Berkeley – We’ve sent out more than a few Pacifica election schedules, but things change. In this case, what changed is people. The new national election supervisor is Renee Asteria Penaloza, who did the job back in 2010, and will be doing it again this year. She replaces Alma Vizcaino, who will remain the local election staffer in Houston. With the change in personnel comes one last change in the election schedule, which we’re pretty confident will be the final version. So here we go:

The record date for the election is November 19, 2018. What that means is that in order to be an eligible voter in the election, you need to have made at least a $25 donation to your station by November 19, 2018 or in the preceeding 12 month period. 

The final candidate list was posted as of January 7, 2019. So if you would like to get a head start perusing the choice of candidates at your station, you can do so at Pacifica’s elections website. As a listener-member, you can only vote for candidates in the listener-member category. Similarly, if you are on Pacifica’s payroll or are a regular volunteer programmer, then you can only vote for the candidates in the staff-member category. 

Ballots will be sent on January 18, 2019. If your local station has your email address, you should receive an on-line ballot on that date. Keep an eye out for it. If your station does not have your email address, then a ballot will be mailed to you on January 18 and will arrive at your residence later in the month. 

The election close date is March 5, 2019. That means your email ballot must be submitted by midnight local time on that date or if you are using a paper ballot, that you have to get it to the reply address or into the hands of your local election staffer by that day. It is not a postmark date, so if you are mailing the ballot in, make sure you do so by late February. 

Pacifica elections require a quorum of 10% of the membership, so if everyone ignores their ballots then the election period will never end. So we encourage you to vote your preferences and to do so in the allotted time to keep costs down. It costs money to extend the elections and it is money that doesn’t need to be spent.

If you are affiliated with Washington station WPFW-FM, you won’t need to vote as that station does not have aspiring candidates in greater number than the number of vacant seats, so volunteers will be automatically seated. 

Assuming quorum is made, election results will be announced on or before March 20. 

Pacifica in Exile will send an endorsement issue out on January 16 with our recommendations for all four signal areas that are having elections. We hope that will be be a helpful aide in voting. 

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In other news from the national front, the 2019 affiliate station representatives on the Pacifica National Board will be Robin Collier of KCEI-FM in Taos, New Mexico and Garry Boast of webcast station Cerebral Radio. They will join directors chosen by the delegates you vote for in the upcoming elections to form the new Pacifica Board of Directors. 

Pacifica has also contracted for financial management services from NETA (National Educational Telecommunications Association) in order to standardize recordkeeping and reporting and staunch the chronic lateness and lack of compliance that has marked the last four years of operations. NETA’s business center support (you can read more about them here) should help to stabilize the reporting and audit problems we have written so much about.

The Pacifica National Board has also developed a policy for editorial disclaimers regarding opinionated content on the airwaves that strikes a balance between the free speech rights of Pacifica guests and hosts and the responsibility of a radio licensee for the content they allow to be broadcasted on their signal. You should start hearing the disclaimer carts in the second quarter of 2019. 

For local station news, we apologize again that this issue will be largely Northern California-focused. After our publishing break, we are still getting up to speed on the local brushfires all over the network. Since accuracy is important to us, we are going to continue gathering information before diving into current events at KPFK-FM, WBAI-FM, KPFT-FM and WPFW-FM. If there are local issues that you’d like us to prioritize, please feel free to drop an email to [email protected] with your suggestions. 

Here in Berkeley, here’s a few things that are up:

The never-ending Campisi vs Pacifica lawsuit that stems from KPFA LSB member Bill Campisi’s January 2018 attempt to torque the national directors election by running as a bogus candidate and then quitting 18 seconds after being elected in the hopes of forcing a new election, is still dripping through the California Court of Appeals. It is using up time and money even though Campisi has lost at every turn. The final ruling should come in March of 2019 and is not expected to be any different than the lower court ruling. The case has already cost some $50K of membership donations after the Pacifica National Board put an end to the hijinks and seated the runner-up who trailed Campisi by 4/10 of a vote and was willing to actually do the job. Angry at having his trick foiled, Campisi took to the courts, where he has had no success. Even though the one year national board term at issue has already basically passed, Campisi continues to file over-sized briefs and run up legal bills. Bill Campisi is a candidate for re-election this year as a member of the UIR slate and we encourage KPFA listeners not to reward his wasteful and petulant actions with your votes. He’s already spent your money.

The Berkeley station also finally released some financial records, and to say the least, they were a surprise. After “preliminary” numbers for the first nine months of the recently completed fiscal year were released in August pointing to record-setting totals for revenue and sky-high projections for the station’s most successful year in the last two decades, the real numbers as released in December 2018 were crushing, showing the station’s lowest revenue total in a decade and a half and revenue of half a million less than the reported actuals in August and over $1.3 million dollars less then the projected numbers. At the time of the release of the overly optimistic numbers in August, this publication questioned those numbers, saying that they did not comport with real-life observation of the fund drive reports.and seemed wildly out of whack. They were. And more importantly, the station’s budget for the upcoming year relies on those inflated numbers and currently projects spending hundreds of thousands dollars more than 2018 revenues. The current projected operating loss for KPFA’s operations in 2018 is $-232,000and if revenue totals remain about the same, the projected operating loss for 2019 would be $-298,700. KPFA’s board treasurer declined to comment. Some course correction will be required in 2019. 

KPFA hit the national news in 2017 when it “deplatformed” atheist writer Richard Dawkins from a sponsored book signing event after he made statements that Islam was the “most evil” religion. The action happened about the same time the station underwent criticism for on-air censorship of the anti-vaccine positions of some on-air guests. Later, the station removed a program, Guns and Butter, after the show aired guests with alternative views of the Holocaust or as characterized “Holocaust denial”.  In defense of their actions, KPFA station management pointed to the necessity not to seem to endorse hatred towards any religious or cultural groups or to profit from denigrating others, as well as the necessity of maintaining credibility and lack of bias. Those statements came into question again when frequent guest and prominent author Alice Walker published a book of poems which referred to the Talmud, the holy book of the Orthodox Jewish community as “poison“, and described extreme author David Ickes as “brave” and “very important to humanity’s conversation” in a NY Times profile and in follow-up blogs on her website. Among the ideas in the Ickes book that Walker lauded were that alternative information about the Holocaust (often referred to as “Holocaust denial”) was being suppressed and should be taught in schools, that the Nuremberg trials should be condemned, that Judaism is a racist religion, and that many European Jewish families contain “reptilian” genes and are not fully human. When asked if Walker should continue to be “platformed” in KPFA events, and if her works should continue to be given away as pledge drive gifts so KPFA can profit from them, KPFA’s local station board and management declined to answer. The varying responses underline the need for consistent programming policies and standards to avoid situational reactiveness and standards that are not evenly enforced across the full spectrum of the network’s constituencies. 

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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.