Berkeley- Pacifica Archives Director Brian De Shazor has announced his resignation from Pacifica Radio, effective June 30th. De Shazor’s resignation provoked a strongly worded rebuke to Pacifica from Dr. Josh Sheppard, director of the Radio Preservation Task Force at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Sheppard stated De Shazor’s resignation forced him to retract a Library of Congress offer to apply for grant funding to support the archives and would amount to several hundred thousand dollars in potential lost funds. Sheppard went further, stating the Library of Congress would change Pacifica’s status to that of an endangered archive and advised Pacifica management that “abandoning maintenance of the archive and the consequent degradation of these materials will effectively erase the history of Pacifica”. Sheppard’s full letter can be read here. Pacifica had recently threatened significant cuts to archival preservation staffing.
Discussions about the network’s deteriorating financial position at the June 2 national board meeting led to attorney Jose Luis Fuentes, a former Siegel and Yee employee, denouncing his comrades-in-arms as “drinking Kool-Aid” and describing the network as a “gravy train”. CFO Agarwal also weighed in saying flatly that he did not understand who was accountable for financial decision-making. Agarwal said he has placed the network’s planned delegate election, which continues to solicit candidate nominations for 2017 board seats, on hold. You can hear the statements by Fuentes and Agarwal here.
CFO Agarwal also released a spreadsheet to the finance committee summarizing amounts owed by each unit for shared network services. The spreadsheet indicated current fiscal year debts of $50,600 from NY’s WBAI and $106,500 from DC’s WPFW. LA station KPFK still owes at least $140,000 from the June to September 2015 period. GM Radford has not indicated any intention to make payments and says she is pursuing an $80,000 loan to fulfill unsent premium gifts.
Interim Exec Director Lydia Brazon announced at the June 2 meeting she had received an email “on the 31st” from KPFA general manager Quincy McCoy indicating neither April nor May network service fees would be paid timely by Berkeley’s KPFA (an amount totaling $69,300) and the station had to “borrow money to make payroll”. Brazon’s declaration was strange, since KPFA concluded a three week fund drive with gross pledges of $628,000 on May 27th, 4 days prior to “the 31st”. You can hear Brazon’s announcement here. An inquiry to KPFA’s local station board treasurer about how much was borrowed to make the payroll and the source of the loan did not get a response to date.
A motion by Houston listener rep Bill Crosier to take emergency actions to recover financial viability including the repayment of restricted funds, preparation for emergency work furloughs if needed, a board fundraising task force and operational assistance for the NY and DC stations, was tabled by the board of directors.
Even members of the Siegel/Brazon faction appear to have lost faith in the information they are receiving from Pacifica volunteer ED Lydia Brazon. Houston listener rep Adriana Casenave launched a directors inspection at all five Pacifica stations in the first week of June, demanding copies of:
1) Every single bank statement from every single bank account at all 7 of the units from October 1, 2015 to May 31, 2016;
2) The check registers for every single bank account at all 7 of the units from October 1, 2015 to May 31, 2016;
3) The list of bank deposit signatories for every single bank account at all 7 of the units;
4) Lists of every single foundation employee at all 7 of the units with hire date, job title, and rate of pay;
5) Payroll registers from all 7 of the units
6) A list of financial recordkeeping deficiencies reported by the audit firm with indications if, when and how they have been addressed by management.
Casenave co-sponsored a proposed bylaws amendments restricting directors from carrying out inspections using agents who are not members of a Pacifica board, but did not let that stop her from designating a Berkeley listener-member who was not a member of any Pacifica board to help carry out her inspection at KPFA. Pacifica’s local boards will be reviewing the proposed bylaws amendment, which is contrary to California Corporations Code sections 6311-6313, in the next 6 weeks.
WBAI’s fund drive concluded after 35 agonizing days with a minimal take of $280,000, barely 60% of the goal and covering only about 8 weeks of the station’s operating expenses. Top fundraiser, unpaid host Gary Null, was kept off the air for most of the fund drive, a heavy contributing factor to the meagre $8,000 a day in pledges. Null made a statement on-air about his show being pulled from the fund drive, which can be heard here. A 2004 report prepared for the WBAI local station board surfaced earlier this week. The 80-page report contains dozens of thank you letters from a bevy of Pacifica managers and producers, as well as other public radio stations, for Null’s hefty fundraising totals from the mid-80’s to just a few years ago.
