Originally posted June 9, 2015
Berkeley- A note pad found on the floor at the Pacifica National Board meeting in November of 2013 and belonging to soon-to-be board chair and interim executive director Margy Wilkinson has been given to Pacifica In Exile. The note pad details strategic notes regarding the board’s in-person meeting, as well as notes from a few KPFA local station board meetings of the same period. A full scanned copy of the contents will be made available in the future, but some highlights from the national board section are below.
At the national board meeting in November of 2013, the board was interviewing 3 candidates for the executive director position, among other tasks. The meeting concluded with a hire letter being issued to Summer Reese, who Wilkinson replaced in March of 2014 after taking over the board chair position in a disputed vote in February of 2014.
The note pad begins with an observation: “Summer out requires all of WPFW”. The note pad then goes on to categorize all the members of the 2013 national board of directors under three labels: “US”, “THEM” and “WORKABLE”.
In the “US” category: Brian Edwards-Tiekert (KPFA), Wilkinson (KPFA), Dan Siegel (KPFA), Lydia Brazon (KPFK), Brenda Medina (KPFK) and Cerene Roberts (WBAI).
In the “THEM” category: Tracy Rosenberg (KPFA), Carolyn Birden (WBAI), Heather Gray (Affiliate), Teresa Allen (KPFT), Jessica Apollinar (KPFT), John Cromshow (KPFK), Richard Uzzell (KPFT) and Summer Reese (KPFK).
In the “WORKABLE” category are listed: Janet Coleman (WBAI), Janis Lane Ewart (Affiliate), Tony Norman (WPFW), Katea Stitt (WPFW), Luzette King (WPFW), Benito Diaz (WPFW), Nancy Hentschel (KPFT), and Manijeh Saba (WBAI).
A list labeled “tactics” follows including:
* “Get everyone on Google Chat for the meeting” (a violation of Brown Act standards for public meetings if this actually occurred),
* “Break up the seating” (presumably to prevent people from sitting where they pleased)
* “Don’t fight WPFW”
* “Abstain more” (presumably to avoid angering “workables”).
Notes follow citing Houston station KPFT: “It all depends on Theresa” and citing DC station WPFW: “Right now, both sides need Summer. Resolve that!”
The notebook suggests “one on ones” with certain board members and suggests what the topics might be. Everyone should be asked if they “care to be an officer of the board”.
For WPFW staff rep (and now program director Katea Stitt), the note pad suggests “Do you think Summer {Reese} put him {GM John Hughes} up to it?” This refers to program changes at the DC station made by Hughes.
For WBAI staff rep Janet Coleman, the notebook suggests “What do you want to do re: Berthold {WBAI GM Berthold Reimers} and will Summer do it?”.
For affiliate rep Janis Lane-Ewart, the suggested topic is “Say that you are worried about Summer and ask if she is worried about Summer too”.
A list of the meeting “goals” includes:
* “Summer out”,
* “Efren back” (which refers to current controller Efren Llarinas),
* “Margy chair”,
* “Tracy neutralized” (seems to be a reference to then-KPFA rep Tracy Rosenberg).
The misplaced note pad indicates a couple of things about the state of Pacifica Radio. The first is the noticeable lack of attention to any of the normal functions of nonprofit boards: strategic planning, Pacifica’s place in the media landscape, development, financial analysis, maintenance of capital assets including buildings, licenses and equipment, and project and program opportunities.
The second noticeable aspect is the majority’s perspective on their colleagues which appears to be akin to guinea pigs in a science experiment to be prodded and manipulated. Should they not succumb to being worked over, they would then be “neutralized”.
This is antithetical to the establishment of respectful working relationships on an elected body entrusted with the preservation of valuable public assets.
The third thing the note pad establishes is that when Wilkinson and other members of the board majority testified in Alameda Superior Court under penalty of perjury and filed formal court filings in 2014, they were not telling the truth. They testified the salient issues leading up to the coup in March of 2014 were related to background checks and a January 2014 contract.
The notes in the note pad were written before the contract was drafted, before the background check was performed, before the final interviews had occurred, and before the offer letter for employment was put out (as they said in a Siegel and Yee filing): “in good faith by the board of directors”.
