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KPFA Elections Letter from Concerned Staff
The KPFA LSB election will determine the direction of KPFA during the politically crucial period ahead of us. Please consider voting for seven candidates who will bring reason, the spirit of collaboration, diversity, and solid left politics to the very contentious and dysfunctional Local Station Board.
Dear friends of KPFA,
The election for KPFA's Local Station Board is in full swing and subscribers to the station should be receiving a ballot at any moment. This election will determine the composition of the board for the next three years and the direction of KPFA during the politically crucial period ahead of us. It's not an exaggeration to say that the outcome of the LSB election will not only shape the future of KPFA but of progressive politics in our area in the years to come.
Please consider voting for seven candidates who will bring reason, the spirit of collaboration, diversity, and solid left politics to the very contentious and dysfunctional Local Station Board. They are (in alphabetical order): Tom Blanks, Sherry Gendelman, Annie Hallatt, Mark Hernandez, Yasuo Monno, Rosalinda Palacios, and Willie Thompson.
These seven candidates have been endorsed by the likes of media critic Norman Solomon, activist clown Wavy Gravy, California Labor Federation executive secretary Art Pulaski, social movements scholar Barbara Epstein, Pacifica historian Matthew Lasar, former KPFA News Director Alan Snitow, SEIU field representative Susan McDonough, organizing director at the ILWU Peter Olney, Scoop Nisker, Democratic Socialists of America's Susan Chacin, Secretary Treasurer of Communications Workers of America, Local 9415 Bill Harvey, Spirit Rock co-founder James Baraz, Michael Eisenscher of AFT Local 1603, and executive secretary of the Alameda County Central Labor Council Judy Goff, among others.
For more information about the candidates, check out http://www.kpfaforward.org or read the open letter to the KPFA community from Matthew Lasar below. The election deadline has been extended to December 4th. Call (877) 217-6928 ext 205 if you have not yet received a ballot.
Thanks for taking the time to make a difference at the flagship of alternative media in the United States.
Larry Bensky, host, Sunday Salon
Pratap Chatterjee, co-host, Terra Verde and APEX Express
Sally Phillips, host, Girl Friday
Bonnie Simmons, host, The Bonnie Simmons Show
Sasha Lilley, producer, Against the Grain
Gary Niederhoff, Subscriptions Director
Aileen Alfandary, KPFA News co-director
Max Pringle, KPFA News labor reporter
David Gans, host, Dead to the World
Lisa Rothman, executive producer, The Morning Show
Victoria Z, host, Tuesday Music of the World
Lisa Ballard, KPFA Webmistress
Derk Richardson, host, Hear and Now
Susan Stone, director, Arts and Humanities department
Brian Edwards Tiekert, KPFA News environmental justice reporter
Andrea DuFlon, KPFA board op and producer
Mark Mericle, KPFA News co-director
Tom Diamant, host, Panhandle Country
Andrea Lewis, co-host, The Morning Show
David Bacon, KPFA Labor producer
(Programs are listed for identification purposes only)
The Other Election:
My endorsements for KPFA Local Station Board
by Matthew Lasar, author, Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network
October 17, 2004
"Please vote for Sherry Gendelman, Mark Hernandez, Willie Thompson, Annie Hallatt, Yasuo Monno, Tom Blanks, and Rosalinda Palacios in the upcoming KPFA Local Station Board elections."
—Matthew Lasar
“It’s appropriate for listeners to be involved, but there’s a tendency to jump to the step of lighting torches and storming the castle. Of course, when you get to the castle there’s only one kind of conversation you can have.”
—Robbie Osman, 1992*
KPFA’s Robbie Osman, easily one of the best community radio deejays in the United States, was quoted as saying the above in 1992 by journalist Paul Rauber in the East Bay Express. The quote came after one of the founding meetings of Take Back KPFA (TBK) at the Ashkanaz theater/dance hall in Berkeley. Twelve years later this eloquent caveat still rings true, especially now that TBK's dream has come true. Today Pacifica is the most democratically run radio network in the United States. This month thousands of KPFA listener subscribers will receive ballots in the mail to elect nine listener candidates to the frequency's 18 member Local Station Board (LSB). The LSB performs crucial tasks like sitting on KPFA management hiring committees, overseeing the station’s budget, and appointing members to the Pacifica National Board (PNB). The PNB oversees the Pacifica foundation, which owns five listener supported radio stations in the United States, including KPFA.
Sure enough, the winners of this election will be faced with one broad question—what kind of conversation will they want to have with the Castle?
Dwarfed by the November presidential campaign, you are probably wondering if the KPFA race will really make a difference. The answer is yes. Pay no attention to cynics who roll their eyes when it comes to KPFA politics. KPFA’s weekly audience ratings are small compared to commercial stations, but the numbers are nothing to sneeze at. They vary from 140 to 200 thousand listeners, depending on who counts and when. And quality plays just as much of a role as quantity. Every listener survey I’ve seen from the late 1940s through the early 1990s shows that the most informed, politically active people in the San Francisco Bay Area listen to KPFA. Progressive teachers, doctors, lawyers, legislative aides, union organizers, taxi drivers, nurses, business entrepreneurs—they represent KPFA’s core audience. They listen hungrily to Democracy Now, Larry Bensky, Flashpoints, Hard Knock Radio, the Morning Show, and the KPFA News.
"If KPFA disappeared, the Bay Area left would be drastically weakened," my friend Barbara Epstein, professor at UC Santa Cruz, once told me. KPFA plays a decisive role in setting the progressive agenda for the leftmost region of the United States. You bet this election will matter.
