Pacifica National Board votes to waste listener dollars

Posted on February 11, 2012 by admin

The Pacifica National Board met in Los Angeles during the last weekend in January 2012, spending the majority of its time in executive session consultations that were closed to the public.

Of the actions reported publicly, there are two concerning KPFA. First, the board  authorized its chair, Summer Reese, to appoint an elections supervisor to run the KPFA recall vote — something that should have happened two months ago. Reese said she’d “try” to do it within two weeks.

Secondly, Pacifica’s board has decided to appeal the court injunction that compelled it to seat SaveKPFA representatives Laura Prives and Dan Siegel last year. Such appeals have a very low likelihood of succeeding. What’s more, Siegel and Prives have already completed the terms the injunction applied to — and been re-elected to the national board — so the issue is now moot. We would call this another bid to disenfranchise KPFA’s duly-elected representatives, but it actually looks like something more petty: a quixotic waste of listeners’ money and SaveKPFA‘s time.

KPFA’s Local Station Board met on February 4, and among other actions, overwhelmingly passed this resolution with bi-partisan support criticizing Pacifica’s board for its money-wasting legal appeal and demanding it reverse course. The vote was 14-2 (the two voting against the measure were Anthony Fest and Janet Kobren). You can listen to the entire 5-hour-long KPFA board meeting here: part 1 | part 2

Posted in KPFA, Pacifica, budget, legal | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Donate to KPFA now!

Posted on February 11, 2012 by admin

Given how Pacifica is treating KPFA’s voting members right now, this is going to sound a little weird, but it’s still true: you need to give money to KPFA. Here’s why:

  • First, Pacifica will use any shortfall in KPFA’s fund drives as a pretext for more layoffs.
  • Second, your pledge is your vote. If you want a chance to vote in this recall election, or to run in next fall’s Local Station Board elections, you have to be a paying member of KPFA. (It takes a minimum of $25 per person per year to join.)
  • Third, KPFA — warts and all — is well worth it. Where else are you going to hear the Great Recession dissected by a Marxist economist? The social justice implications of scientific breakthroughs described by an theoretical physicist? A live broadcast from inside an Occupy demonstration? The world needs KPFA, and that’s why we’re in this fight — but KPFA still needs money to carry on.

PLEDGE FOR KPFA ONLINE at https://secure.kpfa.org/support, or pledge during your favorite show, and feel free to add a comment with your pledge.

If you would also like to support SaveKPFA‘s work to keep management accountable, please visit our online donations page.

Posted in KPFA, Pacifica, budget, fund drives | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Tell Pacifica: stop the delays, hire an impartial election supervisor, now!

Posted on January 28, 2012 by admin

Pacifica continues to stall a listener-initiated recall of Pacifica National Board treasurer and KPFA board member Tracy Rosenberg. No ballots have been sent to listeners even though December 30 was the deadline to mail them under Pacifica’s own recall procedures. | SEE RECALL FLYER | SEE NEW LISTENER MAIL | SIGN PETITION

Over a thousand listeners have signed a petition demanding the hiring of an impartial supervisor to oversee the vote. The recall procedure adopted by Pacifica does not require that the election supervisor be acceptable to all parties, including the subject of the recall. To do so would give the subject of the recall an unfair advantage. The election supervisor needs only to acceptable to the national board.

What can we, as listener-members do, to get this process fast-tracked? The Pacifica national board is holding its quarterly meeting this weekend in Los Angeles. They need to hear from us. CLICK HERE TO EMAIL Pacifica’s entire national board to demand that a qualified impartial supervisor be hired immediately to oversee the recall process in a fair manner. Use our suggested message, or write your own, but please write!

KPFA’s interim manager abusing station email list
It is becoming clear to KPFA’s listeners why the delays are happening: so that Pacifica’s hand-picked management at KPFA can use the extra time to campaign on Rosenberg’s behalf.

