And since KPFA is a Democratic Party mouthpiece, we will now have 2 months of mostly no KPFA. The complaints have been made and nothing has been done. Instead, we get horrific police brutality, CLEARLY STAGED BY KPFA MANAGEMENT TO CORPORATIZE KPFA. IT IS TIME TO STOP SUPPORTING KPFA. And it is long over due that a lawsuit be filed against KPFA for the police brutality. We have the Internet and cable TV stations for information; KPFA is not a provider of information; it is a provider of gangsterism.
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