Unfortunately, the torches have definitely been lit around Castle KPFA of late. For the last year a critical mass of frustrated station activists have waged a campaign to further "democratize" the frequency, which is already saddled with more democracy than it can handle. Committees to advise various station departments about what they should say have been established. A veritable civil war has raged over when to schedule Democracy Now and how to hire a new station manager. Now a slate of LSB candidates are running who want to create a democratically elected Program Council for KPFA, as if the complex task of good journalism can be accomplished by ballot.
For station activists these reforms will allow KPFA to "move forward," as it is often put. The problem is that there is no consensus at KPFA on what "forward" really means. Pretending that one faction's version of forward is everyone's means that the kind of negative momentum we've seen over the last 12 months will continue to polarize the station, creating a decision making vacuum into which the marginal and the misguided will rush.
The divide is already extreme. On July 22, 66 members of KPFA's staff issued a cry of pain in the form of a statement directed towards KPFA's LSB, whose chair has wondered out loud if it is time to "take back" KPFA yet again. The protest charged that staff were being deluged with numerous Internet "hit pieces," libelous accusations, calls for "crushing the will" of various programmers, and comparisons with former Pacifica heavies Mary Frances Berry and Pat Scott. "There is an unprecedented environment of threats, slurs and character assassinations taking place . . . " the statement concludes.
I, better than most, know that during Pacifica wars exaggerated claims of injury rule the roost. And station staff are no innocents themselves when it comes to nasty rhetoric. But even if this cahier des doléances is only half right, it portends to do exactly what its authors warn, prompt "a steady departure of employees due to low morale."
The decision-making and leadership void those departures would create scares me more than anything else. Broad hints of the consequences have already surfaced. On May 30th, despite my protests, KPFA broadcast 14 hours of programming allegedly dedicated to exploring "Afrikan consciousness." This extravaganza included the comments of speakers who proclaimed without interruption that white people are mutants, AIDS may not exist, HIV tests are bogus, the Egyptians built pyramids on Mars, and homosexuality is a treatable condition.
More recently an afternoon programmer on KPFA interviewed noted conspiracyist Mike Ruppert. I do not object to people like Ruppert appearing on Pacifica radio. But the interviewer offered only softball questions as Ruppert declared that Vice President Dick Cheney, "on the day of September the 11th, as he was supposedly rushed to the bunker, was running a completely separate, parallel, and superior command, control and communication system out of the presidential emergency operation center, and that's where the attacks were coordinated from and that's what superceded everything taking place."
In response to my complaints regarding a lack of appropriate skepticism (or at least some kind of alert and clarifying response, eg: "Mike, dude, just checking in here—are you saying that Dick Cheney, like, blew up the WTC on September 11th?"), some tell me that we should simply let the listeners "decide for themselves," regarding such statements and claims. This is a cop out. Journalists are responsible for thinking critically and independently about their subjects, no matter what their sympathies. I cannot imagine how a democratically elected Program Council will further that ideal. I can imagine ways in which it would become a launching pad for aggressive people with irresponsible agendas.
I and others have repeatedly raised these concerns over the last year. The response has been uniform. Such fears, it is claimed, are promoted by KPFA senior staff to protect their jobs, turfs, and personal fiefdoms at 94.1 FM. But where is my turf? Rest assured, I have no job or program anywhere in or around KPFA (and believe me, I want none). All I have is a historian's understanding of the heights to which KPFA can ascend, and the depths to which it can fall. If I could shout loud enough so that everyone in the KPFA community could hear me, I would cry but two words: "Time Out."
On the top left of this Web page you will find my endorsements for the upcoming station board election. My first and most emphatic recommendation goes to Sherry Gendelman, attorney-at-large in the city of San Francisco. Sherry played a crucial role in the lawsuits that led to the democratization of Pacifica radio. I believe that she can play an equally important role in making that democracy work. Mark Hernandez's knowledge of radio, technology, budgets and non-profit management continues to impress the hell out of me. The rest of my endorsees (Willie Thompson, Yasuo Monno, Tom Blanks, Rosalinda Palacios, Annie Hallat) seem capable of having more than one kind of conversation with the Castle, and that, right now, is what KPFA needs the most.
Subscribers, KPFA is truly your station now. You took it back. Now please take good care of it.
Matthew Lasar
The election for KPFA's Local Station Board is in full swing and subscribers to the station should be receiving a ballot at any moment. This election will determine the composition of the board for the next three years and the direction of KPFA during the politically crucial period ahead of us. It's not an exaggeration to say that the outcome of the LSB election will not only shape the future of KPFA but of progressive politics in our area in the years to come.
Please consider voting for seven candidates who will bring reason, the spirit of collaboration, diversity, and solid left politics to the very contentious and dysfunctional Local Station Board. They are (in alphabetical order): Tom Blanks, Sherry Gendelman, Annie Hallatt, Mark Hernandez, Yasuo Monno, Rosalinda Palacios, and Willie Thompson.
These seven candidates have been endorsed by the likes of media critic Norman Solomon, activist clown Wavy Gravy, California Labor Federation executive secretary Art Pulaski, social movements scholar Barbara Epstein, Pacifica historian Matthew Lasar, former KPFA News Director Alan Snitow, SEIU field representative Susan McDonough, organizing director at the ILWU Peter Olney, Scoop Nisker, Democratic Socialists of America's Susan Chacin, Secretary Treasurer of Communications Workers of America, Local 9415 Bill Harvey, Spirit Rock co-founder James Baraz, Michael Eisenscher of AFT Local 1603, and executive secretary of the Alameda County Central Labor Council Judy Goff, among others.
