Berkeley-Ten days after Pacifica’s interim controller issued a long list of accounting schedules and bank reconciliations to meet a projected start date on November 30th for the 2014 audit, it looks likely that deadline, the latest in a long series of blown deadlines, will be missed. Requests from board members for a copy of a signed engagement letter with auditor Armanino have been met with silence. The last meeting of the board’s audit committee wasn’t attended by either the committee chair or the secretary and disbanded rapidly. Continue reading Latest Audit In History→
The Internet stream at Pacifica’s LA station KPFK has been broken for more than 100 hours since 9am on Wednesday November 25th.
The breakdown is suspected to have been caused by an inept repair of the station’s program archive uploader which was out of order from November 16th to November 25th. Continue reading KPFK Stream Gone for 106 Hours→
Berkeley-The Pacifica Foundation, 19 months into a coup by the Siegel/Brazon faction, is starting to project its internal demolition onto on-air operations. In the past two weeks, LA station KPFK’s website has collapsed at least three times, once for 4 entire days and the station fell off terrestrial broadcast, the website at www.pacifica.org went dark, the website at www.kpfa.org went dark, WBAI-FM aired the Progressive Radio Network’s internet stream having misplaced its own programs, and the LA archives failed, storing only 15 of the last 132 hours of programming since 6:00am on Monday November 16th. Continue reading System Breakdown→
I was astonished to read the latest edition of Save KPFA and its attack on local station board member Janet Kobren. As we all may have heard, the $400,000 bequest left to the Pacifica Foundation was almost grabbed by KPFA for its sole use.
So who has sunk to the “new low” of “sleazy politics”, the person who has pointed out the mistake or the people who show their greed by hoarding the money for themselves to dole it out as they see fit? And their intense expression of hatred and vitriol for a person whose fiduciary duty it is to oversee funds for our network and who pointed out the mistake. Continue reading What’s The “New Low” and Who Is “Sleazy”?→
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, Alive as you or me …
Swedish-American labor organizer, poet and songwriter Joe Hill was executed 100 years ago on Nov 19, 1915. Born Joel Emmanuel Hagglund, Oct 7, 1879, he emigrated to the US in 1902. Working on the West Coast as a migrant laborer in 1910, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the “Wobblies,” a radical union of immigrants (subjected to the anti-immigrant hysteria of that period), founded on the principle of One Big Industrial Union for all workers. Continue reading Joe Hill’s Last Will: 100 Years Later→
Berkeley-The “60 pages you can’t see” of documentation regarding the bequest directed to Pacifica Foundation Radio that was incorrectly reported as a restricted donation for the exclusive use of KPFA-Radio, has finally been made available. The national board of directors voted the bequest had been made to the Pacifica Foundation and then to distribute the document package to the network’s five local station boards. Continue reading Partial Document Dump Re: Bequest→
At KPFA’s local station board meeting, Save KPFA-affiliated secretary Craig Alderson began the conversation about the misdirected bequest, whose 60+ pages of paperwork continue to be available only to board members, by saying “we all know the limits of documentation”.
This clip contains then-ED Wilkinson making a verbal slip: “I desperately wanted the money to be for KPFA – er – for the foundation”.
Later in the three hour meeting, UCR member Janet Kobren, who was verbally assaulted by Save KPFA board members calling her “unethical”, read from the hidden package emails from Pacifica CFO Salvador saying he “had only bits of information and could he please see the bequest paperwork” and Wilkinson stating she “had not shared it with him”. Continue reading The Limits Of Documentation→
Berkeley-The Pacifica National Board had an informal “strategic planning” meeting Thursday night. In the hour-long meeting, KPFA director Jose-Luis Fuentes pushes for the Pacifica Foundation to move into voluntary bankruptcy, which is described as “a beginning” by PNB director George Reiter. The board indicates they wish to consult with their FCC attorney John Crigler about filing for reorganization, although Crigler is an FCC and copyright attorney, not a bankruptcy attorney. Options on the table are described as a sale of Berkeley’s national office building or a lease, sale or swap of WBAI’s broadcasting license. PNB members Adriana Casenave and Tony Norman insist the board’s discussions about selling real estate, leases, swaps or sales of broadcasting licenses or “debt reorganization” be held in executive session where the network’s members cannot hear them, and discuss how these decisions are “political”. The full meeting audio is here, a seven minute clip is here. Continue reading Bankruptcy Is A Beginning→
Wednesday night, at the stroke of midnight, LA station KPFK’s website disappeared from the Internet for about three hours, putting a sad cap on a month-long fund drive that ended on Friday 11/6 at $608,000 or $142,000 short of the goal.
On November 10, 2015, supporters of the Berkeley wing of the Siegel/Brazon faction (Save KPFA) targeted an interview between Flashpoints host Dennis Bernstein and Indypendent editor Arun Gupta.
Gupta, who writes for The Nation, The Progressive, Al-Jazeera America, and The UK Guardian and has been a Democracy Now correspondent, was accused by Save KPFA supporter Sheila Sexton of being anti-union. This was quickly echoed by SaveKPFA-affiliated local station board member Kate Gowen and former Pacifica IED Margy Wilkinson, who asked for complaints to be filed with KPFA’s general manager and program director over Gupta’s interview. Continue reading Censoring Arun Gupta→
