A Vision For KPFA and Pacifica-Why Listeners Should Support Voices For Justice Radio Slate

A Vision For KPFA and Pacifica
Why Listeners Should Support Voices For Justice Radio Slate
Voices For Justice Radio
http://www.voicesforjusticeradio.org
info(at)voicesforjusticeradio.org

The internecine warfare dominating most of the debate and discussion at KPFA and Pacifica has failed to seriously take up an agenda of
how the stations and the network will become relevant and vital in the most serious economic crisis since the 1930's. Our slate Voices For Justice
Radio http://www.voicesforjusticeradio.org believes that part of the solution is to make our station and network an activist center in broadcasting the issues facing working people and youth in America.

The most recent striking example of the disconnect at KPFA was the mass student and education workers revolt in California. Tens of thousands of students and teachers rose up in protest against the privatization of public education and the attack on the right of students to go to school. In the largest rally since the 1960's and 1970's at UCB over 5,000 spoke out on this issue only miles from KPFA. The present management and their supporters at the station including one Brian Edward-Tiekert were missing in action. A important and significant action of students and working people like this would have been covered live by KFPA during the 60's and 70's but the present group that really runs the station had no urgency that they provide this public service. If they had covered it live and sought to bring in KPFK in LA in the national and statewide day of action on March 4, 2010 of this year they could have brought tremendous support and enthusiasm of what KPFA and Pacifica can and should be doing.

The present national attack on Muslim Americans and the attack on the Islamic religion is a dangerous reactionary threat that scapegoats this population but the democratic and human rights of all people in this country. It is also very much connected to the scapegoating of immigrants, Latinos and African Americans. We need a national day of programming on this at Pacifica with all the station community programmers and community voices throughout the country participating and contributing. This is national day of broadcasting that only KPFA and Pacifica can provide and we need to make it happen to answer this dangerous assault on human and ethnic rights.

We believe that we have to revitalize the station and network by more community news and live events including video programming on our portal. While there are valuable programs on labor on some of the shows they are not brought together on a portal web page that could tie all the labor programming together. This could be extended to all programs on the environment, the Black, women, Latino, GLBT communities. Instead of building communities the present management and entrenched staff are driving people away from the station.

Our slate is the only one against the merging of the KPFA and KPFK news. The homogenization of the news and other programming into more NPR light will only lose listeners. This has also limited local community news at both stations and we need more local community news and volunteer news bureaus in the South Bay, North Bay, Peninsula and Central Valley. Each regional area has more than 10 million people and we need to expand local community news programs and not merge them. We also need to work with our listeners in the regional areas that we cover to get volunteer news bureaus going and to make sure that even if all their reports are not on the KPFA news they will be on a KPFA regional news portals in audio, text and video. This would provide a real community news and information service and again it would increase the financial support for the station.

The Labor Collective which produced many hours of powerful labor programming on Labor Day, May Day, MLK Day was driven
out of the station by Brian Edward-Tiegert with the support of Bonnie Simmons, Chris Welch, Amelia Gonzalez and even some of those people running on the ICR slate who supported it's banning from even submitting Labor Program Proposals to the Program Council. Edward-Tiekert had meetings with management during this time to dissolve the program council while he was supposed to be representing the staff. One of our supporters was at these meetings and saw for herself how this group was operating. Some people might want to yell about that who in
fact were being misrepresented by Edwards-Tiekert. This illegitimate action was later rejected by the Local Station Board as undemocratic and that the Program Council did not have this authority but the damage had already been done.

While many bay area union officials are supporting the "Save KPFA Slate" formerly "Concerned Listeners Slate" KPFA fails to even have a regular one hour labor radio show like our sister stations in New York, Houston and Los Angeles. The KPFA news department under it's present management even refuses to run a free daily labor radio segment of three minutes put out by Workers Information News WIN http://www.laboradio.org. Why is this? When the Berkeley Honda struggle took place and there was a call for a boycott even supported by the City Of Berkeley, the present management and "Save KPFA" people were opposed to the station taking a stand publicly.
We disagree and eventually got the board to pass a resolution of support but our station can and should be using it's broadcast power to mobilize and back workers in struggle with radio carts such as with the present Castlewood workers who have been locked out for many months and need support on the picket line. This is the kind of activist radio that we will push for if we are elected. It will also get increasing support from the labor movement in Northern California.

The VOJR also supports re-instituting the Program Council but we do not believe it should be dominated by the management and the staff who have vested interests in their programs and favorites. The proposal passed by the ICR slate only allows 3 outside listeners on the program council. Will this make our programming needs be reflected by the people who contribute to KPFA. We think not. Our view is that all the Program Council members should be listeners with the management and staff, paid and unpaid having voice but no vote.

