People’s Radio Endorsement and Ranked Voting Recommendations for 2010 KPFA LSB Election

People’s Radio Endorsement and Ranked Voting Recommendations for the 2010 KPFA Local Station Board Election

A guide to undecided and last minute voters, KPFA members who haven't completed and returned ballots, with candidate assessments and election information. Also see our website election page peoplesradio.net/election2010.htm for additional information and material to be posted soon.

People’s Radio recommends that, above all, do not vote for any of the “Save KPFA” slate. This is the Concerned Listeners (CL) in a new guise, an organization/slate that fights against democratic governance for KPFA, wants more moderate programming and is largely responsible for the financial crisis which threatens KPFA. For the actual history and democratic objectives of the original 1990s listener activist groups/movement Save KPFA and Take Back KPFA, and their objections to the misappropriation of the name by this anti-democratic reform slate, see http://sites.google.com/site/therealsavekpfa.

Our candidate recommendations and rankings are drawn from the Independents for Community Radio (ICR) and Voices For Justice Radio (VFJR) slates and the unaffiliated candidates.

1 Hyun-Mi Kim
2 Felipe Messina
3 Kate Tanaka
4 Cynthia Johnson
5 Steve Zeltzer
6 Stephan Astourian
7 Sureya Sayadi
8 Ivar Diehl
9 Tracy Rosenberg
10 Aaron Aarons
11 Gina Szeto
12 Janet Kobren

You may wish to rank an additional five candidates (there are 17 ICR, VFJR and independents), increasing the chances of a win for all your choices, as long as you don’t vote for any of the 10 Save /CL candidates. We recommend voting in the above rank order for a more powerful, progressive vote for listener democracy.

Please take time to vote now. Ballots must be mailed in time to be received, or hand delivered to the station, by Thursday September 30.

Our candidate ranking assessment:

We arrived at this ranking through a democratic vote of our members, combining varied opinions, candidate preferences and evaluations. Our endorsement and ranking criteria include: support of democratic governance; knowledge of station history, current politics and issues; ability to work with colleagues and in coalition with Peoples Radio and other community radio and listener democracy movement groups, community activist/leadership experience; sense of the KPFA community, diverse communities served and their program needs; board experience, skills/qualifications; involvement in the listener democracy movement, opposition to the KPFA status quo regime and anti-democratic reform supporters/slates.

We are most impressed by the fresh, energetic, intelligent, articulate voices and approaches, the knowledge and sense of KPFA community and issues demonstrated by the higher ranked candidates (#1- #3) in the campaign forums and debates, in order: Hyun-Mi Kim (ICR), Felipe Messina (VFJR) and Kate Tanaka (ICR).

Although not previously involved with KPFA listener activist groups or station governance, Hyun-Mi is the right kind of community based activist needed to represent diverse listeners on the LSB. She takes a strong stand for youth and communities of color, articulates a clear and unique understanding and definition of the communities served by KPFA and their programming needs, and she understands the need for a thorough review and shake up of the program grid. Since she is already knowledgable of program issues, we are confident that she is quickly learning listener movement history, station governance and policy issues.

Felipe is also relatively new to LSB politics but has a history of involvement with the listener movement and LSB election assistance, attending and video-taping LSB meetings. Although he may lack long term experience and activism with community organizations, in the community and on-air forms he stands out as very knowledgeable, organized, energetic, devoted to the station and representative of youth and communities, connecting well with listeners. He has clearly articulated a strong understanding of the issues and opposition to the station status quo, anti-reform slates and supporters.

Kate is a long time KPFA listener, Green Party and community activist, very thoughtful, bright, knowledgeable on local community and political issues, as well as station governance issues through her husband Aki Tanaka (LSB incumbent and Secretary). In spite of a related, potential concern over a representation issue (see more below), we expect she would make a fine and productive addition to the LSB and will strive to work collaboratively with all Board members.

