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KPFA: The Right-Wing Assault
The law firm headed by the chair of the San Francisco Republican party threatens KPFA SLAPP suit
KPFA, the original community radio station that has been broadcasting left-wing talk and radical culture to the Bay Area at 59,000 watts since 1949, is not simply fighting about what to broadcast at 8:00 am. The station's community, which fought and prevented a planned sale in 1999, implemented a system of elected boards to prevent any re-occurrence of license sale proposals. Critics of the democratization effort have often pointed out the STV-based system made it possible for right-wing forces with money and access to the airwaves to infiltrate the Pacifica system and try to wrest control of not only KPFA, but also the networks four other major broadcast outlets in Los Angeles, Houston, New York and Washington DC.
The critics were right, but I doubt they saw it coming as it has come down.
KPFA's paid staff, affiliated with the Communication Workers of America Local 9415, and abetted by a loose alliance of former New Left scions in Berkeley who call themselves sequentially Concerned Listeners and then (ironically enough) Save KPFA, appear to have been duped by their anxieties about maintaining professional status in a rapidly changing broadcast landscape into collaborating with the hard right.
Sarvajit Randawa, the #1 ranked choice of the Concerned Listeners faction in 2006, has been revealed as a frequent donor to Republican political action committees (PACs) while being sent to the Pacifica Foundation board as a listener representative for several years between 2001 and 2007. Randawa married Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, appointed in April as the chair of the San Francisco Republican party. Dhillon has sued the Pacifica Foundation twice since December 2010 and threatens a third lawsuit via her law partner Harold P Smith.
Dhillon's law partner did not disclose in court the nuptials of his law partner with the long-standing foundation board member, cloaked Republican, and founding member of the Concerned Listeners faction, while prosecuting 2 cases impacting the makeup of the Foundation's Board of Directors.
In interviews in the SF Chronicle and on KALW's Crosscurrents program: the following has been revealed. Ms. Dhillon has called for the elimination of the teachers unions, expressed solidarity with the economic agenda of Republicans "everywhere", stated she is an "old college pal" of Ann Coulter and said her parents threw fundraisers for Jesse Helms. She stated ...
"Bottom line, it's about winning. I'd like to see our party win".
In less than 24 hours after charges of "corporate underwriting" erroneously repeated over and over again by the KPFA News Department without any attempt to verify the accusations or acquire documentation, were proven incorrect by KPFA delegate Tracy Rosenberg, Dhillon's law firm Dhillon and Smith produced a letter threatening to "seek general, special and exemplary damages as well as all attorney's fees and costs" against Rosenberg, basically trying to frighten her into shutting up and not continuing to interfere with the destabilization operation by the concealed hard right who drove Pacifica to the brink of bankruptcy by the end of 2009. An independent auditor questioned if the five stations were even a going concern.
The much-demonized CFO Lavarn Williams and Executive Director Arlene Engelhardt have performed yeoman's labor in the past year and a half in pulling back from the brink, reducing KPFA's $600.000 operating deficit to a small surplus, reducing the New York's station deficit by 75% and posting a $950,000 operating surplus for the 5-station network in total. For this act of heroism, they are compared to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker by some befuddled station staffers and old Berkeley lefties whose disastrous record of failing to recognize Cointelpro operations when they hit them in the face is well-documented.
It is time to call it like it and reveal the Concerned Listeners/Save KPFA as a front group for an operation to destabilize Pacifica, aided and abetted by fools who are willing to unleash hard right forces, collaborate with obvious agents, engage in censorship, and lie to the station's community in the illusion that they can dance with the devil and not get burned.
It doesn't work that way.
The only way KPFA and Pacifica will continue as a going concern and the *only* major market broadcast outlets belonging to the progressive community is for KPFA listeners to throw the Save KPFA outfit out on their behinds and make democracy work as it is intended to work.
We can't afford to have people so lost they can't recognize Cointelpro-like operations in their midst
We can't afford to have whistleblowers silenced by Republican-funded SLAPP suits.
We can't afford to have the KPFA News reporting new SF police chief Greg Suhr is "widely praised" when even the Chronicle reports the Police Officers Union president said at the swearing-in ceremony the POA had "bought" the chief's appointment after what was described in the SF Appeal as his "ghastly legacy".
We can't afford to have our station silenced to help Republicans win.
So yes, have an opinion about program changes, regret the 30% reduction in donations to KPFA between 2007 and 2009 that forced a 20% reduction in the number of employees, but do not lose the forest for the trees. You cannot support anyone who opens up the foundation to assault by the hard right-wing. There is no programming preference that justifies using those means. We've seen what they've done to our country.
