Berkeley-Pacifica’s one day national fundraiser on March 2 was a smashing success, raising over a quarter of a million dollars to fully fund both remaining delinquent audits (FY 2015 and FY 2016). Network members in NY, DC, LA and Houston pledged $82K on the phone, $54K via Mobile Cause pledge-by-text and fully used up an $86K match fund provided by the estate of Jim Krivo, a former WBAI programmer and supporter. In Berkeley, KPFA’s listeners didn’t hear the fundraiser due to the station’s own local fundraiser in progress, but a days worth of receipts will go to support the national effort. Pulled off only 19 days after the board changed executive directors and appointed Bill Crosier to the position, the effort ends three years of the network’s board of directors whining there was no money to pay for audits and clears the way for a return to legal compliance in 2017. Continue reading Those Who Can→
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→
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 .
