All are welcome at the next KPFA Local Station Board meeting, which is scheduled for Saturday, October 18 from 11am to 4 pm at 100 Oak Street in Oakland (that’s the SEIU Local 1021 office). You can find details, including an agenda here.
And don’t miss KPFA’s legendary Crafts Fair scheduled for the weekend of December 20-21. The fair is returning to the East Bay after 20 years in San Francisco, to the stunning Craneway Pavilion on the Richmond waterfront. Be there!
KPFA’s staff report the station beat its Summer Fund Drive goal by a tidy $10,000. (If you didn’t get a chance to give, you can still do so online). But with Pacifica’s financial problems intensifying, KPFA’s budget could be threatened.
KPFA’s fundraising success over the past year is partly a result of former manager Andrew Phillips‘ decision to buck Pacifica and put former Morning Show staff Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Laura Prives back to work in the mornings, producing UpFront, along with KPFK’s Sonali Kolhatkar. UpFront has consistently been the station’s biggest fundraiser since the first day of its existence. According to an analysis by KPFA staff, the total pledged during fund drives increased by $220,000 in the 12 months following the introduction of UpFront — all without adding a single day of fundraising.
The better fundraising means KPFA’s Local Station Board (LSB) was able to approve a budget for next year that starts to roll back cuts begun in 2010. The LSB-approved budget restores some funding to KPFA’s Apprenticeship Program, sets aside money for the professional development of KPFA’s unpaid staff, and invests in long-term off-air fundraising strategies, so that the station can shorten its fund drives. The budget passed last Saturday’s LSB with an overwhelming, cross-factional majority — but one KPFA board member voted against it.
Who could that be? The sole vote against approving KPFA’s budget was from Tracy Rosenberg, who also happens to be Pacifica’s treasurer and is at the heart of the network’s mismanagement. KPFA’s budget still needs approval by the Pacifica National Board. Rosenberg and some of her allies participated in a boycott of the LSB’s last budget meeting in an attempt to deny the LSB a quorum.
ACTION ALERT: Sign this petition supporting KPFA’s budget
Last year, under similar circumstances, Rosenberg unilaterally made changes to KPFA’s budget in her role as network treasurer AFTER local board approval. “We can’t let that happen this year,” said Local Station Board member Jack Kurzweil. “KPFA is not the network’s piggy bank. Our listeners give money to keep our local station strong.”
IF YOU AGREE, PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION to the Pacifica National Board demanding that Pacifica respect local control and approve KPFA’s budget in the form adopted by our KPFA Local Station Board — with funding increases for the Apprenticeship Program intact. SHARE the petition with friends, and ask them to circulate it. Together, we can protect KPFA.
If you’d like to listen to the audio of August 10 Local Station Board meeting where the KPFA’s budget was discussed and voted on, you can find it here: part 1 (public comment, manager’s report); part 2 (budget discussion)
A lawsuit demanding over $800,000 in “damages” from four KPFA listeners who tried to raise money for KPFA has been dropped, with its initiator agreeing to pay all costs for SaveKPFA‘s legal defense team.
The SLAPP suit had been filed against the Morning Show 4 — elected KPFA board members Margy Wilkinson, Dan Siegel, Mal Burnstein and Conn Hallinan — who led a 2011 SaveKPFA campaign that collected over $60,000 in pledges to restore the KPFA Morning Show, after Pacifica claimed it had cancelled the show for financial reasons.
Hundreds of listeners made financial pledges in that campaign, but Pacifica refused to accept them. Shortly thereafter, KPFA partisan Daniel Borgstrom and his lawyer, former LSB rep Richard Phelps, slapped the four SaveKPFA board members with a lawsuit demanding $800,000 in “damages” for the fundraising activity, which they claimed was “disloyal” to Pacifica.
While Pacifica formally took no position on the suit, national board members such as treasurer Tracy Rosenberg had been publicly proclaiming the existence of the lawsuit as a “win” for her side. In January 2013, she and her allies on the PNB even passed an Orwellian anti-dissent “loyalty” measure targeting the SaveKPFA‘s activists, threatening to boot them from the board should Borgstrom win his lawsuit. Outraged listeners and staff wrote to the PNB when the measure was introduced earlier this year (a sampling of the letters is here.)
Thanks for your support, and congratulations to everyone who has worked to support KPFA through these difficult times! Please renew that support by making your pledge to KPFA during this week’s fund drive.