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Add an EventDemocracy Derailed at 12/18 KPFA LSB Meeting
Two weeks ago I was elected to KPFA's Local Station Board (LSB) with 43% of the KPFA staff's first-place votes--more than twice what any other candidate received--in an election that, though unquestionably flawed, had the second-highest staff turnout in the network. This Saturday, at what was to be the first meeting of the newly-constituted LSB, I was kept from assuming my position by what I believe to be an illegal move by the majority faction of the old LSB.
Here's what happened:
Miguel Molina, who was serving as a staff representative on the old board, introduced a proposal requesting a re-vote in the staff election on the grounds that he lost his bid for re-election by a small margin (roughly 1.3 votes, though he described it as "half a vote" in the meeting) and at least two of his colleagues had not received ballots. The issue was not on that meeting's agenda, nor had Molina's appeal been distributed to Board members ahead of time, as is customary.
Carol Spooner, a listener-elected representative, amended the resolution to prevent any of the newly-elected staff representatives from being seated on the board--and to keep the old staff representatives in place--until the appeal had received an official ruling by Pacifica's National Elections Supervisor. As there is no longer a Pacifica National Elections Supervisor (his position has ended and will not be filled until the next election two years away)--that could be a very long time.
The motion passed, 11 to 10, in a vote along party lines established some 8 months ago during a fight over changing the timeslot of Democracy Now! Every staff representative except Molina voted against it.
The net result? The winning faction in that vote held onto a majority it would have lost had the newly-elected staff representatives been installed, replacing Molina. So much for democracy: The majority faction of the old Board effectively chose its own successor.
The LSB continued to conduct business for some three hours after that vote--with the old staff representatives still in place. If the issue is not resolved by the first week of January, they will be able to vote for national directors of the Pacifica Foundation.
The move appears to be a violation of Pacifica's bylaws, which stipulate that Pacifica's National Elections Supervisor is responsible for certifying the fairness of the election--which he did--and do not give the Local Station Boards any power to adjudicate disputes in their own elections. The bylaws also require that newly elected members of the Local Station Board take their seats in the December meeting.
This leaves me deeply concerned that the board as presently constituted is an illegal entity, and its activities as such leave the station open to costly and damaging litigation. I have appealed the matter to Pacifica's Executive Director, Dan Coughlin, and expect it to be addressed at today's (Monday's) meeting of the Pacifica National Board.
I encourage you to bring any concerns you may have directly to the next meeting of the Local Station Board, which is scheduled for Sunday, January 9, at a yet-to-be-determined location that will be posted at http://www.kpfa.org/lsb .
Meanwhile, if you wish to receive updates on further developments, you can subscribe to an announcement list I've set up: Subscribe here, or send an email to KPFA-LSB-INFO-subscribe [at] topica.com; you can also visit the blog I've set up at http://kpfa-info.blogspot.com/.
Brian Edwards-Tiekert
Miguel Molina had appealed to the Local Elections Committee, the Local Elections Supervisor and the National Elections Supervisor. Reportedly — and this was not disputed — the National Elections Supervisor — Kenny Mostern — had said that the election for Staff Reps might be done over. (He may have used a stronger word than "might", but I'm using that word to avoid a possible distortion in favor of the LSB majority.) If, indeed, there no longer is a National Elections Supervisor, a final ruling will be made by either the Pacifica National Board (PNB) or the Pacifica Foundation Executive Director, Dan Coughlin. Most likely such a ruling will be made within a few weeks. In fact, it may well be made at tonight's meeting of the PNB.
Molina's appeal didn't have to be distributed in advance to the LSB members because the LSB members were not being asked to rule on the appeal. They only needed to be informed that an appeal had been filed in the appropriate venue.
