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The Corporate Agenda is Alive and Well at KPFA
Ongoing struggles at KPFA...
Her name is Marnie Tattersall. She is a corporate executive at KGO-AM in San Francisco, the "Director of Finance/Business Manager" to be exact.
Tattersall has also managed, by a variety of procedural shenanigans, to put herself in charge of the search for a new General Manager at KPFA.
KPFA is the flagship radio station of the renowned Pacifica Network.
KGO is owned and operated by ABC/Disney, an affiliate of the Walt Disney Corporation. Disney is the 60th largest corporation in the United States, as ranked by Fortune Magazine. Disney is bigger than Viacom or Clear Channel, and second only to Time Warner in the entertainment industry.
1999 MOVEMENT TO TAKE BACK PACIFICA
Five years ago, in 1999, thousands of KPFA listeners and members joined in a mass movement to take KPFA back from the corporate forces that had seized control and attempted to remake the station and the network in their own image. The uprising was an event that had few parallels -- radio station listeners, in the streets, refusing to be a passive audience, demanding that the station serve the community. The catalyst for this uprising was the attempt to literally drag Dennis Bernstein of the famed Flashpoints radio program out of the station, on the air, because he had allegedly broken the "gag rule" imposed by the corporate bosses on what had once been known as "free speech radio."
As with many mass struggles, the conclusion was less than definitive. It eventually became dominated by dueling lawyers, fought out in courtrooms where freedom and justice were far less important than fine points of law. In the end, however, a settlement was reached, a particular set of corporate forces that had hijacked the network were sent packing, and listeners won the right to elect local station boards and a national board with real governing authority.
Now, just months after the first elected boards were seated in February, democracy and free speech are once again under attack at KPFA and Pacifica.
There are five Pacifica stations: WBAI in New York, KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston, WPFW in Washington D.C., and KPFA. Every local station board has been divided, with intense struggles over agendas, minutes, meeting times, rules and committee assignments, as well as more fundamental management issues. This has, for the most part, prevented these boards from getting to the hard business of bringing these stations back to the original progressive Pacifica mission, from improving programming, and from putting the community back into community radio. The ongoing disruptions within the network have been so pervasive, and so similar in form, that more than a few observers have suggested that there may be an organized destabilization campaign in process, aimed at subverting the experiment in listener democracy.
THE ISSUES BEFORE KPFA AND PACIFICA
In a July leaflet to the KPFA community, several prominent KPFA figures and former staff members put forward a set of issues that they feel need to be addressed, in order to bring the station back to the original KPFA mission.
First, "there are still programmers who were banned and fired during the previous period who have not yet been welcomed back into the KPFA and Pacifica community." This has been amplified by another recent statement, from Maria Gilardin, chronicling many of these firings, including the 1995 removal of 165 public affairs programmers, in large part people of color, as well as the removal of Bill Mandel, a long-time and very popular programmer and commentator on the politics of the Soviet Union. Gilardin is a former KPFA Development Director and programmer. She was herself banned from all Pacifica stations after demanding to see the network's financial records. In the wake of the 1995 firings, she co-founded Take Back KPFA, a broad-based listener organization.
Second, according to the July leaflet, "There are still some managers and staff in positions of influence who operated for so long in the old context that many of their assumptions about politics and radio have been shaped by it." This is putting the problem very tactfully.
Another document making the rounds, this one signed by 37 progressive current KPFA programmers and staff members, puts it this way: "...some staff, long accustomed to the previous unaccountable ways of making decisions and wary of changes in the status quo, have flatly refused to accept the exercise of listener/board participation mandated by the new by-laws and other agreements which came out of the struggle... It may disappoint, but it should not surprise KPFA's supporters to learn that the station's staffers, people whose voices have become the voices of friends and who listeners may have even grown to think of as the very voices of progressive politics, can be as jealous of their perks and privileges as people in other political and social arenas."
Still others, including Gilardin and fellow Take Back KPFA co-founder Jeff Blankfort, have put it even more bluntly, pointing out that some of the current staff actively collaborated with the corporate forces in order to preserve their jobs and air time.
Third, there are numerous criticisms of some KPFA public affairs programming, especially of the news department, which often tends to read the news straight off the corporate wire. For example, during the recent invasion and occupation of Haiti by the US and French military, Flashpoints, broadcasting at 5 PM, was making ground-breaking news about the kidnaping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, while the 6 PM news seemed to be taking its cues on the story from the US State Department.
The problems with the news department, and its relationship to the process of bringing more democracy and community involvement to the station, was put into sharp focus in a comment by Max Pringle, a prominent news department employee and one of the staff-elected representatives to the KPFA board. As described by the staff letter noted above, Pringle said at a board meeting that "KPFA was like an airplane. The listeners were like passengers who should expect to pay for their tickets and then remain in their seats leaving the crew to fly the aircraft. It is crazy, he said, to let the passengers into the cockpit. He called the listener board representatives and those listeners who had come to watch the board meeting and to participate in the public comment segment of the meeting 'self-appointed guardians with too much time on their hands.'"
Where do listeners take their issues about programming? There is an existing "Program Council" at the station, where issues about programming theoretically can be raised, but the meetings of this body are closed to all but a select few, they make no reports to the listeners, and, in any event, there are real questions about whether or not their decisions are taken seriously by station management. The new KPFA board has done little to open this process up to the larger KPFA community.
Finally, the July leaflet stated that the station is in the process of looking for a permanent station manager. Experience with previous station managers during the corporate era demonstrate how important a general manager is in setting the direction for the station. "Yet the larger KPFA community," the leaflet continues, "has not yet been invited to be part of this process, and needs to be."
The July leaflet was issued by, among others, Gilardin, Blankfort, Mandel, Lincoln Bergman (the KPFA News Director in 1969-71), Riva Enteen (the elected Chair of the KPFA board), and Henry Norr (a well-known reporter fired from the San Francisco Chronicle for attending an anti-war rally).
JIM BENNETT, "INTERIM GENERAL MANAGER"
The current "Interim General Manager," Jim Bennett, formerly the station engineer, is seen by many as a lax manager, favored by the old-line, entrenched staff who are anxious to preserve their positions and hostile to public review. Since the seating of the new, elected KPFA board, Bennett has openly attacked the majority faction of the board, itself an alliance of a big majority of the board members elected by the listeners. Bennett recently issued a "Report to the Listener," which was posted on the KPFA website, accusing the KPFA board of operating in "a repressive mode of trying to get certain agendas rammed through." Bennett also refuses to talk to Enteen, the elected Chair of the board, who got the second-highest vote total in the membership election. Such, apparently, is Bennett's vision of listener democracy.
Bennett's report goes on to say that "many listeners have called me about the announcements on KPFA that have been heard the last few months, requesting people to apply for the General Manager position. That is an ongoing, and I hope fair process, that I am not involved in. Many of you want to know if I am leaving KPFA, since I have been doing the job for about 4 1/2 years. [In fact, Gus Newport, the former Mayor of Berkeley, served as General Manager for nine months during those 4 1/2 years, until he quit during the recent board election, complaining that he had received no cooperation from the staff. -MN] ...I will not use my current position to campaign for the permanent job, so I can't comment on my own status." To the contrary, Bennett has made it well known around the station that he has thrown his hat in the ring to become the permanent General Manager.
Bennett, a white man, further states in his report that "I do believe if there are women or people of color out there who can do the job, they should be given every consideration." IF there are women or people of color out there who can do the job? That's quite a slip of the tongue.
Bennett's role in an earlier incident, bizarrely reminiscent of events during the 1999 KPFA struggle, provides more grist for the mill. In early June, a Flashpoints programmer, Miguel Molina, was reportedly assaulted by Vini Beacham, the "Interim Program Coordinator" appointed by Bennett, after Molina complained to Beacham about the reversal of a decision to broadcast an anti-war rally. According to witnesses, Beacham completely lost it, started yelling a string of profanities at the top of his voice, got right up next to Molina with his full 250-plus pound bulk, and thrust his arms out. Molina wisely avoided responding in kind. This incident took place in the very location outside the station where five years earlier thousands of KPFA supporters had rallied to protest Bernstein's forced exit from the station.
Although Molina formally complained to Bennett, there has been no apparent disciplinary action of any significance taken against Beacham. Bennett's supporters among the staff nevertheless claim that the matter has been "resolved." Molina claims that Bennett has never interviewed the witnesses that were with him during the alleged assault, and the Flashpoints staff has issued a public letter decrying Beacham's "violent behavior." The words "cover-up" readily come to mind. Beacham, for his part, has only added fuel to the fire by reportedly walking around the station with a target pinned to his back, and showing up at a recent KPFA board meeting with a rope, loudly demanding that those who are trying to "lynch" him finish the job.
TATTERSALL'S MANEUVERS
Instead of moving towards involving the KPFA community in the process of selecting a permanent General Manager, as called for by the July leaflet, the Tattersall faction on the board has maneuvered to put the entire process in their own hands.
The following description of events in the search for a permanent General Manager is drawn in large part from an as-yet unpublished document written by members of the KPFA board intimately familiar with these events. I have dubbed this document the "Tattersall Chronicles."
At a July Personnel Committee meeting, chaired by Tattersall, the first item taken up was a discussion concerning a letter from the paid staff union which Bennett read at a Pacifica National Board meeting, a meeting which was being webcast to the public at large. This union letter made various unsubstantiated charges against some KPFA board members, and threatened a union grievance. According to the Tattersall chronicles, the "reading of this letter in a public forum was a serious breach of confidentiality. In any event, the reading could serve no purpose but to inflame tensions..."
The chronicles go on, "...while discussing this letter at the Personnel Committee meeting, Marnie and her supporters on the committee consistently defended Jim's conduct. They then proposed and pushed through a resolution absolving Jim of all blame for anything."
The document then describes what is called the "illegal expulsion of Chair Riva Enteen from the General Manager hiring process."
"The next item taken up for discussion at the Personnel Committee meeting, ironically, was a charge of breach of confidentiality made against Riva Enteen, the Chair of the GM Hire subcommittee. This involved Riva's mention of the name of an applicant for the General Manager position to a KPFA staff member.
"In fact, the applicant in question had already been quite public about her application -- a fact Riva knew when she mentioned the applicant's name. The applicant later stated for the record that she 'had no expectation whatsoever of confidentiality concerning my application,' and that 'I was very disappointed to hear that somehow my talking to folks put my friend Riva Enteen in jeopardy.' Legally and ethically, this means that the applicant had waived her confidentiality, and there was therefore no breach of confidentiality." [This has been independently confirmed by competent legal authorities. -MN]
"Riva acknowledged that it had nevertheless been an error of judgment to mention the applicant's name in front of a non-committee member, and apologized for this mistake. That should have been the end of the matter. But instead, Marnie and her supporters on the Personnel Committee voted to expel Riva from the Hire Subcommittee, in an attempt to keep her out of the hiring process. This contrasted sharply with the glowing approval for Jim's actual and intentional breach of confidentiality and protocol regarding the union letter."
Numerous sources report that the complaint about Enteen's mention of an applicant's name to a staff member was a mere fig leaf for the real agenda. The real agenda, according to these sources, is that Tattersall, the KGO-AM corporate officer, and her allies, see Enteen as an obstacle in their drive to get Bennett or a similar-type manager installed as the permanent General Manager. Indeed, Bennett himself has reportedly made it clear that he wanted Enteen removed from the hiring process.
The Tattersall chronicles continue: "It is the LSB [Local Station Board] that established the GM Hire Subcommittee. The LSB motion creating the subcommittee specified which board members would be on it. Riva was among those so appointed. Marnie was present, and in fact wrote the language that put Riva, among others, on the subcommittee. At the Personnel Committee meeting, Marnie was reminded that Riva had been appointed by the LSB, and therefore could not be removed by a mere committee of the LSB. Nevertheless, Marnie proceeded as if Riva's expulsion was an accomplished fact."
KPFA BOARD MEETING
A few days later, on Saturday, July 24, there was a full KPFA board meeting. Despite a lot of heat and blather, no action was taken to change the composition of the GM Hire subcommittee, thus confirming Enteen's position as Chair of that committee. The immediate effect was to leave Enteen in charge of the first set of candidate interviews, already scheduled for the next day, Sunday, July 25.
[INTERLUDE: LYNCH ROPES, TERRORISTS, SUICIDE BOMBERS. This board meeting was the same one to which Beacham, Molina's alleged tormentor, brought his rope, demanding that his "lynching" be completed. According to several sources, Beacham's rope, which he had thrown on the floor, later showed up during an "executive session" at this same meeting, but this time in the hands of Annie Hallat, a member of the KPFA board aligned with Tattersall's faction. Hallat was observed with the rope during a heated discussion about another board member, Mark Hernandez, also a Tattersall ally, who had allegedly accused yet another board member, who is of Middle-Eastern descent and not a member of Tattersall's faction, of somehow being associated with "terrorism." During this discussion, Hallat tossed the rope to Hernandez, who proceeded to play with it until Enteen, the Chair, ordered him to put it away, which he did, albeit slowly and apparently reluctantly. Hallat had previously directed the husband of yet another board member, not a member of Tattersall's faction, who had made some comments that she disapproved of, to "unstrap the explosives from your body and remove them from your mouth." Tattersall's allies certainly seem fast and loose with violent imagery.]
The Tattersall chronicles go on. "Shortly after the [Saturday LSB] meeting adjourned, staff LSB member William Walker, a regular voting ally of Marnie's, called out to those board members who were still present, 'If you voted for the Personnel Committee report, you know what to do.' LSB member Michael Lubin asked what this meant, whereupon William replied, 'You didn't vote for it.' William refused to explain what he meant." Others have described Walker's comment as a not-so-veiled threat to prevent Enteen from participating in the Sunday interviews.