KPFAWorker.org reports that over the last month, Andrew Leslie Phillips, who was appointed by Pacifica without any input from KPFA’s staff or its elected local station board, used KPFA’s subscriber email list to mass-distribute materials attacking KPFA’s union as well as the petition seeking a recall of Rosenberg.

KPFA chair Margy Wilkinson, writing on behalf of the board’s majority, told Phillips his email was “misleading and outright false.” Calling his words “a thinly-veiled partisan intervention in an election that you yourself said station management is supposed to stay out of,” Wilkinson demanded equal access to KPFA’s email list for a rebuttal. She says there’s been no response yet.

No manager in KPFA’s history has behaved this way. It is a violation of Pacifica’s by-laws to use station resources to take a side in elections — something Phillips skirts by calling his emails attempts to “correct factual misstatements.”

Sadly, the bad facts are coming from KPFA’s interim manager himself. Phillips suggests that KPFA’s financial situation has improved because of Rosenberg’s move to eliminate the Morning Show — at the time, KPFA’s biggest fundraiser. He fails to mention that over 90% of KPFA’s salary savings came from hour cuts and voluntary layoffs made by prior KPFA management before Pacifica stepped in and killed the Morning Show, and that KPFA’s listeners and staff have had to suffer through nearly four weeks of additional fundraising last year to make up for the drop in morning pledges.

Not that numbers are his strong point: In December, Phillips prefaced a mass mailing with a rant blaming the station’s union workers for $200,000 in costs spent “defending [KPFA] from grievances.” Phillips conceded later that the amount only totals $80,000. Likewise, Phillips told the KPFA local board meeting last month that the huge fundraising losses during the morning hours (see chart above) hadn’t hurt KPFA’s finances. He clearly couldn’t add up the figures correctly. | LISTEN HERE to Phillips doing bad math to justify bad decisions, or hear the entire KPFA local board meeting: PART 1, PART 2

During December’s Local Station Board meeting, many board members were frustrated that KPFA’s interim management refused to give contact information for the station’s workers to enable the board to survey them about interim GM Andrew Phillips‘ performance. | AUDIO: part 1 | part 2 |  part 3 | part 4

CWA responds to anti-union KPFA management
Phillips’ slanted emails to subscribers have also angered KPFA’s workers, who have opposed Pacifica’s decision to spend KPFA’s money on a $400/hour anti-union law firm, in the first place — rather than sit down and work through grievances from the union.

“Your email is inaccurate and offensive,” wrote Christina Huggins of CWA 9415 which represents KPFA’s unionized staff, noting that Phillips’ supposed correction “speaks volumes as to your free and easy use of the truth, with barely a nod to the level of inaccuracy (your self-described style of ‘throwing stuff against a wall to see what sticks.’” In response to Phillips’ anti-CWA comments, she points out that CWA is a progressive union that was among the first to support the Occupy movement, came out early against the war in Iraq, and works in coalition with progressive movements around the world.

One KPFA staffer is quoted as saying, “Andrew has demonstrated an anti-union bias from the day he stepped through the station’s doors, and he’s spent most of his time trying to create divisions between the unpaid and paid staff.” Another said Phillips’ actions showed “very poor judgment from the person we’re supposed to look to heal KPFA.” | LEARN MORE about KPFA’s labor history here.

Posted in Andrew Leslie Phillips, KPFA recall vote, Pacifica, Tracy Rosenberg, budget, elections and governance, fund drives, labor, recall Tracy Rosenberg | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

600+ KPFA listeners tell Pacifica: quit stalling on recall vote

Posted on December 5, 2011 by admin

As of early December, over 600 listeners have signed a petition demanding that the Pacifica National Board immediately delegate responsibility for running the pending recall election on KPFA board member and Pacifica treasurer Tracy Rosenberg to a neutral third party and have the election conducted promptly. On November 1, KPFA management certified that listener-members had submitted more than enough valid signatures for the vote to proceed.