The candidates ranked #4 and #5, Cynthia Johnson (ICR) and Steve Zeltzer (VFJR), are veteran community-labor activists with long experience and strong involvement with the KPFA community and democracy movement, with contrasting styles in political and organizational approaches and working relations.

We know Cynthia and her late husband Hal as directors of the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, which hosted the weekly and sometimes tumultuous meetings of the Coalition for a democratic Pacifica (CdP), both arrested twice in the 1999 Pacifica/KPFA struggle. She engages and works well with people, has served on several boards, is familiar with the movement and station history. Despite some lapses and tentative positions and answers in the forums, and an apparent preference for conflict avoidance and resolution with the anti-reform, status quo opposition, she is coming up to speed on station governance, policy and program issues and would work effectively and peacefully with all Board members.

Steve is a former KPFA volunteer staff with the KPFA Labor Collective, which previously produced special labor programs; a very strong, experienced local and international labor organizer, activist and voice of justice for workers. Besides his work with Labor Video Project and Labor Fest and tirelessly advocating for public employees and union democracy, he has a long view and involvement with the KPFA democracy movement and has been one of the most knowledgable, forceful and passionate candidates speaking on KPFA program and governance issues. Some of our members have reservations and concerns that in his conviction, principled stances and preference for direct action, he sometimes can be too combative, uncompromising or unable to ally and work well and strategically in coalition or on the Board with pro-democracy allies. However, Steve was involved with and open to democracy movement unity slates and coalition approaches in the current and previous elections, while other candidates and allies were not.

Our #6 and #7 ranked choices Stephen Astourian (ICR) and Sureya Sayadi (VFJR) also offer similarities and contrasts in KPFA experience, movement history, community representation, political knowledge and communication styles.

Stephen is new to station governance and politics and a UC Berkeley professor who brings a refreshing academic refinement and a calm, reasoned approach, as demonstrated in the on-air forums. He has a good understanding of listener movement goals, is generally knowledgeable and representative on KPFA and community issues. We expect he would be a quick study and rational, moderating and effective contributor on the Board.

We know Sureya as an LSB incumbent elected in 2007 and a strong, passionate and principled activist and democratic reform ally. She is also an MD and a Kurdish woman from a refugee family, and previously a KPFA volunteer and collective member contributing to the Voices of the Middle East program. Some of us are concerned about her occasionally being too outspoken, untimely, undisciplined in terms of adhering to meeting discourse rules, agenda items and leadership. However, as a KPFA caucus formerly with both minority and majority representatives on the LSB, Peoples Radio also understands her unique and sometimes difficult position working on the Board with the ICR and CL groupings as the sole elected representative affiliated with VFJR.

Our #8 and #10 rankings go to two independent candidates, Ivar Diehl and Aaron Aarons. Here we have few similarities and interesting contrasts of personality, experience, style and positions. While we like them generally and think they could contribute useful elements to the Board's mix, we have a reservation about unaffiliated candidates in the current contentious and alignment driven political environment and reality which, for better or worse, has made slates and LSB voting alliances inevitable and at least temporarily necessary.

Ivar is new to KPFA politics and governance but has participated in nearly all community and on-air forums and has done well in developing knowledge and stands on many governance issues during the campaign. He is intelligent, insightful and articulates the perspective, interests, program and access needs of younger listeners. Ivar seems to be an open, quick study and receptive to supporting and working for effective listener representation.

Aaron is a long term activist and a familiar, persistent presence in the KPFA scene and speaks fairly well for many listeners who are concerned with retaining and promoting a radical socialist edge and content in programing and opposing the forces and influence toward more mainstream, liberal orientated programing and so called professionalism. While he understands governance issues, he has not been interested or able to align politically and work collaboratively with others.