For more information about the candidates, check out http://www.kpfaforward.org or read the open letter to the KPFA community from Matthew Lasar below. The election deadline has been extended to December 4th. Call (877) 217-6928 ext 205 if you have not yet received a ballot.
Thanks for taking the time to make a difference at the flagship of alternative media in the United States.
Larry Bensky, host, Sunday Salon
Pratap Chatterjee, co-host, Terra Verde and APEX Express
Sally Phillips, host, Girl Friday
Bonnie Simmons, host, The Bonnie Simmons Show
Sasha Lilley, producer, Against the Grain
Gary Niederhoff, Subscriptions Director
Aileen Alfandary, KPFA News co-director
Max Pringle, KPFA News labor reporter
David Gans, host, Dead to the World
Lisa Rothman, executive producer, The Morning Show
Victoria Z, host, Tuesday Music of the World
Lisa Ballard, KPFA Webmistress
Derk Richardson, host, Hear and Now
Susan Stone, director, Arts and Humanities department
Brian Edwards Tiekert, KPFA News environmental justice reporter
Andrea DuFlon, KPFA board op and producer
Mark Mericle, KPFA News co-director
Tom Diamant, host, Panhandle Country
Andrea Lewis, co-host, The Morning Show
David Bacon, KPFA Labor producer
(Programs are listed for identification purposes only)
The Other Election:
My endorsements for KPFA Local Station Board
by Matthew Lasar, author, Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network
October 17, 2004
"Please vote for Sherry Gendelman, Mark Hernandez, Willie Thompson, Annie Hallatt, Yasuo Monno, Tom Blanks, and Rosalinda Palacios in the upcoming KPFA Local Station Board elections."
—Matthew Lasar
“It’s appropriate for listeners to be involved, but there’s a tendency to jump to the step of lighting torches and storming the castle. Of course, when you get to the castle there’s only one kind of conversation you can have.”
—Robbie Osman, 1992*
KPFA’s Robbie Osman, easily one of the best community radio deejays in the United States, was quoted as saying the above in 1992 by journalist Paul Rauber in the East Bay Express. The quote came after one of the founding meetings of Take Back KPFA (TBK) at the Ashkanaz theater/dance hall in Berkeley. Twelve years later this eloquent caveat still rings true, especially now that TBK's dream has come true. Today Pacifica is the most democratically run radio network in the United States. This month thousands of KPFA listener subscribers will receive ballots in the mail to elect nine listener candidates to the frequency's 18 member Local Station Board (LSB). The LSB performs crucial tasks like sitting on KPFA management hiring committees, overseeing the station’s budget, and appointing members to the Pacifica National Board (PNB). The PNB oversees the Pacifica foundation, which owns five listener supported radio stations in the United States, including KPFA.
Sure enough, the winners of this election will be faced with one broad question—what kind of conversation will they want to have with the Castle?
Dwarfed by the November presidential campaign, you are probably wondering if the KPFA race will really make a difference. The answer is yes. Pay no attention to cynics who roll their eyes when it comes to KPFA politics. KPFA’s weekly audience ratings are small compared to commercial stations, but the numbers are nothing to sneeze at. They vary from 140 to 200 thousand listeners, depending on who counts and when. And quality plays just as much of a role as quantity. Every listener survey I’ve seen from the late 1940s through the early 1990s shows that the most informed, politically active people in the San Francisco Bay Area listen to KPFA. Progressive teachers, doctors, lawyers, legislative aides, union organizers, taxi drivers, nurses, business entrepreneurs—they represent KPFA’s core audience. They listen hungrily to Democracy Now, Larry Bensky, Flashpoints, Hard Knock Radio, the Morning Show, and the KPFA News.
"If KPFA disappeared, the Bay Area left would be drastically weakened," my friend Barbara Epstein, professor at UC Santa Cruz, once told me. KPFA plays a decisive role in setting the progressive agenda for the leftmost region of the United States. You bet this election will matter.
Unfortunately, the torches have definitely been lit around Castle KPFA of late. For the last year a critical mass of frustrated station activists have waged a campaign to further "democratize" the frequency, which is already saddled with more democracy than it can handle. Committees to advise various station departments about what they should say have been established. A veritable civil war has raged over when to schedule Democracy Now and how to hire a new station manager. Now a slate of LSB candidates are running who want to create a democratically elected Program Council for KPFA, as if the complex task of good journalism can be accomplished by ballot.
For station activists these reforms will allow KPFA to "move forward," as it is often put. The problem is that there is no consensus at KPFA on what "forward" really means. Pretending that one faction's version of forward is everyone's means that the kind of negative momentum we've seen over the last 12 months will continue to polarize the station, creating a decision making vacuum into which the marginal and the misguided will rush.
The divide is already extreme. On July 22, 66 members of KPFA's staff issued a cry of pain in the form of a statement directed towards KPFA's LSB, whose chair has wondered out loud if it is time to "take back" KPFA yet again. The protest charged that staff were being deluged with numerous Internet "hit pieces," libelous accusations, calls for "crushing the will" of various programmers, and comparisons with former Pacifica heavies Mary Frances Berry and Pat Scott. "There is an unprecedented environment of threats, slurs and character assassinations taking place . . . " the statement concludes.
I, better than most, know that during Pacifica wars exaggerated claims of injury rule the roost. And station staff are no innocents themselves when it comes to nasty rhetoric. But even if this cahier des doléances is only half right, it portends to do exactly what its authors warn, prompt "a steady departure of employees due to low morale."