Many who signed the petition added comments. “Pacifica, stop stalling,” wrote  Amy Smith, “KPFA’s listeners want a fair vote!”  The election “must be in the hands of a neutral third party,” wrote Mary B. Skinner, because “current management has clearly shown it is incapable of such trust.”  In addition, fourteen members of KPFA’s Local Station Board have signed a letter urging impartial oversight of the vote. | READ PETITION COMMENTS | READ BOARDMEMBERS’ LETTER

Under Pacifica’s own policy, ballots must go out within 60 days of the certification, and are due back within 35 days after mailing. This puts the balloting period in December and January. So far, there’s been no word from Pacifica on what it will do. SaveKPFA supporters suspect that Pacifica may time the ballots for the holiday season, when they expect attention to be lowest. In fact, the Pacifica National Board decided to move its discussion of the recall into closed session — a clear violation of the open meeting rules in Pacifica’s bylaws.

Rosenberg allies try to squelch elections
Faced with SaveKPFA‘s successful recall petition, some members of Pacifica National Board seem to be thinking that listener participation isn’t such a great thing after all. By-laws amendments drafted by Rosenberg’s allies that are due to be voted on in December would raise the number of signatures needed for a recall from 2% to 10% of the membership, dramatically restrict the time in which signatures can be gathered, and force members filing a petition to bear all costs of the vote.

Donate, endorse to help SaveKPFA get the word out
Given these obviously undemocratic maneuvers, SaveKPFA is concerned that Pacifica may attempt to delay the recall vote indefinitely. If so, we’ll have to go to court to get Pacifica to allow KPFA’s listeners to have their say. To cover potential legal fees — and campaign costs once Pacifica does get a ballot out — we’ve set up an online account for SaveKPFA where you can give a donation of any size. “SaveKPFA is an all-volunteer organization,” said treasurer John Van Eyck. “We appreciate any support you can give for legal costs or election mailings, and we also strongly encourage you to donate to KPFA as well.”

If you’d like to be listed on SaveKPFA materials as endorsing the recall, please email us with your name and how you’d like to identified.

More mismanagement at Pacifica
Continuing developments confirm that the Pacifica National regime for which Rosenberg serves as treasurer is disastrous. As reported earlier this month, KPFA’s union has discovered Pacifica diverted workers’ retirement plan contributions for months. As KPFAWorker reports, while Pacifica claims it has restored the money it took out of workers’ accounts, it “still has not notified affected employees, apologized to them, nor made them whole by paying them interest.”

We now have some indication of where the money’s been going. Starting in July, Pacifica covered the payroll and benefits for WBAI in New York — over $130,000 per month. Publicly, Pacifica had been bragging that WBAI was experiencing a “turnaround” under the management that the network’s executive director, Arlene Engelhardt, installed without the approval of WBAI’s staff or local board.

Management at WPFW in Washington, DC is also on the ropes. Washington’s City Paper reports that more than 80 staff members there have signed a letter of no confidence in their manager, accusing him of lengthening fund drives, imposing steep austerity measures that affect union workers but not managers, and holding such disregard for input from his own staff that he hasn’t called a meeting in 8 months.

Art by Bob Baldock for the film KPFA on the Air

KPFA’s awesome Occupy coverage
As the Occupy movement has erupted, KPFA’s coverage has been stellar, with breaking news updates from protests, live broadcasts, and interviews that bring in-depth analysis to the movement.

Here are just a few recent highlights: Mitch Jeserich‘s anchoring of a live broadcast of former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich addressing a crowd of 10,000 on Sproul Plaza; comprehensive coverage of protests from the Pacifica Evening News; KPFA news anchor John Hamilton‘s report for Democracy Now on the police violence at Occupy Cal; and a fascinating interview on Letters and Politics about the most historic occupation in U.S. politics — the Bonus Army encampment in Washington during the Great Depression.

A big thank you to behind-the-scenes technical staff, like Antonio Ortiz, Frank Sterling, and Dev Ross, who’ve gone above and beyond to get live broadcasts on the air. Thanks to everyone at KPFA — from board ops and engineers, to reporters and music programmers — who’ve participated in this important coverage.

