Berkeley-To recap, after WBAI was forcibly shut down by Pacifica’s new interim director without board authorization, a temporary restraining order has prevented the termination of WBAI’s staff while allowing program content to be piped in from California. In the after-shutdown vote of the Board of Directors, which was held over two nights on October 12th and 13th, after five board members were prevented from voting on the 12th, the Board voted 12-9-1 to restore WBAI, change their officers and remove attorneys Foster Garvey from the case, but their decisions are frozen pending the federal court. 

The board members who have turned Pacifica over to the federal government after being out-voted are:

Christopher Cory (KPFA), Sabrina Jacobs (KPFA), Jan Goodman (KPFK), Mansoor Sabbagh (KPFK), Bill Crosier (KPFT), Donald Goldmacher (KPFA), Adrienne La Violette (KPFT), Wally James (KPFT), and Gerry Boast (Affiliate).

Here are some updates from the past two days. The federal court will weigh in on Monday October 21st. 

Pacifica’s national board has noticed a meeting for October 20th, the evening before the expected court hearing. The meeting notice was issued 7 days in advance and is in compliance with the meeting notice requirements in the Pacifica bylaws. Nevertheless,there was an attempt to order the noticed board meeting to be canceled and to prevent the board of directors from meeting, with an order to long-term Pacifica technician and compliance officer Otis Maclay to take down the meeting notice and hand over the credentials for Pacifica’s meeting notice system. Maclay, who has kept the system on kpftx.org independent for 16 years, refused. Here is his statement:

Dear Board Members,

Once again, I am being told I must remove a meeting posted by a PNB member on KPFTx. Once again, I am forced to decide an issue in which I have neither authority or competence. Further, I have been ordered not to stream it, but to make sure no one else streams it.

KPFTx which I maintain and pay for has consistently remained neutral when there have been disputes between members of the PNB and when these have spilled over to management.

I have always maintained that KPFTx is a service donated to the Foundation for the purpose of facilitating our governance, and that it is ultimately a creature of our governance. I have steadfastly refused to impose mine or anyone else’s positions, and maintained consistently that any disputes had to be resolved by the parties to the dispute, given that the PNB is actually the final arbiter of disputes for the Foundation as per the bylaws. Resolution of dispute is one of the jobs of the PNB.

During all the time KPFTx has existed, I have never been ordered to remove any posting by anyone until now. There is no provision in the bylaws for removing a meeting. There is no provision in the bylaws for canceling a meeting or otherwise impeding one. The court order is directed at the people who filed the application for a temporary restraining order and not at the PNB. The KPFTx system makes it impossible to violate the bylaws or the CPB requirements when posting a meeting.

I therefore do not see how I can remove a meeting and still observe the bylaws. For that reason, I respectfully decline to carry out this order which i assume is coming from management although it has been given to me by an employee not in my chain of command.

Otis Maclay, KPFTx

The national board of directors meeting on the evening of October 20th is expected to proceed.

As one might expect, there are numerous back-channel negotiations going on between members of the national board. Among them are actions to incite local boards to exercise their powers to remove their national board representatives in order to change the voting balance on the national board. Currently scheduled is a potential action to remove KPFA board member Tom Voorhees from the national board on October 26th, and a potential action to remove KPFK board members Jan Goodman and Mansoor Sabbagh from the national board on November 9th. Removals are supposed to be predicated on actions taken that are “adverse to the best interests of the Foundation”. 

In order to avoid removal, national board representatives are sometimes confronted with demands to change their positions. In Berkeley, the local director facing removal by his local board, Tom Voorhees, received such a request. The request from another national director was very interesting.

In it, the national director states: 

 At this point John {Vernile} feels that the best course is to just to go forward with getting WBAI local programming back. 

The director goes on to state:

In regard to how much control local programmers would have, there would be no censorship of content, but after recording, shows would reviewed.

And finally:

If you vote to support this compromise plan if it comes up at next Thursday’s meeting, there will be no reason for Donald to remove you. I hope we can work with you to make this happen.

The full email can be read here. The name of the author has been redacted. What the email demonstrates is that the reason given for the shutdown of WBAI, which has been described as the unbearable financial stress of operating the NY station, is not the reason for the shutdown. Censoring content does not reduce financial burden. Censoring content addresses political and editorial control of local community radio content. 

Finally, Pacifica members, most of whom have gotten a large collection of advocacy emails in the last few months from candidate groups running for the 2020 boards and bylaws revisions groups, should be aware that Pacifica has had a data breach. Such advocacy emails are handled by having the personally identifying information of members, including their names, email addresses, telephone numbers and home addresses conveyed upon request to a certified mailing house which signs a nondisclosure agreement.

However, interim director Vernile has provided the entire WBAI membership roll to some individual members of the board who are not certified mailing houses and without signed nondisclosure agreements. This is against Pacifica standing policy and constitutes a breach of the privacy of WBAI’s members and staff. WBAI members and staffers have not, to date, been notified of the data breach, but should be aware. The directors in possession of their personally identifying information are located in Houston,Texas and Berkeley, California. 

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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.