TATTERSALL'S STRANGE LETTER
"Later Saturday evening [the evening of the July 24 board meeting]," our document continues, "Riva found a letter hand-delivered to her home, which is at an unlisted address. The letter, from Marnie, stated that the Personnel Committee had expelled her as a member (and Chair) of the GM Hire Subcommittee. It ordered her 'not to attend any of the pending interviews.' It cryptically added that, 'If you do, you are advised that your involvement will not be recognized by the process.' This letter was on KPFA stationary, in a KPFA envelope...
"Marnie's letter is an outrageous and manifestly illegal act. Neither Marnie nor the Personnel Committee has the authority to override an LSB motion.
"In addition, it is unclear how Marnie got the KPFA stationary she misused for this letter. The question arises whether any member of the staff or management was complicit in her illegal act...
"The next day, Sunday, July 25, Riva showed up at the designated place and time to interview GM applicants. This was her responsibility and duty.
"Furthermore, because of the threatening atmosphere, several LSB members agreed that non-committee members should be asked to come as peaceful monitors to the interview site when it opened, to make sure Riva was not wrongfully kept out -- and to bring a video camera, just in case...
"When Marnie and all her allies on the GM Hire Subcommittee arrived at the interview site, they went into a separate room and caucused secretly, hidden away from Riva" and the other committee members.
"When they emerged from their secret caucus, Marnie and her four allies stated their outrage that Riva was present, and that people not on the subcommittee had been there to observe their conduct... The five of them announced that they were unilaterally walking out on the interviews scheduled for that day, and suspending all other interviews indefinitely..."
TATTERSALL BREACHES CONFIDENTIALITY...
"Ironically, on August 10th, Marnie herself committed a real, in fact extremely serious, breach of confidentiality -- copying an internal memo concerning the GM hire to one of the applicants. Neither Marnie nor her allies have offered any apology." [The applicant in question, according to sources, was Bennett. -MN]
It seems that no breach of confidentiality by Bennett, Tattersall or any of their allies is of any consequence, no matter how serious, whereas the slightest alleged breach by Enteen is worthy of the wrath of God.
"Thus, Marnie and her supporters," the Tattersall chronicles continue, "have brought the General Manager hiring process to an abrupt halt, extending Jim Bennett's tenure as Interim General Manager...
"These events not only reflect very badly on the station, and risk alienating qualified applicants -- they are altogether inconsistent with the fair and democratic spirit in which the critically important search for a new General Manager should be conducted."
...AND THEN TAKES CONTROL
Thus ends our anonymous authors' still unpublished report. But the tale does not end there.
On Saturday, August 28, the KPFA board held its regular monthly meeting. At this meeting, the board once again fled from public view into "executive session" to battle over the General Manager hiring process. There has as yet been no official report to the KPFA community of the results of this secret meeting, held by a board whose charge it is to shepherd "free speech radio" to the land of democracy.
But the word on the street is that Tattersall's allies, using the relentless pressure that they draw from their alliance with the junta that controls KPFA behind the scenes, pressured a bare majority of the board to finally throw Enteen off the General Manager Hiring subcommittee. This at a meeting where Enteen was home in bed with a migraine headache, unable to even speak in her own defense. Reportedly, her vote, had she been present, would have defeated the motion that cast her -- and the listeners who support her -- to the winds.
At the same meeting, so the story is being told, Tattersall's allies defeated a motion by one vote (that is Tattersall's vote) to throw her off the General Manager Hire subcommittee for her manifest breach of confidentiality, not to mention her disgusting scheming and illegal maneuvering.
It appears that Tattersall, the KGO lady, is now essentially in charge of picking the leader for the flagship station of "free speech radio."
DEMOCRACY IS A BAD IDEA?
The anti-democratic, anti-reform spirit represented by Tattersall and her allies is summed up in a recent email posted by Sasha Lilley, a staff representative on the General Manager Hire subcommittee, allied with Tattersall:
"I do think the bylaws are a disaster... Can you honesty say that having an elected board is going to save KPFA and Pacifica from another takeover attempt?... I have received word that the new elections this summer and fall will cost the network an additional 160k. This will bring the total election costs in this fiscal to a grand total of 347k... We, as a Network, cannot survive this kind of expense... The costs of this (volunteer) bureaucratic stratum, intent on increasingly consolidating power, is really troubling."
Ah, let us mourn for the good old days of benevolent corporate dictatorship.
The next meeting of the KPFA board is Saturday, September 11, att 11:00 AM, at Freight and Salvage, 1111 Addison Street near San Pablo Avenue, in Berkeley.
The tentative agenda for the 9/11 meeting includes a revote on the composition of the General Manager Hire subcommittee -- this time, hopefully, in open session.
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Copyright (c) 2004 Marc Norton
Non-commercial distribution of this piece is permitted and encouraged.
Marc Norton has been listening to KPFA since 1967. He is proud to be Riva Enteen's partner. Norton can be reached through his website at http://www.marcnorton.us, and is in the process of putting up on that website various documents relevant to the struggle over KPFA and Pacifica.
Tattersall has also managed, by a variety of procedural shenanigans, to put herself in charge of the search for a new General Manager at KPFA.
KPFA is the flagship radio station of the renowned Pacifica Network.
KGO is owned and operated by ABC/Disney, an affiliate of the Walt Disney Corporation. Disney is the 60th largest corporation in the United States, as ranked by Fortune Magazine. Disney is bigger than Viacom or Clear Channel, and second only to Time Warner in the entertainment industry.
1999 MOVEMENT TO TAKE BACK PACIFICA
Five years ago, in 1999, thousands of KPFA listeners and members joined in a mass movement to take KPFA back from the corporate forces that had seized control and attempted to remake the station and the network in their own image. The uprising was an event that had few parallels -- radio station listeners, in the streets, refusing to be a passive audience, demanding that the station serve the community. The catalyst for this uprising was the attempt to literally drag Dennis Bernstein of the famed Flashpoints radio program out of the station, on the air, because he had allegedly broken the "gag rule" imposed by the corporate bosses on what had once been known as "free speech radio."
As with many mass struggles, the conclusion was less than definitive. It eventually became dominated by dueling lawyers, fought out in courtrooms where freedom and justice were far less important than fine points of law. In the end, however, a settlement was reached, a particular set of corporate forces that had hijacked the network were sent packing, and listeners won the right to elect local station boards and a national board with real governing authority.
Now, just months after the first elected boards were seated in February, democracy and free speech are once again under attack at KPFA and Pacifica.
There are five Pacifica stations: WBAI in New York, KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston, WPFW in Washington D.C., and KPFA. Every local station board has been divided, with intense struggles over agendas, minutes, meeting times, rules and committee assignments, as well as more fundamental management issues. This has, for the most part, prevented these boards from getting to the hard business of bringing these stations back to the original progressive Pacifica mission, from improving programming, and from putting the community back into community radio. The ongoing disruptions within the network have been so pervasive, and so similar in form, that more than a few observers have suggested that there may be an organized destabilization campaign in process, aimed at subverting the experiment in listener democracy.
THE ISSUES BEFORE KPFA AND PACIFICA
In a July leaflet to the KPFA community, several prominent KPFA figures and former staff members put forward a set of issues that they feel need to be addressed, in order to bring the station back to the original KPFA mission.
First, "there are still programmers who were banned and fired during the previous period who have not yet been welcomed back into the KPFA and Pacifica community." This has been amplified by another recent statement, from Maria Gilardin, chronicling many of these firings, including the 1995 removal of 165 public affairs programmers, in large part people of color, as well as the removal of Bill Mandel, a long-time and very popular programmer and commentator on the politics of the Soviet Union. Gilardin is a former KPFA Development Director and programmer. She was herself banned from all Pacifica stations after demanding to see the network's financial records. In the wake of the 1995 firings, she co-founded Take Back KPFA, a broad-based listener organization.
Second, according to the July leaflet, "There are still some managers and staff in positions of influence who operated for so long in the old context that many of their assumptions about politics and radio have been shaped by it." This is putting the problem very tactfully.
Another document making the rounds, this one signed by 37 progressive current KPFA programmers and staff members, puts it this way: "...some staff, long accustomed to the previous unaccountable ways of making decisions and wary of changes in the status quo, have flatly refused to accept the exercise of listener/board participation mandated by the new by-laws and other agreements which came out of the struggle... It may disappoint, but it should not surprise KPFA's supporters to learn that the station's staffers, people whose voices have become the voices of friends and who listeners may have even grown to think of as the very voices of progressive politics, can be as jealous of their perks and privileges as people in other political and social arenas."
Still others, including Gilardin and fellow Take Back KPFA co-founder Jeff Blankfort, have put it even more bluntly, pointing out that some of the current staff actively collaborated with the corporate forces in order to preserve their jobs and air time.
Third, there are numerous criticisms of some KPFA public affairs programming, especially of the news department, which often tends to read the news straight off the corporate wire. For example, during the recent invasion and occupation of Haiti by the US and French military, Flashpoints, broadcasting at 5 PM, was making ground-breaking news about the kidnaping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, while the 6 PM news seemed to be taking its cues on the story from the US State Department.
The problems with the news department, and its relationship to the process of bringing more democracy and community involvement to the station, was put into sharp focus in a comment by Max Pringle, a prominent news department employee and one of the staff-elected representatives to the KPFA board. As described by the staff letter noted above, Pringle said at a board meeting that "KPFA was like an airplane. The listeners were like passengers who should expect to pay for their tickets and then remain in their seats leaving the crew to fly the aircraft. It is crazy, he said, to let the passengers into the cockpit. He called the listener board representatives and those listeners who had come to watch the board meeting and to participate in the public comment segment of the meeting 'self-appointed guardians with too much time on their hands.'"
Where do listeners take their issues about programming? There is an existing "Program Council" at the station, where issues about programming theoretically can be raised, but the meetings of this body are closed to all but a select few, they make no reports to the listeners, and, in any event, there are real questions about whether or not their decisions are taken seriously by station management. The new KPFA board has done little to open this process up to the larger KPFA community.
Finally, the July leaflet stated that the station is in the process of looking for a permanent station manager. Experience with previous station managers during the corporate era demonstrate how important a general manager is in setting the direction for the station. "Yet the larger KPFA community," the leaflet continues, "has not yet been invited to be part of this process, and needs to be."
The July leaflet was issued by, among others, Gilardin, Blankfort, Mandel, Lincoln Bergman (the KPFA News Director in 1969-71), Riva Enteen (the elected Chair of the KPFA board), and Henry Norr (a well-known reporter fired from the San Francisco Chronicle for attending an anti-war rally).
JIM BENNETT, "INTERIM GENERAL MANAGER"
The current "Interim General Manager," Jim Bennett, formerly the station engineer, is seen by many as a lax manager, favored by the old-line, entrenched staff who are anxious to preserve their positions and hostile to public review. Since the seating of the new, elected KPFA board, Bennett has openly attacked the majority faction of the board, itself an alliance of a big majority of the board members elected by the listeners. Bennett recently issued a "Report to the Listener," which was posted on the KPFA website, accusing the KPFA board of operating in "a repressive mode of trying to get certain agendas rammed through." Bennett also refuses to talk to Enteen, the elected Chair of the board, who got the second-highest vote total in the membership election. Such, apparently, is Bennett's vision of listener democracy.
Bennett's report goes on to say that "many listeners have called me about the announcements on KPFA that have been heard the last few months, requesting people to apply for the General Manager position. That is an ongoing, and I hope fair process, that I am not involved in. Many of you want to know if I am leaving KPFA, since I have been doing the job for about 4 1/2 years. [In fact, Gus Newport, the former Mayor of Berkeley, served as General Manager for nine months during those 4 1/2 years, until he quit during the recent board election, complaining that he had received no cooperation from the staff. -MN] ...I will not use my current position to campaign for the permanent job, so I can't comment on my own status." To the contrary, Bennett has made it well known around the station that he has thrown his hat in the ring to become the permanent General Manager.
Bennett, a white man, further states in his report that "I do believe if there are women or people of color out there who can do the job, they should be given every consideration." IF there are women or people of color out there who can do the job? That's quite a slip of the tongue.
Bennett's role in an earlier incident, bizarrely reminiscent of events during the 1999 KPFA struggle, provides more grist for the mill. In early June, a Flashpoints programmer, Miguel Molina, was reportedly assaulted by Vini Beacham, the "Interim Program Coordinator" appointed by Bennett, after Molina complained to Beacham about the reversal of a decision to broadcast an anti-war rally. According to witnesses, Beacham completely lost it, started yelling a string of profanities at the top of his voice, got right up next to Molina with his full 250-plus pound bulk, and thrust his arms out. Molina wisely avoided responding in kind. This incident took place in the very location outside the station where five years earlier thousands of KPFA supporters had rallied to protest Bernstein's forced exit from the station.
Although Molina formally complained to Bennett, there has been no apparent disciplinary action of any significance taken against Beacham. Bennett's supporters among the staff nevertheless claim that the matter has been "resolved." Molina claims that Bennett has never interviewed the witnesses that were with him during the alleged assault, and the Flashpoints staff has issued a public letter decrying Beacham's "violent behavior." The words "cover-up" readily come to mind. Beacham, for his part, has only added fuel to the fire by reportedly walking around the station with a target pinned to his back, and showing up at a recent KPFA board meeting with a rope, loudly demanding that those who are trying to "lynch" him finish the job.
TATTERSALL'S MANEUVERS
Instead of moving towards involving the KPFA community in the process of selecting a permanent General Manager, as called for by the July leaflet, the Tattersall faction on the board has maneuvered to put the entire process in their own hands.
The following description of events in the search for a permanent General Manager is drawn in large part from an as-yet unpublished document written by members of the KPFA board intimately familiar with these events. I have dubbed this document the "Tattersall Chronicles."
