SUN 1/22 - KPFA TOWN HALL MEETING! - 1-4PM - Women's Bldg - S.F.

In the wake of the Program Council melee and the confrontation between Weyland Southon and Campanella, the KPFA Unpaid Staff Organization unanimously passed a resolution condemning violence at the station, and brought their resolution to the May LSB meeting. Incredibly, when a similar resolution was put to a vote by the LSB, the majority voted it down. The LSB then told the public to leave so that they could go into a secret "executive session."

However, about a dozen people refused to leave, including long-time KPFA activists Les Radke and Bob English, demanding that the issue of violence be addressed. I then proposed that the LSB put an item on the agenda for the next meeting in June addressing the issue of violence. This suggestion drew approval from several LSB members, and no objections, and averted an incipient sit-in.

Yet, prior to the June meeting, then-Chair Rosalinda Palacios refused to put any item about violence on the agenda. As a result, I put out a call to people "who believe that KPFA should be violence-free" to come to the board meeting and "demand that our governing body tell the public what is being done to stop the violence." See Confidential #11, http://www.struggle-and-win.net/17938/49091.html. In response, Palacios and then-Treasurer Marnie Tattersall secretly hired a security guard for the next LSB meeting.

At the meeting, I tried to get a discussion about violence at the station on the agenda, but failed. Absent any substantive discussion, however, the LSB did pass a resolution calling for "a town hall meeting within 90 days to discuss station issues, including workplace violence, labor and community relations."

The Outreach Committee hadn't met for almost a year, but was tasked with organizing the Town Hall meeting. The committee still hadn't met four months after the June meeting. So I took the initiative and called a meeting, and got called a "carpetbagger" for my trouble. Nevertheless, planning for the Town Hall meeting finally got underway.

You certainly wouldn't know from the official KPFA flyer or the notice that is being run on the air that violence at the station was the reason for the upcoming Town Hall meeting. The same entrenched old-boys network at the station that is calling the shots on programming decisions and trying to protect their privileges and perks, has taken control of the planning for the Town Hall meeting. They are actively seeking to prevent any real discussion about violence at the station -- because the violence always comes from the side of the powers-that-be, and is always visited on those of us who want to take back KPFA for the listeners and for the progressive movement for freedom and justice.

We need to open up this can of worms. As Lew Hill envisioned it, Pacifica´s listeners are the blood, sweat and soul of the network. Come to the Town Hall meeting and and help take back our station. Let's demand that the station be free of violence and intimidation. Let's demand that programming decisions be made in a fair, open and democratic manner, and reflect the needs and desires of the listeners, and of the victims of violence and oppression. We can expect nothing less from Free Speech Radio.


Submitted on January 15, 2006,
the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
a tireless fighter against violence
and for the rights of the downtrodden.


Riva Enteen
Member and former Chair,
KPFA Local Station Board

This is called a town meeting, but from your description, it seems more like a lynch mob directed at the staff. If the town meeting has the same contentious atmosphere as the board meetings I have attended, it will produce no positive change and simply embarrass the Board and KPFA by a show of rancor and in-fighting

The text is wrong; I will not be on the KPFA Town Hall panel on Sunday, January 22.

I'm sick and tired of this "old-boy network" and "entrenched" language being used by those on the board who pretend to represent the listeners. I've been listening a long time and I've volunteered at station events and fund drives, and I don't see any hint of some "old-boy entrenched" network. The staffers I've worked with and programmers I've listened to seem like nice, hard-working, dedicated people. They work for a pittance at a community radio station because they obviously love it. What is their reward? To be attacked by a bunch of pompous, self-righteous, cranks whose idea of good radio is chest-thumping, soap box oratory and wing-nut conspiracy mongering. Just who do these people think they are? KPFA workers and programmers are just that -- workers! Yet a bunch of boring trust fund babies, retirees, and worker's comp cheats feel the need to attack them relentlessly. I've been to a couple of these so-called LSB meetings, they really are disgraceful. Enteen and her ilk should really be ashamed.

CORRECTION (typo): KPFA TOWN HALL MEETING IS, OF COURSE, SUNDAY, _1_/22: SUNDAY, _JANUARY_ 22 !

talk about self-righeous, pompous chest-thumping wing-nut?

"annoyed listener": [speaks of] "worker's comp cheats"???

sounds like a 'real' leftist to me!

