Berkeley-Pacifica filed a postponement request one day before a scheduled hearing on a request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to restore voting rights for WBAI’s PNB delegation and seat elected staff delegate Kathryn Davis. The complaint can be seen here. Pacifica asked for time to secure legal representation in the State of New York and the hearing date was rescheduled to April 29th. According to the plaintiff’s attorney Gary Carlton, a temporary restraining order staying any Pacifica meetings barring voting rights for elected WBAI delegates is in effect until Pacifica appears in court or files an objection and both the meeting notice for an April 13th WBAI local station board meeting and last night’s Pacifica National Board meeting can be characterized as ignoring a court order by the Siegel/Brazon board majority. Continue reading Who Cares About A Court Order?→
Berkeley-It was a busy week for the Pacifica Foundation in the New York court system as two new lawsuits were filed against the radio network, a judgment was entered and a complaint was temporarily withdrawn. On April 7th, a request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) will be heard In New York City to restore voting rights for WBAI’s PNB delegation and seat elected staff delegate Kathryn Davis. The complaint can be seen here.Continue reading Two Lawsuits And A Judgment→
Berkeley-The March 17th meeting of the Pacifica National Board was marked by virulent conflicts between members of the Siegel/Brazon majority as the philosophy of “organzational darwinism” begins to play out within the network. The majority members found solidarity in their determination to maximize their number of votes on the national board, but dissolved into bitter arguments about the network’s fiscal woes. Continue reading Playing Organizational Darwinism→
Berkeley-Pacifica’s new CFO Sam Agarwal reported to Pacifica’s national finance committee he anticipated a recommendation in a period of 60 days for the liquidation of Washington DC’s WPFW-FM and the sale, liquidation or lease of NY’s WBAI-FM. Agarwal stated that WPFW was three months behind in central service payments and two months behind in health insurance premium payments and WBAI-FM was two months behind in central service payments and one month behind in health insurance payments. Continue reading CFO Proposes Liquidating DC and NY In 60 Days→
Berkeley-The Pacifica National Board, which met on March 3rd for the first time in a month after two consecutive disrupted meetings on January 28th and February 4th, doubled down on their disenfranchisement of WBAI-FM. The board again prevented 4 NY directors elected on January 26th from participating in the meeting and insisted on their authority to seat the last place finisher from the 2012 election in the NY local board’s vacant seat, instead of the first runner-up from the recently completed election. The national board’s interference has brought NY to a halt as the national board attempts to undo the 13-11 independent majority elected by the voters in order to deliver the Siegel/Brazon faction a 12-12 tie.
In a particularly absurd twist, the national board spent more than half an hour elaborately constructing a rationale to give participation and voting rights to the 2015 Siegel/Brazon faction NY representative Cerene Roberts, while continuing to eliminate participation and voting rights for all of the 2015 and the 2016 WBAI representatives from the independent group that holds the majority on the WBAI local station board. Continue reading Only One Faction Votes In New York→
Berkeley-While Pacifica waits and waits and waits for an audit of the 2014 fiscal year, which ended 17 months ago, new CFO Sam Agarwal informed the national finance committee that “fraud was a major concern of the auditor”, currently Armanino LLP. In fact, he said it twice in a minute and a half. Agarwal added that “we don’t know if all the donations have been accounted for” and that “it would be very easy for anyone to open up a bank account and deposit the donations and that would not be recorded in the Pacifica books”. You can hear his comments here. Continue reading Fraud Is A Major Concern Of The Auditor→
Berkeley-Mozart did not make an appearance at the second disrupted national board meeting in a week, but while the sounds were less than musical, the outcome was the same: meeting interuptus. Doubling down on their outrageous stripping of all national voting rights from NY station WBAI and the seating of two bogus affiliate directors from non-affiliated stations, the rump majority did not even keep their promise to allow WBAI’s 2015 directors to “participate, but not vote”. They didn’t send WBAI the meeting codes and hung up on them when they called in. In fact they hung up on everybody, including duly elected directors from other stations as KPFT director Bill Crosier stated: “I was repeatedly disconnected from the call. I have not been making any interruptions, but tried several times to raise a point of order and was never recognized, but my call was disconnected several times. This is highly improper. Whoever is controlling the conference call has no right to just disconnect anyone they don’t want to talk, even when making valid points of order”.
Berkeley–Thursday’s Pacifica National Board meeting turned into a Mozart sonata after the Siegel/Brazon faction insisted on preventing both the 2016 and 2015 directors from WBAI-FM from voting in the meeting. The music, which played for more than 40 minutes on the conference call line, was preceded by numerous objections to the board majority’s actions, which included trying to seat two affiliate directors self-nominated by stations without affiliate agreements to represent the 200 affiliated stations, refusing the seat four directors elected by NY’s delegate assembly on January 26th: staffer Shawn Rhodes and listener reps Bob Young, Alex Steinberg and Frank LeFever and refusing to allow the 2015 directors from WBAI to vote in their stead, leaving the NY station completely disenfranchised. A clip of some of the meeting can be heard here. Continue reading Mozart Meeting: Civil Disbedience→
Berkeley-Within days of the seating of the new KPFK local station board after the landslide victory of the Committee to Strengthen KPFK, GM Leslie Radford and roommate Adam Rice suggested to staff members the LA station was in “lockdown” after banning volunteer receptionist (and one of the Committee’s staffer candidates), Allan Coie from the station. Coie, a retired attorney, stated the reasons for his firing were that he gave out the number of the Pacifica National Office to a caller and gave program director Alan Minsky listener complaints that were called in about the substituion of Something’s Happening in the M-Th midnight to 3am hours. Coie said Radford told him the listener complaints were “personal to her”. Rice then fired him and told him he would no longer be admitted on station premises. Continue reading Lockdown→
Berkeley-In the wake of the overwhelming election victory for the Committee to Strengthen KPFK and the rejection of current IED Lydia Brazon’s handpicked slate by KPFK’s donors (depending on how you count the votes, Brazon’s slate held 3 or 4 of the 18 seats up for grabs), the Siegel/Brazon faction has resorted to numerous shenanigans to retain control of the foundation after their April 2014 coup. Continue reading Control At Any Cost→