At a July Personnel Committee meeting, chaired by Tattersall, the first item taken up was a discussion concerning a letter from the paid staff union which Bennett read at a Pacifica National Board meeting, a meeting which was being webcast to the public at large. This union letter made various unsubstantiated charges against some KPFA board members, and threatened a union grievance. According to the Tattersall chronicles, the "reading of this letter in a public forum was a serious breach of confidentiality. In any event, the reading could serve no purpose but to inflame tensions..."
The chronicles go on, "...while discussing this letter at the Personnel Committee meeting, Marnie and her supporters on the committee consistently defended Jim's conduct. They then proposed and pushed through a resolution absolving Jim of all blame for anything."
The document then describes what is called the "illegal expulsion of Chair Riva Enteen from the General Manager hiring process."
"The next item taken up for discussion at the Personnel Committee meeting, ironically, was a charge of breach of confidentiality made against Riva Enteen, the Chair of the GM Hire subcommittee. This involved Riva's mention of the name of an applicant for the General Manager position to a KPFA staff member.
"In fact, the applicant in question had already been quite public about her application -- a fact Riva knew when she mentioned the applicant's name. The applicant later stated for the record that she 'had no expectation whatsoever of confidentiality concerning my application,' and that 'I was very disappointed to hear that somehow my talking to folks put my friend Riva Enteen in jeopardy.' Legally and ethically, this means that the applicant had waived her confidentiality, and there was therefore no breach of confidentiality." [This has been independently confirmed by competent legal authorities. -MN]
"Riva acknowledged that it had nevertheless been an error of judgment to mention the applicant's name in front of a non-committee member, and apologized for this mistake. That should have been the end of the matter. But instead, Marnie and her supporters on the Personnel Committee voted to expel Riva from the Hire Subcommittee, in an attempt to keep her out of the hiring process. This contrasted sharply with the glowing approval for Jim's actual and intentional breach of confidentiality and protocol regarding the union letter."
Numerous sources report that the complaint about Enteen's mention of an applicant's name to a staff member was a mere fig leaf for the real agenda. The real agenda, according to these sources, is that Tattersall, the KGO-AM corporate officer, and her allies, see Enteen as an obstacle in their drive to get Bennett or a similar-type manager installed as the permanent General Manager. Indeed, Bennett himself has reportedly made it clear that he wanted Enteen removed from the hiring process.
The Tattersall chronicles continue: "It is the LSB [Local Station Board] that established the GM Hire Subcommittee. The LSB motion creating the subcommittee specified which board members would be on it. Riva was among those so appointed. Marnie was present, and in fact wrote the language that put Riva, among others, on the subcommittee. At the Personnel Committee meeting, Marnie was reminded that Riva had been appointed by the LSB, and therefore could not be removed by a mere committee of the LSB. Nevertheless, Marnie proceeded as if Riva's expulsion was an accomplished fact."
KPFA BOARD MEETING
A few days later, on Saturday, July 24, there was a full KPFA board meeting. Despite a lot of heat and blather, no action was taken to change the composition of the GM Hire subcommittee, thus confirming Enteen's position as Chair of that committee. The immediate effect was to leave Enteen in charge of the first set of candidate interviews, already scheduled for the next day, Sunday, July 25.
[INTERLUDE: LYNCH ROPES, TERRORISTS, SUICIDE BOMBERS. This board meeting was the same one to which Beacham, Molina's alleged tormentor, brought his rope, demanding that his "lynching" be completed. According to several sources, Beacham's rope, which he had thrown on the floor, later showed up during an "executive session" at this same meeting, but this time in the hands of Annie Hallat, a member of the KPFA board aligned with Tattersall's faction. Hallat was observed with the rope during a heated discussion about another board member, Mark Hernandez, also a Tattersall ally, who had allegedly accused yet another board member, who is of Middle-Eastern descent and not a member of Tattersall's faction, of somehow being associated with "terrorism." During this discussion, Hallat tossed the rope to Hernandez, who proceeded to play with it until Enteen, the Chair, ordered him to put it away, which he did, albeit slowly and apparently reluctantly. Hallat had previously directed the husband of yet another board member, not a member of Tattersall's faction, who had made some comments that she disapproved of, to "unstrap the explosives from your body and remove them from your mouth." Tattersall's allies certainly seem fast and loose with violent imagery.]
The Tattersall chronicles go on. "Shortly after the [Saturday LSB] meeting adjourned, staff LSB member William Walker, a regular voting ally of Marnie's, called out to those board members who were still present, 'If you voted for the Personnel Committee report, you know what to do.' LSB member Michael Lubin asked what this meant, whereupon William replied, 'You didn't vote for it.' William refused to explain what he meant." Others have described Walker's comment as a not-so-veiled threat to prevent Enteen from participating in the Sunday interviews.
TATTERSALL'S STRANGE LETTER
"Later Saturday evening [the evening of the July 24 board meeting]," our document continues, "Riva found a letter hand-delivered to her home, which is at an unlisted address. The letter, from Marnie, stated that the Personnel Committee had expelled her as a member (and Chair) of the GM Hire Subcommittee. It ordered her 'not to attend any of the pending interviews.' It cryptically added that, 'If you do, you are advised that your involvement will not be recognized by the process.' This letter was on KPFA stationary, in a KPFA envelope...
"Marnie's letter is an outrageous and manifestly illegal act. Neither Marnie nor the Personnel Committee has the authority to override an LSB motion.
"In addition, it is unclear how Marnie got the KPFA stationary she misused for this letter. The question arises whether any member of the staff or management was complicit in her illegal act...
"The next day, Sunday, July 25, Riva showed up at the designated place and time to interview GM applicants. This was her responsibility and duty.
"Furthermore, because of the threatening atmosphere, several LSB members agreed that non-committee members should be asked to come as peaceful monitors to the interview site when it opened, to make sure Riva was not wrongfully kept out -- and to bring a video camera, just in case...
"When Marnie and all her allies on the GM Hire Subcommittee arrived at the interview site, they went into a separate room and caucused secretly, hidden away from Riva" and the other committee members.
"When they emerged from their secret caucus, Marnie and her four allies stated their outrage that Riva was present, and that people not on the subcommittee had been there to observe their conduct... The five of them announced that they were unilaterally walking out on the interviews scheduled for that day, and suspending all other interviews indefinitely..."
TATTERSALL BREACHES CONFIDENTIALITY...
"Ironically, on August 10th, Marnie herself committed a real, in fact extremely serious, breach of confidentiality -- copying an internal memo concerning the GM hire to one of the applicants. Neither Marnie nor her allies have offered any apology." [The applicant in question, according to sources, was Bennett. -MN]
It seems that no breach of confidentiality by Bennett, Tattersall or any of their allies is of any consequence, no matter how serious, whereas the slightest alleged breach by Enteen is worthy of the wrath of God.
"Thus, Marnie and her supporters," the Tattersall chronicles continue, "have brought the General Manager hiring process to an abrupt halt, extending Jim Bennett's tenure as Interim General Manager...
"These events not only reflect very badly on the station, and risk alienating qualified applicants -- they are altogether inconsistent with the fair and democratic spirit in which the critically important search for a new General Manager should be conducted."
...AND THEN TAKES CONTROL
Thus ends our anonymous authors' still unpublished report. But the tale does not end there.
On Saturday, August 28, the KPFA board held its regular monthly meeting. At this meeting, the board once again fled from public view into "executive session" to battle over the General Manager hiring process. There has as yet been no official report to the KPFA community of the results of this secret meeting, held by a board whose charge it is to shepherd "free speech radio" to the land of democracy.
But the word on the street is that Tattersall's allies, using the relentless pressure that they draw from their alliance with the junta that controls KPFA behind the scenes, pressured a bare majority of the board to finally throw Enteen off the General Manager Hiring subcommittee. This at a meeting where Enteen was home in bed with a migraine headache, unable to even speak in her own defense. Reportedly, her vote, had she been present, would have defeated the motion that cast her -- and the listeners who support her -- to the winds.
At the same meeting, so the story is being told, Tattersall's allies defeated a motion by one vote (that is Tattersall's vote) to throw her off the General Manager Hire subcommittee for her manifest breach of confidentiality, not to mention her disgusting scheming and illegal maneuvering.
It appears that Tattersall, the KGO lady, is now essentially in charge of picking the leader for the flagship station of "free speech radio."
DEMOCRACY IS A BAD IDEA?
The anti-democratic, anti-reform spirit represented by Tattersall and her allies is summed up in a recent email posted by Sasha Lilley, a staff representative on the General Manager Hire subcommittee, allied with Tattersall:
"I do think the bylaws are a disaster... Can you honesty say that having an elected board is going to save KPFA and Pacifica from another takeover attempt?... I have received word that the new elections this summer and fall will cost the network an additional 160k. This will bring the total election costs in this fiscal to a grand total of 347k... We, as a Network, cannot survive this kind of expense... The costs of this (volunteer) bureaucratic stratum, intent on increasingly consolidating power, is really troubling."
Ah, let us mourn for the good old days of benevolent corporate dictatorship.
The next meeting of the KPFA board is Saturday, September 11, att 11:00 AM, at Freight and Salvage, 1111 Addison Street near San Pablo Avenue, in Berkeley.
The tentative agenda for the 9/11 meeting includes a revote on the composition of the General Manager Hire subcommittee -- this time, hopefully, in open session.
-----
Copyright (c) 2004 Marc Norton
Non-commercial distribution of this piece is permitted and encouraged.
Marc Norton has been listening to KPFA since 1967. He is proud to be Riva Enteen's partner. Norton can be reached through his website at http://www.marcnorton.us, and is in the process of putting up on that website various documents relevant to the struggle over KPFA and Pacifica.
For more information:
http://www.marcnorton.us
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Maria Gilardin's article was excellent, but the situation is too serious, if not dire: it's long been time to finally name some names regarding the entrenched, anti-democratic and pro-corporate forces (and their toadies) at KPFA.
Internet Gives Teenage Bullies Weapons to Wound From Afar
By AMY HARMON
New York Times, August 26, 2004
The fight started at school, when some eighth-grade girls stole a pencil case filled with makeup that belonged to a new classmate, Amanda Marcuson, and she reported them.
But it did not end there. As soon as Amanda got home, the instant messages started popping up on her computer screen. She was a tattletale and a liar, they said. Shaken, she typed back, "You stole my stuff!" She was a "stuck-up bitch," came the instant response in the box on the screen, followed by a series of increasingly ugly epithets.
Advertisement
That evening, Amanda's mother tore her away from the computer to go to a basketball game with her family. But the barrage of electronic insults did not stop. Like a lot of other teenagers, Amanda has her Internet messages automatically forwarded to her cellphone, and by the end of the game she had received 50 - the limit of its capacity.
"It seems like people can say a lot worse things to someone online than when they're actually talking to them," said Amanda, 14, of Birmingham, Mich., who transferred to the school last year. The girls never said another word to her in person, she said.
The episode reflects one of many ways that the technology lubricating the social lives of teenagers is amplifying standard adolescent cruelty. No longer confined to school grounds or daytime hours, "cyberbullies" are pursuing their quarries into their own bedrooms. Tools like e-mail messages and Web logs enable the harassment to be both less obvious to adults and more publicly humiliating, as gossip, put-downs and embarrassing pictures are circulated among a wide audience of peers with a few clicks.
The technology, which allows its users to inflict pain without being forced to see its effect, also seems to incite a deeper level of meanness. Psychologists say the distance between bully and victim on the Internet is leading to an unprecedented - and often unintentional - degree of brutality, especially when combined with a typical adolescent's lack of impulse control and underdeveloped empathy skills.
"We're always talking about protecting kids on the Internet from adults and bad people," said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, a nonprofit group that has been fielding a growing number of calls from parents and school administrators worried about bullying. "We forget that we sometimes need to protect kids from kids."
For many teenagers, online harassment has become a part of everyday life. But schools, which tend to focus on problems that arise on their property, and parents, who tend to assume that their children know better than they do when it comes to computers, have long overlooked it. Only recently has it become pervasive enough that even the adults have started paying attention.
Like many other guidance counselors, Susan Yuratovac, a school psychologist at Hilltop Elementary School in Beachwood, Ohio, has for years worked with a wide spectrum of teenage aggression, including physical bullying and sexual harassment. This summer, Ms. Yuratovac said, she is devising a new curriculum to address the shift to electronic taunting.
"I have kids coming into school upset daily because of what happened on the Internet the night before," Ms. Yuratovac said. " 'We were online last night and somebody said I was fat,' or 'They asked me why I wear the same pair of jeans every day,' or 'They say I have Wal-Mart clothes.' "
Recently, Ms. Yuratovac intervened when a 12-year-old girl showed her an instant message exchange in which a boy in her class wrote, "My brother says you have really good boobs." Boys make many more explicit sexual comments online than off, counselors say.
"I don't think the girl is fearful the boy is going to accost her, but I do think she is embarrassed," Ms. Yuratovac said. "They know it's mean, it's risky, it's nasty. I worry what it does to them inside. It's the kind of thing you carry with you for a lot of years."
The new weapons in the teenage arsenal of social cruelty include stealing each others' screen names and sending inflammatory messages to friends or crush-objects, forwarding private material to people for whom it was never intended and anonymously posting derogatory comments about fellow students on Web journals called blogs.
By AMY HARMON
New York Times, August 26, 2004
The fight started at school, when some eighth-grade girls stole a pencil case filled with makeup that belonged to a new classmate, Amanda Marcuson, and she reported them.
But it did not end there. As soon as Amanda got home, the instant messages started popping up on her computer screen. She was a tattletale and a liar, they said. Shaken, she typed back, "You stole my stuff!" She was a "stuck-up bitch," came the instant response in the box on the screen, followed by a series of increasingly ugly epithets.
