Berkeley – The printed ballots for the 2019 Pacifica local board elections were mailed on January 18, 2019.
If your local station has your email address, then you will receive an electronic ballot to save the trees and postage dollars.The online ballot will hit your inbox on Wednesday, January 23rd.
If you get an online ballot but would prefer to vote by paper ballot because you hate computers, like pencils and do not trust online voting, you can send a request to nes@pacifica.org for a paper ballot to be mailed to you and your online ballot will be voided. If you get a postal ballot but would prefer to vote online because you love computers and hate stamps, you can also send a request to nes@pacifica.org and then an online ballot will be emailed to you and your paper ballot will be voided. Pacifica is using a professional election service, so your online ballots are secure and your selections will not be known by any Pacifica-related personnel.
Please vote so Pacifica can make quorum and not have to spend extra money to extend the election period.
Below you will find Pacifica in Exile’s endorsements for each of the 8 listener and staff elections. We will name a few candidates we hope you’ll vote for, some others you might want to consider, and a few candidates that we advise you not to choose. We hope this guide will be helpful to you.
2019 Pacifica Election Endorsements By Station
KPFA-FM Berkeley – Listener Election
In Berkeley, there are two candidate groupings and an independent candidate or two, but voters are likely to find it all a little confusing as the Save KPFA/Concerned Listeners group of Margy Wilkinson, Dan Siegel, and Sherry Gendleman has changed their name and yet again, their new name is remarkably similiar to the name of their previous opposition. Since this is the second time this has happened, we are going to go out on a limb and suggest that it is probably intentional. Given how many words there are in the world, it seems unlikely to have happened twice by accident. However, despite the similarity of United for Independent Radio to United for Community Radio (the opposed slate in the 2016 election), the endorsement list tells the tale with the Save KPFA stalwarts all aboard.
The story the UIR group wants to tell is that they have united with their opposition and will end all the fighting and live happily ever after letting bygones be bygones, but the actions have been anything but happy with UIR member Bill Campisi launching an expensive failed lawsuit to try to keep radio engineer Tom Voorhees off the national board and hitting KPFA with $50,000 in legal bills for factional shenanigans after appealing his Superior Court loss to the California Court of Appeals. We’ve seen better displays of peacefulness. And the UIR incumbents have presided over some of the worst and least transparent financial reporting to ever come out of KPFA after advocating relentlessly for a bankruptcy filing in 2017. One of our strong beliefs here at Pacifica in Exile is that inflated financials are an insult to the members and a grave danger to the organization.
The opposing slate, which renamed itself Rescue Pacifica, is entirely composed of new candidates and we think they deserve a chance.
WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU VOTE FOR: the Rescue Pacifica candidates with your first four ranked selections (1-4 in any order):
Don Macleay, Daniel Borgstrom , Noni Session and James McFadden. They have a solid and well-developed platform and a ton of endorsements.
With the remaining rankings on your ballot (5-9), consider the following candidates; Richard Phelps (independent), and newer UIR candidates Shirah Dedman, Luci Riley, Maria Judice, and Tim Van Landuyt. Riley and Van Landuyt are prominent local activists with no previous KPFA political involvement and although they are running with the wrong slate, we are semi-optimistic they will perform well on the local board and similarly, Dedman and Judice have impressive resumes and no KPFA track record.
DEFINITELY DO NOT VOTE FOR: Bill Campisi, whose lame maneuver of running for the national board as a bogus candidate and then “resigning” seconds after being elected has now cost tens of thousands of completely wasted dollars. Sharon Adams, an ardent advocate for bankruptcy and breakup who has perforned poorly as the board treasurer by presenting inflated numbers and a 2019 budget that spends a quarter of a million dollars more than KPFA took in 2018, Susan Da Silva, the intended beneficiary of Campisi’s manuever who strongly supported the failed lawsuit, Ahmad Anderson, a former employee who was largely missing in action for his entire first term on the board, Donald Goldmacher, one of the veteran Save KPFA’ers from the days of coups and missing audits, and Lily Kimura, whose inability to spell Jerry in “Gerry Brown” worries us.
KPFA-FM Berkeley – Staff Election
WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU VOTE FOR: Frank Sterling, Darlene Pagano, Sabrina Jacobs.
Sterling is definitely the #1 pick. He was a standout as a local board member in his previous term and has a track record of advocacy for the staff and particularly the apprenticeship program that is unmatched within the station.
