The alternative we offer is an UNOFFICIAL ballot collection party, to collect and package ballots for overnight express delivery, outside of KPFA, this Sunday night, December 9th, between 7pm and midnight. This will insure that the ballots, mailed before 2:00 on Monday, will arrive at Election Services Company in New York on December 11th.

You can bring your ballot to the station Sunday evening, we’ll be outside, in front of the station, with USPS express mail boxes, for you to place your ballot in.

We’ll be mailing them via USPS Overnight Express Mail to ensure that they will arrive in Ronkonkoma, NY on Tuesday, the 11th.

Alternatively, you could mail your own ballot by Overnight Express Mail on Monday for $18.95.

We ask and encourage people to contribute to support the cost of this
effort.  

We also invite people to:

1. volunteer to help us on Sunday night,
2. to observe the ballot collection process,  and
3. to go with us to the Post Office to deliver the boxes.

Please help spread the word about this ballot collection party and forward this email as widely as possible.

Thank you all for supporting KPFA and our democratic station board election process.

Hosted by Occupy Concord

Driving directions
From Berkeley – take 56th Ave toward the hills,
turn into CA route 24 east. 
Keep left into Route 680  N. toward Sacramento/Concord for 4.9 miles
Slight right onto route 242.
Exit right, onto Olivera Road, to intersection with Port Chicago Highway
Round Table Pizza is on your right.

From Santa Rosa Take 101 past Petaluma and turn east onto route 37 El Camino Real/
Sears Point Road
At Vallejo turn right (south) onto I 80 West, then left onto 780
780 will merge into 680 going south.
At the intersection with Route 4,turn left, to Pittsburg/e Antioch
Go 2 miles on rte. 4, then turn left onto Port Chicago Highway South,
Just past the intersection with Olvera Road you will see the Round Table Pizza place
on your right.

Public transportation
BART to North Concord-Martinez.
#17 bus North (toward Concord Bart) on Port Chicago Highway to Olvera Road.

QUESTION I didn’t get a ballot. What should I do?

Request a Replacement Ballot.

If you haven’t received your ballot by November 13, 2012, call the “Help
Desk” at the Election Services company to request a replacement ballot.
That toll-free number is 1-866-720-4357.

Ballots were mailed to the postal addresses on record of all members on
November 6, 2012.

QUESTION: How should I mark my ballot? This ranking system is confusing.

Vote all ten United for Community Radio team in whatever order you believe is best for KPFA. Vote for them before you rank any Save KPFA slate candidates.

The method Pacifica/KPFA uses for elections is called Single Transferable Vote, which is a statistical way to allow each voters to have the best possibility to elect those they wish. Like ranked choice voting, it allows you to rank candidates, rather than risking that your choices will take the win away from a front-runner in a winner-take-all election.

The best way to vote in a Single Transferable Election is to rank candidates in the order you believe they will serve KPFA best. In this case, we would like you to vote all ten of the UCR candidates ahead of any SaveKPFA. This will give those who are elected a stronger voice on the board.

QUESTION: I can’t decide. Can I mark them all #1?

Yes you can, although there is a slight downside. You can rank each candidate as #1, or give those you can’t decide between the same ranking. This is slightly less effective as, when the votes are counted, it prevents some of the lowest ranking candidates from staying in the pool long enough to be elected. However, it is perfectly acceptable to choose to give some or all candidates the same ranking. Your votes will be counted.

QUESTION: Isn’t there a strategy to get more votes for the UCR team?

If we knew how the SaveKPFA/Concerned Listeners strategize and how the voters who don’t vote straight tickets would vote (and if we could herd the cats on our side to vote the way we asked), the United For Community Radio team could arrange our rankings in order to maximize the number of seats we get. But we don’t know that and our voters are smarter and more independent than cats. Instead, we are simply asking as many listener-members as possible to vote for all ten of our candidates ahead of anyone else.

For more about the Single Transferable Vote election method.

by Isis Feral
isisferal@yahoo.com

I was raised by several generations of labor organizers, and in every labor dispute my side is easily chosen. I don’t cross picket lines, and I always stand with the workers against their bosses. The current conflict inside KPFA is the first time I’ve ever seen my community divided on an issue concerning labor solidarity.

While labor struggles are usually strictly polarized, it is important to keep in mind that KPFA is a nonprofit community radio station, where the traditional class lines are much harder to draw. In theory the community is in charge of the station, or at least it should be.  It’s the community who pays the bills, and who this station claims to serve.