"annoyed listener: "The staffers I've worked with and programmers I've listened to seem like nice, hard-working, dedicated people."

you mean like the ones who threaten their co-workers with violence?

you mean like the old paid ones who before abandoned their unpaid staffers security in exchange for their own union workers' contract security?

you mean like the ones who scare-monger their lower-level workers?

you mean like the ones who bump unpaid community activist programmers, who had covered certain issues for years, from their special programming or try to screw up their special programming, even on the air?

you mean like the really pompous _one_ on sunday morning who treats listener callers so rudely whenever he disagrees with them? the same one who said that listener activist KPFA pledge members, volunteers and community activist programmers - whom he called "Stalinists" - should have _NO_ input in KPFA's mission, but should just bug off and shut up?

so just who do you think _you_ are and what do _you_ represent, "annoyed listener"?: or should i say "old boy network" clubbie or suck-up.

You say staffers who mistreat their volunteer and paid co-workers and threaten co-workers with violence. I've seen no evidence of any of this. So I won't comment. I've of course heard the rumors of the way a certain Flashpoints Producer behaves, but that's for him and management to deal with. I'm talking about the folks, volunteer and paid, who by and large make the station go. The employees who work very hard, (and I've seen it first hand), to put out good programming on a shoe string.

What the station's union does is the business of its bargaining unit and nobody else's. I don't presume to know what's best for them, (I don't work there) nor should you.

The people at these LSB meetings are, from what I'm able to glean through the yelling and inane babble, a bunch of anti-social malcontents bent on ruining the station. They of course have a right to their opinions, but they have no right to represent themselves as speaking for the broader listener community. They never even bother to come to us to find out what it is we think. This includes myself and other listeners I know who appreciate what we've got in KPFA and don't want to see it destroyed for the narrow political self-interest of a handful of blowhards who've read too many off-the-rail political journals for their own good.

The issues addressed here are important, and those who dismissively reject any mention of a problem with upper level KPFA management, board members, and long-time paid staff have obviously never listened to Sunday Salon and Mr. Larry Bensky's rant and pant routine or attended a Station Board meeting. Perhaps you've been psychically numbed by the gobbledygook of "Chronic Guest Experts" who know nothing about everything— I'm talking about radio pundits like Mr. Chip (off the old block) Berlet.

To be balanced about it, Mr. Denis Bernstein (The impassioned leftish hero of the downtrodden masses???) and Fashpoints radio has its two or three pet projects and won't go anywhere else. Bensky is a self-righteous ass who is so in love with the sound of his own voice that he can scarcely keep his mouth shut for 5 seconds even when he's interviewing someone whom he has himself invited on air as a guest. The manner in which Bensky treats those who call in to voice their divergent perspectives is utterly appalling.

It's the same thing for all the established programs and core KPFA hosts to a much lesser degree. All these people are one-trick-ponies in the Pony Island of the KPFA Mindmeld. The idea of "free speech" progressive broadcasting is a farce. The Morning and Evening News parrallels mainstream media propaganda with a leftish wiff of self-satisfied complacent dissent. Rarely does any program on KPFA other than 'Guns And Butter' question the fundamental underlying set of assumptions which are propelling our society to collapse. The on-air contempt which most programers evince for their listening audiences demonstrates very predictably how far from Lew Hill's founding impulse Pacifica has strayed.

Indeed, one might logically go on to question the advisability of organizing a free speech community radio endeavor around a cult of personalities and professional expert commentators regardless of their espoused political or social perspectives. There are plenty of articulate people across a wide spectrum who could contribute very ably to the reinvigoration of the Pacifica mission if only the entire structure of programming and hosting of programs did not foreclose so completely on innovation and a broader message.

It is not simply time for fresh blood (pardon the violent metaphor) it is time to demand accountability and respect for the listeners who are the station funders and who should have a very direct and powerful voice in what goes on behind the aras.

Finally, it is truly pathetic that people don't even have enough character to post with their own names. To take one out of Bensky's play book— "You suck! anon-e- mouse."

Oh, by the way, "Democracy Now," is another mechanism for containing the dissent in the safe waters of the acceptable "progressive" agenda. Amy Goodman is being pimped by Soros.

The Empress Has No Chothes By Caroyln Becker

see: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011306_empress_clothes_summary.shtml

Your Pal the Plumber

Andrew Carothers-Liske

riva screwed up all the town halls by stacking them so no one had input

first one was for her buddy she was pusshing to be general manager name tiny

this was first town hall she couldnt poison and actually let people speak and talk and learn

then peoples radio tried to claim it as their own instead of cooperative effort between lsb staff and management to reach to listeners

riva lies for the attention because shes a failure in everything else and needs selfesteem wherever she can steal it from

Riva, you left out the time you called out a bunch of men to confront Marnie Tattersall during GM interviews, and one of them assaulted her right on the street in Berkeley. One of the others admitted he had to hold the guy back who kept screaming in her face after he attacked her. That sounds a lot more violent than anything you complain about here.

No wonder Tattersall asked for a security guard.

Since Enteen and her supporters never denounced this act of violence it makes me think they secretly wanted to see a little of the old ultraviolence.