Incidentally, it's hard not to gag when hearing a representative of the Bensky-Alfenderry-Mericle-Welch-et al. entrenched staff clique talk about democracy being derailed at KPFA! They have been doing everything in their power to prevent and sabotage real democracy at the station. A quote from one of their main backers, Matthew Lasar, makes their position clear:
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.By "critical mass of frustrated station activists" Lasar must be referring to those who went on to won six of the nine open seats for Listener Representative to the LSB against the candidates he and the Bensky clique were endorsing. Presumably they were elected by a critical mass of frustrated station listener-supporters who don't like the generally conservative direction the other side is pulling the station in. And while most of those on that side are either pro-Democratic Party liberals or personal opportunists interested in protecting and bettering their jobs, there are others — such as Disney Corporation executive and LSB member Marnie Tattersall — who are probably acting on behalf of other, more sinister, forces. One can only hope that some of the liberals and careerists who have been working with Tattersall will wake up faster than they did when they were sleeping with the corporate operators of the 1990's takeover.
(See http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/12/1707834.php)
Those who want to prevent purges of radical programming at KPFA, especially pro-Palestinian programs and programs like Guns & Butter that try to expose ruling-class conspiracies, had better be prepared to fight again like we fought in 1999 and 2000 against the previous takeover. Moreover, all concerned listeners should — even if important programming is purged before then — subscribe to the station between September 1, 2005 and August 31, 2006 in order to be able to vote in the 2006 LSB election.
I am hiding that one because there are comments to this post. However, the other post could be a rewrite.
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Further, when are we going to have socialist political programming on KPFA? This Democratic Party campaign theme that we hear on most of the political programs is simply not appropriate on KPFA as it is reactionary.
If the Morning Show paid people and any other paid staff member do not like the changes, they are free to resign. We can easily find lots of people who are capable of hosting a show who abhor the Democratic Party for being so reactionary. These are the same kinds of people who think, as I do, that KPFA should have more news and politics, and does not exist to discuss shopping, entertainment, promote mostly various music programs at the expense of political news program, promote religion instead of science, and provide ads for "non-profit" religious outfits that have X-mas and other Money Season hussles typical of religious organizations.
If Larry Bensky finally retires, or at least does us all the favor of staying in the bookkeeping department, thus providing prime time 9 to 11 a.m. Sunday morning for something intelligent and worthwhile, I suggest Guns & Butter be moved to that slot . Ralph Schoenman, Mya Shone and Bonnie Faulkner have more than enough material to fill those 2 hours weekly. Schoenman can fill 5 hours per week, alone, easily.
The repeat of Democracy Now, while not needed, may be heard in place of the music programs at 10 or 11 p.m. I do not believe a repeat is needed. Let's face it: Amy Goodman is a good Democrat. She has yet to have Michael Ruppert on her show, and his outstanding book on the 9/11 Hoax, Crossing the Rubicon, should be discussed all day long on KPFA. If you have not read it, get it now as it is in all on the bookstores. Also in bookstores is David Griffin's new book (the old book was The New Pearl Harbor), The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions and it is also a must read.
As to Flashpoints, Dennis Bernstein, the host, has had Ruppert on his show. Flashpoints could be repeated the next morning at 6 a.m. as Flashpoints is definitely worth repeating.
Can someone tell us when the majority's changes will be implemented and what will fill the 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. time slot?
1. According to National Election Supervisor Kenny Mostern, the LSB acted illegally to block the seating of the new LSB members. The old members of the LSB are hijacking the elections process to keep their seats on the board instead of turning it over to the new board members.
2. If the staff elections should be redone because some people didn't get their ballots, then the listener elections should be redone too -- but we don't hear anyone calling for that. I personally know a number of listeners who didn't get their ballots and people in Fresno got theirs last -- some after the deadline for the elections. But since the peoplesradio crowd on the LSB wants to shut the staff majority out, it's only the staff elections that anyone is making a fuss about.
3. If Miguel Molina so badly wanted to be on the LSB he should not have had the worst attendance record for any LSB member last year -- then maybe more people would have voted for him. What did he do at Saturday's LSB meeting after his theatrics about the elections? He left, hours before the LSB meeting was over!
4. The peoplesradio crowd does _not_ have a majority on the new board and that's why they are trying to overturn to staff elections.