The decision-making and leadership void those departures would create scares me more than anything else. Broad hints of the consequences have already surfaced. On May 30th, despite my protests, KPFA broadcast 14 hours of programming allegedly dedicated to exploring "Afrikan consciousness." This extravaganza included the comments of speakers who proclaimed without interruption that white people are mutants, AIDS may not exist, HIV tests are bogus, the Egyptians built pyramids on Mars, and homosexuality is a treatable condition.
More recently an afternoon programmer on KPFA interviewed noted conspiracyist Mike Ruppert. I do not object to people like Ruppert appearing on Pacifica radio. But the interviewer offered only softball questions as Ruppert declared that Vice President Dick Cheney, "on the day of September the 11th, as he was supposedly rushed to the bunker, was running a completely separate, parallel, and superior command, control and communication system out of the presidential emergency operation center, and that's where the attacks were coordinated from and that's what superceded everything taking place."
In response to my complaints regarding a lack of appropriate skepticism (or at least some kind of alert and clarifying response, eg: "Mike, dude, just checking in here—are you saying that Dick Cheney, like, blew up the WTC on September 11th?"), some tell me that we should simply let the listeners "decide for themselves," regarding such statements and claims. This is a cop out. Journalists are responsible for thinking critically and independently about their subjects, no matter what their sympathies. I cannot imagine how a democratically elected Program Council will further that ideal. I can imagine ways in which it would become a launching pad for aggressive people with irresponsible agendas.
I and others have repeatedly raised these concerns over the last year. The response has been uniform. Such fears, it is claimed, are promoted by KPFA senior staff to protect their jobs, turfs, and personal fiefdoms at 94.1 FM. But where is my turf? Rest assured, I have no job or program anywhere in or around KPFA (and believe me, I want none). All I have is a historian's understanding of the heights to which KPFA can ascend, and the depths to which it can fall. If I could shout loud enough so that everyone in the KPFA community could hear me, I would cry but two words: "Time Out."
On the top left of this Web page you will find my endorsements for the upcoming station board election. My first and most emphatic recommendation goes to Sherry Gendelman, attorney-at-large in the city of San Francisco. Sherry played a crucial role in the lawsuits that led to the democratization of Pacifica radio. I believe that she can play an equally important role in making that democracy work. Mark Hernandez's knowledge of radio, technology, budgets and non-profit management continues to impress the hell out of me. The rest of my endorsees (Willie Thompson, Yasuo Monno, Tom Blanks, Rosalinda Palacios, Annie Hallat) seem capable of having more than one kind of conversation with the Castle, and that, right now, is what KPFA needs the most.
Subscribers, KPFA is truly your station now. You took it back. Now please take good care of it.
Matthew Lasar
For more information:
http://http:www.kpfaforward.org
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The contrived concern of the reactionary slate for labor in the KPFA local station board elections, hiding behind labor's banner, is insulting to anyone's intelligence and to the fact that the progressive slate, found at http://www.peoplesradio.net/, is staunchly pro-labor and filled with labor activists. They are:
Steve Conley
Ted Friedman
Chandra Hauptman
Michael Lubin
Attila Nagy
Richard Phelps
Gerald Sanders
Joe Wanzala
LaVarn Williams
Stan Woods
Their endorsers are:
Tomas Moran, pro-democracy former Pacifica National Board member
Carol Spooner, LSB and PNB member, plaintiff in anti-hijacker suit
Michael Parenti, progressive author & social commentator
Russ Miyashiro, Secretary/Treasurer Ships Clerks Union Local 34 ILWU, Asian Pacific Islander Labor Alliance member
Dennis Bernstein, producer of Flashpoints
Robbie Osman, host of Across the Great Divide
Barbara Lubin, founder and director of Middle East Children's Alliance
James Vann, Oakland housing activist, founder of Just Cause Oakland
Henry Norr, former SF Chronicle writer fired for attending anti-war demonstration
Bonnie Faulkner, producer of Guns and Butter
Peter Franck, former President and CEO of the Pacifica Foundation, former Pacifica National Board member, attorney for the Free Speech Movement
Jack Ford, past president of Teamster Local 921, the SF Chronicle delivery drivers' union
Sepideh Khosrowjah, KPFA Local Station Board Member
Max Blanchet, KPFA Local Station Board Member
Fadi Saba, KPFA Local Station Board Member
Hep Ingram, former Pacifica Local Advisory Board member from KPFT in Houston
Wendy Schroell, Pacifica National Board member from KPFT in Houston
The Middle East Radio Project, the secular Middle East collective that produces the Voices From the Middle East program every other Wednesday on KPFA
California Peace and Freedom party, State Central Committee
The Fresno County Central Committee, Peace and Freedom party
Their program is:
1. A democratically elected Program Council with strong listener representation and the authority to make programming decisions by majority vote.
2. Transparency in all finances, job postings, and contracts, with an accountable process for management decisions at the station. Compliance with all Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requirements.
3. Democracy Now! on twice a day, once at 7:00 a.m. and once in the evening, to reach as many listeners as possible.
4. Strong and effective elected boards at KPFA and Pacifica, to prevent future anti-democratic takeovers.
5. KPFA as a vigilant critic of the New World Order, with no corporate underwriting.
6. Strong support for the pioneering Free Speech Radio News collective.
7. Broader diversity in staff and programming as well as increased outreach to underserved communities.
8. Improve station functionality and organization by immediately hiring a permanent General Manager, followed by a Program Director and Public Affairs Director. These positions have effectively remained vacant for over five years.