Pacifica has recently been notified that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has initiated a proceeding regarding employment discrimination against Reese.
Wilkinson’s final act before ending her long tenure as interim executive director was to hire her factional crony, community college teacher Leslie Radford as LA station KPFK’s general manager while new ED John Proffitt was driving across the country. The hire of the unqualified Radford has been unpopular with the station’s employees, with all but one signing a letter objecting to the hire. The first week of Radford’s tenure, with the station in the 4th week of the spring fund drive, raised a miserable $67K from June 1 to June 5. The fund drive, extended to a back-breaking 31 days, raised only $600,000, $150,000 less than the $750,000 budgetary projection. This returned the station to the six figure hole that prompted an April emergency fund drive to avoid shutting down. That April drive averaged over $30,000 a day under former GM Zuberi Fields.
Radford’s special fund drive programming did not attract the station’s listeners who largely limited their donations to the station’s traditional money-raisers including Background Briefing, The Aware Show with Lisa Garr, Democracy Now and Sojourner Truth. Radford’s innovations included cutting off Sonali Kolhatkar’s Uprising half way through on June 1st (cutting off the show’s pitch and raising only $125 for the entire 8-9 AM drive time hour) and a 5:00am rap show called Music to Resist By, which you can hear a sample of here. Music to Resist By was undoubtedy a surprise to the usual listeners of public affairs program Counterspin, produced by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). It woke everyone up with several audible profanities.
The Pacifica National Board will be meeting from June 12th-15th at the Aris and Carolyn Anagnos Center in Culver City, CA. 4 days prior to the meeting start date, no draft agenda has been provided at press time notifying the public of the subjects under discussion, when they can attend and the available times for the board to hear public comment.
Pacifica in Exile readers may write to the board at pnb@pacifica.org.
To subscribe to this newsletter, visit www.unitedforcommunityradio.
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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.
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June 9, 2015: Notes regarding the pad. The full contents have been scanned and can be found below, with the exception of the single page that contained only PNB member Janet Coleman’s personal cell phone number and personal email address, which has not been posted for personal privacy reasons.
The notebook contents are in two sections, which are reversed to reflect their relative levels of interest. The first part is the national section, which some parts of are mentioned above. It begins with the “us and them” list that was linked in the Pacifica in Exile bulletin above. As an identity note: the notebook mentions on page 5 “bunking with Brenda” (KPFK board member Brenda Medina), which would not have been an option for the other “US” members of the KPFA delegation, Dan Siegel and Brian Edwards-Tiekert.
The second section, which begins on page 6 and started off the notepad, is extensive notes from one or more KPFA local station board meetings. The meeting(s) are definitely from 2013. The note pad cites statements from several KPFA local station board members including Andrea Prichett, Frank Sterling and Joy Moore and are congruent with statements they made during that period of time and that they will recognize. Characterizations include”Andrea going off on Bob Baldock” and Joy “wanting to be involved with Goal Busters”. The note pad also references under “Idea”: Motion to have PNB committee assignments selected only by the delegation from the station being represented, not by the whole PNB by vote (Dan). It bears noting that in fact, Dan Siegel did make that exact motion during 2013.
This level of detail about the KPFA local station board could only have been written by someone present at KPFA local station board meetings – and obviously also present at the Pacifica National Board meeting at the Houston hotel where the board meeting was held and where the notebook was found. Four people meet that description: KPFA 2013 PNB reps Dan Siegel, Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Margy Wilkinson and Tracy Rosenberg.
It seems unlikely Siegel and Tiekert would be planning to “bunk” with Brenda Medina, so the remaining candidates are Wilkinson and Rosenberg. Rosenberg’s meeting goal was unlikely to be “Summer OUT” nor to “neutralize” herself.
The individual who picked up the notebook was at the national board meeting in Houston in November of 2013 and, as a factual matter, the envelope in which the notepad arrived in the Bay Area on June 5, 2015 had a Houston, TX postmark and had been mailed 5 days earlier, so there is no doubt the note pad’s previous location was in Houston, TX,