5. Nice to hear an old fart like Aaron Aarons say that Brian Edwards-Tiekart is "entrenched staff". He can speak quite ably for himself, but I'd just like to point out that Brian is 26, a non-union, poorly paid KPFA staff member who, if I remember correctly, has worked at the station for a year and a half. But of course it's easier to smear someone as "entrenched" rather than effectively disputing their views.
6. The only people talking about programming purges at or around KPFA are the anti-democratic listener activists like Aaron Aarons and the peoplesradio crowd, calling for the heads of KPFA staff they don't like (so much for Aaron's campaign statements about welcoming a diversity of ideas on KPFA, from liberal to far left). You can find some of these statements right here on IndyBay.
But I don't think turning kpfa over to conspiracy theory--a la "guns and butter"--is a desirable alternative. The previous "listener-activists" give the impression that if they had their way it would be featured three times daily....
"Against The Grain" is a good show--far better than Kris Welch's insipid banter--and a far better model of the type of programming that kpfa should do more of than "guns and butter." It's genuinely radical and intelligent; the hosts get interesting guests and frame the discussions in a far more mentally nutritive way than most of the stuff on kpfa.
Main Entry: neo·phyte
Pronunciation: 'nE-&-"fIt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin neophytus, from Greek neophytos, from neophytos newly planted, newly converted, from ne- + phyein to bring forth -- more at BE
1 : a new convert : PROSELYTE
2 : NOVICE 1
3 : TYRO, BEGINNER
i called myself a neophyte regarding this feud because i'm not involved or clued-into its details. nor have i ever attended a kpfa-governing meeting. my views are explicitly those of someone looking in from the outside. a kpfa novice, so to speak.
'Reality Check' (hereafter referred to as RC) makes a number of claims and arguments.
RC: 1. According to National Election Supervisor Kenny Mostern, the LSB acted illegally to block the seating of the new LSB members. The old members of the LSB are hijacking the elections process to keep their seats on the board instead of turning it over to the new board members.
RC gives us no source for his assertion about Kenny Mostern's opinion. But Kenny Mostern's opinion is suspect in any case, since it was his screwing-up of the elections process that caused the problem in the first place.Moreover, if the staff reps chosen in the flawed election had been seated, the only changes would have been that Brian Edwards-Tiekert would have replaced Max Pringle and Eric Park would have replaced Miguel Molina. Only the last change would have been likely to affect any votes. One can argue that the fair thing would have been for Brian to replace Max and for neither Eric nor Miguel to sit until the election appeals are decided. Unfortunately, that would have required a very creative interpretation of the by-laws and was not proposed by anyone.
RC: 2. If the staff elections should be redone because some people didn't get their ballots, then the listener elections should be redone too -- but we don't hear anyone calling for that. I personally know a number of listeners who didn't get their ballots and people in Fresno got theirs last -- some after the deadline for the elections. But since the peoplesradio crowd on the LSB wants to shut the staff majority out, it's only the staff elections that anyone is making a fuss about.
The staff election should be redone because some people didn't get their ballots AND the vote was so close that there's a high probability that their not getting their ballots affected the outcome AND one or both of the losing candidates have challenged the results! In the case of the listener election, no losing candidate has challenged the result. Unless they do, the result stands.
It should also be pointed out that a re-run of the staff election would cost only a few hundred dollars, take only a few weeks, and have a high probability of changing the outcome. A re-run of the listener election, OTOH, would cost over $10,000 and have a much smaller probability of changing the outcome.
By the way, since RC is not an identifiable person whose credibility can be evaluated, what (s)he claims to personally know is worth as little as a claim made by a government official "on condition of anonymity"! It's worth less, in fact, since some reporters, at least, do know the identity of the government official in such cases.
RC: 3. If Miguel Molina so badly wanted to be on the LSB he should not have had the worst attendance record for any LSB member last year -- then maybe more people would have voted for him. What did he do at Saturday's LSB meeting after his theatrics about the elections? He left, hours before the LSB meeting was over!
I can't comment on why Miguel had a bad attendance record and, indeed, he may well have gotten more votes if he had a better one. But the issue at hand is that, if the election had been properly conducted, he may well have been elected anyway.