In a few host changes at the California stations, volunteer coordinator/security guard/Radford roommate Adam Rice threw in the towel on his hourlong perch during overnight profanity-thon Safe Harbor after only six months, handing it over to attorney Nana Gyamfi, one of the Uprising replacement hosts. Rice’s announcement, punctuated with a “thank god” over being released from fundraising and hosting duties, can be heard here. At KPFA, anti-police-brutality organizer and actress Cat Brooks came on board as a co-host for the 7am Upfront program. Brooks was the campaign manager for former Pacifica board member and current corporate counsel Dan Siegel in his 2014 Oakland mayoral campaign. Siegel finished in fourth place.
In LA, GM Radford has her eye on dismantling the joint California news product, the Pacifica Evening News. Radford informed a KPFK staff meeting the Pacifica Evening News product was “reactionary” and she hoped to replace it with a KPFK-generated daily newscast.
One of the four music programmers who left KPFK in disgust after Margy Wilkinson appointed Radford manager of the LA station, former Melting Pot host Michael Barnes, has threatened legal action against Pacifica Radio if his name, program listing and reruns of his old shows are not removed from the KPFK website. Barnes’ sayanora to KPFK is here. Despite the May 25th threat of legal action, Melting Pot remained listed as a KPFK program on kpfk.org as of June 11th.
A new podcast joined the small collection on KPFA’s website, dubbed Area 94.1. The mystery podcast, a cowboy busted-dreams kinda thing focusing on a country music DJ with a tendency to alcohol-induced blackouts, turned out to be the handiwork of KPFA’s general manager, a fact only revealed at the end of the podcast. The monologue describes an encounter between our drunken DJ (whose eyes look like “pissholes in the snow”) and a community college student cum stripper with rosy lips, ample breasts and buttocks and a stuck-out tongue, who turns out to be lusting after the drunken DJ’s son. You can listen to it here.
This publication’s home on the Internet (www.pacificainexile.org) is starting a Resources page to provide easy one-click access to frequently searched-for and downloaded documents and files. It’s still in the beginning phases, but about two dozen documents are now available, with more to come. If you have any requests for materials you’d like to see there or for posting, send to [email protected] so we can develop the most useful page possible for those “looking for that thing” moments.
However “organizational darwinism” works out, it is looking like one ugly process. To remind you to keep laughing and keep fighting for a Pacifica Radio that can not only heal itself but also help to heal the world, take 30 minutes to enjoy this Twit Wit radio satire from way back in March of 2014 when Pacifica’s national office was occupied in an effort to keep the network from being dismantled.
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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.
Since so many of these problems can be traced to Wilkinson/Siegel/Brazon/Radford Gang of 4, and their minions, and since they are all perpetuating their Reign of Error long after their shelf life has expired, has it occurred to anyone that there is a simple solution where breaking the law is happening repeatedly like this: just have those who are duly constituted to make decisions (that is, those who are legitimately elected, and not just squatting provocatively in the board rooms) call a locksmith and have all the locks changed, while issuing keys/passes only to the legit?
That way, next time time said squatters try to enter the building or board room to do their squatting thing, anyone already there can make a citizens arrest, and call the cops to execute those arrests, and then let the courts sort it out.
If those being arrested can’t produce documents proving their right to be there (such as election tallies), not only law enforcement, but judges by and large don’t have much patience with a pure charade, which their whole bogus presence at Pacifica and PNB seems surely to be.
Some types will try to counter-arrest, but judges will have even less patience with that, for the same above reasons about charade, or as they say, “bad faith”.
At that point, when their pattern of, well, criminal behavior has been repeatedly established, it’s not much of a leap for a judge to restrain them with a TRO.
If they break that, they do not pass Go, or the board room, or even Pacifica’s entry, but go directly to jail, which is where it seems they should have been for quite some time, if you ask me, or the vast majority of Pacifica members and listeners.
—-Frankly yours
Did Brian gives his reasons for his leaving, or what he suggests happen to the archives he has fathered for so long? He is way too responsible to just exit without a plan for his work and treasures. What does he say about what happens there without his supervision?