KPFA board member makes news
SaveKPFA activist Dan Siegel, who serves on both the KPFA and Pacifica boards, made national headlines when he very publicly resigned as an unpaid advisor to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan because of her decision to forcibly remove the encampment in downtown Oakland. He was interviewed on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.  (Believe it or not, Pacifica is still spending listeners’ money fighting in court to kick Siegel off the national board.) 

Local board discusses programming, budget
KPFA’s Local Station Board met November 19, and among other things, had a lively discussion about KPFA’s programming.  “We need to talk to a wider audience,” said SaveKPFA-affiliated board member and journalism professor Conn Hallinan. KPFA needs to reach people “who don’t have the same politics as we have,” he said, adding, “for that, we need to be good.” Programming discussed in part 3 of the meeting. | LISTEN to 3 minute clip, or the entire meeting: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

Support the KPFA Crafts Fair
KPFA’s biggest fundraiser of the year is coming up: the annual KPFA Crafts Fair on December 10 and 11. It’s an amazing event full of artwork, music, and an opportunity to do your holiday shopping in a way that supports local artisans. All proceeds stay with KPFA — Pacifica doesn’t take a cut of event revenue. Check out the Craft Fair’s webpage, or like its Facebook page. See you there!

Posted in KPFA recall vote, Pacifica, Tracy Rosenberg, elections and governance, fund drives, recall Tracy Rosenberg, recall election | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Recall moves ahead, listeners petition for impartial oversight

Posted on November 6, 2011 by admin

The campaign by KPFA listeners to recall Pacifica National Board treasurer Tracy Rosenberg has passed an important hurdle. KPFA management certified this week that recall petitions submitted by SaveKPFA activists contained more than enough signatures of KPFA subscribers.

The petitions included more than 800 signatures, and 462 were verified on the first pass as precise matches to KPFA’s subscriber database — more than the number needed for the recall to go forward. Subsequent matching accounting for name variations, address changes, and so forth brought the number of valid signatures up to 583, or 70% of the total submitted.

“We can’t wait any longer to recall Tracy,” said Pamela Drake, a member of KPFA’s Local Station Board.  She added that next week marks the one year anniversary of Pacifica’s purge of KPFA’s popular Morning Show, which Rosenberg was instrumental in engineering.

Running the recall election is expected to cost about $10,000 for printing and postage — or about 50 cents per KPFA subscriber. In the year since Pacifica’s elimination of the Morning Show, the loss in pledges during morning drive time has averaged over $8,000 per weekday.  “That means Rosenberg’s purges have cost KPFA hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Drake, “and more importantly, have deprived Bay Area listeners of consistent, hard-hitting morning programming.”

Recall ballots should arrive in listeners’ mailboxes next month. IMPORTANT: If you haven’t yet signed the listener petition demanding that Pacifica make sure the recall vote has impartial, third-party oversight, please do so now. | SIGN PETITION HERE

Posted in KPFA recall vote, Pacifica, Tracy Rosenberg, budget, elections and governance, fund drives, recall Tracy Rosenberg, recall election | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

KPFA workers uncover retirement shortfalls, endorse Occupy Oakland strike

Posted on November 6, 2011 by admin

KPFA's Sasha Lilley (left) & Mitch Jeserich (right) broadcasting from Occupy Oakland

Union workers at KPFA say that Pacifica has been shorting their retirement accounts, in violation of federal law. KPFAWorker.org reports that when employees got their quarterly statements from account provider ING, “they noticed that Pacifica had taken money out of their paychecks but had not put the money into their pensions during half of the weeks recorded.”

After two KPFA union members investigated and obtained documents about Pacifica’s payments (as is their right under the federal law), they received “terse” emails from both interim KPFA general manager Andrew Phillips and Pacifica’s executive director Arlene Engelhardt threatening legal action if they shared the information.

