Berkeley-Long-time alternative health host Gary Null announced on WBAI’s air yesterday that there was a strong possibility he would soon be filing significant litigation against Pacifica Radio. Null did not mention the subject of the lawsuit, but referenced federal authorities and stated he was in possession of compelling evidence to support his charges against the national radio network. You can listen to his on-air announcement here. Continue reading One Judgment and More To Come
Berkeley-Only in Berkeley will the network’s troubled board elections come to a close today, with balloting extended to January 4th in Los Angeles, NY and Houston. The election supervisor has decided to close the Northern California elections despite a large number of voters stating they haven’t gotten ballots and that their requests for replacements have gone unanswered. In last nights national board meeting, L. Joy Williams stated she had more than 600 “unread emails”, most of which are likely to be from voters trying to vote. The closing of the balloting under these circumstances runs contrary to California law which upholds the rights of eligible voters to vote and expects organizations to demonstrate a good faith effort to accommodate those who attempt to participate. If even half of the unread emails come from the Berkeley signal area, the quantity could cause a measurable change in the outcome. Continue reading More Than 600 Unread Emails
Former Siegel and Yee associate attorney Jose Luis Fuentes, who replaced his then-boss Dan Siegel on the Pacifica National Board in January of 2014, has the solution to Pacifica’s problems: jettison the executive director position and sell everything off.
Fuentes has been aggressively pursuing the Siegel/Brazon faction’s bankruptcy strategy, and spent all of Tuesday nights Pacifica governance committee meeting discussing bylaws amendments to dispense with a paid executive director permanently (the network has only had one for 7 of the last 21 months) and to enable the lame duck board to sell off assets without the permission of the network’s members and donors.
Fuentes’ boss of 12 years, Dan Siegel colluded with Margy Wilkinson when both were board members in 2013 to secretly set up a new foundation under their sole control to recover foundation assets should be they be sold off. Wilkinson then went on to orchestrate the firing of the networks ED, replace her with herself and hire Siegel as the corporate counsel.
Berkeley-Ten days after Pacifica’s interim controller issued a long list of accounting schedules and bank reconciliations to meet a projected start date on November 30th for the 2014 audit, it looks likely that deadline, the latest in a long series of blown deadlines, will be missed. Requests from board members for a copy of a signed engagement letter with auditor Armanino have been met with silence. The last meeting of the board’s audit committee wasn’t attended by either the committee chair or the secretary and disbanded rapidly. Continue reading Latest Audit In History
Berkeley-The Pacifica Foundation, 19 months into a coup by the Siegel/Brazon faction, is starting to project its internal demolition onto on-air operations. In the past two weeks, LA station KPFK’s website has collapsed at least three times, once for 4 entire days and the station fell off terrestrial broadcast, the website at www.pacifica.org went dark, the website at www.kpfa.org went dark, WBAI-FM aired the Progressive Radio Network’s internet stream having misplaced its own programs, and the LA archives failed, storing only 15 of the last 132 hours of programming since 6:00am on Monday November 16th. Continue reading System Breakdown
Berkeley-The “60 pages you can’t see” of documentation regarding the bequest directed to Pacifica Foundation Radio that was incorrectly reported as a restricted donation for the exclusive use of KPFA-Radio, has finally been made available. The national board of directors voted the bequest had been made to the Pacifica Foundation and then to distribute the document package to the network’s five local station boards. Continue reading Partial Document Dump Re: Bequest
Berkeley– Thursday night’s Pacifica National Board meeting focused 2 of its 3 hours on the bequest to the Pacifica Foundation deposited into KPFA’s operating account in the spring of 2015 by board chair Margy Wilkinson. The conversation occurred in two parts. In the first hour of the meeting board members jockeyed around agenda items calling for the release of documentation on the bequest diversion. At the end of the hour-long agenda setting session, the document release motion ended up close to the top.
In the third hour, the board voted to release a 60 page document package about the bequest diversion to the network’s five local station boards, but in closed session and not until November 14th. Continue reading The 60 Pages They Won’t Show You
Berkeley-In last night’s Pacifica National Board meeting, held in executive session, the national board voted to order KPFA to refund to the Pacifica Foundation national office the proceeds of one of two large bequests deposited into KPFA’s Mechanics bank account by then-IED Margy Wilkinson. One of the checks (totaling at least $400,000) was donated to the Pacifica Foundation. In the spring of 2015, the “Hall Trust bequest” was characterized as a restricted gift to KPFA, but information derived from a directors inspection convinced the board of directors the gift was instead left to the Pacifica Foundation and misappropriated for the exclusive use of the Berkeley station. The funds were not deposited into the national Pacifica operating bank account where they belonged. Continue reading KPFA Ordered To Refund Bequest
By Kim Kaufman – published in the LA Progressive on October 24, 2015
A quiet coup has taken place at Pacifica, and the results are disastrous. The National Board has failed to carry out its obligations to have elections in a timely manner. Their negligence has led to board members holding seats past the expiration of their terms. One faction now controls the local board at KPFK and the National Board. They are in the process of changing the fundamental nature of our station and the Pacifica network. It is on the brink of bankruptcy.
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| Screenshot of Google Search for “Blue Angels San Francisco 2015,” performed on 10.11.2015 |
– by Ann Garrison
This morning I resolved to write something about a plank that I lobbied to have added to the United for Community Radio/Rescue KPFA platform in KPFA’s Local Station Board election: “Updating KPFA technology so that KPFA reporters can generate news headlines and stories that challenge corporate media’s dominant narratives on the Worldwide Web.” It seems strange that I need to explain something that seems so basic to the new media universe, but I promised to give it a try.
Continue reading Rescue KPFA! Vote for Scott Olsen and the UCR 9!