Community radio is supposed to be by and for the community, more like a movement than a business. The majority of KPFA workers are community members, who donate their labor for free. As some tasks require consistent, daily attention, a limited number of workers must be paid for their time, because volunteering the necessary hours would interfere with their ability to make a living. The line between workers and management is blurry, to say the least. To complicate matters, several unionized workers recently held management positions, or effectively behave like managers.

For some time now a group among the paid workers and their allies on the Local Station Board (LSB) have largely held control over the management of the station. With the capitalist economic crisis crippling our communities, the station’s income has understandably been less. When budget cuts had to be made, they were agreed to by this group, but were never implemented. This happened two years in a row. With each new budget, the cuts were deeper, because the previous cuts were never made. Now the necessary cuts are deeper still, because KPFA funds were massively mismanaged: More money was spent than was coming in, including a million dollars the station had in reserve. The height of incompetence was achieved when a six figure check intended to earn interest sat in their general manager’s desk for a year instead of being deposited, apparently unnoticed even by their treasurer. Recent payroll funds had to be borrowed from another station. The station is broke and we’re at risk of losing it altogether.

On the LSB this managing group was represented by the slate calling itself Concerned Listeners. Right before the last elections this slate renamed itself Save KPFA, in what appeared to be an effort to confuse and solicit the support of voters who remember the original Save KPFA, which had the polar opposite intent of this group: The original organization officially formed in order to defend community control of the radio station in the 1990′s. This new group, on the other hand, has actively attempted to dismantle community oversight, and to defer control to a small percentage of KPFA staff, who call themselves KPFA Worker. The appropriation of another organization’s name, and attempt to benefit from its history, was just one of several unfair campaign practices this group has been involved in over the years. Among other things, they repeatedly used the airwaves to gain support for their slate, without giving the other candidates fair access to do the same.

The new Save KPFA is representing the issue as a labor dispute, and is claiming that the union of the paid workers is getting busted. Let me be clear: There is currently NO union busting going on at KPFA. Because of the deficit, and a refusal to actually implement budgets these people had agreed to, the axe that is falling now is impacting some of their own people, not just the jobs of others that they themselves have threatened to eliminate, or eliminated already. These cuts are being represented as going by a “hit list” against progressive programmers, but actually they are being made by seniority, and follow the guidelines of their own union contract, unlike the cuts they have advocated themselves. It’s terrible to see people losing their jobs, but this is not union busting by any stretch of the imagination.

The real union busting that happened at KPFA was in the 1990′s, when the Pacifica National Board, which was at the time undemocratically appointed, hired professional union busters, the American Consulting Group. They busted the independent, progressive United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), which represented all KPFA workers, both paid and unpaid. Local 9415 of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) swooped in like a vulture, and became an exclusive job trust for the paid staff. Many people now refer to the managing faction of the still unionized workers as the “entrenched staff”, and some call the CWA a “scab union”. From the start the CWA played the divisive role of an elitist private club, rather than that of a union. To this date unpaid workers, who currently make up about 80% of KPFA’s workforce, are barred from membership. Many of them have been donating their labor to KPFA for many years. Without them the station and community radio cannot exist.

Unpaid staff represented by the UE were entitled to such benefits as travel expenses and childcare. The latter is particularly relevant in considering what happened to Nadra Foster in 2008, when she was accused of misappropriating KPFA resources, after printing out a few sheets of math homework to keep her children engaged while she was working. This accusation lead to her getting banned from the station, charged with trespassing, and beaten and injured by the cops, who were called by management without any interference from the entrenched staff. Even in the aftermath their names are conspicuously absent among those of 74 of their fellow workers, who condemned management’s use of police force, and expressed solidarity with Nadra.

The year prior, right before the 2007 LSB elections, the Unpaid Staff Organization (UPSO), which is the closest thing to a union for volunteering workers at KPFA, was decertified (a friendly name for union busting) by station management supported by these Concerned Listeners. This move eliminated the rights of many of the unpaid staff to participate in the elections. In 2005 a leaked email among members of the entrenched staff and their supporters, the suggestion was made that perhaps the LSB should be dismantled altogether. Under their management the Program Council, previously in charge of deciding programming, has also been effectively stripped of its power. Does this sound like community control?

