"Democratic" Manipulations at KPFA

Editors, Daily Planet:

I am a pretty regular listener to KPFA, and have been for about six years now. I especially listen to three programs: “Democracy Now!” at 6 a.m. when I am getting up and getting my kids off to school and me to work, “Sunday Salon” on Sunday mornings, and the 6 p.m. news on most days.

I don’t understand when so-called “peoples” or “democratic” groups who seem to use KPFA as their playpen for personal power games and political one-upmanship think they can intrude on listener habits and preferences, and as we’ve seen in a bunch of Daily Planet columns recently, pester the obviously professional and accomplished (and in my mind, indispensable) staff people who host these programs.

Moving “Democracy Now” to another time is not putting it into what the power trippers around KPFA call “prime time.” I wouldn’t be able to hear it, for example. And I imagine even more people would miss it at 9 a.m. But the further point is: there doesn’t seem to have been any survey, outreach or discussion of the change, merely a cabal of “democratic” outsiders—some of them “elected” by the tiny minority of listeners who bother to vote in station elections.

KPFA has enough problems without insider/outsider manipulations. Most of us listen to it for the programmers, not the background static of the endless pressure groups and power trippers who “democratically” continue to destabilize this precious resource.

Mary Constantinu