*Note* – As you’ve noticed, Pacifica in Exile had ceased regular publication earlier this year. The reasons for that have been multiple and have included increasing demands on the time of the editor, the change in Pacifica leadership and resolution of the Empire State Building obligation, and the financial stress of maintaining the publication schedule on a largely uncompensated basis for multiple years.This edition is being published due to problematic occurrences at KPFA. We will try to resume publication periodically when circumstances warrant, as we can. It is noted that the quality of conversation and availability of information suffers in Pacifica in Exile’s absence and we regret that. This issue will be largely KPFA-centric, but we believe the matters involved bear on and have significance for all the stations in the network. – Editor

Berkeley-At a contentious and surprisingly crowded KPFA local station board meeting, scores of people turned out to object to the station’s sudden kiboshing of 17-year public affairs and analysis show Guns and Butter. The meeting had been previously billed as a “town hall”, but as the meeting actually unfolded, it became clear the reason for 90% of the attendance was the abrupt cancellation of Guns and Butter. (Quaintly referred to by KPFA board member Andrea Turner as the “reduction” of the program.”). Guns and Butter, came on the air in 2001, one of the first programs greenlighted by KPFA’s community-based program council that existed in those years. Guns and Butter, then hosted by Bonnie Faulkner and Kellia Ramares, and for the last decade, solely by Faulkner as an unpaid staffer, had a charter statement to bring to the air deeply alternative voices it was hard to hear elsewhere, with an emphasis on the intersection between economics and politics, and what are often called conspiracy theories, including non-mainstream versions of the events of September 11. The show has *always* pissed people off, and faced significant opposition from KPFA’s News Department and some program hosts at the get-go, and has regularly spurred controversies. It also has one of the largest and most dedicated audiences of any program in the Pacifica Network.  Continue reading June Comes After May and Guns and Butter Goes Away →