As a child of the labor movement, I am appalled to see people, who are behaving as management at the station, opportunistically exploiting their on-paper union membership to solicit the support of the labor movement and the left, while they are refusing to comply with the very union contract, that was negotiated on the backs of their sacrificed fellow workers. I believe that the fake Save KPFA (on Indybay someone refers to them as “Slave KPFA”) and the KPFA Worker group are misrepresenting this as a labor dispute in an attempt to politically legitimize their turf war. What they are teaching listeners about community building and organizing labor are disastrous lessons to be aired on a supposedly progressive radio station, and represents a grave disservice to the community at large, and the labor movement in particular.

The recent “informational picket” was another example of this group merely posturing as organized labor. Using the word “picket” to describe a protest, which does not have the explicit intent to blockade, teaches people that real picket lines are negotiable, that it’s okay to cross them. Historically picket lines are not merely gatherings where we exercise free speech. They are a very specific form of direct action. Picket lines mean don’t cross! It’s not a matter of semantics. Picket lines are THE militant direct action tradition of the labor movement. Of course, this point is likely lost on KPFA’s current union staff, since their right to strike was bargained away for higher pay by the CWA, as they betrayed their fellow workers of the UE.

The Pacifica management of the 1990′s recognized that the UE represented not just workers, but that the workers in turn represent our communities. Replacing the UE with the CWA created a deep division within KPFA, and paved the way for what we are witnessing today. The current crisis is part of a long history of attempts to undermine community control at the station, and to turn it into just another main stream professional media outlet. But one doesn’t have to be a professional to understand what generations of working class people have taken for granted as basic common decency: Any labor organization that does not represent all workers has no business calling itself a union.

Union corruption has become a stereotype used by conservatives to rally working people against unionizing. What they conveniently leave out is that unions belong to workers, not to paid union bureaucrats who corrupt the union’s integrity, as well as their own, as they negotiate compromises with the boss. When there is such corruption, it’s the responsibility of the rank and file to reclaim the union as the tool for which it was intended. A union’s primary purpose is to unite workers. The CWA must be held accountable, not be rewarded with community solidarity, for its divisive role at KPFA. If the union continues to refuse membership and the right to collective bargaining to the majority of KPFA workers, unpaid workers owe it to themselves and their communities, to organize union representation for themselves elsewhere. I urge the KPFA community at large, including those paid workers who still remember what solidarity really means, to encourage and actively aid such efforts.

——————————————————————————————-

Note: The author is an autonomous activist, who is not affiliated with, nor endorses, any of the LSB election slates, nor any other organization, but writes strictly from her own conscience. The embedded links in this text are not exhaustive evidence to support my views, but merely a small selection of additional information I found personally helpful in illustrating my position. I encourage all to do your own research and fact-checking and reach your own conclusions.

Michael Parenti

These self-appointed elites consume almost the entire budget while producing only 20 percent of the programs.  I also would like the dedicated volunteer staff to be able to have an organized union voice of its own.  And it would be grand if we could get more diversity in programming and personnel from time to time, bringing progressive ideas to the fore instead of the same old NPR imitations. 

And I wish the elite paid staff would show some regard for KPFA’s (listener-supported) budget and not act as if they are pitted against a rich corporate giant.”

In his Nov 5th Counterpunch op-ed titled “The Battle for Pacifica,” Oakland attorney Dan Siegel exhibits a severe case of amnesia. While chronicling a presumed series of deeds he claims occurred since 2009, Mr. Siegel mentions nothing at all that happened prior to 2009.

As if Pacifica were a tabulae rasa born shiny and new at the exact moment Mr. Siegel and his cronies lost their 6 year grip on the foundation’s national board of directors.

Siegel was the Pacifica attorney from 2006-2009, and at all times a powerful player in internal affairs and prime financial backer of the Concerned Listeners group that now calls itself Save KPFA. It is disingenuous for Siegel to pretend to a lack of culpability for some of the unfortunate circumstances he presents.

The Internet, at last report, existed well before 2009, so one must ask why in the decade prior no technology upgrades were made by the group Siegel now wishes to return to leadership. Who does he think failed to invest money — when Pacifica had money to invest — in digital technology throughout the 2000′s?

Well …. um….. himself?

In fact, his crew didn’t even maintain the radio transmitters, which in 2012, failed in both Houston and Los Angeles. 

As the legal adviser to the board of directors in 2006, Siegel had every opportunity to point out the unaffordability of the Empire State building lease for WBAI-FM’s transmitter, which was signed in 2006 for 20 years with rates that increase by 15% a year. Instead, he recommended that the board sign it, and sign it they did.

