5/22 Meeting On KFPA & Labor

I listened to the Workers' Memorial Day coverage last week and I cringed so many times. You guys need more airtime so you can get more experienced and comfortable with the equipment that you're using.

Good luck!

Regardning the above post about the glitches in KPFA Workers' Memorial Day coverage last week...

The labor hosts and guest experts were probably doing the best they could under the behind the scenes circumstances that they, perhaps, had to put up with during their show. There are a lot of shenanigans going on at KPFA behind the scenes. This includes the purposeful undermining, internal monkey wrenching, attempted program wrecking, or sabotaging of and, otherwise, constant internal opposition to truly left programming at KPFA. This, for example, as with one William Walker, though not necessarily limited to him, and his behind the scenes technical handling of one labor show special. Suddenly, the remote interview lines weren't working right.

Certain public affairs shows are even pretextually canceled by the general manager, Roy Campanella, who once boasted, upon his coming to the KPFA scene, that he would not be "an autocratic top-down manager". Yet a call-in casual 'psychotherapy' show, so you could talk about your emotional tramas with your relatives, breezed through without even going through the regular application process.

Now even years after the Pacifica crisis of 1999, there are several strong in-station (and no doubt external) interests, here and at other Pacifica stations, who, for nonpolitically conscious interests of just gratifying their egos, or plain ole meal-ticket careerism, or something even much more nefarious, want to semi-mainstream KPFA. An executive financial officer from KGO radio (owned by Disney Corp), Marnie Tattersall (now KPFA board treasurer), even stealth candidated her way onto the local KPFA station board. Station board meetings are purposely not webcast by these dubious obstructionist interests, as part of the effort not to let listeners see or hear and know what's going on. There is an in-station management and committee avoidance of democratic transparency by these particular interests.

These interests want to water down and turn KPFA and Pacifica into something approaching NPR, or into more of a music station. They want to turn KPFA into something reasonably safe for the mainstream national political establishment and act as its liberal (not really progressive or leftist) media gate-keepers. This is occuring under a management guise of wanting to seek a wider listener audience. Music programming, which typically runs in 2 or 3 hour time slots, and often back to back, is already at least 60% of KPFA programming. Yet that's still not enough music for some in-station personnel, even in these world-changing dangerous times and a turn towards empire that will directly bring our country into perpetual US war and eventual retaliatory terrorism upon us. I guess we can all, instead, just sing or fiddle along while Rome burns.

The KPFA shows that most seriously confront either, US empire & its client or puppet states, the new Cointelpro & its souped up national security state, or our (essentially in name only) 'two-party' duopoly, are the ones most threatened, or shunned to air times when most working people can't listen. Listeners who value more of those kinds of incisive public affairs shows, or in more worker accessable listening time slots, are labeled and monolithically slurred as "anti-music".

Even though KPFA repeatedly meets or exceeds near million dollar fundraising targets pledged by the listenership three or four times a year, basic in-station electronic equipment services are not provided (or suddenly they're malfunctioning) for certain kinds of left public affairs and activist programming. The excuse is, ironically, typically "lack of funds" (so where is our money going?). This in-station opposition also extends to serious labor programming from a truly leftist perspective.