By the way, he may have left hours before the meeting was over, but that may have been because the meeting lasted for several hours after its scheduled end.
RC: 4. The peoplesradio crowd does _not_ have a majority on the new board and that's why they are trying to overturn to staff elections.
The new board, like the old board, is fairly evenly split, with the Peoples Radio grouping winning on some issues and losing on others. The KPFAForward/entrenched-staff alliance got their candidates elected as interim chair and vice-chair of the LSB.
RC: 5. Nice to hear an old fart like Aaron Aarons say that Brian Edwards-Tiekart is "entrenched staff". He can speak quite ably for himself, but I'd just like to point out that Brian is 26, a non-union, poorly paid KPFA staff member who, if I remember correctly, has worked at the station for a year and a half. But of course it's easier to smear someone as "entrenched" rather than effectively disputing their views.
It's easier for an anonymous hack to smear someone as "an old fart" than to effectively dispute their views, as RC ably demonstrates. Whether or not I'm "an old fart", I never said that Brian Edwards-Tiekart is "entrenched staff". Rather, I referred to him as "a representative [Emphasis added!] of the Bensky-Alfenderry-Mericle-Welch-et al. entrenched staff clique".
BTW, is Brian a "poorly paid" or an unpaid member of the KPFA staff? If the former, he's paid staff and eligible to be in the union. If the latter, he's not eligible because of the rotten agreement the paid staff made with the old management to kick the unpaid staff out of the union. That sordid story should be written about by others who know more about it than I do.
RC: 6. The only people talking about programming purges at or around KPFA are the anti-democratic listener activists like Aaron Aarons and the peoplesradio crowd, calling for the heads of KPFA staff they don't like (so much for Aaron's campaign statements about welcoming a diversity of ideas on KPFA, from liberal to far left). You can find some of these statements right here on IndyBay.
Sue Supriano's Steppin' Out of Babylon was terminated a few weeks ago. There are serious moves in the Program Council to get rid of Guns and Butter. There are also moves underway against one of the two collectives that shares Voices from the Middle East – the one (by chance, of course!) that is more pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist. None of these purges or attempted purges come from the Peoples' Radio side.
If I and the Peoples' Radio group didn't want to include liberal & reformist programming, we wouldn't be advocating for Democracy Now!. Moreover, I don't want (and I don't think most of the Peoples' Radio group want) to ban people like Bensky, Maldari, Welch, Mericle, Alfenderry, et al. from KPFA's airwaves. I (and, presumably, Peoples' Radio) do, however, want to end their virtual dominance of those airwaves. In particular, I (and, I'm sure, they) don't want the near-NPR take on world affairs that Mericle and Alfanderry promote to continue to be presented by KPFA as THE NEWS.
Finally, RC, why don't you use your name? It doesn't seem likely that anyone with your views has much to fear from the powers-that-be, either at KPFA or in the society at large. Maybe you're one of the staff heavyweights and don't want to let us know that you care enough about what we write here to spend your precious time responding?
Aarons is also wrong when he states that no complaints have been sent to the election supervisor. Alternate Mark Hernandez has notified the election supervisor that if a staff re-vote is taken, he is formally requesting a listener revote. Aarons trumpets himself as the great champion of all things left, yet his lack of concern for listener enfrachisement reveals that he's just blowing smoke. The listener vote turned out the way he wanted, so he sees no reason to challenge it, even though it was clearly flawed, much more flawed in fact, than the staff election.
Then (s)he states: "Over 900 ballots in the Central Valley alone arrived late, or not at all." This may well be true, but the anonymous writer doesn't give the reader a hint as to how to verify this claim.
Anonymous TS also writes: "The number of votes separating the lowest vote-getter and the alternate [Mark Hernandex] was 27." Actually, by my reading, the number was less than 22. But the lowest vote-getter above Hernandez, before he was eliminated and his votes redistributed, was Rosalinda Palacios, a member of the same slate. His replacing her on the board would not change the balance of power and, in fact, replacement of the likable Palacios by the obnoxious Hernandez would probably have hurt his faction's ability to get support from the unaligned members of the board.
