Three members of KPFA’s local station board, Chair Christina Huggins, Andrea Turner, Donald Goldmacher and their lawyer, traveled down to Los Angeles on Tuesday, violating California’s COVID19 shelter in place order, to try to convince a court to place Pacifica’s assets into a receivership and remove control of the Foundation from its members. Update: There is a 4th plaintiff, former KPFA LSB member Craig Alderson. The attorney is Stephen Jaffe, an SF employment lawyer and unsuccessful congressional candidate). Their effort was unsuccessful and their emergency request was denied by the court.
Their filing, apparently an error-riddled 800 page tome, was not available on the LA County Superior Court site as of the time of this newsletter, but was said to have asserted incorrectly that Pacifica’s buildings were about to be foreclosed upon and that the fiscal year 2017 audit had not been completed. (It was completed some time ago). The judge denied the request in a brief hearing of less than 30 minutes duration and castigated the plaintiffs for procedural irregularities.
Among the procedural irregularities was the failure to serve the lawsuit. The plaintiff’s attorney merely called a few officers of the board on the telephone at 8:00 am the day before the hearing.
Receivership, which is normally requested by an organization’s creditors, not its member-elected delegates, hands over all of the foundation’s assets, including all five station radio licenses, title to all owned real estate, and all of the money in any the station bank accounts, to an independent party appointed by the court. The receiver maintains possession of all assets until discharged by the court, The receiver makes all financial and operational decisions during the period of receivership and may shed assets and discharge workers to attain profitability. With the permission of the overseeing judge, a receiver can act to liquidate an organization and can also petition to terminate or not renew collective bargaining agreements.
The three KPFA local station board members did not inform the KPFA local station board of their actions, and one of them Andrea Turner, who is a PNB director, did not inform her national board colleagues. Their bizarre actions happened as other members of their faction send pleading emails to members to sign a petition for a bylaws referendum, which would no longer be possible under receivership, as members would lose their voting rights for the duration of the receivership.
While the “emergency request” was formally and finally denied, the full lawsuit will continue wending its way through the court system, with Pacifica members like you footing the bill.
Pacifica members upset at the actions by delegates to take away the Foundation from its members can email the KPFA local station board at [email protected].
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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 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.