Or perhaps the WBAI lease at Wall Street which was signed repeatedly by him and his cronies in what the then-minority knew even then was financial insanity? That’s not even mentioning a totally nutty balloon loan proposed in 2008 that would have endangered foundation buildings and licenses and was averted by one solitary vote from the contingent he ridiculously insults.

This kind of raw hypocrisy is the problem.

Siegel fails to mention his role in actively supporting a number of managers in extracting significant legal settlements from Pacifica after termination, greatly exacerbating the financial chickens that came home to roost in 2009-2010. Siegel served as an attorney for fired KPFK manager Eva Georgia and testified  on behalf of Lonnie Hicks after he was let go as the CFO. These legal shenanigans are his responsibility and his alone. They’re usually defined as malpractice.

Siegel’s Save KPFA contingent described unpaid workers at KPFA-FM as “clowns” on Michael Krasny’s Forum radio program, needlessly insulting the workers who create 75% of the program content and raise more than 1/2 the operational funds.
The point is, the last thing Pacifica needs is more of the same. Economic pressures are what they are. Like Pacifica, San Francisco’s public radio station KALW-FM also has a going concern alert on their audit. It’s endemic in this age of financial catastrophe. Very few of us besides wealthy lawyers  are a going concern these days.

Siegel is so desperate to keep control of Berkeley’s KPFA-FM that he ran a lawyer from his own firm, Siegel and Yee, for the KPFA board in 2010 and now proposes to add a third lawyer from Siegel and Yee, Jose Fuentes Roman, to the local board. This will make more than 10% of the local board his current and former employees. Does Siegel and Yee think KPFA-FM is their personal property?

Reject this nonsense and vote for candidates who are not a part of the Siegel machine.

http://www.votecommunityradio.org in Berkeley
http://www.candidateslate.org in LA and
http://TakeForwardWBAI.net in New York.

Pacifica will thank you. Its survival depends on not repeating the mistakes of the past decade.

Tracy Rosenberg is the executive director of Media Alliance and a current local board member at KPFA-FM in Berkeley.

Ramsés Téon Nichols: Organizing Committee Chair of Local SEIU 1021 and member of SF Green Party.  Endorsed by San Francisco Green Party and SEIU Local 1021.

Ramsés Téon Nichols

I am running for Local Station Board (LSB) because KPFA is part of my community. I began listening when I moved to the Bay Area as a San Francisco State student in 2001. I migrated from borderland Mexico and was raised in Las Vegas, NV where we had little community empowerment yet all the community problems one can imagine.

When I first tuned in to KPFA, I felt validated and empowered, taping shows and mailing them to friends back home because such programming would be impossible to hear there. I value KPFA for its relationship with our community. I’m now a Bay Area resident, a Union nonprofit worker, and a labor and community organizer with experience mediating, facilitating, and building alliances. I look forward to being your LSB member and furthering KPFA’s mission and values in the Bay Area and beyond.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and believe it is one of the best communities in the world. The struggles here are struggles that many people pay attention to and learn from all over the country and the world.  I believe that KPFA plays a leading role in keeping our social justice community connected, both culturally and through communication.  I would like tosee KPFA meet its challenges today and in the future in a way that is positive and healthy for all.

As a listener, I’ve noticed a lot of difficulties at KPFA recently, including labor relations with its workers.  This is a field where I have experience in as a Union shop steward at my workplace and a labor and community organizer, stepping up as a mediator and a facilitator in many difficult decision-making situations.  Often the difficulties and struggles we face in our community can find their way to our work and cultural spaces where we engage daily.  I would like to be a part of helping KPFA work through its internal struggles and move us forward with the best decisions we can make together.

As we develop healthy, respectful, and productive ways to organize ourselves internally, I believe and will work hard to see that we need to give our listeners, staff, and volunteers all of our support in charting a path for KPFA’s future.  This primarily includes analyzing how best we can increase our listener base through electronic media.  It also includes keeping to our mission and values as we try to expand our base and meet our financial goals.

I urge you to give me the opportunity to be on the LSB and be able to do all of this. Thank you.

Vote for me and the United for Community Radio slate: VoteCommunityRadio.org

Questions and Answers

1.         In what ways is your station moving in a positive direction, that you would want to continue or perhaps improve?

