Berkeley-This edition of Pacifica In Exile is devoted solely to endorsements for the upcoming board elections. We will return to news and updates in a day or two.

Overview

In the year and a half since Pacifica in Exile began publication, the Pacifica Foundation has toppled into critical condition after a series of board coups, loss of Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding, an investigation by the California Attorney General of  accounting irregularities, the establishment of nonprofits by board members to privately secure Pacifica’s broadcasting licenses, and severe declines in membership and revenues. Under “volunteer” executive director Margy Wilkinson, the network could not complete timely financial audits, borrowed from and did not repay restricted funds, relied on temps who embezzled and “damaged” accounting systems, and hired an inexperienced board crony to lead its largest station and most powerful broadcasting signal in Los Angeles. Pacifica’s democratic system, put into place after Northern California subscribers petitioned the California Attorney General for membership rights, allows current donors to kick the board out. That time has come.

 

Pacifica in Exile used the following criteria to evaluate candidates and slates a) needed skills on radio station boards b) institutional memory and experience c) a rejection of the Siegel/Brazon faction’s theory of “organizational darwinism” (board-manipulated pitting of the stations against each other) and d) commitment to enhanced mission delivery and impact in an era of shrinking resources.

We believe the first order of business for a new board of directors is to tackle modification of the overly-complicated bylaws put into place in 2003. Although well-intentioned as a response to an unelected board in the 1990’s, they have proven dysfunctional in practice and unenforceable in courts, with their mandating of large local boards, overly frequent and expensive elections and often self-contradictory rules of procedure across their 49-page length.

As a cautionary note, even if Pacifica subscribers do turn over the half of the board up for election, there are indicators the lame duck national board now in power for 20 months after their elected terms expired, may attempt to file for voluntary bankruptcy or mortgage real estate assets to hamstring their successors, up to and including refusing to seat new board members (which has occurred in previous years). We encourage Pacifica members to indicate to their  representatives that such actions are unacceptable by a lame duck board.

*Note: Pacifica In Exile’s negative ratings are not in any way intended as any sort of referendum on a person’s life, work or moral character. In all cases, Pacifica work is only a part of larger lives with many facets. Within Pacfica, the Siegel/Brazon faction, as a coalition composed of NY’s Justice and Unity, LA’s Grassroots KPFK and Berkeley’s Save KPFA, has collaborated on the coup that led to the current threat of imminent breakup. The Shock Doctrine approach to the finances (twisted budgeting, disastrous accounting, audit failure, and forfeiture of CPB grant funding, is not an accident or a “factional” dispute – but a plan by the Siegel/Brazon board majority to gain private control of the licenses and assets of the Pacifica Foundation.  It is necessary to change direction before there is no Pacifica Radio at all and for listener-members to avoid, in their entirety, voting for individuals associated with these factions and slates if they do not wish to see the network privatized and broken up.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to skip to the endorsements for your home station; they are listed east to west from WBAI, to KPFT, to KPFK, to KPFA at the bottom.

WBAI-FM, New York City

In the New York/WBAI listener election, we ask you to choose from the candidates on the “Indy Caucus” slate. The role of their organized opposition which calls itself the “Justice and Unity” slate in the deterioration of WBAI should preclude any further involvement in foundation leadership. The Justice and Unity group has already violated election rules before the election has even begun, refusing to post the required disclaimer on their website. WBAI has been in the cross-hairs of the Siegel/Brazon faction with sustained negative impact from the insane 15-year tower contract at the Empire State Building signed in 2006 by a Siegel/Brazon-dominated board, to the 2014 disqualification for CPB funding due to the inability to submit timely audits.

Listener election:  Pacifica in Exile suggests ranking the following seven candidates as your top picks: Several come from the station’s community advisory board which has been the most energetic and dedicated in the network, doing much of the work the local station board should be doing – and hasn’t been – to help WBAI recover from what has been more than a decade and a half of debilitation. .

Please vote for: Robert “Bob” Young, Alex Steinberg, James Sagurton, Eve Moser ,Jim Dingeman, Carl Makower, Jonothan Logan 

Please don’t vote for: King Downing, John Brinkley, Pauline Park, Dacio Quintana, Eugene Hammond, Ralph Poynter (nor Lynne Stewart as a write-in).

Staff election: Pacifica in Exile suggests ranking the following candidates as your top picks:

Please vote for: Shawn Rhodes, Kathryn Davis, R. Paul Martin

Please don’t vote for: Bob Lederer, Vajra Kilgour, Wuyi Jacobs

KPFT-FM, Houston

In the Houston/KPFT election, the dominant issue is the effort by the Siegel/Brazon-affiliated members of the local station board to boot out manager Duane Bradley. Bradley is the longest surviving general manager in the network and while he certainly has strengths and weaknesses, managerial stability has played a significant role in the Houston station’s relative solvency compared with the majority of the stations. The current attempt to unseat him with no planned succession – the proposed plan is the unqualified chair of the local board to “volunteer” to manage the station – appears to be another destabilization effort  to further the cause of network breakup and privatization.