Has he revealed how much [%] of old reels have been digitized and how much more needs doing ?
Or how much more actually needs preserving ?
He must have a list of those who have helped this transferring before, even for minimal pay, and if he wants to share those contacts who may want, maybe, to work & to continue some that work…now …
or would Brian make specific suggestions of what CAN happen to all Archive materials, not what ‘should’ happen, but the various possible alternative ways of preservation ?
Or has Brian suggested another person maybe, to kinda take his place, tho he may be invaluable, others too have been working with him for years – and they too are also knowledgeable and have not all disappeared…yet, have they ?
The assumption that all is going into a dumpster is probably fear-exaggerated and not what happens when 1 person leaves their post, integral and important tho they may be to the dept.
What are the Director Brian and his co-workers: wanting, hoping, saying, suggesting, offering ?
….vs. the image of there being just a ‘big dump’ because of his/ their exit ?
Can someone do an interview with those still In Charge of Archives and that dept, – Brian and also the others there, and it can then be typed, into text, to be read and/or heard — w/o it being on KPFK or a radio station?
Sometimes a piece of information elicits the worst images and biggest fears without the rest of related information that must be attached – to know the context – and actual consequences – to make sense.
Brian’s dedication and talents have made the resources wealthy and a treasure. But it took more than 1 person to create and continue that function too. Credit is fully given to him, but the assumption is that it is not just 1 hero involved or dept dissolves. So who else can speak about what is happening…next ?
and those who are still staff and at KPFK have access to those working in Archives, as do others. Roy is one, there are other staff even not on-air that are still employed.
Other long-term programmers must also be able to assist or inquire and share what is happening to Archives or other such changes at KPFK.
The end has not yet come. Panic is not yet necessary.
Tell you what — a station could be a success just playing stuff from the archives.. They are that valuable.
Ha! That struck me upside the head as well.
But rather than turn Pacifica into a Museum, albeit such a venerable one, or even a venerable anti-Museum, the word of the venerable Good Pope John (XXIII, or as Graham Greene fondly called him, Pope John Roncalli, as a nod to his Bergamo farm boy ? roots) come to mind, “Aggiornamento” or an updating of the Church of Rome, emphasis on bringing up to date, as in “reform”.
It seems like, in intra-mural exchanges, that Pacifica has a lot of very thoughtful in-house ? (at least I didn’t use a demo icon of a folding table) democratic structure, but it is sore beset when exposed to all the proliferating piranhas voraciously nibbling at her licenses, poetic and otherwise (I may be channeling a Roy pledge drive by now).
However that plays out, it is important that the Pacifica tradition survives and thrives, the more intact the better.
At least these relentless assaults and coups upon Pacifica have drawn a whole lot of attention to the structural problems. When you have rogues, though, that are oblivious to the rule of law within the Network, clearly there is a need for a structure that is less permeable than it is ironclad.
But that is a study that should yield results far beyond the Foundation, National Board, and all the LSBs. “And a sword shall pierce your own heart, that the thoughts of many shall be revealed.”
So it’s all good. QUE VIVA LA LUCHA!
Yes, thanks very much for going into greater depth with these issues, and for all your thoughts exploring the “ancillary issues” of preservation, as they suggest themselves.
Doing it here at this forum is also very helpful, as one might suspect it will engage membership and others in creative responses to very pressing issues of insuring the preservation of what are indisputably uniquely historic archives.
Much of the hidden history of the United States (with as yet unearthed evidence) are maintained in those “degrading reel to reel tapes.” For starters.
It appears, from what I know, that that aspect is the one of paramount urgency, to digitize those reels/tapes that are in the most precarious condition. I know that much, or too much, of the Golden Age of Hollywood celluloid was lost because not enough energy, or funds, were directed soon enough to save some of it.
But, unless I’m mistaken, a lot of this archive is even more important than those. Quite clearly.
Is this the sort of thing that KPFK can commandeer a task force of volunteers to do the “grunt” work, the non-specialist chores of running the tape and transferring it? Is there any of it non-specialized labor?
It seems to me that the imperiled tape is Job #1 for the entire network. It’s nearly 7 decades of legacy, and I think how much of it has enriched my understanding, even with Alan Watts tapes that had such poor sound quality I had to listen ? ? twice, but always well worth it.