I believe our station KPFA is continuing to reach out to labor and Unions increasingly in the coverage.  I also believe that Occupy reopened a lot of the political discourse around social and economic justice issues that were present in the anti-globalization and anti-war movements.  KPFA and Pacifica went out of its way to make sure that these issues and all discourse and stories were covered well.

2.         In what ways is your station moving in a negative direction, that you would want to stop or change? What changes would you work for?

I believe that programming and staffing is facing serious challenges.  Many of us believe that the station has been in challenging times financially and therefore tough decisions have to be made around programming and staffing.  As a Union Member and a KPFA listener, I want to respect all workers, paid or unpaid, volunteers, and listeners when it comes to deciding the best course of action for our station.  I would participate in facilitating the processes necessary for us to make the best decisions possible in such difficult times.

3.         What key experience, connections, skills or traits would you bring to the Local Station Board to advance the station’s mission?

I’ve been a student/youth and community organizer.  I’m currently a labor and Union organizer.  Professionally, I’ve worked as a counselor in social services. I have a lot of experience in de-escalation, conflict resolution, and alliance-building in the political community in San Francisco and the Bay Area.  I would bring all my skills I’ve learned into serving for our community station KPFA.

4.         What ideas do you have for helping the station and the Pacifica Foundation meet the financial challenges currently being faced?

I have had many conversations with staff and listeners about this.  I believe that being clever and creative in our current situation will help us best. We are in challenging times where electronic media has become at least as popular as on-the-air radio. Many of our staff and listeners already have the ideas necessary for KPFA to further develop and put itself out there electronically.  Once we analyze how other stations are doing this successfully, we can map out our best decisions for our station to move forward.  I would fight for us to meet these challenges and stay true to our Mission and principles as KPFA and Pacifica.

Akio Tanaka, KPFA LSB Member (2006-2012)

Current situation and background

As long time observers know, there never seems to be peace at KPFA-Pacifica.

After the 1999 Crisis, Pacifica reorganized with new bylaws which called for democratic governance by a board elected by the listeners and staff, both paid and unpaid. Immediately, a divide formed over the new governance. The current conflict is a continuation of this divide.

The current conflict began with the layoffs in 2010, when the union accused the Pacifica management of union busting and usurping local control. While it is the duty of the union to fight to save jobs, anyone who has seen KPFA’s annual audited financial reports can see that the KPFA’s local management more than doubled the payroll during the boom years of 2000 – 2006, and then failed to make the necessary cuts when the economy collapsed and listener support plummeted in 2006-2010. The number of staff the station can afford to pay is directly tied to the level of listener support which in large part depends on the state of the economy. By 2010, the station was in danger of insolvency, which is the ONLY reason Pacifica stepped in.

There have also been claims that the layoffs were political and did not follow the union contract, but the National Labor Relations Board has dismissed as‘without merit’ all five complaints filed by the union regarding this matter.

Underlying problems

One major area of friction is programming. It stands to reason that a trade union looking after the financial security of its members will prefer programming that appeals to the more affluent, if progressive, audience. But the mission of Pacifica is to be the commons of the airwaves, to represent a broader and more diverse community, to include the voices of the voiceless and marginalized.

Another area of friction is the working relationship between paid and unpaid staff. Until 1996 both were represented by one “industrial” union. In 1996 this was changed to a “craft” union that no longer represented the unpaid staff. This created a kind of a class system resulting in an uneasy working relationship between the paid and the unpaid staff.

Possible Solutions

So what to do with these conflicting needs and interests? How does a union look after the financial security of its members in a non-profit organization that does not make profits and must live within a balanced budget?

The primary task of the station should be to fulfill the mission of Pacifica. The management and union should carefully work out a paid staffing level that can be sustained over the economic ups and downs and avoid the temptation to add too many people during the economic boom times, like what happened in 2000-2006.

A sustainable paid staffing level would help remove the one main source of anxiety and tension. It would also end the practice of measuring the value of program only by the amount of money it brings in, a sad and ironic state of affairs. This is not to devalue well-produced programs, but to invest more resources into training and support thereby increasing the production value of all programs.

Pacifica holds the unique position of giving a platform to the powerless and voiceless, as the union did at one time, and while the notion of workers’ rights resonates to all within the progressive community, it must be remembered that it is to respect and honor ALL labor, not just paid labor.

It is important to note that KPFA relies on a large number of unpaid staff; 75% of the programming is done by the unpaid staff. At KPFA there simply is not enough money to pay all those who contribute to the station.

