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Media Alliance Press release on August 20th Police Incident at KPFA
Community Journalist Roughed Up After KPFA-FM Calls Police on Volunteer. Training program graduate and former Elemental Roots co-host Nadra Foster forcibly removed from radio station offices.
Berkeley – On August 20th, 2008, the Berkeley Police Department was summoned to KPFA Radio offices at 1929 Martin Luther King Jr Way to remove an unauthorized visitor. The unauthorized visitor was Nadra Foster, a graduate of the station’s heralded apprenticeship program, and a co-host of the Elemental Roots program which aired on Friday evenings at 7pm for several years. Foster was doing some volunteer work at the station, not unusual for an institution with over 200 formal volunteers who use the description unpaid staff to describe their work producing 2/3 of the station’s programming for free.
Foster was using one of the communal work spaces in the station, the “Ujima Room” (together in the Swahili language), a 1st floor production studio. While on the telephone arranging a ride home, according to her brother Gideon Foster, Nadra was asked to get off the telephone and apparently did not do so quickly enough. In a chain of circumstances that remain unexplained, a decision was made by the management team at KPFA and the next-door Pacifica National Office, to handle the telephone overload by summoning the Berkeley Police Department and reporting a trespasser on the premises.
The Berkeley Police Department sent a squadron of six officers and removed the pregnant Ms. Foster from the premises by force, fracturing her arm in the process. Ms. Foster was taken to Alameda County Jail in Santa Rita and booked with two felony charges of battery on a police officer. At Friday’s arraignment, the charges were reduced to five misdemeanors and bail was posted by her family later that day.
On an August 21st edition of Flashpoints that discussed the incident, Hard Knock Radio producer Weyland Southon, who witnessed the latter part of the arrest stated: “This is a place where we report on police brutality. This is a place where we hold the police accountable for wrong-doing. To bring the cops willingly into KPFA to deal with a situation like this was short-sighted. Situations like this get us killed”.
Ms. Foster, who is the primary caretaker of two young children, is still facing five misdemeanor charges, including one count of trespassing, two charges of resisting arrest and two charges of battery on a police officer. She is currently being represented by an Alameda County Public Defender.
Pacifica Radio and KPFA-FM have issued no public statement at the time of this release, although Pacifica Executive Director Nicole Sawaya stated via e-mail that Pacifica did not intend to press charges on the trespassing count.
Media Alliance Managing Director Tracy Rosenberg, commented “Turning a workplace dispute about telephone usage into a police action where people are hurt is simply an unacceptable escalation of an ordinary situation that is handled in a million workplaces everyday without the use of police. It demonstrates a significant failure to implement on-site the noble words of KPFA's mission - which revolve around acknowledging and resolving conflict without the use of oppressive force”.
KPFA’s unpaid staff organization which advocates on behalf of the station’s large unpaid workforce and had established grievance procedures for volunteer concerns, was derecognized by interim general manager Lemlem Rijio in August of 2007 and has not been reinstated.
###
Foster was using one of the communal work spaces in the station, the “Ujima Room” (together in the Swahili language), a 1st floor production studio. While on the telephone arranging a ride home, according to her brother Gideon Foster, Nadra was asked to get off the telephone and apparently did not do so quickly enough. In a chain of circumstances that remain unexplained, a decision was made by the management team at KPFA and the next-door Pacifica National Office, to handle the telephone overload by summoning the Berkeley Police Department and reporting a trespasser on the premises.
The Berkeley Police Department sent a squadron of six officers and removed the pregnant Ms. Foster from the premises by force, fracturing her arm in the process. Ms. Foster was taken to Alameda County Jail in Santa Rita and booked with two felony charges of battery on a police officer. At Friday’s arraignment, the charges were reduced to five misdemeanors and bail was posted by her family later that day.
On an August 21st edition of Flashpoints that discussed the incident, Hard Knock Radio producer Weyland Southon, who witnessed the latter part of the arrest stated: “This is a place where we report on police brutality. This is a place where we hold the police accountable for wrong-doing. To bring the cops willingly into KPFA to deal with a situation like this was short-sighted. Situations like this get us killed”.
Ms. Foster, who is the primary caretaker of two young children, is still facing five misdemeanor charges, including one count of trespassing, two charges of resisting arrest and two charges of battery on a police officer. She is currently being represented by an Alameda County Public Defender.
Pacifica Radio and KPFA-FM have issued no public statement at the time of this release, although Pacifica Executive Director Nicole Sawaya stated via e-mail that Pacifica did not intend to press charges on the trespassing count.