Union rep Christina Huggins of CWA Local 9415 stepped in. After receiving no response to her queries from either Engelhardt or Pacifica’s CFO Lavarn Williams, Huggins wrote this letter to the Pacifica National Board, to whom both Engelhardt and Williams report. “This is a form of wage theft, and it is a very serious matter,” Huggins wrote.  “The scope of this problem is large: We have seen this pattern for every employee whose records we have been able to check,” she wrote, adding that similar problems were identified as far back as a year and a half. “I’m writing to you as fiduciaries of the Pacifica Foundation,” Huggins continued, “because what we are dealing with is looking less like an error and more like a pattern: Missing payments, lack of transparency, hostility to employees who ask financial questions, unwillingness to release basic financial documents. These are classic warning signs of financial mismanagement and/or internal fraud.”

Engelhardt eventually responded, admitting the payments were overdue but saying they had finally been made. “They’ve not paid for lost interest, nor have they notified all the affected workers,” one KPFA worker told us.

Financial transparency lacking at Pacifica
In the wake of the retirement fund blowup, SaveKPFA reps have been pressing Pacifica management for financial transparency. Pacifica National Board members Dan Siegel, Andrea Turner and Laura Prives (who serve on the KPFA local board as well), have exercised their right to have their agents (KPFA treasurer Barbara Whipperman, and Brian Edwards-Tiekert, a former KPFA treasurer) inspect Pacifica’s books.

So far, they report that Pacifica management has been less than forthcoming — insisting all document requests be submitted in writing, unilaterally canceling scheduled inspections, and paying an attorney to write them a threatening letter.

Pacifica to put KPFA’s money in B of A?
While the Occupy Wall Street protests have inspired record numbers of people to move their money out of corporate mega-banks, Pacifica management is trying to move its stations’ money in.

Pacifica’s chief financial officer LaVarn Williams is pressuring KPFA and the other stations Pacifica owns, to move their business to Bank of America. (KPFA’s business manager has solicited a proposal from a local bank that would cost $20,000 per year less in fees).

Meanwhile, KPFA’s union staff passed a resolution in support of Occupy Oakland‘s Nov. 2 general strike, and the station’s journalists joined the movement on the streets to do extensive live coverage of the actions.

Posted in Arlene Engelhardt, KPFA, Pacifica, budget, labor, recall Tracy Rosenberg | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Fund drive comes up short; KFCF nixes KPFA’s new programming

Posted on November 6, 2011 by admin

KPFA’s Fall Fund Drive has come up over $100,000 short, mostly due to a stunning $8500 per day shortfall during the morning hours (see chart at right comparing this fall with last fall, when the Morning Show was still on the air).

KPFA fall fund drive chart

Among the questionable programs broadcast during the drive was one presented by interim general manager Andrew Phillips which promoted far right-wing ideas along with bizarre theories about brain control.

Fresno station KFCF has pulled two programs installed recently by KPFA’s interim management, TwitWit and The Week Starts Here. The programs, hosted by allies of Pacifica management, were put on the air despite an outcry from KPFA listeners who supported existing Sunday night arts programming. While KFCF rebroadcasts much of KPFA’s air, it is independently run by the Fresno Free College Foundation. KFCF’s Program Needs Assessment Committee recommended that the new shows be nixed, and the award-winning LA Theatre Works be returned to its regular slot.

Edwards-Tiekert (center with mike) interviewing filmmaker Michael Moore at Occupy Oakland

Award for KPFA journalist
KPFA staffer Brian Edwards-Tiekert has won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists – Northern California.

SPJ must have seen something Pacifica didn’t — the award is for climate change reporting Edwards-Tiekert did after Pacifica laid him off, and before it was forced to reinstate him with back pay. (The Pacifica-installed management at KPFA is still refusing to return the Morning Show to air, so Brian is now reporting for the News Department).

Posted in Andrew Leslie Phillips, Arlene Engelhardt, KPFA, KPFA recall vote, Pacifica, budget, censorship, corporate underwriting, fund drives, recall Tracy Rosenberg | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Silence from Pacifica on recall vote; Pacifica overrules KPFA board on budget

Posted on October 20, 2011 by admin

Stack of recall petitions.