I also did not say that "no complaints have been sent to the election supervisor". Rather, I said that "no losing candidate has challenged the result" of the listener election. At least at the time of the LSB meeting, there was no such formal challenge or statement of intent to make such a challenge, although there had been numerous complaints about the conduct of the election from all sides. Any losing candidate could make such a challenge. I suppose that, technically, even I could do so, even though I lost quite soundly. But if Mark Hernandez and KPFAForward want to force KPFA and Pacifica to spend another $20,000 or so on an election that probably won't change anything of consequence, let the responsibility be on them. I'm pretty sure, thugh, that they're making the threat just to prevent a rerun of the staff election.
Despite what Anonymous TS writes, I'm not entirely happy with the results of the listener election. In particular, I'm disturbed by the defeat of Gerald Sanders and Stan Woods. But I expect they'll both be back for the next listener election in 2006. Maybe I'll run again too, and if I do I'll be campaigning a lot more energetically than I did this time around.
The issue is not "which faction won." It is "What should the LSB do in the case of an elections challenge?"
At the meeting the LSB was informed that a challenge was pending to the KPFA staff elections, and that the challenge was brought by enough staff members to change the outcome of the staff election. Under Pacifica's bylaws, the LSB does not have the authority to resolve the challenge. The National Elections Supervisor does. So the LSB punted the issue to the National Elections Supervisor -- as the person with the authority to make a determination of the challenge -- and decided not to seat new staff delegates until learning the decision of the National Elections Supervisor.
If the shoe had been on the other foot -- which it very well might have been since the election was so close and people from BOTH "factions" were asking for the staff election to be redone prior to the vote count -- if the challenge had been brought by Eric Parks rather than Solange Echevarria and Miguel Molina, I believe the LSB should have done the same thing. I really hate to think that anyone approached the issue as a factional one, rather than one of principle.
There is certainly room to disagree on the principle of punting to the National Elections Supervisor. A principled argument could be made that we should seat the new delegates and leave it up to the NES to "unseat" them later if he decided the election challenge was well-taken and decided to redo the staff election.
I think it was wisest for the LSB to find out what the NES was going to do before seating new delegates.
By the way, the full elections supervisors' reports are now posted at http://www.pacifica.org -- scroll down the right side of the page to the Pacifica Elections section. It's a 244 page pdf file!
The LSB did not have this report at the time it was faced with deciding what to do about the elections challenge. According to a memo from Pacifica Executive Director Dan Coughlin to the LSB yesterday -- "The National Elections Supervisor reports that he has reviewed the concerns and/or appeals of the KPFA staff candidate in relation to the election. I understand that he has spoken to that issue in email form. He tells me that he referred to the specific issue raised by the appeal in Section 5 of his final report entitled, "Design, Production and Mailing of Ballots and Replacement Ballots." [Note: I have not seen any emails from the Elections Supervisor speaking to the issue. -- CS]
Based on this information, I believe the LSB is required by the bylaws to seat the staff delegates certified by the National Elections Supervisor at our next meeting -- now scheduled for January 9th, to elect KPFA's directors on the Pacifica National Board..
--Carol
Also, several attempts were made to deal with the obviously flawed election. The deadline was moved back; a ballot box was put in the station and same day voting was an option -- with the election site conveniently located in Berkeley. If the aggrieved staffers really wanted to vote they could have taken a half-hour, or so, at lunch or after work, to get to the location, which continued to accept ballots till quite late. Or maybe they would rather whine and kvetch now because someone didn't pick them up in the royal coach and drive them to the location then carry them on a sedan chair to the ballot box? It was the listeners, many of them live hours from Berkeley, who were most screwed by the faulty election. And give us a break Aarons, had Tiekert or Park lost, then complained days later about being mistreated, you would have been the first one to yell OBSTRUCTIONIST.
ts: Aarons says the vote separating the lowest vote getter on the LSB from the alternate would have had little impact when hundreds of ballots weren't counted.
Could you please translate this for me? If English is too difficult for you, I can handle Spanish, French and Portuguese.
ts: If you factor in all the hundreds of uncounted ballots in the listener election, it is statistically self-evident that the results would have been quite different.