Advertisement
That evening, Amanda's mother tore her away from the computer to go to a basketball game with her family. But the barrage of electronic insults did not stop. Like a lot of other teenagers, Amanda has her Internet messages automatically forwarded to her cellphone, and by the end of the game she had received 50 - the limit of its capacity.
"It seems like people can say a lot worse things to someone online than when they're actually talking to them," said Amanda, 14, of Birmingham, Mich., who transferred to the school last year. The girls never said another word to her in person, she said.
The episode reflects one of many ways that the technology lubricating the social lives of teenagers is amplifying standard adolescent cruelty. No longer confined to school grounds or daytime hours, "cyberbullies" are pursuing their quarries into their own bedrooms. Tools like e-mail messages and Web logs enable the harassment to be both less obvious to adults and more publicly humiliating, as gossip, put-downs and embarrassing pictures are circulated among a wide audience of peers with a few clicks.
The technology, which allows its users to inflict pain without being forced to see its effect, also seems to incite a deeper level of meanness. Psychologists say the distance between bully and victim on the Internet is leading to an unprecedented - and often unintentional - degree of brutality, especially when combined with a typical adolescent's lack of impulse control and underdeveloped empathy skills.
"We're always talking about protecting kids on the Internet from adults and bad people," said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, a nonprofit group that has been fielding a growing number of calls from parents and school administrators worried about bullying. "We forget that we sometimes need to protect kids from kids."
For many teenagers, online harassment has become a part of everyday life. But schools, which tend to focus on problems that arise on their property, and parents, who tend to assume that their children know better than they do when it comes to computers, have long overlooked it. Only recently has it become pervasive enough that even the adults have started paying attention.
Like many other guidance counselors, Susan Yuratovac, a school psychologist at Hilltop Elementary School in Beachwood, Ohio, has for years worked with a wide spectrum of teenage aggression, including physical bullying and sexual harassment. This summer, Ms. Yuratovac said, she is devising a new curriculum to address the shift to electronic taunting.
"I have kids coming into school upset daily because of what happened on the Internet the night before," Ms. Yuratovac said. " 'We were online last night and somebody said I was fat,' or 'They asked me why I wear the same pair of jeans every day,' or 'They say I have Wal-Mart clothes.' "
Recently, Ms. Yuratovac intervened when a 12-year-old girl showed her an instant message exchange in which a boy in her class wrote, "My brother says you have really good boobs." Boys make many more explicit sexual comments online than off, counselors say.
"I don't think the girl is fearful the boy is going to accost her, but I do think she is embarrassed," Ms. Yuratovac said. "They know it's mean, it's risky, it's nasty. I worry what it does to them inside. It's the kind of thing you carry with you for a lot of years."
The new weapons in the teenage arsenal of social cruelty include stealing each others' screen names and sending inflammatory messages to friends or crush-objects, forwarding private material to people for whom it was never intended and anonymously posting derogatory comments about fellow students on Web journals called blogs.
For more information:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/educatio...
There isn't an article of truth in Marc Norton's windy screed. All of his information appears to be coming second hand. It appears he wasn't at any of the places where these so-called anti-democratic actions took place. Marnie Tattersal works for KGO. YEAH AND?! There are a lot of listeners who work at commercial stations or corporate entities who also like KPFA. This must be some litmus test of qualifications for listening to the station. You have to be an un-employed, wacko conspiracy theorist in order to qualify as a dedicated listener. PLEASE! It sounds like this Enteen person doesn't know what a confidentiality agreement means. If you sign it, you keep your trap shut. If you breach it, you're gone. Case closed. Norton doesn't care about democracy. It's about him and his self-righteous friends deciding what's politically acceptable for everyone else. Democracy is a useful rhetorical device for his ilk. The USSR and the former East European tin-pot tyrannies called themselves "people's democracies", any sane person doubles over in laughter at that, as they should Norton and his pals' bleatings about democracy. For them, it's their way or the highway, or the gulag as it were.
To: "A listener and volunteer"
The real bullies in this situation are those who are once again trying to hijack KPFA and Pacifica.
To: "listener supporter"
Your eagerness to stoop so readily to red-baiting says it all.
To: both of you
I have put my real name on the line. Will you?
The real bullies in this situation are those who are once again trying to hijack KPFA and Pacifica.
To: "listener supporter"
Your eagerness to stoop so readily to red-baiting says it all.
To: both of you
I have put my real name on the line. Will you?
For more information:
http://www.marcnorton.us
"listener supporter"[rrright]: "You have to be an un-employed, wacko..."
Speaking of "WACKO"...!
You can tell from his classist, crude, cheap, red-baiting, writing style that "listener supporter" -- who probably is NEITHER (and certainly not the latter) -- is some wacko himself (probably just some random right-wing nut who posts at indybay). Or maybe he's Larry Bensky (gone the route of Tod Gitlin, Alan Dershowitz, or Christorpher Hitchens).
Right-wing WACKO: "All of his information appears to be coming second hand. It appears he wasn't at any of the places where these so-called anti-democratic actions took place. ...It sounds like this Enteen person..."
Look, speaking of second hand, he doesn't even know who Riva is!
If he's not Bensky, he's probably just sitting there - unemployed himself - posting away in his basement bunker in his army surplus special forces fatigues and boots, and with his old Farrah Fawcett poster on the wall next to him ('so he knows what he's fighting for'). Yeah, that's who's cheering for the entrenched, anti-democratic staff.
"Marnie Tattersal works for KGO [as a KGO official/exec]"
Probably reason alone why she should have NEVER been - as a matter of KPFA listener community principle - on the KPFA LSB board. No more of these officials/execs from corporate or establishment radio: it's just asking for trouble.
And wacko is not even worth debating. I'm glad you kept your response short, sweet, and sharply to the point, Marc.
Speaking of "WACKO"...!
You can tell from his classist, crude, cheap, red-baiting, writing style that "listener supporter" -- who probably is NEITHER (and certainly not the latter) -- is some wacko himself (probably just some random right-wing nut who posts at indybay). Or maybe he's Larry Bensky (gone the route of Tod Gitlin, Alan Dershowitz, or Christorpher Hitchens).
Right-wing WACKO: "All of his information appears to be coming second hand. It appears he wasn't at any of the places where these so-called anti-democratic actions took place. ...It sounds like this Enteen person..."
Look, speaking of second hand, he doesn't even know who Riva is!
If he's not Bensky, he's probably just sitting there - unemployed himself - posting away in his basement bunker in his army surplus special forces fatigues and boots, and with his old Farrah Fawcett poster on the wall next to him ('so he knows what he's fighting for'). Yeah, that's who's cheering for the entrenched, anti-democratic staff.
"Marnie Tattersal works for KGO [as a KGO official/exec]"
Probably reason alone why she should have NEVER been - as a matter of KPFA listener community principle - on the KPFA LSB board. No more of these officials/execs from corporate or establishment radio: it's just asking for trouble.
And wacko is not even worth debating. I'm glad you kept your response short, sweet, and sharply to the point, Marc.
What good is it to put your name on line? How does anyone know you're not using a pseudonym? How about going to KPFA talking directly to the people you villify face-to-face and dialogue with them? Try that instead of posting things on the internet that stretch credulity beyond the limit. You can call what I wrote red-baiting, but your self-important rhetoric says it all: "Me and my friends are smarter than everyone, we're the true democrats, we're acting in the best interests of the people." Strip away all the distortions and muck and that's essentially what you're saying. It's taken directly from the speeches of all the erstwhile tyrants you and your friends probably quote from in your sparsley attended meetings.
Comrade Norton, you forgot to tell me that I don't have the right class consciousness and that I don't reflect the best interests of the proletariat, or any other Sparticist league cliches. Who do you represent? Are there any more than a handful of you? When you accuse anyone who doesn't agree with you of being a right winger you make my point for me that you are an intolerant self-righteous faux democrat, who doesn't really know the meaning of the words democracy and inclusion. Let me tell you. You aren't the left, you are cowards and bullies who attack people on the internet and bash the KPFA staff because it's the only place people like you have any influence. That's sad for the station and for people who want to move beyond the tired old platitudes and actually see the progressive movement accomplish something instead of being made continually irrelevant by the right and people like you who have so much in common with them.
I consider this hit piece on Marnie Tattersall -- AND the one-sided hit piece on Riva Enteen planted in the Berkeley Daily Planet a couple of weeks ago -- to be grotesque distortions of what the democracy so many of us fought for is all about.
The democracy I fought for is NOT about personalities or innuendo or character assassination. It is about bringing various points of view and interests together to consider the issues and find solutions and direction for the station that most, if not all, can embrace.
I believe these exchanges put us back from that goal.
--Carol Spooner
The democracy I fought for is NOT about personalities or innuendo or character assassination. It is about bringing various points of view and interests together to consider the issues and find solutions and direction for the station that most, if not all, can embrace.
I believe these exchanges put us back from that goal.
--Carol Spooner
After observing LSB meetings and the anti-social and lack of civility displayed by many of the board members, it is no wonder that there is division.
I suggest that Riva, a good activist soldier, does not have the skill level or social grace to lead the LSB. The board members have good intentions and are all on the same page when it comes to the Pacifica Mission, and yet they flounder about without a rudder. Why at the last meeting when critical issues were discussed and an executive session was scheduled, did Riva Enteen feign a migraine head ache, and not show; and not have the decency to alert a replacement of a chair in ample time to avoid an hour delay?
We, the listeners, have elected the board to represent us, and it is unjust to try to tarnish the reputation and integrity of any of its members because they happen to work for competitive medias or organizations.
Most of us have day jobs and we do our best to keep our integrity and work for social justice and democracy in the work place. We may work with republicans but retain our independence and autonomy. If one uses circumstantial evidence to smear and tarnish our opponents one is saying more about oneself and not looking at the facts.
There is no doubt in my mind after witnessing the LSB election process that all candidates were authentically sincere and above board. Marnie Tattersall got the fourth largest number of votes because she is an expert in her field and made it clear from the start that she worked for KGO Disney. It is a shame to cast doubt without specific facts. Pride and prejudice, but not much sense, seems to be the theme of these attacks.
Riva Enteen is a valuable player in the scheme of things, but if she cannot get the democratic majority of the board behind her as chairman, not to mention the good will and cooperation of the board, she should step down.
I think people should remember the firing of Nicole Sawaya, the general manager, was the lighting rod that was the cause of the controversy before Dennis Bernstein. Nicole, a single mother of color lost her paycheck because she defended the KPFA mission. I think that she should be invited back to reconcile the station and make amends. Personally I think she deserves more credit for her part.
I suggest that Riva, a good activist soldier, does not have the skill level or social grace to lead the LSB. The board members have good intentions and are all on the same page when it comes to the Pacifica Mission, and yet they flounder about without a rudder. Why at the last meeting when critical issues were discussed and an executive session was scheduled, did Riva Enteen feign a migraine head ache, and not show; and not have the decency to alert a replacement of a chair in ample time to avoid an hour delay?
We, the listeners, have elected the board to represent us, and it is unjust to try to tarnish the reputation and integrity of any of its members because they happen to work for competitive medias or organizations.
Most of us have day jobs and we do our best to keep our integrity and work for social justice and democracy in the work place. We may work with republicans but retain our independence and autonomy. If one uses circumstantial evidence to smear and tarnish our opponents one is saying more about oneself and not looking at the facts.
There is no doubt in my mind after witnessing the LSB election process that all candidates were authentically sincere and above board. Marnie Tattersall got the fourth largest number of votes because she is an expert in her field and made it clear from the start that she worked for KGO Disney. It is a shame to cast doubt without specific facts. Pride and prejudice, but not much sense, seems to be the theme of these attacks.
Riva Enteen is a valuable player in the scheme of things, but if she cannot get the democratic majority of the board behind her as chairman, not to mention the good will and cooperation of the board, she should step down.
I think people should remember the firing of Nicole Sawaya, the general manager, was the lighting rod that was the cause of the controversy before Dennis Bernstein. Nicole, a single mother of color lost her paycheck because she defended the KPFA mission. I think that she should be invited back to reconcile the station and make amends. Personally I think she deserves more credit for her part.
This open letter was written by Dennis Bernstein of Flashpoints about a posting on Indymedia:
** PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY **
To the KPFA staff and the Pacifica Community
From Executive Producer of Flashpoints, Dennis Bernstein
Re: racist memo to Vini Beachem
I read with horror the vicious and racist memo that purports to be from a member of the KPFA community. First and foremost, Flashpoints disavows all connection to such hurtful and degrading messages. I personally pledge to use my 25 years of investigative skills to find out who wrote it and why. I am requesting that any documentary evidence, i.e. email addresses, place of origin, or if it was handwritten and delivered, any documents or evidence that would help our special investigation. I will enlist the help of
several private investigators and a fingerprint analyst, as well as a syntactical writing expert to analyze the letter and help us get to the bottom of this horrible episode in the history of Pacifica.
If I weren't busy on the ground in New York, keeping track of police attacks particularly on people of color, I would have had an earlier start on this investigation. In conclusion, however, we will do everything in our power to nail the racist or the agent provocateur so that this does not occur again at least from this source.
Sincerely,
Dennis Bernstein
FLASHPOINTS
Your Daily Investigative News Magazine
Monday thru Friday on Pacifica Radio
http://www.flashpoints.net
** PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY **
To the KPFA staff and the Pacifica Community
From Executive Producer of Flashpoints, Dennis Bernstein
Re: racist memo to Vini Beachem
I read with horror the vicious and racist memo that purports to be from a member of the KPFA community. First and foremost, Flashpoints disavows all connection to such hurtful and degrading messages. I personally pledge to use my 25 years of investigative skills to find out who wrote it and why. I am requesting that any documentary evidence, i.e. email addresses, place of origin, or if it was handwritten and delivered, any documents or evidence that would help our special investigation. I will enlist the help of
several private investigators and a fingerprint analyst, as well as a syntactical writing expert to analyze the letter and help us get to the bottom of this horrible episode in the history of Pacifica.