A progressive organization like KPFA should have one all inclusive union for everyone who works at KPFA.

Bringing Peace to KPFA and Pacifica

It is time for all the staff, paid and unpaid, and for listeners to embrace the democratic victory that was won for us in legal and street battles of 1999-2001 and by the people who formed the original “Save KPFA” in the mid-1990’s. KPFA was not sold from under us, and thanks to their efforts, it never will be. It is time to bring peace to KPFA and Pacifica and help strengthen this priceless resource.

‘United for Community Radio’ (UCR) coalition stands for:
Community Resource – Reclaim the mission of Pacifica and KPFA as commons, with broad and diverse participation, not to be controlled by any particular group or party.
Program Council – Programming decisions to be made in fair, collaborative, and respectful manner.
Mutual Respect – Foster cooperation and equality for paid and unpaid staff.

Please vote for the following ‘United for Community Radio’ candidates:

Ramsés Téon Nichols -Organizing Committee Chair of Local SEIU 1021, SF Green Party
Dr. Laurence Shoup –Historian, Author “Rulers and Rebels”,former Green Party candidate
Karen Pickett – Earth First!, Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, Global Justice Ecology Project
Andrea Pritchett – Incumbent board member, teacher, Copwatch founder
Samsarah Morgan -Oakland Green Party, Occupy Oakland, writer on birth, health and family
Dave Welsh – Labor organizer, delegate SF Labor Council, Haiti Action Committee, Occupy Oakland
Oriana Saportas – Community & Labor activist, former KPFA Local Election Supervisor
Kate Tanaka - Incumbent board member, anti-corporate stalwart
Beth Seligman - Vegetarian occupier, permaculturist, writer, law degree
Virginia Browning – Long time KPFA activist, former radio programmer
[Staff candidates: David Landau, Frank Sterling, Joy Moore]

Laurence Shoup:  Author of Rulers and Rebels: A People’s History of Early California, 1769-1901, & other books, Green Party stalwart, longtime community and people’s movement activist.  Endorsed by Gayle McLaughlin, Gray Brechin, ry cooder, James Vann and Michael Parenti.

Laurence Shoup

Laurence Shoup requests your vote for the United for Community Radio slate. 

This election comes at a decisive moment, when the ecological, economic, social and political problems facing humanity amount to a profound systemic crisis. We who want to create a new society, one focused on ecological sanity and full human development, see KPFA’s mission as an independent, educational institution dedicated to the promotion of peace, equality, solidarity, direct participatory democracy, and social justice as central in confronting this crisis and promoting our community’s common struggle. The mainstream corporate media will always exclude us, KPFA must be our voice, the voice for our people’s movements, helping them unite and work together in the epic fight to transform the nation and the world.

I have been a people’s movement activist for over four decades, beginning with the 1960s anti-Vietnam war and civil rights struggles. While working my way through college during those years, I joined the union movement. I have actively participated as a member of three unions, most recently the National Writers Union, which I represented for several years on the Central Labor Council of Alameda County. I have been an educator, including teaching at the college level, using as my inspiration Howard Zinn’s vision of an engaged scholar in solidarity with the people’s movements.

I am the author of numerous magazine articles, mainly for Z Magazine, and four books, the most recently Rulers and Rebels: A People’s History of Early California, 1769-1901, documenting the historic struggles of our state’s people’s movements. I am currently working on my fifth book, on the Council on Foreign Relations in the current neoliberal era. I have also run for political office as a Green Party candidate twice, for Oakland City Council (1996) and for California Secretary of State (2002). My strong support for KPFA resulted in my arrest for non-violent civil disobedience during the pivotal 1999 struggle to save our station.

My long experience in the people’s movements has taught me the centrality of full democracy/transparency, mutual respect, and the importance of building unity and consensus in organizations. The United for Community Radio Platform stresses these core beliefs, seeing KPFA as a key community resource, as a commons, for our collective future. For KPFA to survive we need financial viability through a financial plan, including more events which combine education and culture with enjoyment. A reactivated Program Council to improve programming, along with an improved web presence, including searchable archives, will help us reach more listeners.

We, the candidates of the United for Community Radio slate, are committed to maintaining and expanding KPFA as the voice for the progressive people’s movements.

The institutions of the people’s movements must be free of the alienation and commodification typical of capitalist society. We are committed to mass participation as the antidote.

Please honor us with your vote.