9. Development of a new Folio.
10. Respectful treatment of listeners who call in to live shows.
This writer has been listening to KPFA for over 50 years (since I am too young to remember, in other words) and strongly supports the Peoples' Radio slate. As to David Bacon's labor program on the Morning Show, the half hour weekly program that is one of 2 decent features of the Morning Show, the other being the monthly half hour program of Poor News Network, can easily be rescheduled for a prime time slot, which it should be.
Guns and Butter, the 2 p.m. weekly Wednesday hour long program that exposes the 9/11 Hoax and other such scandals, should be on prime time between 7 and 10 p.m.. during the week or sometime on the weekend between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Flashpoints should also be on prime time instead of 5 p.m, daily during the week. I have to listen to Flashpoints as I travel on the bus from work on a small pocket radio with an earphone. Many people simply cannot listen to it while traveling. And, we need more programs like Guns and Butter and Flashpoints, as well as more labor programming.
At election time, the socialist candidates on the California ballot, including those who live in Berkeley, should be inteviewed. I never heard any interviews of any socialist candidates on KPFA during this year's election campaign. That is inexcusable and must change.
There is simply no need for Democracy Now being heard twice in the morning and the Morning Show is not very stimulating at all. It has very little public affairs and far too much entertainment. The biggest void in radio that KPFA must fill is the news and public affairs gap as it is political information that is sorely lacking in this country, especially news and public affairs from a labor perspective.
The biggest problem at KPFA is the fact that too many people promote the anti-labor, capitalist Democratic Party, which has no place in any progressive organization. There is in fact a contradiction at KPFA with constant news on 6 p.m. nightly news and interviews on Flashpoints highlighting and condemning the US puppet, Israel's genocidal actions against the Palestinians, and the support of the pro-Israel, pro-war, pro-Patriot Act capitalist Democratic Party. One would never know from listening to KPFA that there is a socialist community in the Bay Area, and that it is very active. A socialist community is by definition a pro-labor, peace community and it opposes Israel's genocide of the Palestinians. All too often, KPFA sounds like a Democratic Party campaign station. This is profoundly reactionary and must change.
As to the 9/11 Hoax, it is mandatory that every thinking person read Michael Ruppert's benchmark book, Crossing the Rubicon, for all the details on the fact that the events of 9/11/01 were a Reichstag Fire, something any KPFA listener should have realized, as did this writer, the day it happened. Just as the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X all were perpetrated by the US government, so too is the 9/11 Hoax an inside job. Ruppert is no socialist, although he quotes a socialist website at one point. His research is thorough, and every single page is a gem. No matter how many books you have in your home, I can assure you, this will be one of your favorite, to treasure forever.
Please support the Peoples Radio slate.
Steve Conley
Ted Friedman
Chandra Hauptman
Michael Lubin
Attila Nagy
Richard Phelps
Gerald Sanders
Joe Wanzala
LaVarn Williams
Stan Woods
Their endorsers are:
Tomas Moran, pro-democracy former Pacifica National Board member
Carol Spooner, LSB and PNB member, plaintiff in anti-hijacker suit
Michael Parenti, progressive author & social commentator
Russ Miyashiro, Secretary/Treasurer Ships Clerks Union Local 34 ILWU, Asian Pacific Islander Labor Alliance member
Dennis Bernstein, producer of Flashpoints
Robbie Osman, host of Across the Great Divide
Barbara Lubin, founder and director of Middle East Children's Alliance
James Vann, Oakland housing activist, founder of Just Cause Oakland
Henry Norr, former SF Chronicle writer fired for attending anti-war demonstration
Bonnie Faulkner, producer of Guns and Butter
Peter Franck, former President and CEO of the Pacifica Foundation, former Pacifica National Board member, attorney for the Free Speech Movement
Jack Ford, past president of Teamster Local 921, the SF Chronicle delivery drivers' union
Sepideh Khosrowjah, KPFA Local Station Board Member
Max Blanchet, KPFA Local Station Board Member
Fadi Saba, KPFA Local Station Board Member
Hep Ingram, former Pacifica Local Advisory Board member from KPFT in Houston
Wendy Schroell, Pacifica National Board member from KPFT in Houston
The Middle East Radio Project, the secular Middle East collective that produces the Voices From the Middle East program every other Wednesday on KPFA
California Peace and Freedom party, State Central Committee
The Fresno County Central Committee, Peace and Freedom party
Their program is:
1. A democratically elected Program Council with strong listener representation and the authority to make programming decisions by majority vote.
2. Transparency in all finances, job postings, and contracts, with an accountable process for management decisions at the station. Compliance with all Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requirements.
3. Democracy Now! on twice a day, once at 7:00 a.m. and once in the evening, to reach as many listeners as possible.
4. Strong and effective elected boards at KPFA and Pacifica, to prevent future anti-democratic takeovers.
5. KPFA as a vigilant critic of the New World Order, with no corporate underwriting.
6. Strong support for the pioneering Free Speech Radio News collective.
7. Broader diversity in staff and programming as well as increased outreach to underserved communities.
8. Improve station functionality and organization by immediately hiring a permanent General Manager, followed by a Program Director and Public Affairs Director. These positions have effectively remained vacant for over five years.
9. Development of a new Folio.
10. Respectful treatment of listeners who call in to live shows.
This writer has been listening to KPFA for over 50 years (since I am too young to remember, in other words) and strongly supports the Peoples' Radio slate. As to David Bacon's labor program on the Morning Show, the half hour weekly program that is one of 2 decent features of the Morning Show, the other being the monthly half hour program of Poor News Network, can easily be rescheduled for a prime time slot, which it should be.