If I weren't busy on the ground in New York, keeping track of police attacks particularly on people of color, I would have had an earlier start on this investigation. In conclusion, however, we will do everything in our power to nail the racist or the agent provocateur so that this does not occur again at least from this source.
Sincerely,
Dennis Bernstein
FLASHPOINTS
Your Daily Investigative News Magazine
Monday thru Friday on Pacifica Radio
http://www.flashpoints.net
I hope that Carol Spooner follows through on her outrage here and actually takes real action against the LSB member who leaked all this confidential information -- from LSB executive session, internal committees -- to Marc Norton to post here. I would hope that as an elected member of the LSB, and someone who is respected by many, Carol Spooner will make a pledge here that political considerations will not outweigh the demands of accountability, transparency and democracy at KPFA's LSB. As someone who cares about KPFA, I am tired of hearing people on the LSB talking about the need to work together in a harmonious way, while simultaneously refusing to call LSB members on their abusive and undemocratic behavior. Carol Spooner could make a real impact right now if she chose to.
And thank you, Dennis.
See folks, this situation is serious.
Marc makes a really important point when he says that similar
disruptive actions are going on at the other stations as well.
Does anybody remember Cointelpro? Pitting allies against
each other?
Do we remember the attempted takeover of the the Pacifica
stations, starting with KPFA? How hard the old Berry - stacked board fought to stay in power? How some obstructed the instituting of new by-laws?
It is certainly possible that this process is continuing.
Thank you, Marc, for bringing this to our attention.
I remember those who said they "couldn't believe that the old
board would do such a thing" - as try to seize power.
Please reread Marc's letter, folks - KPFA may be in danger & it
is more than just a matter of personalities. Marc is criticizing Marnie's behavior, not just her corporate connection.
I agree with Carol that KPFA's focus should be "about bringing
various points of view and interests together to consider the issues
and find solutions and direction for the station that most, if not all,
can embrace." But disregarding by-laws, ignoring legitimate committee decisions, ignoring threatening behavior, trying to oust elected members, having different standards of accountability for different people - these things need a spotlight shown on them, to be seen with open eyes, and addressed properly.
Ignoring attempts to subvert democratic process is something
which will put us back from our goal. I agree with "Listener": at some point names must be named. And before elections.
I couldn't agree more with Mara here, who says that it's time to name names. Mara writes: "But disregarding by-laws, ignoring legitimate committee decisions, ignoring threatening behavior, trying to oust elected members, having different standards of accountability for different people - these things need a spotlight shown on them, to be seen with open eyes, and addressed properly." And Riva Enteen, Marc Norton's partner, has done most of these reprehensible acts. It was she who started the racist slander against Vini Beachem which Dennis Bernstein is objecting to in his open letter. She obviously passed on to Mark Norton confidential information from closed LSB meetings for him to publish here -- a violation of the Pacifica bylaws. She violated the confidentiality of the candidates applying for the GM position (and Norton seems to be continuing her work here). Anyone who has watched her chair the LSB meetings can see how she plays favorites and gives her allies an advantage or allows abusive behavior to gone on unchecked (like that of Gerald Saunders, who insults fellow board members during meetings). Do listeners want this sort of corrupt behavior from the LSB's chair??? Could anyone act in a more divisive and toxic manner than Riva Enteen has done? Doesn't KPFA deserve better than this?
I couldn't agree more with Mara here, who says that it's time to name names. Mara writes: "But disregarding by-laws, ignoring legitimate committee decisions, ignoring threatening behavior, trying to oust elected members, having different standards of accountability for different people - these things need a spotlight shown on them, to be seen with open eyes, and addressed properly." And Riva Enteen, Marc Norton's partner, has done most of these reprehensible acts.
It was she who started the racist slander against Vini Beachem which Dennis Bernstein is objecting to in his open letter.
She obviously passed on to Mark Norton confidential information from closed LSB meetings for him to publish here -- a violation of the Pacifica bylaws.
She violated the confidentiality of the candidates applying for the GM position (and Norton seems to be continuing her work here).
Anyone who has watched her chair the LSB meetings can see how she plays favorites and gives her allies an advantage or allows abusive behavior to gone on unchecked (like that of Gerald Saunders, who insults fellow board members during meetings).
Do listeners want this sort of corrupt behavior from the LSB's chair??? Could anyone act in a more divisive and toxic manner than Riva Enteen has done? Doesn't KPFA deserve better than this?
It was she who started the racist slander against Vini Beachem which Dennis Bernstein is objecting to in his open letter.
She obviously passed on to Mark Norton confidential information from closed LSB meetings for him to publish here -- a violation of the Pacifica bylaws.
She violated the confidentiality of the candidates applying for the GM position (and Norton seems to be continuing her work here).
Anyone who has watched her chair the LSB meetings can see how she plays favorites and gives her allies an advantage or allows abusive behavior to gone on unchecked (like that of Gerald Saunders, who insults fellow board members during meetings).
Do listeners want this sort of corrupt behavior from the LSB's chair??? Could anyone act in a more divisive and toxic manner than Riva Enteen has done? Doesn't KPFA deserve better than this?
Dear JS --
Scapegoating is an ugly thing & I will not participate in it.
There are several members of the LSB who breached confidentiality in misguided attempts to injure & smear their perceived opponents.
For this the LSB needs to accept collective responsibility, and each member needs to accept personal responsibility.
"Do not look outside yourself for the leader."
I have been guided by those words since 1999, and whenever I am tempted to inflate myself or to accept other peoples' projections of their power onto me, I am reminded to pass it on.
The Hopi Elder said,
"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.
And there are things to be considered ...
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader."
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said,
"This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water.
And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Oraibi, Arizona
Hopi Nation
Scapegoating is an ugly thing & I will not participate in it.
There are several members of the LSB who breached confidentiality in misguided attempts to injure & smear their perceived opponents.
For this the LSB needs to accept collective responsibility, and each member needs to accept personal responsibility.
"Do not look outside yourself for the leader."
I have been guided by those words since 1999, and whenever I am tempted to inflate myself or to accept other peoples' projections of their power onto me, I am reminded to pass it on.
The Hopi Elder said,
"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.
And there are things to be considered ...
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader."
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said,
"This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water.
And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Oraibi, Arizona
Hopi Nation
It will probably come as no surprise to anyone that I disagree with Carol Spooner's characterization of my article.
The Berkeley Daily Planet article of July 30, and the "open letter" on which it was based, were both full of factual errors and distortions. My article -- whatever one may think of its conclusions -- is based on the facts.
Democracy is about airing facts and opinions, and allowing people to make their own judgments. It is also about holding people accountable for their actions. That is NOT the same thing as "personalities or innuendo or character assassination." Trying to squelch the frank exchange of points of view does not serve democracy.
Democracy is sometimes, as Carol says, about "bringing various points of view and interests together." Sometimes, however, it is about making it clear that one side is right and one side is wrong. In this case, Marnie Tattersall -- the KGO corporate executive -- represents a trend that can only lead KPFA and Pacifica backward.
The "open letter" on which the Berkeley Daily Planet article was based, which was truly a "hit piece," has been posted on Indymedia since August 2. Carol Spooner has never posted any comments there, but is now in a somewhat unseemly rush to complain about my article.
It seems to me that Carol Spooner's centrist politics -- despite her many contributions to Pacifica's pro-democracy and pro-reform struggle -- sometimes blinds her to the machinations of the backward, pro-corporate trends in Pacifica.
It's time to hold Marnie Tattersall's faction to account for their actions.
The Berkeley Daily Planet article of July 30, and the "open letter" on which it was based, were both full of factual errors and distortions. My article -- whatever one may think of its conclusions -- is based on the facts.
Democracy is about airing facts and opinions, and allowing people to make their own judgments. It is also about holding people accountable for their actions. That is NOT the same thing as "personalities or innuendo or character assassination." Trying to squelch the frank exchange of points of view does not serve democracy.
Democracy is sometimes, as Carol says, about "bringing various points of view and interests together." Sometimes, however, it is about making it clear that one side is right and one side is wrong. In this case, Marnie Tattersall -- the KGO corporate executive -- represents a trend that can only lead KPFA and Pacifica backward.
The "open letter" on which the Berkeley Daily Planet article was based, which was truly a "hit piece," has been posted on Indymedia since August 2. Carol Spooner has never posted any comments there, but is now in a somewhat unseemly rush to complain about my article.
It seems to me that Carol Spooner's centrist politics -- despite her many contributions to Pacifica's pro-democracy and pro-reform struggle -- sometimes blinds her to the machinations of the backward, pro-corporate trends in Pacifica.
It's time to hold Marnie Tattersall's faction to account for their actions.
For more information:
http://www.marcnorton.us
Dear KPFA community,
September 2004
Last week, I submitted my resignation from General Manager (GM) Hiring Committee to the KPFA LSB. This has been a very difficult and painful decision for me. I worked very hard and tried to maintain the integrity of this crucial process. I also made an effort to concentrate on the positives and ignore the negatives, thinking things eventually would work out for the best. I truly believed that we all had the best interest of the station in our hearts.
However, I am sad to report that my experience proved me wrong. I witnessed so many arbitrary and undemocratic actions by some of the committee members, which, to my mind, seriously has damaged the integrity of the current GM hiring process. To give you a taste of some of these inappropriate actions, I am providing you with just a few examples. I would like to start with the most recent ones.
« Although there were charges of breach of confidentiality against two members of the GM Hiring Committee, most of the members of this committee completely ignored the charges against one member and asked for disciplinary actions for the other member by the KPFA LSB. This unfair and biased action is against staff resolution # 1 passed on 8/19/04, which states: “It is the sense of the 6:30 pm, August 19 staff meeting that any member of the general manager hiring committee, past or future, who violates a confidentiality agreement shall be removed from the general manager hiring committee by the LSB.”
« I believe that there were numerous contacts between at least one of the committee members and one of the candidates concerning his desire for possible removal of one of the committee members from the committee for “bias” against him. This was inappropriate, and compromised the integrity of the process as a whole, as well as the confidentiality of the GM Hire committee. Another committee member forwarded internal complaints about a committee member to one of the candidates.
« In the GM Hiring Committee meeting on 8/25/04, the new chair denied giving me an equal opportunity to respond to some of the misrepresentations of my previous statements. I asked the chair four times for an opportunity to respond by raising my hand, when nobody else was on stack. Each time, I pointed out to him that this was not what I had said and I needed an opportunity to respond. When I mentioned that there was nobody else on stack, the chair responded, “But I am on stack.” And he kept talking and never gave me an opportunity to respond.
« On Sunday, 7/25/04, after some of the GM Hiring Committee members refused to go ahead with interviews (while the applicant was siting in the waiting room) we had a short meeting to discuss our future actions. I argued that the personnel committee is an advisory body and has no authority to oust one of the members from the GM Hiring Committee since she was elected by the LSB. At that moment, one of the committee members made the following comment to me, “We could not get to the personnel committee resolution in the executive session, because of you! You who always wants everyone to say poor little Iranian woman.” Two of the committee members objected to these racist remarks, however, the other five members did not say a word.
« One of the staff committee members suggested that she would keep extra copies of applications in her office at the station to provide additional access to other committee members. According to our agreement, members of the GM Hiring Committee could go to her office and review the applications as long as there was more than one person present. The first time that I and another member of the committee went to her office to review the applications on a Sunday (I work full time and was attending KPFA meetings all evenings.), that staff committee member sent an e-mail and informed us that she shared her office with another KPFA staff and that other staff would not feel comfortable if other people go to his office while he was not present. When I asked for an alternative method, my request was ignored. I believe that that staff committee member denied equal access to applications to working people like me, while she kept her personal copies in her office.
« At the inception of the committee, One of the committee members made an “executive decision” to let management to vote for paid staff representative in the GM Hiring Committee without informing the other committee members, contrary to the LSB resolution that a staff committee member would be elected by the paid staff and not by the management. I tried to discuss this issue with the committee member who made the "executive decision" and told her that when she had made a decision without other committee members’ knowledge making others look stupid. She responded that she did not care if the rest of us looked stupid and she was elected by popular votes to make decision and she would continue doing that.
Based on the aforementioned examples and many similar incidents, I do not believe that I can go on with this unfair process. I would also like to encourage LSB members to consider reconstituting this dysfunctional body and replacing the six LSB listener representatives in the GM Hire Committee. I am ready and willing to answer any questions regarding these issues.
Sepideh Khosrowjah, KPFA Local Station Board Listener Representative
September 2004
Last week, I submitted my resignation from General Manager (GM) Hiring Committee to the KPFA LSB. This has been a very difficult and painful decision for me. I worked very hard and tried to maintain the integrity of this crucial process. I also made an effort to concentrate on the positives and ignore the negatives, thinking things eventually would work out for the best. I truly believed that we all had the best interest of the station in our hearts.
However, I am sad to report that my experience proved me wrong. I witnessed so many arbitrary and undemocratic actions by some of the committee members, which, to my mind, seriously has damaged the integrity of the current GM hiring process. To give you a taste of some of these inappropriate actions, I am providing you with just a few examples. I would like to start with the most recent ones.
« Although there were charges of breach of confidentiality against two members of the GM Hiring Committee, most of the members of this committee completely ignored the charges against one member and asked for disciplinary actions for the other member by the KPFA LSB. This unfair and biased action is against staff resolution # 1 passed on 8/19/04, which states: “It is the sense of the 6:30 pm, August 19 staff meeting that any member of the general manager hiring committee, past or future, who violates a confidentiality agreement shall be removed from the general manager hiring committee by the LSB.”