It’s been over a month since members of SaveKPFA submitted petitions seeking a recall vote against KPFA board member and Pacifica Treasurer Tracy Rosenberg, the driving force behind Pacifica’s destruction of KPFA’s Morning Show, and its war against the station’s workers and listeners.

Thanks to your efforts, a delegation of SaveKPFA activists submitted over 800 signatures from KPFA listener-members — that’s over twice the number needed — to trigger a recall ballot under the network’s bylaws, in which every current member is entitled to vote.

The response from Pacifica? Complete silence. KPFA staff confirm Pacifica has finally turned over the signatures for validation against KPFA’s member database, but from Pacifica, there has been no word on when the recall election will be held, or who will run it. All discussion of the recall process at last month’s 4-day meeting of the Pacifica National Board happened behind closed doors. The only information released from that meeting is that Pacifica has found a lawyer to tell it, bizarrely, that a successful recall would take nearly ten times the number of votes required by Pacifica’s bylaws.

This is a blatant misreading of Pacifica’s bylaws. Like most of Pacifica’s election manipulations, it probably won’t hold up in court. But it does demonstrate Pacifica’s willing to bend the rules in Rosenberg’s favor — which is why we need to demand a fair process.

ACTION ALERT: Sign this petition demanding a fair recall
KPFA listeners are signing this petition demanding that Pacifica run the recall vote promptly, and that supervision of the process be turned over to a neutral party (such as the American Association of Arbitrators, or California State Mediation and Conciliation).  CLICK HERE to add your support!

KPFA fall fund drive chart

Why a recall is important: a fund drive in crisis
KPFA’s Fall fund drive is struggling. Why?  Pledging from 6-10 AM has dropped over $9,000 per day since last year, before Pacifica cancelled the KPFA Morning Show and re-arranged the rest of the morning lineup in a shake-up engineered by Pacifica Treasurer Tracy Rosenberg (see this chart).

Prior to its cancellation, the Morning Show was KPFA’s biggest fundraiser. Andrew Phillips, the manager Pacifica installed at KPFA after the shakeup, has been unresponsive to calls from KPFA’s staff, listeners, and elected Local Station Board to restore the Morning Show.

So, what’s his plan?

First off: Longer fund drives. Phillips has already extended the Fall drive to 24 days — the longest in at least a decade. And, even with the extension, the fund drive is on track to finish at least $40,000 short of its goal.

Second: Kooky content. Last Thursday, Phillips put himself on the air for 90 minutes to hawk the DVD Zeitgeist, a bizarre amalgam of populist, religious, and right-wing conspiracy theories that allegedly provided inspiration to the man who shot Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

SaveKPFA is encouraging everyone who cares about the future of KPFA to contribute during this fund drive in spite of the lunacy — your donation secures your right to vote in the upcoming recall, and it deprives managers like Phillips of a pretext to lay off union workers.

Staff cuts loom, after Pacifica overrules KPFA’s board on budget
SaveKPFA-affiliated representatives on the Local Station Board worked hard this summer to craft a balanced budget for KPFA that would preserve the programs listeners care about, and put resources into off-air fundraising. KPFA treasurer Barbara Whipperman even brought to light a whopping $300,000 error in the budget template Pacifica had issued to KPFA. Fixing the error made it possible to budget for shorter fund drives.

Then, after KPFA’s budget was passed by a majority vote and sent to the network, Pacifica management moved the goalposts and overruled KPFA’s local elected representatives. Pacifica said KPFA would have to budget an additional $113,000 for “depreciation” –  an accounting abstraction that does not actually cost any money. Then Tracy Rosenberg used her position as Pacifica treasurer to unilaterally slash $121,000 out of KPFA’s personnel budget to pay for that depreciation.

The last time Rosenberg inserted herself into the budget-cutting process, Pacifica eliminated the most listened-to program produced at KPFA, and violated the union contract at KPFA by laying off staff out of seniority order, following a list Rosenberg herself drafted that included her political opponents. Which leads to an obvious question — who’s she targeting this time?

