Keep on making “noise”

Earlier in the same meeting, PNB chair Summer Reese complained about KPFA listeners making “a lot of noise” regarding the election supervisor she hired for the Tracy Rosenberg recall vote. Hundreds of listeners have been writing the PNB to ask why recall ballots had still not been mailed nearly four months after Pacifica’s own deadline for that to happen.

Over 1200 listeners have signed a petition demanding Pacifica appoint an impartial election supervisor from the American Association of Arbitrators or a similar organization. As we reported in our last issue, Reese recently hired a person named Matt Ward to supervise the recall, but gave no information about him. Multiple efforts by SaveKPFA activists to ask both Reese and Ward himself about his experience, or his timeline for the election, did not produce answers. Reese told the PNB that because Pacifica had previously hired election supervisors who she said “don’t appear to have had any qualifications to be election supervisors,” it was therefore “inappropriate” for KPFA listeners to ask about the qualifications of the person she hired to oversee the Rosenberg recall. | LISTEN TO 2 min audio clip of Reese

You can hear the entire PNB meeting in this three-part public recording: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3. (The discussion of the recall and KPFA’s listener emails begins about 8 minutes into part 2 and continues through the vote at the end of part 3).

“KPFA listeners and staff have the right to know how the radio network they support is run and what our donations are paying for,” said KPFA board chair Margy Wilkinson. “Let’s keep speaking up loudly and clearly, until we get our station and network back on the right track.”

Take a look at today’s posts from San Francisco’s Fog City Journal and the California Federation of Labor‘s website. Reader comments are welcome at both, and that’s another way you can add your voice.