The critics were right, but I doubt they saw it coming as it has come down.
KPFA's paid staff, affiliated with the Communication Workers of America Local 9415, and abetted by a loose alliance of former New Left scions in Berkeley who call themselves sequentially Concerned Listeners and then (ironically enough) Save KPFA, appear to have been duped by their anxieties about maintaining professional status in a rapidly changing broadcast landscape into collaborating with the hard right.
Sarvajit Randawa, the #1 ranked choice of the Concerned Listeners faction in 2006, has been revealed as a frequent donor to Republican political action committees (PACs) while being sent to the Pacifica Foundation board as a listener representative for several years between 2001 and 2007. Randawa married Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, appointed in April as the chair of the San Francisco Republican party. Dhillon has sued the Pacifica Foundation twice since December 2010 and threatens a third lawsuit via her law partner Harold P Smith.
Dhillon's law partner did not disclose in court the nuptials of his law partner with the long-standing foundation board member, cloaked Republican, and founding member of the Concerned Listeners faction, while prosecuting 2 cases impacting the makeup of the Foundation's Board of Directors.
In interviews in the SF Chronicle and on KALW's Crosscurrents program: the following has been revealed. Ms. Dhillon has called for the elimination of the teachers unions, expressed solidarity with the economic agenda of Republicans "everywhere", stated she is an "old college pal" of Ann Coulter and said her parents threw fundraisers for Jesse Helms. She stated ...
"Bottom line, it's about winning. I'd like to see our party win".
In less than 24 hours after charges of "corporate underwriting" erroneously repeated over and over again by the KPFA News Department without any attempt to verify the accusations or acquire documentation, were proven incorrect by KPFA delegate Tracy Rosenberg, Dhillon's law firm Dhillon and Smith produced a letter threatening to "seek general, special and exemplary damages as well as all attorney's fees and costs" against Rosenberg, basically trying to frighten her into shutting up and not continuing to interfere with the destabilization operation by the concealed hard right who drove Pacifica to the brink of bankruptcy by the end of 2009. An independent auditor questioned if the five stations were even a going concern.
The much-demonized CFO Lavarn Williams and Executive Director Arlene Engelhardt have performed yeoman's labor in the past year and a half in pulling back from the brink, reducing KPFA's $600.000 operating deficit to a small surplus, reducing the New York's station deficit by 75% and posting a $950,000 operating surplus for the 5-station network in total. For this act of heroism, they are compared to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker by some befuddled station staffers and old Berkeley lefties whose disastrous record of failing to recognize Cointelpro operations when they hit them in the face is well-documented.
It is time to call it like it and reveal the Concerned Listeners/Save KPFA as a front group for an operation to destabilize Pacifica, aided and abetted by fools who are willing to unleash hard right forces, collaborate with obvious agents, engage in censorship, and lie to the station's community in the illusion that they can dance with the devil and not get burned.
It doesn't work that way.
The only way KPFA and Pacifica will continue as a going concern and the *only* major market broadcast outlets belonging to the progressive community is for KPFA listeners to throw the Save KPFA outfit out on their behinds and make democracy work as it is intended to work.
We can't afford to have people so lost they can't recognize Cointelpro-like operations in their midst
We can't afford to have whistleblowers silenced by Republican-funded SLAPP suits.
We can't afford to have the KPFA News reporting new SF police chief Greg Suhr is "widely praised" when even the Chronicle reports the Police Officers Union president said at the swearing-in ceremony the POA had "bought" the chief's appointment after what was described in the SF Appeal as his "ghastly legacy".
We can't afford to have our station silenced to help Republicans win.
So yes, have an opinion about program changes, regret the 30% reduction in donations to KPFA between 2007 and 2009 that forced a 20% reduction in the number of employees, but do not lose the forest for the trees. You cannot support anyone who opens up the foundation to assault by the hard right-wing. There is no programming preference that justifies using those means. We've seen what they've done to our country.
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This writer's blood pressure went up to 200 when I heard at 8:30 a.m. from Tracy Rosenberg and Richard Phelps that they were in the studio at 8 a.m. for the 8 a.m. LSB Report to Listener, but did not have their microphones turned on. Margy Wilkinson, the ice-cold government operative Local Station Board chair, had the unmitigated gall to lie and state that Tracy and Richard had just arrived at the station! THIS IS GROUNDS FOR IMMEDIATE TERMINATION OF THE STAFF WHO TURNED OFF THE MICROPHONES OF TRACY AND RICHARD. The first half hour was occupied with the horrifying Hate Pacifica routine of Wilkinson, Matthew Hallinan and their puppet treasurer, rattling off figures that no one could compare to anything as the average listener does not have financial records on hand. PLEASE CALL AND COMPLAIN NOW AND DEMAND THAT IMMEDIATE TERMINATION OF ANYONE WHO SHUTS OFF OF MIKES OF PEOPLE IN THE STUDIO AND ANYONE WHO SPREADS RUMORS BETTER KNOWN AS LIES as happened on Sunday, April 24, with a lie about corporate sponsorship. One number I found is:
Andrew Phillips, Station Manager, 510.848.6767 X203
Boy, I hope you have this documented and ready to present in court. I looked him up on donor reporting sites and couldn't find any such "revealed" proof.
Can you say "libel"?
Mr. Old Libertarian (another one of the cloaked right-wing operatives) is threatening anonymous people with legal charges on a website dedicated to freedom of information.
You do nothing but expose how accurate the original article is.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/69366
Be sure to listen to all of it so you get the full impact. Tracy was outstanding and I am glad she stayed to represent all who voted for her. No matter what these fascists do, the opposition must be there and stand up to these fascist bullies. A bully is the biggest coward. Hallinan ran out of the studio as soon as the microphones were turned on. Most of the phone calls favored the fascists and were clearly staged. The fact that Wilkinson could sit there and obviously lie, knowing that Tracy and Richard would certainly complain means that not only is she an ice cold government operative, she knows exactly what she is doing when she welcomes Republican lawyers.
In the tradition of the working class movement the scabs have always been considered the lowest form of life on earth;however,today ,"progressive" petty bourgeois intellectuals are attempting to convince the workers that they should support the illegal scabs who usurp their workplaces to the detriment of unions,wages,labor laws,safety rules and working conditions in general.The petty bourgeois intellectual takes this position because his/her job is not threatened by the mostly illiterate scabs;he/she only cares about cheaper goods at the store and cheaper gardeners,maids and drugs.Besides,he/she has a job protection since titles from foreign universities are not valid unless they're validated by a filter exam in the United States,in English.However,Barack Obama is starting to change that at the elementary school level by the proliferation of "charter schools" (scab schools) with public funds and private administrations that are destroying the teachers' unions and regulations thus,illegal scabs will have access to these jobs too.
The twisted logic of the scabs' advocates claims,among other things,that the "undocumented workers" only take jobs that U.S. workers don't want=FALSE: the illegal scabs have taken most of the jobs that the U.S. corporations can not ship abroad: Construction,meatpacking houses,hotels,restaurants,automated machine shops, warehousing ,etc..The union hiring halls that once existed in U.S. cities,where workers could get a job at union wages,have been replaced by the "Centros de Jornaleros" where contractors,often also illegals,hire scab labor.Most of the jobs that were covered by the U.A.W.'s contract have been outsourced to machine shops around the country who employ illegal scabs at a third of U.A.W.'s wages.The same's happened with the meatpacking houses and other industries where the corporations,by different tactics,got rid of unions and today are running the plants with scabs.
The twisted logic continues by claiming that the illegal scabbing benefits us all=FALSE:It only benefits U.S. corporations by lowering their cost of production.
Furthermore,the twisted logic uses a lot of touchy-feely stories,appealing for compassion, about children and separated families without clarifying that these people who came illegally to the country to take U.S. workers' jobs leaving them homeless and,ever more,sleeping in the streets of U.S. cities, this scum, certainly, doesn't show any "compassion".
Some labor unions have been complicit in the scabbing operations by setting agencies in Mexico and Honduras to recruit illegal scabs as part of their strategy of collaboration with the corporations.The misleadership of these unions is composed mostly by intellectuals graduated from universities who never worked in the trade but got a job in the union hall and climbed to the top from there;their only interest is to collect the union dues.
The illegals who break the border laws,not only break the labor laws,they also break the traffic laws,putting in danger the lives of U.S. citizens on the road;they also break tax laws while demanding services paid for by U.S. taxpayers and often they also break drug laws by trafficking drugs from Mexico to the United States.
The requirement that only U.S. citizens or legal residents are allowed to work in the United States is a workers' gain and U.S. workers must defend it by any means necessary.
There are workers in Mexico who fight for better conditions in their country and who risk their lives in this fight but the illegal scabs have no dignity.As a disgusting twist this scum marches on May Day in a sea of U.S. flags as a big display of their obsequiousness.