PLEASE MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD TODAY by signing this petition demanding that Pacifica fast-track this recall election under the auspices of a neutral third party. And give to KPFA to ensure you’ll be able to vote. You can make an online donation here.

Posted in Arlene Engelhardt, KPFA, Pacifica, budget, elections and governance, fund drives, legal | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

KPFA listeners deliver petitions demanding recall vote

Posted on September 13, 2011 by admin

Listeners Sharon Maldonado, Kim Waldron, Ying Lee & Barrie Mason (l to r) delivering petitions.

A delegation of listeners delivered a huge stack of petitions containing signatures of over 800 KPFA members during the September 10 meeting of the station’s elected Local Station Board. | KPFA News coverage (audio mp3) | Public comment (7 min audio clip)

Listeners are upset with the loss of local control at KPFA Radio 94.1 FM in Berkeley. The Pacifica network, which owns KPFA’s license, has made controversial changes to programming, including canceling the popular Morning Show at 7-9 AM, severely affecting fundraising during the station’s morning drive time. The petitions demand a vote among KPFA listener-members on the question of recalling board member Tracy Rosenberg, who has been a key ally of Pacifica’s heavy-handed management of KPFA.

“We fought — and won — a similar battle for KPFA back in 1999 when Pacifica tried to take over our station,” recalls listener-activist Barrie Mason. “Tracy Rosenberg has consistently used unethical means to undermine local control,” she added. “Removing her is the first step in saving KPFA.”

“Thousands of listeners have written, called and picketed at KPFA in recent months, demanding a return of the Morning Show and an end to Pacifica’s meddling in the station’s autonomy, but the network’s management refuses to listen,” said KPFA local board member Pamela Drake.

The charges against Rosenberg, who sits on both KPFA’s local board and Pacifica’s national board, include drawing up a secret layoff list that was used to cancel the Morning Show, pressuring Pacifica management to mount legal challenges to seating her opponents on the board (all of which were later overturned in the courts), and falsely obtaining and using KPFA listener-subscribers’ personal emails.

Local station management must review the petitions to insure that the signatures are those of actual KPFA members (people who have given at least $25 in the last year). The Pacifica bylaws simply state that a recall election will be triggered by petitions from 2% of the station’s members — in this case, less than 400 valid signatures are needed.

Audio of the entire September 10 Local Station Board meeting is available here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 [note: sounds quality improves after first few minutes].

See also: No confidence in Pacifica-appointed manager, says local board.

Posted in KPFA recall vote, Pacifica, Tracy Rosenberg, budget, elections and governance | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

No confidence in Pacifica-appointed manager, says local board

Posted on September 13, 2011 by admin

On September 10, KPFA’s Local Station Board passed a resolution saying it had “no confidence” in KPFA’s interim general manager Andrew Leslie Phillips, who was installed by Pacifica’s executive director Arlene Engelhardt about six months ago. The vote was 11-8. All SaveKPFA-affiliated board members present voted for the measure.

“After Pacifica cancelled the Morning Show and laid off its co-hosts, it rejected $63,000 in pledges to help return the program, hired an anti-union law firm to fight KPFA’s staff to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in KPFA’s own funds, and continued making top-down, ill-advised program changes,” said Drake. “We find this unconscionable,” she added.

For details, see Phillips’ support for business “sponsorships” at KPFA (i.e., underwriting), his actions on programming and fundraising, and his approach to station staff.

Delegates to the San Francisco Labor Council unanimously passed a second resolution last week supporting KPFA’s workers.

Audio of the entire September 10 Local Station Board meeting is available here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 [note: sounds quality improves after first few minutes]. | KPFA News coverage (audio mp3) | Public comment from meeting (7 min audio clip)

See also: KPFA listeners deliver petitions demand recall vote

Posted in Arlene Engelhardt, KPFA, Pacifica, Tracy Rosenberg, censorship, corporate underwriting, fund drives, labor, underwriting | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment