THE NEWS

After three years of litigation, and six figure legal fees paid out of KPFA’s bank account, the KPFA Protectors have abandoned their Safety Net lawsuit. A settlement agreement signed on June 5, 2023 and filed with the court dismisses the entire action with prejudice (meaning it cannot be re-filed), and stipulates no conditions except that the defendants (Pacifica Foundation and former board members Grace Aaron and Alex Steinberg) shall not make any subsequent claim for malicious prosecution. 

All parties pay their own fees, so KPFA is permanently relieved of all the money paid out (which at last report was well over $100,000 and has probably increased significantly since then) and donors to the Safety Net/Protectors get nothing. The 2020 KPFA Local Station Board, dominated by the Protectors, refused to censure members Goldmacher, Turner, and Huggins for filing the lawsuit and the three plaintiffs (plus Protector Craig Alderson who bailed on the lawsuit midway through) have not announced any plans to repay the station and network in whole or in part for the abundant legal fees their actions cost. Recent layoffs at KPFA were partially atrributable to the financial strain of the Protectors lawsuit. 

It’s election time at Pacifica Radio again. Your annual contribution lets you pick the board at your local station. That’s pretty unique for a media outlet. How do you handle this grave responsibility? We are here to help with voting info, some news, endorsements at our local station (Berkeley) and a few opinions to chew on as you make your decisions. We hope it’s helpful! Please remember to vote by September 30th. We can’t just let a noisy few shape our community institutions. These are community decisions and all of us make them together. 

ENDORSEMENTS

This election season, we are only endorsing at KPFA as a publication. We know that may be annoying, but we encourage you to listen to the debates, read candidate statements, and think about the issues we’ll discuss below as you consider the candidates at your station. For the Northern California folks: we are recommending the following listener candidates for the KPFA election (in alphabetical order)

Cheryl Davila, Edward Escobar, Nayvin Gordon, Elizabeth Milos, Pathma Venasithamby, Rich Stone, Stan Woods, Steve Zeltzer

HOW TO VOTE

Your ballot link should arrive by email today (August 15th). You have until September 30th to complete it. If you are a current member at your station, and don’t receive a ballot, you can request one here. If you would like to hear more from the candidates, you can tune into or stream on demand candidate discussions that will be broadcast as follows:

KPFA – Aug 18 @ 11-2 PM PST, KPFK – Aug 14-18 @ 2-3 PM PST (In English) & Aug 14-17 @ 830-1030 PM PST (En Español), KPFT – Aug 11 & August 18 @ 7-8 PM CST, WBAI – Aug 19, 26 & Sept 2 @ 4-6 PM EST, WPFW – Aug 28 @ 5-8 PM EST

Pacifica uses ranked choice voting, which is a system of proportional representation that allows you to rank the candidates you like in order so that your vote isn’t lost if your favored candidates have already been eliminated. So pick up to 9 listener candidates (or 3 staff candidates if you are a member of the staff) and put a #1 next to your favorite, #2 next to your second best and so on. Don’t stress out about it. Your vote will automatically transfer to your most favored candidate that is still in contention. Just make sure the candidates you like most get the highest rankings on your ballot. You can access a voter guide here. 

Berkeley – We know it has been a long time since we’ve written. A lot is happening at Pacifica Radio, and a lot is also happening in our own lives, which has made the labor involved in following Pacifica happenings so closely less viable. But we will keep the option open when there is significant news that otherwise would not be distributed. Before we begin, a few disclaimers. All of the information provided here is drawn from public court filings in the Alameda Superior Court. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty and allegations are just allegations until proven. However, we find it unconscionable that several members of KPFA’s Local Station Board were not aware of this lawsuit’s existence until last week. Board members should not have to monitor court records to discover litigation against their organization. And some of the issues regarding station response are significant whether the allegations are true, false or some of both. 

Elected members of KPFA’s local station board were startled last week to discover that a lawsuit against KPFA and Pacifica had been pending since May of 2022 with no notification to them. The plaintiff is Francisco Torres De La Rosa, who described himself as a 54 year old man who is married with two children and has limited English fluency. Mr. Torres De La Rosa was employed as a maintenance worker at KPFA in Berkeley from 2015 to 2021. De La Rosa alleges that beginning in 2019, news co-director and 41 year KPFA employee Mark Mericle “repeatedly and forcibly grabbed his buttocks and laughed at him when he recoiled and expressed distress, followed him to the bathroom and blocked him inside of it, and stared and leered at him in a harassing way”. Torres De La Rosa alleges he complained to his female supervisor, who is unnamed in the complaint, but seems likely to be business manager Maria Negret, and the response he received was “Well, he’s gay”. Torres De La Rosa then alleges he elevated his complaint to the “general director”, who is unnamed in the complaint, but seems likely to be general manager Quincy McCoy, and was told he “had to get along with everybody”. When Torres De La Rosa alleges he pushed the complaint about sexual assault to Pacifica Human Resources (again unnamed in the complaint), there was no remedial action taken. 

