Berkeley-Some communications between KPFK volunteer coordinator/amateur security guard Adam Rice and unpopular general manager Leslie Radford have been sent to this publication. The first consists of a set of instructions from Rice of actions for Radford to take as KPFK’s manager. The to do list is provided here in its entirety, with explanatory notes provided by this publication.
Date: Tues Aug 25
From: Adam
To: Leslie
Subject: To Do List, No More, No Less
1. Circulate letters
(This may refer to copies of an email taken from previous manager Zuberi Field’s email account and anonymously mailed to a number of employees. The letters containing Field’s email were sent from a Santa Clarita post office and consisted of Field’s discussions with the national office about severance costs if layoffs were to occur. The purpose of the letters was to discredit Fields with employees who objected Radford’s hire, which was all of them but one).
2. Programming changes, Allan needs to find at least 2 hosts, no compromise. Music switch for 2nd week in Sept
(“Allan” is program director Alan Minsky. New hosts were apparently being sought for 8:00am program Uprising in August. The planned” music switch” may have been pre-empted by the on-air resignations of 60% of the hosts on showcase Global Village).
3. Newsletter, make sure it goes out today, to all current and former members we have emails for.
4. Talks w Margret {sic}, Mark, and all you need to keep.
(This seems to refer to Sojourner Truth host Margaret Prescod and producer Mark Maxwell).
5. Call fstv
(“fstv” refers to Free Speech TV, which canceled a contract with Pacifica after Radford informed them the program would no longer be hosted by the same person.. KPFK collected over $60,000 on Indiegogo to support the Uprising move to TV and had the contract canceled after ten months. Half the Indiegogo funds were misdirected in 2014 by Margy Wilkinson to pay KPFK’s Kaiser and telephone bills).
6. Call Maggie’s people
(This refers to music director Margaret LePique).
7. Come home, get fucked up, and let it all out.
(This may indicate Rice is living in Radford’s residence and is in some sort of a relationship with her).
The communication introduces the question if Rice, who has been issuing threats to union staff and volunteers and has been reported to claim he has a gun at the station and will act in “armed self-defense,” is the de facto general manager of KPFK.
In the second communication, Radford copies him on emails between herself, program director Alan Minsky and KPFA manager Quincy McCoy regarding airing 2 days a week of Uprising with Sonali Kolhatkar instead of 5. Rice comments “Lord please guide Leslie’s pimp hand so that it may fly straight and true, and knock some sense into this dumb bitch {Kolhatkar}, amen” and then Radford asks Rice to “bring her the check and her cell phone”.
Date: Mon Sep 14
From: Leslie
To: Adam
Subject: Re: Sonali’s Schedule
“Thought you’d like that. Please bring me my phone and the check when you come up here. Thanks. –Leslie”
Date: Mon Sep 14
From: Adam
To: Leslie
Subject: Re: Sonali’s Schedule
“Lol, you gotta be shutting {sic} me, nice email, fuck that bitch. My favorite part was “two day’s on two day’s off punto”! Lord please guide Leslie’s pimp hand so that it may fly straight and true, and knock some sense into this dumb bitch, amen”.
In other news, a volunteer reported overhearing Radford instruct long-time membership director and shop steward Terry Guy to give Rice full access to the membership database on October 6th. The membership database contains residential addresses for KPFK’s 15,000 members, their credit card numbers and membership status for voting. Terry Guy does not appear to have done so, but came up ill the next day, was hospitalized three days later, and has remained at Kaiser ever since.
The individual later said in writing: “Dear Leslie; As a donor member of KPFK I strongly object to your proposal to open KPFKs membership files to some homeless person you picked up off the street and made acting whatever. It’s one thing to supervise the destruction of KPFK. It’s quite another to be complicit in such an act of irresponsible stewardship. People have trusted KPFK to keep their data confidential as, over the years, we have promised that no one but authorized membership department persons would have access to their information. Now I learn that you have asked Terry Guy, head of membership, to give access to those computer files to your henchman, Adam Rice. Adam Rice has established the trust of no one on the staff. I’m not comfortable with him having access to the data I supplied with my donations”.
KPFK IT Director Jonathan Alexander, who has been on bereavement leave due to the death of a parent, returned to the station on Monday and reported an interaction with Rice in the fund drive room. He asked Rice directly about reports Rice brought a gun into the station and threatened an unarmed volunteer with armed self-defense. Alexander said Rice replied “If I had a gun, you wouldn’t even come here at all”. Alexander has been a SAG-AFTRA employee at KPFK for 8 years. He filed a union grievance bringing the number filed at KPFK and headed for arbitration to over 20, more than 75% of the bargaining unit.
KPFK has withheld salary and compensation to union employees now in excess of $110,000 including $66,000 in unpaid seniority pay, $24,000 in unpaid employer pension deposits and at least $15,000 in unpaid union dues. Can they pay any of it back? According to Radford’s report to the station’s local finance committee, Radford says it is “impossible to know how much money the fund drive has made to date”. She guesses $350,000, but this printout from the station’s database puts the number at $183,000 as of Sunday night with the station averaging about $14,000 a day. Printouts show pledge numbers for each show entered two and then three times, which is one way to get the numbers up.
At KPFT-Houston, the Texas wing of the Siegel/Brazon faction is aiming for the removal of long-time general manager Duane Bradley, who has managed the station for over a decade. National board member Adriana Casenave is leading the charge, which appears to be aimed at destabilizing one of the few solvent units in the network. The plan to replace Bradley put forward by the Texas Siegel/Brazonites, is for the local board chair to fill the general manager position part-time as a “volunteer”. If the local board moves ahead with recommending Bradley’s removal, the final decision would be made by volunteer executive director Lydia Brazon.
None of the network’s seven divisions has a budget yet for the operating year which began on October 1st. At Tuesday’s finance committee, Texas treasurer and former national board vice-chair Bill Crosier expressed shock and dismay when the committee rejected a common sense amendment he put forward that all station’s budgets should be based on real numbers from the previous year. You can listen to a snippet from the meeting here.
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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.