Originally posted August 16, 2014

Berkeley- The rogue board occupied itself on Thursday with a midnight-special lynching, picking the cheery time of 11:45pm EST to devote a solid 12 minutes to voting on a meaningless statement of censure to KPFT director Richard Uzzell and Affiliates Director Heather Gray. The censure gained the support of only half the members of the board (11 out of 22), divided entirely along factional lines, and prevented the objects of the “censure motion” from speaking in their own defense, with Uzzell being shouted down and Gray receiving an abrupt 90 seconds prior to the vote, at which point she was shushed into silence. The vote was followed by a shrieking match audible on the audio, during which unelected chair Wilkinson implores former PNB vice-chair Bill Croiser, the volunteer streamer, to “turn off the stream”. The board oddly reversed the normal schedule, holding the closed session at the open session time and the open session at the closed session time, presumably to do the censuring at the latest possible hour of the evening. Audio released by Berkeley’s Save KPFA faction omits the hysterical screaming match and the shouting down of Uzzell and Gray (the entire audio is available here).  The manipulated  snippet from Save KPFA features an amnesia-laden statement from KPFA programmer Brian Edwards-Tiekert that suing Pacifica is bad behavior – Edwards-Tiekert apparently forgetting about the multiple lawsuits and grievances (at least 8) that he, himself, was a party too. Uzzell’s tongue-in-cheek response can be found here.

Members objecting to the board majority’s actions over the past six months can sign a petition here.

In other news from the board meeting, during the rescheduled closed session, attorney John Crigler canceled his planned report, apparently having nothing new to say about the ongoing process to resuscitate Pacifica’s CPB grant funding. The rogue majority is unwilling and/or unable to secure legal services following the resignation of prominent media attorney Terry Gross in March, besides the conflict-ridden relationship with Siegel and Yee, the law firm that employs director Jose Luis Fuentes. A trumped-up letter of retainer with Siegel and Yee is dated prior to a boad meeting discussion from which half the board was excluded, and features the handwritten addition of then-IED Bernard Duncan after the fact. Siegel’s firm recently tried to block a staff-initiated recall petition for KPFK staff representative director Rodrigo Argueta on the basis that it violated Argueta’s “free speech rights”. Argueta is a member of the Siegel/Brazon majority. Director Hank Lamb from KPFT issued a request to Wilkinson and Fuentes to “cut the crap” with regard to the retention of Siegel’s firm. Lamb’s June 28th email stated “Margy and Jose Luis, this is bullshit and you both know it all too well.”

 A pending complaint to the CA Attorney General Registry of Charitable Trusts by 8 former board members can be found here (in a slightly updated version). The AG is responsible for California charitable compliance and can be asked to force the Pacifica board to run for re-election. Pacifica members can send a note to the AG here. 

In the open session, fired/rehired CFO Raul Salavador announced the organization’s tax filings (IRS form 990 and FTB form 199) had been received “that day” (August 14th). The filing date is August 15th after two 3-month extensions. The documents were not provided to the board and will be filed without being seen by the board, the audit committee or the finance committee. Salvador mentioned he expects the 2013 audit (which has not yet begun) to “greatly transform” the numbers and that it would be necessary to file an amended return. The previous year’s tax return prepared by Salvador in August of 2013 contained over $2 million dollars in discrepancies with the later audit and has not been amended.

Salvador’s finally-released financial statements (after 2 missed deadlines) muddle accrual and cash accounting (2012 and 2013 use accrual accounting, 2014 uses cash accounting), and misplace several bequests which are not recorded despite having been deposited in Pacifica-owned bank accounts. The missing bequests include a $105,000 check from Chevron to KPFA, and 5 gifts to WBAI totaling $85,000 including a $10,000 check from Yoko Ono, artist and widow of former Beatle John Lennon. Other problems included no affiliate payments recorded, and no income from KPFK’s spring fund drive. Salvador mentioned that missing items had been “discovered,” but claims that bank accounts were reconciled appear to be specious.

IED Wilkinson’s board report focused on accusations directed at her predecessor which appear both unsubstantiated and false. The first accusation referred to excessive bank charges incurred to the national office. Salvador’s financial statements indicated average national office bank charges of $2,000 a month from October 2012 to February of 2014. In March of 2014, after Wilkinson inserted herself as the IED, national office bank charges doubled to over $5,000 a month and maintained that level in March, April, May and June of 2014. Wilkinson’s second accusation addressed late fees she claimed were paid on Kaiser health care benefits. Wilkinson was unaware that both CA divisons (the only ones that use Kaiser) pay for their health care benefits directly, not via the national office. Salvador’s financial statements indicated no late payments nor benefits expenses disproportional to the station’s salary expenses. Requests to Wilkinson to substantiate her accusations or withdraw her report to the board were met with silence.

Wilkinson also indicated that Pacifica’s DC station, WPFW-FM, refused to hold a summer mini-drive, along with the other 4 stations, despite financial statements indicating tWPFW was operating at a deficit through June 30th.

The Bay Area chapter of the venerable National Lawyer’s Guild, the legal arm of social justice movements across the nation, issued a letter to KPFA expressing great concern about the station’s direction and the recent removal of community-based public affairs programming from the AM drive-time. The letter stated that KPFA “reduced diversity on its airwaves”, “erased local character”, “silenced excellent reporting” and “engaged in viewpoint suppression”. The letter also refers to a lack of support for critical black programming and issues relevant to Black communities”.

In recent day’s Berkeley’s KPFA has been riven by a conflict over whether or not to provide extended special coverage of the planned blockade at the Port of Oakland of Israeli cargo ships in protest of the Gaza massacres. An inital “no” from KPFA’s management resulted in an impassioned plea from KPFA local board staff rep (UCR-affiliated) and programmer Frank Sterling. Many emails flooded the station protesting the decision. Sterling said KPFA was “breaking his heart”.

At a department heads meeting that followed Sterling’s plea and an outpouring of community support, the KPFA GM is reported to have punted the final decision to news co-director Aileen Alfandary saying it was “her call”. While Alfandary assented to the broadcast, which aired this morning from 8:30am to 11:00am, Alfandary is a member of the CWA bargaining unit, not the station’s program director, which is a non-union management position. On July 14th, CWA shop steward Phillip Maldari testified at the San Francisco Labor Council that the CWA contract does not deal with programming, and that the bargaining unit “works to bring back the people-not the programming.” KPFA management does not appear to be in compliance with the contract if members of the bargaining unit are exercising sole veto power over programming decisions. The full text of Maldari’s comments to the Labor Council can be found here. 

Berkeley-based satirical sound collage Twit-Wit Radio, a 3-minute collaborative spoken word collage produced by noted theatrical director George Coates, continued to spoof the board-induced craziness on July 27th, with snippets of audio drawn from Pacifica’s actual board meetings.

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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.