Guns and Butter, the 2 p.m. weekly Wednesday hour long program that exposes the 9/11 Hoax and other such scandals, should be on prime time between 7 and 10 p.m.. during the week or sometime on the weekend between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Flashpoints should also be on prime time instead of 5 p.m, daily during the week. I have to listen to Flashpoints as I travel on the bus from work on a small pocket radio with an earphone. Many people simply cannot listen to it while traveling. And, we need more programs like Guns and Butter and Flashpoints, as well as more labor programming.
At election time, the socialist candidates on the California ballot, including those who live in Berkeley, should be inteviewed. I never heard any interviews of any socialist candidates on KPFA during this year's election campaign. That is inexcusable and must change.
There is simply no need for Democracy Now being heard twice in the morning and the Morning Show is not very stimulating at all. It has very little public affairs and far too much entertainment. The biggest void in radio that KPFA must fill is the news and public affairs gap as it is political information that is sorely lacking in this country, especially news and public affairs from a labor perspective.
The biggest problem at KPFA is the fact that too many people promote the anti-labor, capitalist Democratic Party, which has no place in any progressive organization. There is in fact a contradiction at KPFA with constant news on 6 p.m. nightly news and interviews on Flashpoints highlighting and condemning the US puppet, Israel's genocidal actions against the Palestinians, and the support of the pro-Israel, pro-war, pro-Patriot Act capitalist Democratic Party. One would never know from listening to KPFA that there is a socialist community in the Bay Area, and that it is very active. A socialist community is by definition a pro-labor, peace community and it opposes Israel's genocide of the Palestinians. All too often, KPFA sounds like a Democratic Party campaign station. This is profoundly reactionary and must change.
As to the 9/11 Hoax, it is mandatory that every thinking person read Michael Ruppert's benchmark book, Crossing the Rubicon, for all the details on the fact that the events of 9/11/01 were a Reichstag Fire, something any KPFA listener should have realized, as did this writer, the day it happened. Just as the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X all were perpetrated by the US government, so too is the 9/11 Hoax an inside job. Ruppert is no socialist, although he quotes a socialist website at one point. His research is thorough, and every single page is a gem. No matter how many books you have in your home, I can assure you, this will be one of your favorite, to treasure forever.
Please support the Peoples Radio slate.
For more information:
http://www.peoplesradio.net/
Larry Bensky epitomizes what is still wrong with KPFA. He and other senior staffers (including News co-directors Aileen Alfandary and Mark Mericle) went along with the corporatization of the network for almost a decade and slowly began to speak up only when things were getting really, really bad in the beginning of 1999, and, in most cases, only when Station Manager Nicole Sawaya was fired in March of that year.
In 1995, over 170 part-time volunteer programmers were fired without a peep from Bensky and the rest of the paid staff. Had that diverse group of dedicated programmers not been purged, we would today have a very different staff that would not be afraid of democracy at KPFA, and would certainly not be hostile to the left-wing listener candidates for the LSB.
Anybody who knows Bensky or has listened to him enough can only laugh at his supposed desire to bring "reason, the spirit of collaboration, diversity, and solid left politics" to the board. In particular, how solid are the left politics of someone -- Bensky -- who on his show berated the organizers (most of them Black longshoremen!) of the Million Worker March for diverting labor from the supposedly more important task of getting out the vote for John Kerry?
Bensky, Alfandary and Mericle have all earned their retirement by now and, if I'm elected to the board, I'll offer to personally organize an on-air marathon to fund decent pensions for them. If, on the other hand, they wish to remain active in radio, perhaps their biggest fan on the LSB, Marnie Tattersall, can get them jobs at KGO -- where she's Director of Finance!
By the way, Robbie Osman deserves the praise that Matthew Lasar bestows on him. But it should be noted that Robbie is supporting the supposed ogres of peoplesradio.net, not the candidates that Lazar, Bensky, et al. support.
--
http://kpfa.aarons.fastmail.fm/
Also, please see "Sign your ballot!" at
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1707400_comment.php#1707847
In 1995, over 170 part-time volunteer programmers were fired without a peep from Bensky and the rest of the paid staff. Had that diverse group of dedicated programmers not been purged, we would today have a very different staff that would not be afraid of democracy at KPFA, and would certainly not be hostile to the left-wing listener candidates for the LSB.
Anybody who knows Bensky or has listened to him enough can only laugh at his supposed desire to bring "reason, the spirit of collaboration, diversity, and solid left politics" to the board. In particular, how solid are the left politics of someone -- Bensky -- who on his show berated the organizers (most of them Black longshoremen!) of the Million Worker March for diverting labor from the supposedly more important task of getting out the vote for John Kerry?
Bensky, Alfandary and Mericle have all earned their retirement by now and, if I'm elected to the board, I'll offer to personally organize an on-air marathon to fund decent pensions for them. If, on the other hand, they wish to remain active in radio, perhaps their biggest fan on the LSB, Marnie Tattersall, can get them jobs at KGO -- where she's Director of Finance!
By the way, Robbie Osman deserves the praise that Matthew Lasar bestows on him. But it should be noted that Robbie is supporting the supposed ogres of peoplesradio.net, not the candidates that Lazar, Bensky, et al. support.
--
http://kpfa.aarons.fastmail.fm/
Also, please see "Sign your ballot!" at
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1707400_comment.php#1707847
Re: the list of endorsers, didn't alot of these folks, especially Labor professionals, also back the corrupt thug teflon don perata for state senate? Why should we trust their judgement?