It is statistically self-evident that there would have been more votes for each candidate, but it is far from evident that the order of the candidates would have been changed. It is even less evident that the factional make-up of the board would have been changed. However, a statistical analysis of the probablilities of such changes requires both specific information about the number of additional ballots and an extremely complex mathematical model that is beyond someone like me whose graduate coursework in mathematics included little statistics.
ts: It was the listeners, many of them [who?] live hours from Berkeley, who were most screwed by the faulty election.
Yes, they were! And I can't help suspecting that at least some of the people involved at high levels in the process wanted it screwed up. Pacifica is run by people like Dan Coughlin who went along with the hijackers for years, until the latter got totally carried away and started attacking everybody who didn't like their boots with sufficient gusto.
ts: And give us a break Aarons, had Tiekert or Park lost, then complained days later about being mistreated, you would have been the first one to yell OBSTRUCTIONIST.
I see that ts' anonymity is matched by his arrogance in presuming to know me better than I know myself.
I have presumed, BTW, that ts is male. His style gives me that impression. If I'm wrong, she can say so.
Anonymous posts are useless or worse when they contain allegations of fact that can't be verified and subjective statements about what the writer likes and doesn't like without any explanation of why.
I post my comments here to invite discussion of issues, not personal attacks from anonymous verbal thugs. But I do realize that the latter come with the territory. After almost 50 years of activism, I've got a thick skin.
isn't it funny how often you scratch a leftie, find a censor? maybe the soviet thing wasnt so aberrant after all.....
Because there are much fewer staff votes to count, and a re-vote there would more than likely aid your side, you are screaming for a staff re-vote, and brushing aside the fouled up listener election. You admit that hundreds of listeners were disenfranchised, yet you do not call for a re-vote. Hmmmm? Could it be that you don't give a flying &#$%* about those listeners because there's no guarantee they'll vote like you? And you have the temerity to accuse others of arrogance?
Please Aarons don't insult us by pretending you're only concerned with facts and evidence and all that, when you imply that the votes were fixed without providing a shred of evidence to back it up. .
The only censor on this thread exists in your mind.
Aarons didn't call for anyone's post to be censored.
Something like the president not calling for the privatization of Social Security. He's merely loudly bemoaning the lack of personal freedom to opt out of the system.....
In fact, my response to all the main issues in his latest post can be found in my previous post. But it's clear that he's either
- not reading what I write,
- not understanding it, or
- deliberately distorting it.
You don't want the listener elections re-done because there's no guarantee you'll get your way. You want the staff elections re-done because you know there's a greater chance you'll get your way. So you don't give a half a damn about democratic process, when it's not convenient. That's the issue smart boy. So don't bother us with your self-righteous bleatings about democracy.
Folks, for more information, see also Carol Spooner's post above & at IndyBay, where you can also see Richard Phelps' posts about the revote which apparently is proceeding:
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/1707771.php
"Sue Supriano's Steppin' Out of Babylon was terminated a few weeks ago"
Steeping Out of Babylon" is on hiatus. It hasn't been replaced permanently and a program that is temporary in nature has been inserted for a 13 week interval through the next fund drive. At that point, the slot will be up for grabs again and Stepping Out of Babylon is a strong contender for it at that time.
"There are serious moves in the Program Council to get rid of Guns and Butter"
No, there are not. None at all.
"There are also moves underway against one of the two collectives that shares Voices from the Middle East – the one (by chance, of course!) that is more pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist"
The concern about the Voices of the Middle East Collective #A was expressed by, and only by, the General Manager, who has been at KPFA for exactly 45 days. His concerns were presented as a fait accompli to the Program Council and it was made clear to him that we do not wish to go forward with unilateral programming decisions by anyone, including GM's, and that no changes will be made without a collaborative evaluation process coming to completion.
The move, which was temporary in nature as proposed, was rescinded and that was partially in response to a strong protective stance FROM the program council.
It is clear that factual communication greatly needs to be improved throughout this KPFA community.
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