« I believe that there were numerous contacts between at least one of the committee members and one of the candidates concerning his desire for possible removal of one of the committee members from the committee for “bias” against him. This was inappropriate, and compromised the integrity of the process as a whole, as well as the confidentiality of the GM Hire committee. Another committee member forwarded internal complaints about a committee member to one of the candidates.
« In the GM Hiring Committee meeting on 8/25/04, the new chair denied giving me an equal opportunity to respond to some of the misrepresentations of my previous statements. I asked the chair four times for an opportunity to respond by raising my hand, when nobody else was on stack. Each time, I pointed out to him that this was not what I had said and I needed an opportunity to respond. When I mentioned that there was nobody else on stack, the chair responded, “But I am on stack.” And he kept talking and never gave me an opportunity to respond.
« On Sunday, 7/25/04, after some of the GM Hiring Committee members refused to go ahead with interviews (while the applicant was siting in the waiting room) we had a short meeting to discuss our future actions. I argued that the personnel committee is an advisory body and has no authority to oust one of the members from the GM Hiring Committee since she was elected by the LSB. At that moment, one of the committee members made the following comment to me, “We could not get to the personnel committee resolution in the executive session, because of you! You who always wants everyone to say poor little Iranian woman.” Two of the committee members objected to these racist remarks, however, the other five members did not say a word.
« One of the staff committee members suggested that she would keep extra copies of applications in her office at the station to provide additional access to other committee members. According to our agreement, members of the GM Hiring Committee could go to her office and review the applications as long as there was more than one person present. The first time that I and another member of the committee went to her office to review the applications on a Sunday (I work full time and was attending KPFA meetings all evenings.), that staff committee member sent an e-mail and informed us that she shared her office with another KPFA staff and that other staff would not feel comfortable if other people go to his office while he was not present. When I asked for an alternative method, my request was ignored. I believe that that staff committee member denied equal access to applications to working people like me, while she kept her personal copies in her office.
« At the inception of the committee, One of the committee members made an “executive decision” to let management to vote for paid staff representative in the GM Hiring Committee without informing the other committee members, contrary to the LSB resolution that a staff committee member would be elected by the paid staff and not by the management. I tried to discuss this issue with the committee member who made the "executive decision" and told her that when she had made a decision without other committee members’ knowledge making others look stupid. She responded that she did not care if the rest of us looked stupid and she was elected by popular votes to make decision and she would continue doing that.
Based on the aforementioned examples and many similar incidents, I do not believe that I can go on with this unfair process. I would also like to encourage LSB members to consider reconstituting this dysfunctional body and replacing the six LSB listener representatives in the GM Hire Committee. I am ready and willing to answer any questions regarding these issues.
Sepideh Khosrowjah, KPFA Local Station Board Listener Representative
Norton seems to have stepped right out of the pages of 1984. This loyal citizen of Oceania plays fast and loose with the truth. He claims to have presented facts. But, what he calls facts seem to be second, or third hand distortions. He says there are forces collaborating with the old regime but doesn't name anyone, or present any evidence. He bleats about breaches of protocol, but seems to know about confidential matters brought up in Executive Sessions. He is obviously being briefed on confidential matters from an LSB informant. But that's okay because it's coming from someone who agrees with him. Also Tattersal's so-called breach, in which no candidate was named and no expression of bias was presesented, is somehow equivalent to Enteen's blatant disregard for the rules. He accuses people of having centrist politics, just one step away from calling them counter-revolutionaries. In his fantasy world he and his ilk are the arbiters of what's progressive. Orwell would recognize this type of pap. In his ideal world the accused would get a one way ticket to a re-education camp, after a show trial of course. He is unconcerned about democracy at KPFA. Democracy for Norton(Big Brother) means getting your way by hook or by crook. If by some nightmarish scenario Norton, Blankfort, Gilardin and the other thought police came to power, they would immediately call for a suspension of democracy because of some made up crisis. You can write the script in your sleep. Orwell's done a brilliant job of it already.
« “We could not get to the personnel committee resolution in the executive session, because of you! You who always wants everyone to say poor little Iranian woman.” Two of the committee members objected to these racist remarks, however, the other five members did not say a word.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are even people like this _at_ KPFA!?: One, who would make such a racist remark and _FIVE_ who would sit by and say _NOTHING_ !? Such a person making the openly witnessed racist remark wasn't immediately charged for that and the person (or meeting) suspended, and later presumably dismissed, upon a fair appropriate review and hearing, from a _HIRING_ committee!? This, in an institution that, no doubt, states that it will not discriminate on the basis of race, _ethnicity_, _gender_, sexual orientation, physically differentially enabled, _national origin_, religion, etc.?
How is any applicant, especially _woman_, of "Middle Eastern" descent supposed to feel being considered for the GM position by _that_ hiring committee?: the one who made the remark and the _five_ who remained silent in the face of an openly and blatantly racist and sexist remark.
Where is the in-station outrage here!? Or are cries of racism a useful outrage _only_ when the entrenched staff/management can contrive and exploit it?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are even people like this _at_ KPFA!?: One, who would make such a racist remark and _FIVE_ who would sit by and say _NOTHING_ !? Such a person making the openly witnessed racist remark wasn't immediately charged for that and the person (or meeting) suspended, and later presumably dismissed, upon a fair appropriate review and hearing, from a _HIRING_ committee!? This, in an institution that, no doubt, states that it will not discriminate on the basis of race, _ethnicity_, _gender_, sexual orientation, physically differentially enabled, _national origin_, religion, etc.?
How is any applicant, especially _woman_, of "Middle Eastern" descent supposed to feel being considered for the GM position by _that_ hiring committee?: the one who made the remark and the _five_ who remained silent in the face of an openly and blatantly racist and sexist remark.
Where is the in-station outrage here!? Or are cries of racism a useful outrage _only_ when the entrenched staff/management can contrive and exploit it?
Canada and Europe have national health insurance. Some countries in Europe have virtually eliminated child poverty. The U.S. doesn't even provide state sponsored child care. The average vacation time in Europe is five weeks paid. Americans are lucky if they get two. France and Germany have generous paid family leave programs. The U.S. doesn't get paid family leave. The U.S. has the widest gap between rich and poor. Canada and Europe have sane gun control laws on the books. The U.S. has a violent crime rate about four times that of Germany's. Europe, Canada and several other countries were against the Iraq war by 90 plus percent in some instances. The people of Spain after suffering a horrific terrorist atrocity still turfed out their right wing government and demanded that the new leftist government withdraw from Iraq. At this point President Bush has a near double digit lead in the polls. Just a few facts to put into perspective the utter collapse of the American left. So go ahead Norton and allies, attack the entrenched staff and management at KPFA and Pacifica, you'll help make certain that one of the few voices for positive social change is brought to ruin, while the left continues to flounder. You'll be able to puff your chests out with pride when you finally acheive your "democracy" in the network. The progressive movement will lose but at least you'll have your pyrhhic victory.
You're so stupid that you don't realize that you and your RANTS are even an EMBARR-_ASS_-MENT to (well at least you finally got this right, as you finally also correctly put it in your post just above), "the entrenched staff and management at KPFA and Pacifica" that you support. No one is going to debate your wacko rants with you, and no one of, even quoting you, "the entrenched staff and management at KPFA and Pacifica" is going to support someone here as crude and WACKO as you.
I wouldn't trust Blankfort or Gilardin to deliver my newspaper.
I have researched and published corporate documents on Pacifica Foundation for the past three years, many of which never seemed to make it to the many "movement" websites during the late 1990s. I have invited individuals to share their recollections and documents and you can view them, mostly in the Files section, at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LewHillproject
I have also researched the national campaign literature and fundraising letters that Carol Spooner issued in order to force out legitimate Pacifica Board members in the late 1990's and here are some of my conclusions.
In my estimation, both the David Adelson (KPFK LAB member) and Carol Spooner (KPFA listener) lawsuits and Carol's national campaign to force the removal of those Board members that she, unilaterally, decreed as "illigal", were all based on character assisinations and had little to do with "democracy."
One only has to look at the written record of the two years that the interim Board was in control, rewriting our corporate bylaws, firing our General Managers and allowing a widespread purging of many of the best programmers in Pacifica who had worked so hard to build the network in the 1990's. The problem is that the interim Board, under Secretary Spooner, left no legal record of their own proceedings! But that hasn't stopped her or the other Plaintiffs from continuing their slander of our own former volunteers and Trustees and General Managers as "hijackers" and "coupsters" and similar personal attacks and I think this has created a toxic corporate culture which is being expressed here today in these articles.
In my opinion, Spooner's Committee to Remove the Pacifica National Board, as well as Juan Gonzalez's Pacifica Campaign both helped to legitimize and empower an increasingly paranoid culture and which has helped lead us to the chaos and mess we find ourselves today. We have network-wide infighting, costly employees lawsuits (and more rumored to be on the way) mass program changes that have terminated many of Pacifica's most popular and successful programs, and a chaotic structure in which very few of the new unmanageable system of 125+ board members have a clue as to what they are mandated to do. In a clumsy attempt to establish "local control," our national Trustees, who have the legal duties of FCC compliance and oversight of the stations, are weaken by one year terms, barely long enough to even get to know the other Members, let alone to enable any long term funding, strategic planning or management oversight.
The new convolunted corporate structure has already created a humongus web of ever shrinking committees who are unsure of their own mandate or procedures.
The attrition of people is already proving that the New Pacifica will once again the interest and support of some of our most qualified leaders who will not put up with the chaos.
The upcoming elections are projected to cost _another_ 160K-180K and they are already conspicuous in their lackluster regional support in terms of new candidates or any legitimate region wide promotion outside of just the stations themselves. In my estimation the new structure is designed NOT to allow a well-managed, accountable and transparent organization and it's designed to recruit only those who are already on the insider of the various power cliques and new "slates" that have brought factional fighting and ugly politics into each Pacifica station.
Who needs some phony version of "democracy" when the result is incompetance, chaos and confusion?
Come to think of it, the only democracy that listeners might have truly benefited from, which could have created some trust into the structure, was to have at least one opportunity every few years for listeners to elect some members of the National Board directly, but even that was not won from the multi-million dollar war that Carol and Dave and Rob Robinson and Juan Gonzales and Denis Bernstein all took us on.
My guess is that Pacifica Foundation will continue to be drained and weakened by it's new structure, born out of blackmail and harrassment. We are crucially limited by a lack of adult supervision and suffer from a lack of qualified management, starting from the very top. I have contacted many members of former Pacifica national and local boards from over the past few decades and when I describe to them the new structure and they often say "I'm glad we didn't have to put up with that!"
Every faction has been known to twist the original "mission" of Pacifica to serve their own political agenda (or jobs, or spouses job) and viewpoint. Founder Lew Hill has been mistakenly labelled as an "anarchist" and he has been turned into a Martyr of some bizarre new Religion. Carol is only one of many regional warlords in this Empire who have renamed themselves the Nobility of the Pacifica. It's really an embarrassment.
I believe that by studying the actual record, by deconstructing a lot of the myths that were fed to unsuspecting listeners during the so-called "hijacking" anyone can see that there is a trail of lies and broken hearts that came out of exactly the same mean-spirited, slanderous articles and round of attacks and counter-attack we see today. Carol laments, "this is not what I wanted" but it is, in fact, what she helped to create.
I have one friend, a former LAB member, who likes to say "Pacifica doesn't solve conflicts, it creates them."
If there is only ONE generalization that could characterize all of Carol's campaigns, together with the entire "Save Pacifica" and "Pacifica Campaign" it was, in fact, slanderous character assasination.
Sadly, those who love Pacifica can often become so strident and intolerent that they in fact cause pain and damage to the project. If I was pressed to supply one perscription, it would be for the organization to be put under a careful Court Receivership, during which time we could be protected from another round of Lawsuits and carefully craft a workable set of corporate bylaws. The past three years drained millions from Pacifica assets through incompetant management and lax, amateur governance. This project is spiraling out of control.
A forensic audit is required as well, covering at least the past five years, so that we can "follow the money" in the areas of potential corruption and corporate abuse. This truth telling would be important so that people could understand just how much all this fighting and the misplaced notions of "democratic media" has cost us all. Pacifica is not a religion or a political party. The biggest problem seems to be that people who "hate corporations" are trying to take control of this one! Like it or not, Pacifica is a California corporation and ought to be functioning to benefit the millions of listeners. We need some concensus on our real, legal Purposes, we must hire and trust and evaluate our managers in fair and reasonable processes,and we need to find some leaders who sincerely care about stabilizing this project and honoring all it's constituant members. If I can be of help in those goals, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Nalini Lasiewicz
Lasiewicz Foundation
Los Angeles
http://www.KPFKChat.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LewHillproject
I have also researched the national campaign literature and fundraising letters that Carol Spooner issued in order to force out legitimate Pacifica Board members in the late 1990's and here are some of my conclusions.
In my estimation, both the David Adelson (KPFK LAB member) and Carol Spooner (KPFA listener) lawsuits and Carol's national campaign to force the removal of those Board members that she, unilaterally, decreed as "illigal", were all based on character assisinations and had little to do with "democracy."
One only has to look at the written record of the two years that the interim Board was in control, rewriting our corporate bylaws, firing our General Managers and allowing a widespread purging of many of the best programmers in Pacifica who had worked so hard to build the network in the 1990's. The problem is that the interim Board, under Secretary Spooner, left no legal record of their own proceedings! But that hasn't stopped her or the other Plaintiffs from continuing their slander of our own former volunteers and Trustees and General Managers as "hijackers" and "coupsters" and similar personal attacks and I think this has created a toxic corporate culture which is being expressed here today in these articles.