"...These seven candidates have been endorsed by the likes of media critic Norman Solomon, activist clown Wavy Gravy, California Labor Federation executive secretary Art Pulaski, social movements scholar Barbara Epstein, Pacifica historian Matthew Lasar, former KPFA News Director Alan Snitow, SEIU field representative Susan McDonough, organizing director at the ILWU Peter Olney, Scoop Nisker, Democratic Socialists of America's Susan Chacin, Secretary Treasurer of Communications Workers of America, Local 9415 Bill Harvey, Spirit Rock co-founder James Baraz, Michael Eisenscher of AFT Local 1603, and executive secretary of the Alameda County Central Labor Council Judy Goff, among others. """
"...These seven candidates have been endorsed by the likes of media critic Norman Solomon, activist clown Wavy Gravy, California Labor Federation executive secretary Art Pulaski, social movements scholar Barbara Epstein, Pacifica historian Matthew Lasar, former KPFA News Director Alan Snitow, SEIU field representative Susan McDonough, organizing director at the ILWU Peter Olney, Scoop Nisker, Democratic Socialists of America's Susan Chacin, Secretary Treasurer of Communications Workers of America, Local 9415 Bill Harvey, Spirit Rock co-founder James Baraz, Michael Eisenscher of AFT Local 1603, and executive secretary of the Alameda County Central Labor Council Judy Goff, among others. """
On November 1, 2004 as a representative of PeoplesRadio.net I sent an e-mail to KPFAForward asking them to debate the issues. All that came back was silence. I personally have extended a debate challenge to Mark Hernandez and Willie Thompson and both have not responded. What are they afraid of?? the truth coming out!!!
Subj: Debate
Date: 11/1/2004 8:43:41 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: PhelpsMediation
To: endorse [at] kpfaforward.org
PeoplesRadio.net asks KPFAForward.org to debate the issues in public and on the air to enlighten the KPFA voters on the positions of the competing 10 point programs. Both candidates not associated with a group will also be invited. Please contact me within the next two days so that we can get the format and time set up ASAP before everyone has voted. Thank you for your prompt ressponse.
None was ever received.
Subj: Debate
Date: 11/1/2004 8:43:41 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: PhelpsMediation
To: endorse [at] kpfaforward.org
PeoplesRadio.net asks KPFAForward.org to debate the issues in public and on the air to enlighten the KPFA voters on the positions of the competing 10 point programs. Both candidates not associated with a group will also be invited. Please contact me within the next two days so that we can get the format and time set up ASAP before everyone has voted. Thank you for your prompt ressponse.
None was ever received.
I've finally received my KPFA ballot, after having called to get one sent again, and have been trying to figure out who to vote for. I've been looking at the candidate statements, listening to the elections programs on KPFA, and looking at websites and I came across these postings here. I have to say that I am completely disgusted by nastiness and insults I have heard on the radio candidate interviews and elsewhere. It does a complete disservice to the cause of peace and the KPFA community.
While it's hard to know who to vote for, I'm making my choice from attrition and knowing who I'm _not_ going to vote for. I'm not going to vote for anyone who is engaging in personal attacks, either against other candidates or staff of the station. Whatever you think of Larry Bensky's style (I can take it or leave it), why would I ever want to vote for a candidate that singles out for insults a station worker like Aaron Aarons has done here? The same is true of the People's Radio website. The nastiness is really ugly and goes counter to Lewis Hill's vision. (Also, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe whoever gets elected to the LSB has no say over whether staff are hired or fired. So why are you candidates saying things like this?)
If you wanted my vote you should have been respectful and campaigned on your own merits instead of trying to pull this all into the mud.
While it's hard to know who to vote for, I'm making my choice from attrition and knowing who I'm _not_ going to vote for. I'm not going to vote for anyone who is engaging in personal attacks, either against other candidates or staff of the station. Whatever you think of Larry Bensky's style (I can take it or leave it), why would I ever want to vote for a candidate that singles out for insults a station worker like Aaron Aarons has done here? The same is true of the People's Radio website. The nastiness is really ugly and goes counter to Lewis Hill's vision. (Also, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe whoever gets elected to the LSB has no say over whether staff are hired or fired. So why are you candidates saying things like this?)
If you wanted my vote you should have been respectful and campaigned on your own merits instead of trying to pull this all into the mud.
Sue in Novato:
You seem to like those who attack people without naming names, as Bensky, Lazar, et al., do in their post. You say I should campaign on my own merits. Well, one of my merits is that I say what I think and don't pretend to be everything to everybody.
I'm not running because I look forward to the "pleasure" of being on the Local Station Board. I'm running because I want to push KPFA to the left. I don't want to silence people with liberal/social-democratic politics like Bensky's, but I don't want them to continue setting the tone for the station either. I especially don't want the station's main call-in show to continue to be run by someone who is rude and abrupt with anyone who calls in with a radical perspective. How unlike the late Mama O'Shea, who took calls from people with diverse viewpoints and discussed issues with them!
I know that the LSB has little direct power over programming. That's one of the problems: the same entrenched paid staff that allowed the purges of the 1990's to take place are still running things. If it hadn't been for those purges, I'd be happy to let the staff -- paid and unpaid together -- pretty much run the station as a collective.
Matthew Lazar's reference to "the castle" is ironic. Paid staff (those allied with Bensky, anyway!) do act like they're defending the castle from attacking hordes of listener-activists. But there's not one castle; it's more like feudalism with each lord-programmer having his own castle and the various lords allied against the plebs.
By the way, I was involved in Take Back KPFA. We were right and those who opposed us were wrong! If more people had joined with us, the corporate takeover would have been nipped in the bud.
