Berkeley – Pacifica’s ticking bomb, the 15-year incredibly expensive WBAI transmitter lease at the Empire State Building, has been the center of attention, since the owners of the iconic NY skyscraper reneged on the supposed deal announced by then-IED Margy Wilkinson in December of 2014 to reduce monthly rent from $50,000/month rate to $12,000/mo and sued Pacifica for the balance of the unpaid rent for the 2014-2016 period. The deal, much to the distress of the then-PNB minority was described as “verbal”, and if it existed at all, has no legal enforceability in court. Due to traditionally bad Pacifica negotiating, this time by then-interim ED Ambrose Lane in 2005, Pacifica is locked into the lease until 2020, which was never economical, goes up by 9% per year and is currently set at 4 times the current market price for radio antenna/transmitter space in Manhattan.
After the initial set of negotiations collapsed, WBAI programmers faced with the possible loss of the station if an abrupt summary judgment for as much as $4 million dollars goes through – (three years of unpaid rent from the Wilkinson/Brazon years based on the aborted/nonexistent “deal” and future rent for 2017-2020) – reached out to prominent NY political figures for support in asking the Empire State Building to be reasonable. Among the supporters: Congressperson Nydia Velasquez, NY State Senator Jose Serrano, NY State Senator Brad Hoylman, NY State Senator Daniel Squadron, NY State Assemblymember Deborah Glick, NY State Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, NY State Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, NY State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, NYC Council members Rosie Mendez, Melissa Mark-Vivierito, Bill Perkins, Margaret Chin and Corey Johnson, NYC Controller Scott Stringer, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Bill Samuels, Board Chair for Effective NY, Mayor Bill DiBlasio and Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange.
Radio World covered the Empire State situation as well as NY1 News, Amsterdam News and Black Agenda Report. The efforts met with success and the skyscraper’s owners have agreed to resume negotiations.
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The long-delayed fiscal 2015 audit, due to the Registry of Charitable Trusts in June of 2016, is nearing completion, coming in under the bell set by California’s Attorney General for August of 2017. This is a significant achievement for Pacifica’s rehired CFO Sam Agarwal, who is finishing this audit in a fraction of the time taken for the troubled FY 2014 and FY 2014 audits.
Meanwhile in Houston, the second managerial change in the last nine months has set off more lightning sparks after long-time manager Duane Bradley’s resignation after almost two years of pressure from a Siegel-Brazon local board. Bradley transitioned out of the station in March of 2017, leaving it to his interim successor Obidike Kamau. The Houston station, which while small, had always been among the most financially consistent performers in the network, rarely running significant deficits and paid up on network service fees. has been sliding into red ink. The downward trend was noticeable for most of the last year, but took a sharp bend during the management transition, with the last on-air fund drive performing at a dismal 45% of the goal. IED Crosier, who finally decided termination was required, also cited some personnel issues as contributing his decision, but soon found himself tarred with charges of racism from the remnants of the Siegel/Brazonites.
Crosier commented on the uproar: “What you are doing is very, very wrong, and very harmful to KPFT. My request is for you both, Ted {Weisgal} and PK {McCrary}, to please tone down the rhetoric, grossly unfounded accusations, hatred, and bile. Stop encouraging people to create more chaos. Instead, please encourage them to support Larry Winters, our new interim General Manager, in helping KPFT and Pacifica to get through our very serious financial crisis, so we can have a KPFT in the future. Your actions are grossly interfering with that. Can you please help us with the big, serious, and immediate threats to KPFT’ and Pacifica’s existence – our finances and getting out of debt? If we can’t get those under control, our mission won’t mean anything if we all go down the toilet because of the infighting.Please be agents of peace, and work to help KPFT survive, not push it over the cliff”.
At KPFA’s June Local Station Board meeting, it was revealed that 3 years of property taxes are delinquent on the building attached to KPFA’s main studio. The attached small building contains a former restaurant property that used to be rented to a Thai restaurant called Nakapon and has been kept empty for the past 15 years while nominally used for KPFA storage and subject to occasional rodent infestation, and the small office that houses the Pacifica Foundation central office. The last property taxes were paid in 2013, with arrears for 2014, 2015 and 2016 now totaling over $45,000. The property tax bills are, at KPFA’s insistence, sent to KPFA’s business office at 1929 Martin Luther King Jr Way. KPFA management appears to have neither paid them nor notified anyone that they needed to be paid since the onset of the Siegel/Brazon coup in 2014. A partial nonprofit exemption is available, but needs to be applied for each year and has not been since 2012-13. The board meeting announcement by LSB secretary Carol Wolfley, who discovered the delinquency, can be heard here. The clip also contains a discussion by unpaid program host/producer Lisa Dettmer about KPFA fundraising and community outreach that is well worth a listen.