We also believe that we need to use the KPFA/Berkeley KPFK/LA signal for California wide broadcasting issues and that is why we support KPFA and KPFK offering to host statewide simultaneous debates for the top Statewide candidates. At present the corporate media and their candidates want to exclude all third party candidates who have qualified for the ballot off the debates. Our stations and network should stand for all the candidates getting a hearing. The Peace and Freedom Party and the Greens of Alameda County.

We also agree that there is a financial crisis at KPFA and Pacifica and we support cutting the Pacifica Board physical meetings to two a year instead of four. This cost saving measure would help keep some full time and part time paid staff. We are also appalled that the station has to send out two mailing for the election when they could have had the ballot and candidate statements in one mailing. These are clear areas where money is being wasted. This however will not deal with the long term decline of our revenue because of a loss of listeners. There have to be layoffs of paid staff at the stations and they should be done by seniority and not be picking favorites of management as is now done by the present management. They cut long-term staff at Flashpoints while keeping the hours of new programmers from Letters To Washington. Our slate also believes it is dishonest to claim that the stations will shut down if there are significant budget cuts or layoffs. Many community radio stations around the country operate with 100% volunteer staffs and have strong followings. Instead of cutting board operators which are vital to the operation of all the programs, KPFA needs to downsize the paid on air staff if layoffs are to take place. They should also take place with strict seniority.

Our view however is that if KPFA and Pacifica start to do their job they would have a tremendous growth in listenership and support. Many former
supporters and subscribers have turned away from KPFA to KALW, Green 960 and the internet for their information and music needs. KPFA along with KPFB should be providing this. We believe that new programming could immediately be put on KPFB and streamed on the web for those unable to get the broadcast signal from Berkeley. At present a small group of people make all the programming decisions and this is unacceptable.
Despite all the anger and frustration and much consternation, we are optimistic that KPFA and Pacifica can be turned around. It is the only real national alternative network from the pro-war corporate media that dominates the airwaves. We need to provide a vision and programming that can meet the challenge if we are going to really make a change and that means involving all those who are interested in contributing to a revitalized KPFA and Pacifica.

Vote For Jaime Cader, Felipe Messina, Sureya Sayadi, Steve Zeltzer For Real Change At KPFA

A Vision To Rebuild KPFA & Pacifica

A Program To Rebuild KPFA and Pacifica

1. More community based reporters with volunteer news bureaus in the South Bay, N. Bay, Peninsula, Fresno and Sacramento and training of community reporters in these areas. Also web links to these news bureaus with reports from the regions and that can be reached on the web through google news and other search engines.

2. Re-establish and Open up the Program Council meetings to the public. Programmers and management can have a voice but no vote. The listeners need to be the decision makers on changes of programming.

3. Reorganize the KPFA news department to get more in depth news reporting and make segments such as labor and environment available as a google news feed. We also support combining labor, environmental, Black, GBLT and other programming nationally so it is searchable on the web. We support putting on Workers News as a feed which has been offered free to the station but is not used by news department managers.

4. We need to increase Public Affairs programming at KPFA including all communities in the Northern California. At present there is no public affairs director with a budget of $4.5 million and a population in the bay area of 12 million.

5. Better utilize KPFB by webcasting it and using new internet technology that will allow more new programs on housing & tenants rights and many other issues. We also propose to encourage use of video for interviews and on the site remote locations.

6. Re-establish the Women's Department, the Third World Department and establish a Labor Department with voices of the rank & file and leaders of unions and a news information calendar on the web.

7. Bring back the monthly folio in print and on line with interactive feedback on programming and how to build the station and Pacifica. We also support a regular survey by mail during the elections of what listeners support and what changes they want at our community radio station

8. Support the establishment of a Pacifica New Orleans Station Affiliate that can be a beacon from the South.

9. The development of a national and regional community producers network that will develop national and regional programming proposals that can link up the stations and the network from the ground up instead of a top down approach to national and regional programming.

10. Re-establish regular community town hall meetings every 6 months that are required under station bylaws but have been ignored by the present Concerned Listeners Group and ignored by the ICR slate.

11. Support the campaign to drop the charges against arrested community programmer Nadra Foster. Foster who was arrested and charged with trespassing at the station must be defended and Nadra is still banned by the station management without due process.

We need to be a beacon for all the people of this country!

http://www.voicesforjusticeradio.org

info(at)voicesforjusticeradio.org