#9 Tracy Rosenberg (ICR) is an LSB incumbent with long and exceptional experience, activity, knowledge and leadership with the KPFA listener movement, and currently serves as a Pacifica National Board (PNB) director from KPFA. In some important respects we regret not being able to rank her much higher, as some LSB observers and activists might expect. She has worked as the Media Alliance Administrative and Executive Director, that organization having taken an effective, although not uncontroversial or flawless, leadership role in the 1999 uprising. She has chaired the Program Council, worked as the Local Election Supervisor and with the CdP. In her various positions and roles, on the LSB and in the candidate forums, she is arguably the candidate most knowledgeable about KPFA/Pacifica affairs and a powerful voice for progressive, representative governance. Especially as an incumbent with name recognition, she has a good chance of winning.

However in an overall assessment and ranking, we have strong reservations about her insider orientation and what often presents as a detached, dismissive and autocratic leadership style, as well as her political and movement judgments, actions and motivations. While such characteristics are not unique in Pacifica/KPFA leaders and managers, as an ICR group and slate leader she has not conducted or respected a democratic group meeting and decision process with the candidates. The ICR leaders has recruited a mixed group from diverse and under-represented communities, some whom we endorse highly, others who are no-show candidates in name only, making the ICR appear in part hollow and not fully credible as a community radio slate. Yet in their 2010 candidate outreach and selections, she and ICR co-leaders rejected our group's one perspective LSB candidate for their slate, even though an experienced labor and KPFA activist and a well qualified, former LSB member, in favor of some candidates with little KPFA background who have minimally (or not at all) participated in the campaign.

While we worked collaboratively with Tracy and other allies/groups in the Fair Election Committee after the 2007 election, we had a different experience in the 2009 and 2010 elections. Tracy and the ICR co-leaders have repeatedly blocked and abandoned unity initiatives and talks and have refused to work in coalition with us and others. We find it difficult at best to recommend a candidate who has worked actively in many ways to undermine and marginalize Peoples Radio as a caucus and LSB slate.

We also note with concern that Tracy a) with the ICR leadership has contributed to the corrupting and undemocratic, exclusionary influence of big party politics and money in LSB elections by admittedly adopting and imitating the CL campaign model, including using an expensive slate mailer; and b) voted on the PNB to withhold candidate information booklets from the election ballot mailings, probably as a cost saving measure, yet hardly a democratic stance for members without ready internet access (thus inconsistent with her advocacy for the same class interests in a recent Huffing Post commentary) and actually adding to election expenses when the PNB later reversed its decision and decided to send the booklets in a separate mailing.

#11 Gina Szeto (ICR) is another community based activist and potential fresh voice for diversity and youth. However, she is unknown to us and KPFA governance and has not participated enough in election events including the rounds of on-air forums and local area community forums to develop and fill out clear positions on governance, programing and other issues. There may be a concern with her reliability for the consistent LSB meeting attendance needed for representation, alignment and voting support for the democratic reform program.

#12 Janet Kobren (ICR) is a long time activist and KPFA listener, who has worked in KPFA coalition groups for the last few years. We admire and applaud her recent, well known, courageous international commitment and direct activism with the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. She is intelligent, knowledgeable, well organized with practical experience and skills, and like several candidates untried in a KPFA leadership role, potentially an effective listener democracy representative. As with Tracy and for some similar reasons, we would like to but can't improve her ranking. She has been sometimes hostile, dismissive and not collaborative with Peoples Radio members, including an instance of circulating inaccurate and harmful information about one of our 2009 candidates. As an ICR candidate pick she was apparently not interested or receptive to our recent campaign unity proposals. Our impression is that Janet would be reliable to support and follow the lead of the ICR leadership, not a completely positive prospect for us.


Please take time to vote now. Ballots must be mailed in time to be received, or hand delivered to the station, by Thursday September 30.

We need to reach quorum (10% of listener members voting) for the election to be valid, and to achieve a far higher voter rate to make the elections more representative and credible (and to answer election system critics). And we need an effective majority of independent, pro-democracy board members, more than the one vote majority we now have in order to ensure the station's financial viability and intelligent, representative governance, policy and decision making and community based programming, so it will continue as an all too rare source for the truth and a Voice for the Voiceless.

For more election information see our website peoplesradio.net/election2010.htm, and look for additional material to be posted soon.