Media Alliance Managing Director Tracy Rosenberg, commented “Turning a workplace dispute about telephone usage into a police action where people are hurt is simply an unacceptable escalation of an ordinary situation that is handled in a million workplaces everyday without the use of police. It demonstrates a significant failure to implement on-site the noble words of KPFA's mission - which revolve around acknowledging and resolving conflict without the use of oppressive force”.
KPFA’s unpaid staff organization which advocates on behalf of the station’s large unpaid workforce and had established grievance procedures for volunteer concerns, was derecognized by interim general manager Lemlem Rijio in August of 2007 and has not been reinstated.
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I don't know where the Media Alliance gets their information from, but the KPFA’s unpaid staff organization does not advocate for the unpaid staff. Most of the unpaid staff have abandon that "organization" because like many things at the station it was taken over by self serving people who thought that the only way to get their point across was by yelling and intimidation. I’m not sure how many unpaid staff there are but only a tiny percent have anything to do, or care about, the unpaid staff organization.
If the Media Alliance can get this fact wrong, then I question everything else in the article.
I am an unpaid staff member. I will NOT give my name. I am not interested in being yelled at, or the retribution and hatred of the people who think they represent KPFA’s listeners, but in fact represent the smallest minority.
Yes, I agree the police should not have been called, but I have been to meetings where I have seen people act in the most intimidating, verbally violent way, and I can see someone getting scared and calling the police.
If the Media Alliance can get this fact wrong, then I question everything else in the article.
I am an unpaid staff member. I will NOT give my name. I am not interested in being yelled at, or the retribution and hatred of the people who think they represent KPFA’s listeners, but in fact represent the smallest minority.
Yes, I agree the police should not have been called, but I have been to meetings where I have seen people act in the most intimidating, verbally violent way, and I can see someone getting scared and calling the police.
After a visit to the doctor on Monday, it turned out that Nadra's arm was severely sprained, not fractured.
There is a lack of historical perspective present among many of the people posting and I understand their concern about not seeing their workplace publicly trashed. But that said, KPFA has had an unpaid staff organization for many, many years. It was created by the blood, sweat and tears of many people who are long gone from the station's workforce. It is meant to equalize power between paid professionals and a large army of unpaid volunteers who produce 2/3 of the station's programming without compensation. It is labor organizing to protect itself.
Once upon a time, the unpaid workers were also part of the union that protects the paid workers, but in the switch to the CWA in the early 90's, the unpaid workers were abandoned and left without any sort of representation. The UPSO developed to fill that breach. It is a radical concept, but one well in the tradition of labor organizing.
Its had its times of efficacy and its times of lack of efficacy, usually dependent on who was inhabiting the leadership positions and how proactive they chose to be. But its grievance procedure provided an avenue for an employee like Nadra Foster
(who was trained to do radio at the station, co-hosted a program for four years and has been producing for over a decade) to contest a "banning" that was apparently dished out four months ago due to unauthorized use of a copy machine to copy some activity sheets to occupy her kids. (per her statement on the video interview). Most of us would expect, at most, a written reprimand under such circumstances.
Petty, totalitarian power plays like banning over copy machine usage isn't usually a good idea if management expects to be respected by workers. Enforcing petty, totalitarian power plays with the use of police force is a horrible idea.
There is a lack of historical perspective present among many of the people posting and I understand their concern about not seeing their workplace publicly trashed. But that said, KPFA has had an unpaid staff organization for many, many years. It was created by the blood, sweat and tears of many people who are long gone from the station's workforce. It is meant to equalize power between paid professionals and a large army of unpaid volunteers who produce 2/3 of the station's programming without compensation. It is labor organizing to protect itself.
Once upon a time, the unpaid workers were also part of the union that protects the paid workers, but in the switch to the CWA in the early 90's, the unpaid workers were abandoned and left without any sort of representation. The UPSO developed to fill that breach. It is a radical concept, but one well in the tradition of labor organizing.
Its had its times of efficacy and its times of lack of efficacy, usually dependent on who was inhabiting the leadership positions and how proactive they chose to be. But its grievance procedure provided an avenue for an employee like Nadra Foster
(who was trained to do radio at the station, co-hosted a program for four years and has been producing for over a decade) to contest a "banning" that was apparently dished out four months ago due to unauthorized use of a copy machine to copy some activity sheets to occupy her kids. (per her statement on the video interview). Most of us would expect, at most, a written reprimand under such circumstances.
Petty, totalitarian power plays like banning over copy machine usage isn't usually a good idea if management expects to be respected by workers. Enforcing petty, totalitarian power plays with the use of police force is a horrible idea.
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