Listener election:  Pacifica in Exile suggests ranking the following candidates as your top picks:

Please vote for: Bill Crosier, Teresa Allen, Deb Shafto, Kevin White, Ira Aghai, Larry Snellings, Randall Tousley, Dean Torres

Please don’t vote for: Ted Weisgal,  Susie Moreno,  Don Cook, Anisa Faruqi

Staff election: Pacifica in Exile suggests ranking the following candidates as your top picks:

Please vote for: Mike Lewis, Tony Cox, Robert Gartner

KPFK-FM, Los Angeles

At KPFK-FM, this election will probably decide if the station lives or dies as it is in the midst of an intense financial crisis engineered in the past  year and a half by the Siegel/Brazon faction. The financial powerhouse of the Pacifica network only two years ago, KPFK lost two general managers in a row in less than a year via “volunteer ED” Margy Wilkinson who replaced the last one with a board crony, Leslie Radford, who has brought disarray and dissension so intense that it made the pages of London’s Guardian newspaper.  Due to a failure to make quorum in 2012, the station is electing an entire 24-person board this year, so there are a plethora of candidates. The long delay in elections in LA resulted in the faction (Siegel/Brazon) which lost the last election inheriting a majority by attrition, and then acting aggressively to damage the station before their time runs out, as they were never the choice of the voters in the first place. That historical accident should be corrected in this election.

Listener election:  Pacifica in Exile suggests ranking the following candidates as your top picks:

Please vote for: Grace Aaron, Fred Blair, Jan Goodman, Sharon Brown, Mike Mora, Ken Aaron, Jaime Gomez, Stephen Frantz, Roberta Eidman, Leslie Fox, Steve Kaiser, Mansoor Sabbagh, Bruce Caukin, Ann Doneen, Will Ryan, Sandy Childs, Myla Reson, Rob Macon

Also consider: Rolando Salmeron, Barbara Marbach, Jerry Van, Marylin Hebert, John Vollbrecht,  Christian Beck

Please don’t vote for: Lydia Brazon, Chuck Anderson, Brenda Medina, Michael Novick,  Diana Medina, Lawrence Reyes, Jaye Cho, Michael Corral, Rose Mary Elizondo, Alise Sochaczewski, Aryana Gladney, Nancy Lawrence, Reza Pour, Richard Macias, Schyna Pour, Ronald Spriesterbach

Staff election: Pacifica in Exile suggests ranking the following candidates as your top picks:

Please vote for: Ali Lexa, Jonathan Alexander, Maggie LePique, Steve Pride, Allan Coie, Kiyana Turner

Please don’t vote for: Tej Grewall, Fernando Velazquez, Charlene Muhammed, Jose Benavides

KPFA-FM-Berkeley

At KPFA-FM, the secret nonprofit KPFA Foundation set up by former “volunteer” ED Margy Wilkinson to acquire KPFA’s license on the breakup or bankruptcy of the Pacifica Foundation lies at the heart of the shenanigans of the last year and a half. Leadership based on grabbing power in order to dissolve is no kind of leadership at all, and the toxicity in much of Pacifica politics lies in the duplicity, unspoken agendas and purposeful dysfunction that accompanies such a move. To want to be on the board of organization to work for its destruction from the inside is an act that should forever disqualify Wilkinson from any Pacifica board service again, and all who choose to run with her. The United for Community Radio candidates provide an alternative with a largely new slate led by Iraq Veterans Against the War board member Scott Olsen. UCR’s candidates propose a humane and inclusive alternative to dissolution and “organizational darwinism” focused on opening up the station, ramping up livestreaming and participation, redefining progressive news and demystifying the station’s infamously obscure finances. They deserve your support.

Listener election:  Pacifica in Exile suggests ranking the following candidates as your top picks:

Please vote for: Scott Olsen, Jeremy Miller, T.M. Scruggs, Maria Arguilles, Janet Kobren, Don MacLeay, G. Mario Fernandez, Virginia Browning, Sharon Adams, Tom Vorhees, Richard Hart

Please don’t vote for: Margy Wilkinson, Sasha Futran, Barbara Whipperman, David Lynch, William Campisi, Yuri Gottesman, Hilmon Sorey, Leland Thompson

*It has been reported, but not confirmed that Save KPFA candidate Hilmon Sorey has withhdrawn. His name will be removed after confirmation.

Staff election: Pacifica in Exile suggests ranking the following candidates as your top picks:

Please vote for: Anthony Fest, Sabrina Jacobs, (and Ann Garrison as a write-in)

Please don’t vote for: Tim Lynch (or Lewis Sawyer as a write-in)

To subscribe to this newsletter, please visit our spanking new website at www.pacificainexile.org

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Started in 1946 by conscientious objector Lew Hill, Pacifica’s storied history includes impounded program tapes for a 1954 on-air discussion of marijuana, broadcasting the Seymour Hersh revelations of the My Lai massacre, bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, going to jail rather than turning over the Patty Hearst tapes to the FBI, and Supreme Court cases including the 1984 decision that noncommercial broadcasters have the constitutional right to editorialize, and the Seven Dirty Words ruling following George Carlin’s incendiary performances on WBAI. Pacifica Foundation Radio operates noncommercial radio stations in New York, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and syndicates content to over 180 affiliates. It invented listener-supported radio.

DISCLAIMER: This is not an official Pacifica Foundation website nor an officiawebsite of any of the five Pacifica Radio Stations (KPFA Radio, KPFK Radio, KPFT Radio, WBAI Radio, WPFW Radio). Opinions and facts alleged on this site belong to the author(s) of the website only and should NOT be assumed to be true or to reflect the editorial stance or policy of the Pacifica Foundation, or any of the five Pacifica Radio Stations (KPFA Radio, KPFK Radio, KPFT Radio, WBAI Radio, WPFW Radio), or the opinions of its management, Pacifica National Board, station staff or other listener members.”