Also, I was one of those arrested at the sit-in in 1999. As soon as I heard what was happening over the air, I started making phone calls. Then I went down and into the station. I didn't just sit in, however. While waiting for the cops to come for me, I was using one of the station's computers to send out emails to various lists to let people know what was happening. One person later told me he came up from Los Angeles after getting my email.
So, Sue in Novato, I don't expect you to vote for me. The election is essentially by proportional representation and, if elected, I'll be a voice for the more radical leftist portion of the listenership, of which you are clearly not a part. But thanks for attacking me and giving me a chance to further clarify my views.
You seem to like those who attack people without naming names, as Bensky, Lazar, et al., do in their post. You say I should campaign on my own merits. Well, one of my merits is that I say what I think and don't pretend to be everything to everybody.
I'm not running because I look forward to the "pleasure" of being on the Local Station Board. I'm running because I want to push KPFA to the left. I don't want to silence people with liberal/social-democratic politics like Bensky's, but I don't want them to continue setting the tone for the station either. I especially don't want the station's main call-in show to continue to be run by someone who is rude and abrupt with anyone who calls in with a radical perspective. How unlike the late Mama O'Shea, who took calls from people with diverse viewpoints and discussed issues with them!
I know that the LSB has little direct power over programming. That's one of the problems: the same entrenched paid staff that allowed the purges of the 1990's to take place are still running things. If it hadn't been for those purges, I'd be happy to let the staff -- paid and unpaid together -- pretty much run the station as a collective.
Matthew Lazar's reference to "the castle" is ironic. Paid staff (those allied with Bensky, anyway!) do act like they're defending the castle from attacking hordes of listener-activists. But there's not one castle; it's more like feudalism with each lord-programmer having his own castle and the various lords allied against the plebs.
By the way, I was involved in Take Back KPFA. We were right and those who opposed us were wrong! If more people had joined with us, the corporate takeover would have been nipped in the bud.
Also, I was one of those arrested at the sit-in in 1999. As soon as I heard what was happening over the air, I started making phone calls. Then I went down and into the station. I didn't just sit in, however. While waiting for the cops to come for me, I was using one of the station's computers to send out emails to various lists to let people know what was happening. One person later told me he came up from Los Angeles after getting my email.
So, Sue in Novato, I don't expect you to vote for me. The election is essentially by proportional representation and, if elected, I'll be a voice for the more radical leftist portion of the listenership, of which you are clearly not a part. But thanks for attacking me and giving me a chance to further clarify my views.
Okay, the above response is really dumb. A listener tells you her concerns about how you're campaigning and you decide for some reason that she's not radical and isn't worth reaching. Good luck with getting any votes at all.
Despite the left-veneer that I hear from you and the peoplesradio crowd -- especially Richard Phelps, Stan Woods and Michael Lubin -- y'all are some of the most anti-worker and anti-union people around, at least when it comes to KPFA. KPFA staffers are barely paid a living wage but somehow you conclude that the paid staff are lords "allied against the plebs" who are what -- the listeners? You talk about the disgrace of purges in the mid-1990s but want purges of the staff you don't like.
And another thing. You claim to have been active in 1995 at the time that a number of unpaid staffers had their shows cancelled. Seems a little dubious that you were, given that -- like the peoplesradio bunch -- you claim 170 part-time volunteers were taken off the air. KPFA in 1995 was no where as large as it is now and currently -- in 2004 -- KPFA has around 150 unpaid staff. So following your obviously very informed logic, in 1995 the entire station was liquidated plus some more people to boot. You need a credibility check.
Despite the left-veneer that I hear from you and the peoplesradio crowd -- especially Richard Phelps, Stan Woods and Michael Lubin -- y'all are some of the most anti-worker and anti-union people around, at least when it comes to KPFA. KPFA staffers are barely paid a living wage but somehow you conclude that the paid staff are lords "allied against the plebs" who are what -- the listeners? You talk about the disgrace of purges in the mid-1990s but want purges of the staff you don't like.
And another thing. You claim to have been active in 1995 at the time that a number of unpaid staffers had their shows cancelled. Seems a little dubious that you were, given that -- like the peoplesradio bunch -- you claim 170 part-time volunteers were taken off the air. KPFA in 1995 was no where as large as it is now and currently -- in 2004 -- KPFA has around 150 unpaid staff. So following your obviously very informed logic, in 1995 the entire station was liquidated plus some more people to boot. You need a credibility check.
By the way Aaron Arons, who constitutes the radical left? You seem to think that the radical left is made up only of people who agree with you. That seems pretty arrogant. Who appointed you great arbiter of all things radical, or leftist? Yeah, that's what we want at KPFA, people who are unconcerned with the thoughts or attitudes of people they disagree with. That appears to be the attitude of the people's radio slate. Now that's inclusion baby!
To me KPFAFORWARD seems like the right vote.
To me KPFAFORWARD seems like the right vote.
I never implied that "the radical left is made up only of people who agree with" me! I would include in the radical left people and groups as diverse as the RCP, the Spartacist League, Fidel Castro and many anarchists. I would also include Kevin Keating, although he doesn't like being called a "leftist" at all!
I will have more to say in response to the above criticisms, but I'm heading off to attend a benefit for people arrested at last June's biotech protests in SF, whom I support even if they're not "radical leftists".
I will have more to say in response to the above criticisms, but I'm heading off to attend a benefit for people arrested at last June's biotech protests in SF, whom I support even if they're not "radical leftists".
Before the 1995 purges, there were many shows that were on only once or twice a month, and many of the shows were produced by collectives. That's why the figure of 170 part-time volunteer programmers ousted in the purge is not far-fetched, even though there aren't nearly that many volunteer programmers today.
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