Both KPFA management and the Save KPFA faction on the KPFA local station board have stated the Nakapon property “belongs” to KPFA, which they said pays for it, and stated their objection to mortgaging or selling it to address network debts, including the Empire State building debt. Efforts over the years to do something productive with the abandoned restaurant property, including retrofitting it into a working cafe or community space, have been discouraged. At the five year delinquent mark, municpal government can take aggresive action to collect delinquent property taxes, including repossessing the property.
In the past few days, another mini-uproar ensued in Berkeley when KPFA cancelled a planned speech by Richard Dawkins, a British author, biologist and renowned aetheist or anti-organized-religion advocate. Dawkins has increasingly come under fire for aggressive and somewhat juvenile Islamaphobic commentary as well as some disturbing statements about pedophilia. KPFA’s statement about the cancellation (reported by Berkeleyside as “an email sent to ticketbuyers): “We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people,” “KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier.” Dawkins has a long trail of online provocations directed at Muslims and women and questioning whether date rape exists and defending “mild pedophilia”. The disinvitation is for a sponsored authors talk at a local church in Berkeley. Dawkins had previously been disinvited to a conference after tweeting out a rude video “Feminists Love Islamists”.
Former KPFK general manager Leslie Radford is contesting her March 2017 termination on the grounds of being a whistle-blower for labor rights, an almost comical assertion after Radford lost a large labor arbitration with the station’s SAG-AFTRA union that resulted in $285,000 in penalties. The arbitrator upheld virtually all of the employee grievances filed against Radford as KPFK’s manager. Radford claims in the wrongful firing complaint that she pointed out employee pensions had not been funded by IED’s Lydia Brazon and Margy Wilkinson and claims she was fired by succeeding IED Bill Crosier in retaliation for her charges against Brazon and Wilkinson. Radford’s complaint can be read 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-sponsored radio.
When you above list ‘supporters’ of WBAI, by listing famous or important people’s names, does that mean they have done what ?
Given money ?
written letters of actual recommendations ?
Just signed a petition ?
Visited an influential collegue to have some effect ? What does “support” mean ?
The generality left some readers unclear and wondering.
Want to clarify ? or not ? Maybe no one else cares ?
Written letters of recommendation.
welcome back, Tracy – the only one who seems to have access and willingness to let ‘the rest of us all Pacifica stakeholders [investors], donors know – about what is or may be happening, i.e. collapses, lawsuits, mis-firings of all verbal attacks, and those audits, etc.
while ,We, who diligently read and shared your valued information had thought you had a serious disabling accident, been exiled, dropped out, or abandoned this site.
Surprisingly, there seems to be no other on-line source of needed-info: as we are not at the Pacifica locations or board meetings to be even attempting to be a reporter. If there are any other resources, places that provide actual info, could you please share that too, for if/ when this site goes quiet, dry and blank ?
Again, and still, your dedication and logical writing style provide factualized info no where else is it locatable. Nor is your effort/ involvement replicated, even tho a proliferation of words are written on 1 group site not available to most of us =”The American Pacifica Public”.
Yes, you get to have another life ,a more enjoyable life than attending to all the intense attacks & outbursts — that seem the predominant way that most ‘old’ Pacifica people outburst their views. any where.
Even on KPFK’s air-waves, there is so much more Anger, in tone, in ugly words, and mean criticisms… to any but ‘their own’ chosen cronies. Words heard are mostly all strongly blaming — and acting as if only victims-need-apply-or-be-heard there.
. The very few prgms of actual [ factual, neutral] relevant info & interviews & guests are far separated from each other on air, so tuning in to Other Stations is much more fruitful , varied, and informative too.
Sadly, the Pacifica people’s determination of enforcing a ‘ we alone are sooo good & special’ image — as heard on KPFK — is no different than any other corporate image-making-framing-creating P.R. – no different than others labeled as “commercialized” radio stations are. So listener distrust immediately erupts when that faked, forced exaggerations proliferate, as on KPFK air.
No one outside of those who are loyally dedicated to continuing the very old, retro-versions of what Pacifica was before….during external USA wars …. or when trying to turn into Predominant Black Focus radio becomes KPFK’s & other Pacifica stations’ norms.
Nothing else seems to be emerging to capture any
“Other – than those old-timers, who already paid, paid, paid more $$$…” audiences ? If there are other valuable programs that are not repeats of repeats then repeated, please make those better known, to the ‘rest of us, anywhere. Thanks