In my opinion, Spooner's Committee to Remove the Pacifica National Board, as well as Juan Gonzalez's Pacifica Campaign both helped to legitimize and empower an increasingly paranoid culture and which has helped lead us to the chaos and mess we find ourselves today. We have network-wide infighting, costly employees lawsuits (and more rumored to be on the way) mass program changes that have terminated many of Pacifica's most popular and successful programs, and a chaotic structure in which very few of the new unmanageable system of 125+ board members have a clue as to what they are mandated to do. In a clumsy attempt to establish "local control," our national Trustees, who have the legal duties of FCC compliance and oversight of the stations, are weaken by one year terms, barely long enough to even get to know the other Members, let alone to enable any long term funding, strategic planning or management oversight.
The new convolunted corporate structure has already created a humongus web of ever shrinking committees who are unsure of their own mandate or procedures.
The attrition of people is already proving that the New Pacifica will once again the interest and support of some of our most qualified leaders who will not put up with the chaos.
The upcoming elections are projected to cost _another_ 160K-180K and they are already conspicuous in their lackluster regional support in terms of new candidates or any legitimate region wide promotion outside of just the stations themselves. In my estimation the new structure is designed NOT to allow a well-managed, accountable and transparent organization and it's designed to recruit only those who are already on the insider of the various power cliques and new "slates" that have brought factional fighting and ugly politics into each Pacifica station.
Who needs some phony version of "democracy" when the result is incompetance, chaos and confusion?
Come to think of it, the only democracy that listeners might have truly benefited from, which could have created some trust into the structure, was to have at least one opportunity every few years for listeners to elect some members of the National Board directly, but even that was not won from the multi-million dollar war that Carol and Dave and Rob Robinson and Juan Gonzales and Denis Bernstein all took us on.
My guess is that Pacifica Foundation will continue to be drained and weakened by it's new structure, born out of blackmail and harrassment. We are crucially limited by a lack of adult supervision and suffer from a lack of qualified management, starting from the very top. I have contacted many members of former Pacifica national and local boards from over the past few decades and when I describe to them the new structure and they often say "I'm glad we didn't have to put up with that!"
Every faction has been known to twist the original "mission" of Pacifica to serve their own political agenda (or jobs, or spouses job) and viewpoint. Founder Lew Hill has been mistakenly labelled as an "anarchist" and he has been turned into a Martyr of some bizarre new Religion. Carol is only one of many regional warlords in this Empire who have renamed themselves the Nobility of the Pacifica. It's really an embarrassment.
I believe that by studying the actual record, by deconstructing a lot of the myths that were fed to unsuspecting listeners during the so-called "hijacking" anyone can see that there is a trail of lies and broken hearts that came out of exactly the same mean-spirited, slanderous articles and round of attacks and counter-attack we see today. Carol laments, "this is not what I wanted" but it is, in fact, what she helped to create.
I have one friend, a former LAB member, who likes to say "Pacifica doesn't solve conflicts, it creates them."
If there is only ONE generalization that could characterize all of Carol's campaigns, together with the entire "Save Pacifica" and "Pacifica Campaign" it was, in fact, slanderous character assasination.
Sadly, those who love Pacifica can often become so strident and intolerent that they in fact cause pain and damage to the project. If I was pressed to supply one perscription, it would be for the organization to be put under a careful Court Receivership, during which time we could be protected from another round of Lawsuits and carefully craft a workable set of corporate bylaws. The past three years drained millions from Pacifica assets through incompetant management and lax, amateur governance. This project is spiraling out of control.
A forensic audit is required as well, covering at least the past five years, so that we can "follow the money" in the areas of potential corruption and corporate abuse. This truth telling would be important so that people could understand just how much all this fighting and the misplaced notions of "democratic media" has cost us all. Pacifica is not a religion or a political party. The biggest problem seems to be that people who "hate corporations" are trying to take control of this one! Like it or not, Pacifica is a California corporation and ought to be functioning to benefit the millions of listeners. We need some concensus on our real, legal Purposes, we must hire and trust and evaluate our managers in fair and reasonable processes,and we need to find some leaders who sincerely care about stabilizing this project and honoring all it's constituant members. If I can be of help in those goals, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Nalini Lasiewicz
Lasiewicz Foundation
Los Angeles
http://www.KPFKChat.org
For more information:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LewHillproject
"I wouldn't trust Blankfort or Gilardin to deliver my newspaper."
They aren't volunteering.
They aren't volunteering.
You're not going to debate what you call my "rants", because you're not capable of debating them. You don't have any facts on your side, nor do you care about facts. You have no support in the progressive community, you're weak and marginal. You can always go back to peddling the "Worker's Vanguard", or some other half-baked rag, in front of the Sather gate. The rest of us will try and make a more tolerable society. Good luck comrade Norton and friends.
Nalini Lasciewitz is a well-known water carrier for Mark Schubb and the rest of the old regime. She has been trolling for information for years and has admitted to collecting information and seeking attorneys in order to put a stop to the democratic bylaws changes of 2003. She continues her quest to cajole Pacific supporters to supply her with dirt, for what one can only presume is a future lawsuit attempt. She has very recently openly called for the filing of mass FCC complaints against Pacifica as well.
Don't feed this troll.
Don't feed this troll.
Which is it?
Or has everyone already stated their positions?
Or has everyone already stated their positions?
That wack job Norton and his pals are now dredging up names from the past that no one, except the most thoroughly obsessed Pacifica/KPFA stalker types, have heard of. Can anyone say LOSERS? I'm sure most sane progressives don't give a damn who Schubb or any of these other people are. Remember those statistics about how the left in other parts of the world from Canada, to Europe, to Latin America are accomplishing things, while the Yank left is going from defeat to defeat? Well the Nortonites are a big reason. Don't blame the right, they're going to do what they do. It's time to purge the narrow-minded, intolerant neo-Stalinists like the Blankforts and Nortons if the U.S. left is ever going to regain any of its past influence. Just think if the civil rights and labor movements wasted all this energy attacking the staff and management of a radio station. Let's see, blacks would still be on the back of the bus and eight-year-olds would still be working in coal mines. Move aside Norton and Blankfort you never were relevant. We're going to make things better and we're going to cooperate with like-minded folks working at KPFA to tell that story.
The anti-Stalinist "listener supporter" is now calling for a "purge" of the "Nortonites." As they say, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Cointelpro anyone?
Carol:
Don't forget the words of your Hopi guides:
"Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. "
=================================
"We listeners at KPFA (but perhaps not most of the KPFA staff) certainly recognized very early that ours was NOT a struggle to save Nicole OR for home rule ... it was a fight to save Pacifica, and with it the stations that are precious to our communities AND the network that could/should be an antidote to mainstream/corporate journalism and its lack of integrity." - Carol Spooner, Dec 2000
"Sherry Gendelman was deposed on November 13 and 14, 2000, and Mary Berg was deposed on November 17, 2000. There will be an additional report after tomorrow's session. On this Thanksgiving we have much to be thankful for. The LAB lawsuit is moving forward and collecting invaluable information in support of our struggle to keep the airwaves free and vibrant. I wish you all a very good holiday and I hope to see many of you on Alcatraz early Thursday morning." - Carol Spooner, Nov 2000
"I do not believe this struggle is about race -- I believe it is about power, the power to decide which voices will be heard. And I do hear from many people of all races thanking me for fighting for their right to be heard." - Carol Spooner, July 2003
"The WBAI situation was different in nature in my opinion -- as I have said, I think it was more of a power struggle between competing factions at the station that continues today." - Carol Spooner, Dec. 2003
"I had good times driving around Washington D.C. and NY area with Erroll during the struggle. I remember those times fondly." - Carol Spooner, January 2004
Don't forget the words of your Hopi guides:
"Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. "
=================================
"We listeners at KPFA (but perhaps not most of the KPFA staff) certainly recognized very early that ours was NOT a struggle to save Nicole OR for home rule ... it was a fight to save Pacifica, and with it the stations that are precious to our communities AND the network that could/should be an antidote to mainstream/corporate journalism and its lack of integrity." - Carol Spooner, Dec 2000
"Sherry Gendelman was deposed on November 13 and 14, 2000, and Mary Berg was deposed on November 17, 2000. There will be an additional report after tomorrow's session. On this Thanksgiving we have much to be thankful for. The LAB lawsuit is moving forward and collecting invaluable information in support of our struggle to keep the airwaves free and vibrant. I wish you all a very good holiday and I hope to see many of you on Alcatraz early Thursday morning." - Carol Spooner, Nov 2000
"I do not believe this struggle is about race -- I believe it is about power, the power to decide which voices will be heard. And I do hear from many people of all races thanking me for fighting for their right to be heard." - Carol Spooner, July 2003
"The WBAI situation was different in nature in my opinion -- as I have said, I think it was more of a power struggle between competing factions at the station that continues today." - Carol Spooner, Dec. 2003
"I had good times driving around Washington D.C. and NY area with Erroll during the struggle. I remember those times fondly." - Carol Spooner, January 2004
For more information:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LewHillproject
Oh no. I'm not calling for a purge of anyone. Purging the Nortonites would imply that they had relevancy. They don't. We who really care about KPFA and progressive radio are going to move forward. The Nortonites will be given the attention that they're due, which is none. They simply don't matter.
Don't feed that WACKO: he'll only follow you home!
To Wackobuster aka "nutjob": Folks are still waiting for you to provide any evidence or documentation for your attacks on station staff, board members and management. Remember you lot started this thread with Norton's screwy, rambling broadside. You put out rumors and innuendo and character assassination on the internet. Now, like the most miserable schoolyard bully, you get annoyed when people hit back. If you can't take it, don't dish it out. We can keep this up as long as you like.
Just learned this interesting fact. Darrow Bishop made his comment above without making this disclosure. Why not?
Carol Spooner claims that "The democracy I fought for is NOT about personalities or innuendo or character assassination....."
Oh yeah??? Just ask Michael Palmer, Ken Ford, Besse Wash, Pat Scott, Mary Frances Barry, Dick Gregory, Valerie Chambers, David Acosta, Karolyn Van Putten, Bertrum M. Lee ("who died of a broken heart" and was illigally replaced by a Plaintiff who sued him) Robert Farrell, Andrea Cisco, John Murdock, Wendell L. Johns, Frank Millspaugh, etc etc etc. to see if they agree.
Somehow or another, as Barbara was raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the Lawsuits to "remove the Board" and Carol was travelling around the country, recruiting our Affiliates to sabatoge Pacifica, it seemed AWFULLY personal to a great many folks, long time listeners and staff and supporters and volunteers who thought it was pretty darn personal, and many have left, fired or foced out and never want to return to the chaotic, disfunctional organization which the "New Pacifica" movement has created. For the past three years, Pacifica has been drowning in "rudeness, crudeness, disrespect, and even cruelty that more than anything else have caused good people to behave irrationally and badly."
There was once a time, not to long ago, when Pacifica has a Code of Conduct and management who had the guts to enforce it. Those days are long gone.
Carol says that the democracy that she worked for was about "bringing various points of view and interests together" but, as usual, she neglects to include the historical chapter of how she went to war against an entire "point of view" by our legal Trustees, our qualified staff and thousands of long time listeners who have all been forciby "cleansed" from Pacifica, attacked and hammered by the self-named Nobility of Pacifica listeners, including many of those Plaintiffs.
I just want to know, after all this investment, strategy and conquest.......has Pacifica been \saved yet? Anyone?
Maybe Juan can tell us. Whoops.....he's gone too.
NL
Oh yeah??? Just ask Michael Palmer, Ken Ford, Besse Wash, Pat Scott, Mary Frances Barry, Dick Gregory, Valerie Chambers, David Acosta, Karolyn Van Putten, Bertrum M. Lee ("who died of a broken heart" and was illigally replaced by a Plaintiff who sued him) Robert Farrell, Andrea Cisco, John Murdock, Wendell L. Johns, Frank Millspaugh, etc etc etc. to see if they agree.
Somehow or another, as Barbara was raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the Lawsuits to "remove the Board" and Carol was travelling around the country, recruiting our Affiliates to sabatoge Pacifica, it seemed AWFULLY personal to a great many folks, long time listeners and staff and supporters and volunteers who thought it was pretty darn personal, and many have left, fired or foced out and never want to return to the chaotic, disfunctional organization which the "New Pacifica" movement has created. For the past three years, Pacifica has been drowning in "rudeness, crudeness, disrespect, and even cruelty that more than anything else have caused good people to behave irrationally and badly."
There was once a time, not to long ago, when Pacifica has a Code of Conduct and management who had the guts to enforce it. Those days are long gone.
Carol says that the democracy that she worked for was about "bringing various points of view and interests together" but, as usual, she neglects to include the historical chapter of how she went to war against an entire "point of view" by our legal Trustees, our qualified staff and thousands of long time listeners who have all been forciby "cleansed" from Pacifica, attacked and hammered by the self-named Nobility of Pacifica listeners, including many of those Plaintiffs.
I just want to know, after all this investment, strategy and conquest.......has Pacifica been \saved yet? Anyone?
Maybe Juan can tell us. Whoops.....he's gone too.
NL
For more information:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LewHillproject
Hi, listener supporter again. I'm not anyone at KPFA's husband, wife, uncle, yoga instructor, dog walker or anyone of the sort. I am a listerner supporter who recognizes a lot of cowardly, rumor mongering, bullies when I see them. You don't have any support in the community other than a handful of pretty sad and obsessed people. You again throw out rumors without any basis in fact. You do not represent KPFA's listener supporters, you represent yourselves.
WACKO: "We can keep this up as long as you like."
I meant what I said and I said what I meant: a Norton is crazy 100 percent.