I am endorsed by Gayle McLaughlin, Gray Brechin, ry cooder, James Vann and Michael Parenti.

Karen Pickett:  Environmental and civil rights activist; Earth First!,  Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, Global Justice Ecology Project

Katen PIckett

KPFA has been a big part of my life since the 1970s, when I relocated to California from the east coast. I have been an environmental and social justice activist since the mid-70s, long affiliated with Earth First!, Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters, the Global Justice Ecology Project, the Ecology Center, and many other grassroots campaigns and groups. I am also on the School Board of Canyon Unified School District. I believe in the power of direct action-along with hard work-and have been very excited and inspired the past year by the Occupy Movement. We must evolve. And KPFA must evolve, constantly, intelligently, thoughtfully and with utmost respect for the people who keep the station alive and vital, and respect for the issues.

I depend on KPFA to be an informed activist, but I have also stood as a source of news stories, interview referrals and information on issues being covered by programmers in the news and public affairs departments. That access-for grassroots activists in the trenches-is one of the strengths of KPFA. The truth can be an elusive thing, and it takes hard work, and a combination of sourcing from the “experts” and from those in the trenches to arrive at a semblance of the truth. To attract and keep the kind of programmers, paid or unpaid, who will do that hard work in cooperation with our community requires that KPFA be an environment where people can thrive. It is up to all of us to build that environment, and also to be the boosters of this place on the dial that we are so blessed to have in the Bay Area. I hope I can make a contribution.

KPFA in many ways came out to show its stuff – what it is uniquely capable of-during the Occupy movement.  Journalism in the streets, and from the trenches is one of things KPFA does best–vital particularly because it’s not duplicated in other media. Whether bringing the streets into the studio or bringing the mics into the streets, KPFA has to be a place that attracts both the powerful voices and the disenfranchised to be the voice of the people, and we need that to effect change.

The discord and problems at KPFA are undeniable and stand in stark contrast to the quality programming we hear on the air. That said, we can and must do what is necessary to ensure financial stability and a workplace that supports all who bring their skills to the air. I think I have something to offer this station I love and we all need. I support the platform United for Community Radio, but respect and value so many programmers at KPFA.

Vote for me and United for Community Radio.

 Questions & Answers

1.         In what ways is KPFA moving in a positive direction, that you would want to continue or perhaps improve?

Recent Reports to the Listener harken back to days when this happened more often, sometimes in the context of shows that were largely call-in.  It not only involves the listener and allows them to feel more a part of the process, but brilliant and creative ideas sometimes pop up from people we might not otherwise hear from.

Recent fundraising has been more successful, and that buoys programmers, as well as getting to a more stable financial situation. Let’s analyze what went right in the most successful fund drives and see what we can replicate.

More programmers out in the streets collecting news and on-the-spot interviews always injects excitement and an involved perspective into newscasts, which, by their nature can sometimes be dry. Setting up mobile broadcasting, as was done at Occupy, is a fantastic idea!

2.         In what ways is your station moving in a negative direction, that you would want to stop or change? What changes would you work for?

Partisan politics often run entirely counter to real problem solving, and the factionalism at KPFA is something that saddens and troubles me tremendously, in part because it undercuts stability and a supportive and safe work environment.  I have great respect for so many people at KPFA, and do hold hope that given the intelligent and creative minds at the station, we can learn better ways of working together.  It is not sitting in a circle singing Kumbaya, but it does have to do with tolerance, respect, and recognition of the beauty of diversity of ideas.

3.         What key experience, connections, skills or traits would you bring to the Local Station Board to advance the station’s mission?

After working on the front lines of Earth First! campaigns, and with many other organizations, including founding a “blue/green” alliance, The Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, and many other environmental organizations as well as groups seeking justice in Native American cases, and teaching classes in activist skills, I have a wide ranging community and consider myself pretty well-connected in the larger Bay Area and beyond community.

I have also been on a number of Boards of Directors, including the Ecology Center, the Global Justice Ecology Project, and most recently the School Board in my community, as well as many advisory boards and task forces. I believe I know how to be a team player. I am also a good listener (and listening and truly hearing each other is key),

4.         What ideas do you have for helping the station and the Pacifica Foundation meet the financial challenges currently being faced?

Fund-raising is always one of the toughest areas to approach, but I have heard some creative ideas tossed around recently, like tapping into purchases from programmers’ playlists (something complex at best, but targeting an audience who are perhaps not yet subscribers), and perhaps doing fundraising out in the community at outreach tables, as well as lining up large concert gigs.

