Brief snippet from KPFK local station board meeting of June 19th.
Tag Archives: savekpfa
Pay To Vote Or Just Cede Control To Me – KPFA Local Board 2-27
KPFA’s local station board meeting 2-27: the first speaker is Save Kpfa member William Campisi who proposes that national voting rights should be stripped from stations that fall behind on central service payments and then that Pacifica should go into voluntary bankruptcy if it isn’t willing to cede national control to KPFA.
Campisi apparently doesn’t realize that under his plan, his own station KPFA, would have had “its” voting rights stripped from October 2015 to February 2016 when it failed to pay central services due to financial troubles – and for two a half years from January of 2010 to June of 2012 when KPFA was slowly paying back $250,000 in unpaid central service payments to Pacifica in installments.
The second speaker is Save KPFA member and national director Jose-Luis Fuentes who says the other stations in Washington, LA and New York are eyeing KPFA’s fund drive receipts to “subsidize their standard of living”.
Fuentes appears to be unaware that in order to restore CPB funding, Pacifica would have to produce not one, but two, annual audits in the next 88 days, as the FY 2015 audit would be due at the end of June 2016. The $150,000 he quotes for the FY 2014 audit is roughly twice the estimate and twice what an audit for an organization of Pacifica’s size should cost.
The third speaker is UCR-affiliated unpaid staff rep Frank Sterling, who speaks with heart and intelligence and in addition to acknowledging that all of the stations are equally important, brings up the issue of shell corporations being set up to “catch” Pacifica’s assets .
More Than 600 Unread Emails
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
Mr. Destructo
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.
KPFA-Pacifica Union History and Politics
by Bob English
Joe and Lew Hill (1879-1915) – (1919-1957)
IWW and Pacifica Radio
Two named Hill, Lew following Joe a century ago, different national, cultural and class origins; both radical humanists who died young yet contributed so much to our world with unifying, progressive missions and legacies far beyond their lifetimes. Continue reading KPFA-Pacifica Union History and Politics
System Breakdown
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
What’s The “New Low” and Who Is “Sleazy”?
By Frank Sterling
I was astonished to read the latest edition of Save KPFA and its attack on local station board member Janet Kobren. As we all may have heard, the $400,000 bequest left to the Pacifica Foundation was almost grabbed by KPFA for its sole use.
So who has sunk to the “new low” of “sleazy politics”, the person who has pointed out the mistake or the people who show their greed by hoarding the money for themselves to dole it out as they see fit? And their intense expression of hatred and vitriol for a person whose fiduciary duty it is to oversee funds for our network and who pointed out the mistake. Continue reading What’s The “New Low” and Who Is “Sleazy”?
Partial Document Dump Re: Bequest
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
Bankruptcy Is A Beginning
Berkeley-The Pacifica National Board had an informal “strategic planning” meeting Thursday night. In the hour-long meeting, KPFA director Jose-Luis Fuentes pushes for the Pacifica Foundation to move into voluntary bankruptcy, which is described as “a beginning” by PNB director George Reiter. The board indicates they wish to consult with their FCC attorney John Crigler about filing for reorganization, although Crigler is an FCC and copyright attorney, not a bankruptcy attorney. Options on the table are described as a sale of Berkeley’s national office building or a lease, sale or swap of WBAI’s broadcasting license. PNB members Adriana Casenave and Tony Norman insist the board’s discussions about selling real estate, leases, swaps or sales of broadcasting licenses or “debt reorganization” be held in executive session where the network’s members cannot hear them, and discuss how these decisions are “political”. The full meeting audio is here, a seven minute clip is here. Continue reading Bankruptcy Is A Beginning
Censoring Arun Gupta
On November 10, 2015, supporters of the Berkeley wing of the Siegel/Brazon faction (Save KPFA) targeted an interview between Flashpoints host Dennis Bernstein and Indypendent editor Arun Gupta.
Gupta, who writes for The Nation, The Progressive, Al-Jazeera America, and The UK Guardian and has been a Democracy Now correspondent, was accused by Save KPFA supporter Sheila Sexton of being anti-union. This was quickly echoed by SaveKPFA-affiliated local station board member Kate Gowen and former Pacifica IED Margy Wilkinson, who asked for complaints to be filed with KPFA’s general manager and program director over Gupta’s interview. Continue reading Censoring Arun Gupta