Nalini, your true intentions -- and your own hypocrisy -- have long been discredited behind your disingenuousness and duplicity.Your support of the old Pacifica national board regime -- even now -- really discredits anything you have to say, your hidden agenda, and your true motives. It's the same agenda hidden behind Mary Berry's criticisms (including playing on issues of white privilege and racism), which, of course, may have mixed some elements and instances of possible, perhaps more general, truth, with her real goal of the corporatization and mainstreaming of Pacifia (bringing it 'into line'). Berry wanted this, I believe, in part, because Pacifica threatens the duopolistic RepubliCrat political system and its right-of-center Democrat faction line into which Berry -- and many Black Democrats -- have long since assimilated and made herself/themselves comfortable. (Our own Ron Dellums in a perfect example, who as Randal Robinson, or was it Derek Bell, once said, "Went to Washington to do good and stayed to do 'well' " -- *very* well.)
(Although, you wouldn't know it these days from the way in which KPFA has been 'registering' itself as *The*Democrat*Campaign*Headquarters*for*John*Kerry*!! KPFA may have settled itself into the right-of-center, "Globalization", neo-imperialist RepubliCrat system too -- as opposed to a true critic of the system into which we would all be trapped by Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum ever more right-leaning politics. Now Kerry is significantly to the right of Gore! -- who was right-of-center himself!)
For many newer Pacifia listeners who couldn't quite sort out all the history, dates, prior events, personalities and contentions of 'this point from that point', it became crystal clear once the old national board cancelled Flashpoints and Democracy Now. So, were we going to believe you or our own damn lyin' eyes? This, among the other old Pacifica board's starkly revealing actions (like the discovered moves to sell off KPFA), brought over 15,000 people into the streets to protest that regime. How many people did you, your elements, and the old board bring into the streets? Hmmm...?
It is often the case that after a revolution some cowards who had long laid low, including hidden or at least passive collaborators from the old repressive regime, will try to resurface, reconsolidate, and reclaim their old positions, privileges, and power that they indeed once enjoyed under that old regime--until that regime no longer needed them either. The post-revolutionary phase can actually be as dangerous as the struggle itself precisely because of this. Such people may even subsequently claim to be champions of the revolution! (Like Larry Bensky.) But their goal is to revive the anti-democratic cirsumstances under which they originally ensconced and attempted to secure themselves. This is what is going on now. History shows us that this is really to be expected. It's just the second leg of the struggle that must be. You're right, Nalini, 'the battle continues...'
To sum up in 4 words, Nalini: you're not fooling us.
(Although, you wouldn't know it these days from the way in which KPFA has been 'registering' itself as *The*Democrat*Campaign*Headquarters*for*John*Kerry*!! KPFA may have settled itself into the right-of-center, "Globalization", neo-imperialist RepubliCrat system too -- as opposed to a true critic of the system into which we would all be trapped by Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum ever more right-leaning politics. Now Kerry is significantly to the right of Gore! -- who was right-of-center himself!)
For many newer Pacifia listeners who couldn't quite sort out all the history, dates, prior events, personalities and contentions of 'this point from that point', it became crystal clear once the old national board cancelled Flashpoints and Democracy Now. So, were we going to believe you or our own damn lyin' eyes? This, among the other old Pacifica board's starkly revealing actions (like the discovered moves to sell off KPFA), brought over 15,000 people into the streets to protest that regime. How many people did you, your elements, and the old board bring into the streets? Hmmm...?
It is often the case that after a revolution some cowards who had long laid low, including hidden or at least passive collaborators from the old repressive regime, will try to resurface, reconsolidate, and reclaim their old positions, privileges, and power that they indeed once enjoyed under that old regime--until that regime no longer needed them either. The post-revolutionary phase can actually be as dangerous as the struggle itself precisely because of this. Such people may even subsequently claim to be champions of the revolution! (Like Larry Bensky.) But their goal is to revive the anti-democratic cirsumstances under which they originally ensconced and attempted to secure themselves. This is what is going on now. History shows us that this is really to be expected. It's just the second leg of the struggle that must be. You're right, Nalini, 'the battle continues...'
To sum up in 4 words, Nalini: you're not fooling us.
JA: 1
NM: 0
NM: 0
What revolution? You do realize that you're talking about a radio station for the love of god. What's all this about "collaborators" and "lying low" and "ensconced in their positions." Put down your copy of the "Wanker's Vanguard" and get a grip on reality. What does your average kpfa employee earn $30-35 K tops? That's probably after they've been there a while. Yeah I'm sure they're all cleaning up in their "priveleged positions". What's this about the station being a critic of the system? The U.S. left can't get it's act together enough to even field a decent social democratic alternative party and you're talking about changing the system. And you're talking about doing it from a radio station. You lot aren't changing anything. All you do is turn your internet guns on radio station staff instead of doing the hard work of actually organizing to accomplish something. This is prima facie evidence that all connections to reality and the loony faction of the left have been cut, if those connections ever existed. Do you think the people who organized general strikes for rights, or endured humiliation and beatings sitting in at lunch counters spent all their time attacking the local lefty media? If they had done, what kind of shape do you think this country would be in? Answer, a lot worse than it is now.
WACKO: "Do you think the people who organized general strikes for rights, or endured humiliation and beatings sitting in at lunch counters..."
And what the fuck did YOU ever do but sit on your butt and run your mouth?
Those people, indeed, had their internal media and strategy debates too, and the ones who organized general strikes and sat in at lunch counters were considered radical.
It's not the size of one's income that produces change. It's the size of one's commitment. Most civil/human rights activists and icons didn't make much or were relatively poor. Look up Gandhi. He took a vow of poverty.
WACKO: "You do realize that you're talking about a radio station..."
Yes, one that major political and corporate interests saw as a sufficient threat to spend years going after.
Do you realize that you've been talking like a FOOL?
And what the fuck did YOU ever do but sit on your butt and run your mouth?
Those people, indeed, had their internal media and strategy debates too, and the ones who organized general strikes and sat in at lunch counters were considered radical.
It's not the size of one's income that produces change. It's the size of one's commitment. Most civil/human rights activists and icons didn't make much or were relatively poor. Look up Gandhi. He took a vow of poverty.
WACKO: "You do realize that you're talking about a radio station..."
Yes, one that major political and corporate interests saw as a sufficient threat to spend years going after.
Do you realize that you've been talking like a FOOL?
The use of expletives reveals that "wacky wackobuster" has a limited ability to express himself. And you're talking about sitting on your butt and running your mouth. That's all you lot do. And you do it by launching broadsides on people with no evidence or documentation. And you do it at one small radio station. I can tell you what I don't do. And that's get on the internet and initiate smear campaigns. Getting a little angry are we wacky wacko buster? You're not used to people actually giving you a little bit back of the stuff you dish out. You seem a little unbalanced. What are you talking about internal media debates? Do you honestly think that the civil rights and labor rights movements actually spent most of their time obsessing over one radio station and network on the margins of society? You're more deluded than I thought. They actually turned off their radios sometimes and got out and organized. Media strategy debates. PLEASE! You don't debate. You attack and you attack people who you should be encouraging, which is all the more pathetic. So go ahead and curse me, it still won't change the fact that you're unproductive and irrelevant.
To so-called "listener supporter" above.
You know I think it is nappie time for wacky wackobuster. That's the best idea I've heard come from him. Take a nap.
...Wake me up when that so-called "listener supporter" WACKO guy stops running his mouth off and stops posting. His rants are such a really good sleeping pill. Until then..., it's nap time...
YYYYYAWWWWNNNN......MMMMMM........ZZZZZZZ.......
YYYYYAWWWWNNNN......MMMMMM........ZZZZZZZ.......
I hope you have a nice dream, crazy wacko buster. Maybe in the dream you and your pals will be relevant. Certainly not in the waking world.
ZZZZZZZZ........
Snooooore!
'listener supporter': "Snooooore"
Now hopefully we won't have to hear from that WACKO again!
Now hopefully we won't have to hear from that WACKO again!
snooooore, oh hey wacko wacko buster at it again, I was dreaming that wack job had actually gotten a life or something. Too much to hope for I guess. oh well, snoooooore!
"listener supporter"
If somebody is a candidate for General Manager of a listener-governed radio station, why should there be any confidentiality regarding anything they tell to the committee making recommendations? In other words, should either the committee or the whole Local Station Board base their decisions on anything about the person they're hiring that can't be shared with the listeners?
Maybe we should change the title of the General Manager to President, to make plain that the selection is a political decision and that the candidate for that job is a candidate for public office.
By the way, even if proportional representation allowed Marnie Tattersall to be legitimately elected to the LSB, there's no justification for her being given any position of importance within that board or any of its committees.
Note: I'm a candidate for Listener Representative to the Local Station Board. See my web site:
For more information:
http://kpfa.aarons.fastmail.fm
The previous poster is a fraud, posing as me, the real candidate for KPFA president----oooppss-----I mean General Manager.
See my website, AaronAaronAaronsforPresident.org
Hey, look, I'm the real wingnut. I have the wings on my lapel to prove it. Don't go being fooled by my imitator.
Aaaron Aaron Aarons
See my website, AaronAaronAaronsforPresident.org
Hey, look, I'm the real wingnut. I have the wings on my lapel to prove it. Don't go being fooled by my imitator.
Aaaron Aaron Aarons
The above post (Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2004 at 7:15 AM) is a perfect example of what the entrenched anti-democratic elements (and their corporate radio 5th columnists like Marnie Tattersall, who deceived the KPFA listener-voters about her corporate radio background and should have never gotten on the Local Advisory Board) of KPFA will resort to in order to get their way.
(Besides, the real Aaron Aarons would never use Bill Gate's hotmail system.)
(Besides, the real Aaron Aarons would never use Bill Gate's hotmail system.)
Hey who is this JA nutter trying to steal my nut job thunder. I'm the real Aaron Aarons. I'm the one who spends his days and nights listening to the radio instead of doing anything constructive. I resent the fact that anyone else would present themselves as the hopeless screwball who has nothing better to do than call into radio stations and write half-baked screeds on the internet. You're a poor imitation JA.
hopeless screwball: "I resent the fact that anyone else would present themselves as the hopeless screwball who has nothing better to do than call into radio stations and write half-baked screeds on the internet."
Maybe the same kind of "hopeless screwball" who has nothing better to do than impersonate others on indybay and write half-baked screeds.
Maybe the same kind of "hopeless screwball" who has nothing better to do than impersonate others on indybay and write half-baked screeds.
PUBLIC FORUM:
KPFA/Pacifica - Democracy Deferred?
WHEN:
Wednesday, November 10, 7-9:00 pm
WHERE:
La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley
Panelists are:
SOLANGE ECHEVERIA
Flashpoints, moderator
RIVA ENTEEN
Chair, KPFA Local Station Board
MARIA GILARDIN
former KPFA Development Director,
Co-founder, Take Back KPFA
BILL MANDEL
37 year programmer fired for violating KPFA's gag rule
GERALD SANDERS
KPFA Local Station Board and Pacifica National Board
SUSAN STONE
KPFA Director of Arts and Humanities Programming
JAMES E. VANN
community and political activist,
long time listener
(Organizations listed for ID purposes only)
The historic victory achieved by KPFA listeners hangs in the balance.
Once again, listeners must come to the rescue.
A panel of the "banned and fired," current programmers,
board members and community members,
followed by an open-mike session,
will address questions and propose solutions
to protect the nation's only independent radio network.
In 1999, 10,000 people poured into the streets of Berkeley
to defend KPFA, Pacifica Network's flagship radio station,
from a corporate take-over. As a result, a court settlement
was reached, which established elected governing boards.
However, the struggle for democratization, which requires
transparency and accountability, is far from over.
To solidify our victory, we must address these questions:
How do we put the community back into community radio?
Is station management listening to the listeners?
Is our elected board showing the leadership we need?
What went wrong with the General Manager hiring process?
Is KPFA really "free speech radio"?
How does our mission inform our news coverage and public affairs programming?
What about the "banned and fired?"
Is it time to take back KPFA again?
What's happening at other Pacifica stations?
KPFA/Pacifica - Democracy Deferred?
WHEN:
Wednesday, November 10, 7-9:00 pm
WHERE:
La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley
Panelists are:
SOLANGE ECHEVERIA
Flashpoints, moderator
RIVA ENTEEN
Chair, KPFA Local Station Board
MARIA GILARDIN
former KPFA Development Director,
Co-founder, Take Back KPFA
BILL MANDEL
37 year programmer fired for violating KPFA's gag rule
GERALD SANDERS
KPFA Local Station Board and Pacifica National Board
SUSAN STONE
KPFA Director of Arts and Humanities Programming
JAMES E. VANN
community and political activist,
long time listener
(Organizations listed for ID purposes only)
The historic victory achieved by KPFA listeners hangs in the balance.
Once again, listeners must come to the rescue.
A panel of the "banned and fired," current programmers,
board members and community members,
followed by an open-mike session,
will address questions and propose solutions
to protect the nation's only independent radio network.
In 1999, 10,000 people poured into the streets of Berkeley
to defend KPFA, Pacifica Network's flagship radio station,
from a corporate take-over. As a result, a court settlement
was reached, which established elected governing boards.
However, the struggle for democratization, which requires
transparency and accountability, is far from over.
To solidify our victory, we must address these questions:
How do we put the community back into community radio?
Is station management listening to the listeners?
Is our elected board showing the leadership we need?
What went wrong with the General Manager hiring process?
Is KPFA really "free speech radio"?
How does our mission inform our news coverage and public affairs programming?
What about the "banned and fired?"
Is it time to take back KPFA again?
What's happening at other Pacifica stations?
An example of what's wrong at KPFA:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1703564.php
http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1703564.php
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