Andrea Prichett: Incumbent board member, community activist, teacher, Copwatch founder.

Get the Signal – 94.1 KPFA

We may love it or hate it, but still, KPFA is ours and we must do our best to be good and faithful stewards of this precious resource.  We need the station to unite people and support an inclusive educational process that distributes reliable information to and about communities. 

There is plenty that I want to do and want to see done. I want to focus on traditionally less partisan areas of station functioning.

I helped to start the KPFA Outreach committee and now some very dedicated volunteers have come forward to take up that work. In addition to tabling, volunteers are exploring how to start support groups in other listener areas, how to partner with community groups, how to make ourselves known in diverse communities and how to get the fact that we can be heard in Santa Cruz more widely known.

Andrea Prichett

We need a strong network of stations to be supported by a Foundation that coordinates the commons, facilitates sharing of content, helps with distribution of resources and curriculum about topics related to volunteer radio and much more.

I want us to consider an online voting system and how to secure such a thing. Imagine how much we could save in election materials. What if we could have many elections for very low cost? How could that change our understanding of democratic radio?

There is a lot we can do to promote and strengthen KPFA and the ties within our communities.

United for Community Radio is made up of activists and others who share a vision of a station that facilitates and encourages grassroots, community access and that acts as part of a federation of similarly independent stations and affiliates. These are also folks who get things done in the neighborhood. Vote For United for Community Radio. Healthy radio, healthy communities!

GET THE SIGNAL

94.1 KPFA

Samsarah Morgan

Samsarah Morgan: Oakland Green Party, Occupy Oakland Activist, writer on birth, health and family

In brief:  I come by the decision on to run because many people in my community asked me to.   As I researched the issues and concerns of KPFA I began to understand why.

One of my most valuable skills is the ability to relate positively with a wide variety of people, as well as to create bridges between people who would ordinarily not relate to one another at all. Every aspect of the work I do for the families and children of the Bay Are focuses on healing and healthy communication, on the levels of mind, body and soul.

If I am elected, my focus will not be backward but forward. I am completely disinterested either in taking sides, nor re-visiting past conflicts.  My focus will be to do my utmost to be one of the stewards of a most precious resource:  our communities’ public radio station.

More about Samsarah:  I am a mother, a grandmother and a resident of Oakland for 24 years.  I love this city and have always grieved the reality of the chronic misgovernance of Oakland – and how this consistently threatens to render this city an unsafe and unappealing place to raise children.

I am an holistic health provider and community midwife.  I am focused on serving in any way that creates not only the possibility of financial prosperity for the citizens of Oakland – but emotional, spiritual, and psychological prosperity as well.  Healthy and happy adults result in a greater possibility for safety and the flowering well being of children.

I am a skilled mediator and counselor – a gift which has stood me in good stead in many environments.

I have, since last year, been deeply involved with the Occupy Movement in Oakland and, in that capacity, have been the founder of two committees, and sit on three others.  I am one of the founders of Occupy Oakland Children’s Village, the area for children’s and families that existed as part of the Oakland encampment.  Occupy Oakland was the first of our national encampments that had a program or space for families to come and find out about the movement.  Our children had as safe a space as could be provided in the face of the illegal and criminal policies and decisions of our government.

I would like to assist KPFA in any way possible.  I am aware that the organization has long standing challenges which have plagued it over recent years.  And although I have certainly heard bits and pieces of the various facts and opinions about this – I have largely remained out of the fray.  This, I feel, is an asset of my candidacy.

My focus will be in what serves the community served by their public radio station.  My work in the natural birth community as well as the Occupy movement has well educated me in how very important it is to have the free and unedited flow of information to the people.  It is a tragedy for that flow to be hindered by infighting of any kind.

My focus and desire is also to educate and welcome people of color, women and younger people, and provide mentorship for KPFA membership and service in the future.

I would like to do what I can to reach out to those who are tempted to check out of what is perceived by them to be mainstream processes altogether and prevent the loss of the energy of such individuals.

Bottom line, I look forward to bringing a fresh set of eyes to KPFA and a strong desire for community service as well as a commitment to sow the seeds for continued community engagement into the future.

Thank you for reading this and considering me.  I look forward to working with you for the betterment of the organization, as well as all who are served by KPFA.

Sincerely,

L. Samsarah Morgan
(510) 393-7380
lsamsarahmorgan@gmail.com