DEFINITELY DO NOT VOTE FOR: Tim Lynch, Phillip Maldari
KPFK-FM Los Angeles – Listener Election
The hard work by the Committee to Strengthen KPFK incumbents on the KPFK local station board (and the national one) is pretty much the entire reason the Empire State Building did not eat Pacifica Radio in 2017. They richly deserve election. Everyone talks about fundraising, but they are the ones that pulled together a listener loan fund and then a nonprofit loan to pull Pacifica back from the brink of a bankruptcy filing. Their opponents, Lydia Brazon’s Grassroots Radio Coalition, had their turn at the helm from 2014-2016 and we saw how that went. No contest. There are 16 endorsed candidates from the Comittee to Strengthen KPFK (for 9 seats), so you will have to choose, but here are our recommendations:
WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU VOTE FOR: Grace Aaron, Jan Goodman, John Suarez, Paul Roberson, Marcie Mills
And your choices among: Rob Macon, Marshall James, Fred Blair, Allan Beek, Robert Payne, Ken Aaron, Michelle Manos, Nancy Pearlman, Michael Adler,
DEFINITELY DO NOT VOTE FOR: Michael Novick, Bella De Soto, Bill Eisen
Novick and De Soto worked closely with Leslie Radford and Adam Rice during the bad old days at KPFK. Eisen has been a divisive figure in some previous nonprofit and community group work.
KPFK FM Los Angeles – Staff Election
WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU VOTE FOR: Mansoor Sabbagh, Kiyana Williams, Myla Reson
DEFINITELY DO NOT VOTE FOR: Fernando Velazquez
Velazquez was a strong supporter of the Radford/Rice regime which was a disservice to KPFK.
KPFT-FM Houston – Listener Election
At KPFT, the local station board’s challenge is to stop putting each other on trial and do something to help the station grow instead of shrink. The abrasive board temperature is largely due to the leadership of Adriana Casenave, whose six-year board stint has come to an end, but whose acolytes adopted her accusatory and confrontational style. We are not advocates of shrinking violets nor particularly conflict-averse, but years of capturing Casenave’s tirades on audio and years of painfully listening to the KPFT local station board suspending and expelling and sanctioning and reprimanding virtually the entire membership has left us convinced that the group Casenave created has nothing good to offer. KPFT is a lot smaller than it was, and the station’s survival in getting-more-blue-but-not-there-yet Texas is too important to leave to the pointlessly argumentative This board has work to do and we are recommending the candidates who we think might actually do it.
WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU VOTE FOR: Bill Crosier, Adrienne LaViolette, Sandra Rawline, Lynden Foley, Darelle Robbins, Teresa Allen
And your choices among: Danae Moreno, Micheline Milligan, Jordan Moreno
DEFINITELY DO NOT VOTE FOR: Dewayne Lark, Ted Weisgal, Ben Perodeau
Lark, Weisgal and Perodeau have been key participants in the board’s disruptions and toxicity. They don’t deserve another term.
KPFT FM Houston – Staff Election
WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU VOTE FOR: Egberto Willies, Thomas Harper, Wendy Shroell or Danielle Allen
DEFINITELY DO NOT VOTE FOR: Vinisha Patel Adams
Patel Adams was a national board member during the coup years and complicit in the missing audits.
WBAI-FM New York – Listener Election
At WBAI, the primary issue is whether or not control of the station should be given over to former Pacifica executive director Dan Coughlin, who now runs Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a public access station. Coughlin is currently litigating a case at the United States Supreme Court after a dispute with Deep Dish TV co-founder Dee Dee Halleck and Puerto Rican poet Jesus Papaleto Menendez spiraled into a lawsuit and now, a referendum on whether public media platforms themselves are state actors. The case has encouraged the National Cable Telecommunications Assn to file a brief arguing that access channels are fundamentally unconstitutional and potentially threatens the existence of thousands of governmental and public channels across the country. Coughlin’s judgment in appealing his lower court loss to the Republican Supreme Court was poor, and has potentially disastrous consequences. That’s enough for us not to advocate for his control over Pacifica’s assets. Pacifica in Exile will not endorse any candidate shilling for a Coughlin-WBAI merger.
Even without the Manhattan Neighborhood Network issue, there are plenty of reasons to support the Indy candidates over the Justice and Unity group, not the least of which is the Justice and Unity’s shameful effort to keep three of their opponents off the national board for an entire year. But there are also some fresh new faces on the Indy Caucus side who seem like good additions, which WBAI certainly needs.
WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU VOTE FOR: Carolyn MacIntyre, Michael White, Jim Dingeman, Alex Steinberg, Randy Credico, Maxine Harrison-Gallmon
And your choices among: Carolyn Birden, Mitchel Cohen, Jack De Palma, Michael Jankowitz, Michael Lardner, Katherine O’Sullivan, Neale Vos, Marilyn Vogt-Downing, Linda Zises
DEFINITELY DO NOT VOTE FOR: Errol Maitland, Hazel Pinder, Ralph Poynter
These three top-ranked Justice and Unity candidates are ardent supporters of the half-baked Coughlin deal and should not be on WBAI’s board.
WBAI- FM New York – Staff Election
WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU VOTE FOR: Shawn Rhodes, Max Schmid, R. Paul Martin, or Paul DiRienzo
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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.