Berkeley – The ironically named “Pacifica Safety Net” has had their 1st and only tax filing rejected by California’s Attorney General, demonstrating that co-founders Donald Goldmacher and Sherry Gendleman, aren’t up to running a nonprofit organization. 

While the AG public notice sticks to all the things that are missing, when you dig into the filings, it becomes clear that they are fraudulent on numerous counts. 

Berkeley – The ironically named “Pacifica Safety Net” has struck again. While we weren’t sure Donald Goldmacher could top his previous pathetic performance as a nonprofit board member when he petitioned the LA Superior Court to have a receiver take the nonprofit’s assets away, he has done it. Now he has petitioned the FCC to take one of his valuable radio licenses away and give it to someone else. The Federal Communications Commission is in receipt of a formal request not to renew the broadcasting license of WBAI-New York from Donald and his cohort Sherry Gendelman.

The petition itself is viewable here. Like most Goldmacher-prepared Pacifica documents, we would characterize it as a haphazard mess. The primary complaint, which is alternative health information on WBAI, is outside the jurisdiction of the FCC. By definition, they are content-agnostic. If they didn’t renew broadcast licenses because of on-air criticisms of the COVID vaccines, they would have had to delicense the entirety of red state talk radio. Otherwise, there are some random treasurer’s reports from WBAI and some evidence of both management and the LSB responding to issues with premiums, which is what you would actually want to see happening i.e. complaints and then board and management response. 

Berkeley – At a court hearing in the Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday March 11, the New Day Pacifica countersuit was struck in its entirety. The judge’s ruling was procedural in nature. The countersuit filing listed as “plaintiffs” a number of individuals in the Los Angeles area who were not defendants in the initial lawsuit and therefore ineligible to file a countersuit. It’s a rookie mistake and does not speak well to the New Day legal team, but the upshot is that their suit is stricken from the record, along with a “demurrer” or attempt to have the countersuit dismissed by the Pacifica Foundation. At the same hearing, a request from Pacifica for an ex parte proceeding to freeze New Day’s emails to the members was denied. This brings New Day’s attempt to get a legal ruling that the staff and listener votes in the 2021 bylaw referendum be “combined” or the WBAI staff vote thrown out (both scenarios were requested in various legal filings) back to zero. While it may be inevitable that they will re-file without the incorrect plaintiffs, we would take a moment to reflect on the vast waste of money this effort has become and hope that saner minds will prevail. Virtually any use of listener donated funds would be more constructive than this. We estimate the total from the referendum and the associated legal fees from both sides (New Day has been raising funds for their legal costs from Pacifica members) must total more than $400,000 by now, and this is money that would have helped out struggling KPFK-FM in Los Angeles a whole lot. The judge’s ruling is here. 

Berkeley – After months of “Stop the Steal” rhetoric, New Day Pacifica’s court appearance came and went with a whimper. After two earlier defeats on motions to move the legal proceedings to Alameda County and prevent the seating of the 2022 KPFK Local Station Board, the court turned down flat a request to overturn the defeat of New Day’s bylaws proposals and to install the New Day proponents as the officers of Pacifica. The court stated the motion was a “thinly veiled attempt to reverse a vote”. On January 21, the court will consider a request to dismiss the New Day Pacifica countersuit in its entirety, leaving intact only the litigation regarding the alleged improper use of Pacifica’s mailing list by New Day. 

Berkeley – The voting period ends for this year’s local station board elections on October 15th. If you are eligible, please get your ballot submitted by the 15th of October at midnight eastern standard time. You can find our voting recommendations here. If you need to secure a replacement ballot or think that you should have gotten one, but haven’t, you can request a new ballot here.  Candidate debates and statements are available here.

This edition will be KPFA-heavy, so apologies in advance to members at other stations. The editor has had a busy few weeks and needs to get caught up on happenings outside of the local signal area. We will attend to that and cover matters at the other 4 stations shortly. 

Berkeley – This is the second of two emails. The initial one focused on Pacifica Foundation news and this contains endorsements for the 2021 local station board elections. Your ballots have been sent on Monday and you have until October 15 to vote. Pacifica in Exile is an independent publication and our endorsements are not affiliated with any third party. 

Berkeley – This is the first of two emails. This initial one will focus on Pacifica Foundation news and the next one will contain endorsements for upcoming local station board elections. Your ballots are being sent today and you have until October 15 to vote. 

The KPFA Protectors – Safety Net lawsuit from Don Goldmacher and company seemed to have gone away after last week’s scathing denuniciation and dismissal of the case from LA Superior Court judge Michael Stern. But, apparently not discouraged by the judge’s sharp words, the Safety Net – Protectors filed an appeal, making sure that the flow of member dollars out of KPFA will continue for some time. At last count, the LSB member’s lawsuit has cost KPFA $71,000, more than 10% of the fund drive goal. The KPFA LSB Protectors majority under board chair Christina Huggins (a plaintiff) has not engaged in fundraising to offset the costs of their lawsuit to the station, instead raising funds independently on a Go Fund Me to cover their own costs. The Go Fund Me has raised about $9,500, only a fraction of the costs with the majority coming from just a few wealthy funders including celebrity divorce lawyer Harold Mayerson.