I think I may have still been in my teens, at the start of the 70s, when I first stumbled on KPFK on the dial, as it broadcast a marathon of the McCarthy hearings, and there I heard accounts of Bertolt Brecht telling a friend on the Boulevards of Paris why he wasn’t in D.C., “The senators were very kind, they let me smoke. The Nazis would never have done that.”
(Ah, but even Bertie wasn’t savvy in the earliest days of TV product placement….)
I told my mother about KPFK and the weeks long McCarthy HUAC broadcasts, and I would find her spellbound in front of the living room “Hi Fi” days on end, as I came in and out, listening in a rapt state.
(Her mother’s nephew, actor Roman Bohnen, had been blacklisted posthumously. He had been called to testify, having worked with or known all of the Hollywood Ten, but died a few days before, backstage during a play, of a heart attack in his forties. Old radio played a part there, too: she had the radio on while she was vacuuming, and her first word of it came on the news. He had just spent Xmas vacation with her and family. Then, Actors Lab, which he founded, burned down shortly thereafter, and its safe went missing from the ashes.)
So Mom became an avid fan of KPFK thereafter, baptized in that archival footage.
She wore the history of those years like a tattoo and was mesmerized to hear the station broadcast all that, in a clime and a time where no one else would touch it.
I hope the cause of the Archives, as it develops, is brought front and center until that day when it is all digitized.
So far, only 20% ?
Be gentle with our ignorance about some of this (but only if it’s timely and feasible: we know how the thick the air around the stations is, at present, with action and counter-action, and reaction), knowing that some questions may be uninformed, or underinformed, to wit–
1. Are there emergency measures in place to insure the survival of all the archives at secondary storage sites?
2.) Are there any copyright laws prohibiting that in related aspects?
3.) Does the membership have any particular rights in regard to the materials?
4.) Is it all available in entirety to mere, or general audiences?
I know how just plain historic so (very) much of the Pacifica Archives is, it is a de facto national treasure and core American REAL history sine qua non (the mere threat of its future as one in absentia ~ nightmare visions of Rosemary Wood’s 17 minute Dictaphone gap~ is so jarring it has me starting to think in mounting spasms of Latin, always a bad sign).
Like any and all freedom fighter governments in exile, pacificainexile and its allies must have plans to preserve what would appear long-term to be a prime target of the 4th Reich ~ much as de Gaulle grabbed all his papers en route from Vichy to London in his flight ✈ from the 3rd one, on the lam to a makeshift interim home for the Free French ~”Mon Dieu, Londres!”
Forgive us if some of these questions are primitive or naive, but our preservationist gears are already starting to turn round, even as we struggle to preserve the prime source itself intact.
Just precautionary thoughts, among all the other strategies.
Hi John,
These are good questions and I don’t actually know the answers to all of them, although I’ll make an effort to find out.
1. Are there emergency measures in place to insure the survival of all the archives at secondary storage sites?
I don’t know the answer to this. I’m pretty confident the portion of the audio archive that is digitized is backed up/duplicated as necessary. The problem would be the remaining reel to reel tapes, which are degrading. They are catalogued and insured, but they are aging rapidly and my guess is that if anything happened to the tapes, that would be that. I don’t know if they will be safer going forward in their space at KPFK or at some other facility. The space required is large, so secondary storage would not be cheap.
2.) Are there any copyright laws prohibiting that in related aspects?
No I don’t think so. Storage and security usually doesn’t directly invoke copyright law. Distribution can trigger copy right issues and while many of the archives contents are clearly and unambiguously Pacifica’s copyright, there’s also some muddled material where nobody is quite sure how Pacifica ended up with it.
3.) Does the membership have any particular rights in regard to the materials?
In the broad sense, sure the members own everything and the foundation’s property should never inure to the benefit of any individual, especially board members. But the ability of members to actually enforce that broad ownership is pretty dependent on the courts. Selling or formally transferring the archives should be a membership decision, but unfortunately “letting the archives deteriorate” is a much less concrete thing.
4.) Is it all available in entirety to mere, or general audiences?
No. A quantity of material is available to general audiences. But you have to have an idea what you are looking for to use the search function. Another quantity of material is not yet formally preserved and is not necessarily available yet although scholars can probably access it upon request.