THE PACIFICA FINANCIAL CRISIS!
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
Recently WBAI management did not pay their rent for four months and
received a Three Day Notice to pay or be subject to eviction. This was
not promptly communicated to the financial or executive management of
Pacifica. WBAI has been losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year
for several years and currently owes Pacifica over $1,000,000.00 in
back central services contributions. Each station contributes
20% of its listener-generated revenue to run the Foundation. When one
station isn’t making its contribution the results are that the
Foundation is short on money or the other stations have to pay more.
This several year problem at WBAI and the current economic downturn
has caused serious financial problems for Pacifica. The current Pacifica
National Board (PNB), elected in January, gives hope for the survival
of Pacifica.
Why didn’t Pacifica correct this problem early on? There was collusion
among some PNB members from various stations to allow WBAI to
do what they wanted to do with no oversight or accountability to the
Bylaws or the listener/subscribers. The major players in this collusion
were from KPFA, WBAI and WPFW, with a vote or two from KPFK and KPFT
and the affiliate Reps on the PNB.
The Local Station Board (LSB) majorities at KPFA and WBAI generally
elected three PNB members that supported this collusion and WPFW, until
recently, often sent four. There are 22 members of the PNB, four from
each station and two Affiliate Representatives. An LSB majority can
elect three of the four PNB members for their station. With ten votes
from KPFA, WBAI and WPFW it only takes three votes from the ten from
the other two stations and affiliate reps to have a majority to control
the PNB and continue this collusion. Until this last January the Colluders
had the majority for several years.
Who are the Colluders and why did they do this? Local tyrannical majorities
wanted to run their stations without regard to the Bylaws and with no
oversight from the Foundation. At KPFA the “KPFAForward”
(2004) and “Concerned Listener” (CL) (2006 & 2007) slates
represented the same management/staff faction and generally endorsed
majorities that sent three PNB members who consistently voted to protect
and continue the collusion. This group included William Walker, Sarv
Randhawa, Rosalinda Palacios, Mary Berg, Sherry Gendelman, Bonnie Simmons
and Andrea Turner. They consistently vote/voted with the Justice &
Unity majority from WBAI and the WPFW majority. They generally sit together
at the PNB meetings and are regularly seen privately caucusing together
at lunch and before and after meetings sometimes, with GM Lemlem Rijio
when in Berkeley.
Prior to this year’s PNB, Bob Lederer was the Justice & Unity
leader on the PNB. I have attended many PNB meetings and listened
to most of the others on line. During those meetings if KPFA Colluder
PNB members were not sure how to vote they often passed if Bob Lederer
hadn’t voted or passed. When he voted they would follow. If you
don’t believe me go to the archives of the meetings and listen.
Rosalinda Palacios (2006) was especially consistent with following Lederer’s
votes.
Whenever there was a move to correct the problems at WBAI the KPFA Colluders
always voted with the others to protect the LSB majority at WBAI. Patty
Heffley, the minority PNB Rep from WBAI, made a motion to have the PNB
order the WBAI LSB to do a performance review of the general manager
(GM) and the program director. The Bylaws require these to be done annually.
At WBAI they had never been done, despite complaints from the LSB minority.
The PNB Colluder majority refused to order the WBAI LSB to follow the
Bylaws. Many others complained about WBAI being out of control and losing
money and the Colluder PNB majority did NOTHING as the red ink continued
to flow.
At KPFA the CL slate and the Rijio/Lilley management work together to
make sure they maintain a majority on the LSB to elect three PNB members
from their group. One of their methods was to have no election information
on the air when the ballots went out and at the same time the CL sent
a slate mailer. After the first time this happened I wrote a motion
on the PNB Election Committee requiring election information to be on
the air during the election. It passed out of the election committee
by a 10-2 vote. The Colluder majority on the PNB voted it down.
When they finally ran some candidate information they ran 22 candidate
statements in a row, always with Sherry Gendelman first! At the April
2009 PNB meeting in Berkeley the new non-Colluder PNB majority passed
a motion requiring broad election coverage on the air.
The Colluder majority was consistently against transparency. The Bylaws
and California law allow Directors, PNB members, the “absolute
right” to inspect all documents and facilities at any reasonable
time. For years the Colluders fought to stop or hinder Directors’
Inspections. When inspections were finally allowed due to potential
lawsuits it was discovered that $65,000 worth of equipment had been
sent to a WBAI former GM’s father’s house and was
not accounted for. As recently as 2008 a Director was ordered out of
WBAI in the middle of a lawful inspection without any justification.
Who gave the order? Dan Siegel, interim Executive Director, hired by
the Colluder majority.
So when you hear Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Sherry Gendelman, Bonnie Simmons,
Conn or Matthew Hallinan, Warren Mar or any of the CL allies complain
about KPFA money going to shore up WBAI, they and their allies are responsible
for this crisis for trading fiscal responsibility for their power to
ignore the Bylaws, transparency and accountability.
To save Pacifica we must vote out the CL Colluders in the next election
so they will not be able to send three Colluders to the PNB to ignore
the Bylaws and progressive principles in favor of uncontrolled tyranny
of the local majorities. KPFA is a Commons that belongs to all of us,
and it must be protected and preserved above the CL/Rijio group’s
desire for unrestrained and unaccountable power.
Richard Phelps, former Chair, KPFA LSB
KPFA:
TEN YEARS AFTER THE 1999 HIJACK ATTEMPT
After mass listener support rescued KPFA and Pacifica
from a self appointed Pacifica National Board (PNB) that was planning
to sell KPFA or one of the other stations and take the “community”
out of the network, new democratic Bylaws were written and adopted.
You can read the Bylaws at: http://pacifica.org/governance/PacificaBylaws-new.html
. Pacifica’s Bylaws state a commitment for peace and social
justice, Article One, Section 3. It seems inconceivable that peace and
social justice can even be approached with out a democratic process
with transparency and accountability. As Gandhi said “Be the change
you want to see in the world.”
As Pacifica embarked on its new democratic path it became clear is that
everyone that fought the Hijackers didn’t do so for the same reason!
Most listener activists and some staff supported the new democratic
process and welcomed the involvement and input of the listener/subscribers
who are the regular audience and the financial supporters of the station
and Pacifica.
At KPFA some staff and their supporters sought to defeat the Hijackers
so that they could control KPFA and make the decisions about who/what
gets air time and who gets the paid jobs. This latter group has used
the power of the stations progressive reputation and the power of the
microphone to maintain control and frustrate the new Bylaws in many
ways. The staff group I am referring to was identified by an e-mail
from Brian Edwards-Tiekert to the other “insiders” that
became public in 2005. You can read the e-mail at http://peoplesradio.net/Dismantle.htm
. The author acknowledged its authenticity. Their group now claims that
it never met to discuss “dismantling the Local Station Board (LSB)”,
aka the democratic process, or “how do we make our enemies own
the problems that are to come”. This group has been supported
by their electoral counter part, first called KPFAForward (2004) and
now Concerned Listeners (CL).
In the 5+ years under this leadership group KPFA subscribers have gone
from 28,000 in 2003 to 20,000 now! That is a 28% decrease while they
increased the paid staff by 50%. Bringing us a $300,000 deficit this
year. At the same time they refused to do anything about the financial
problems hurting Pacifica. Their conduct actually precipitated a major
financial crisis at Pacifica. http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-05-14/article/32873?headline=The-Pacifica-Financial-Crisis-Who-is-Responsible-.
[same article as above]
Let’s see what these folks have done toward “dismantling
the LSB”. In 2003 the KPFA Program Council, made up of paid
and unpaid staff and listeners, voted to move Democracy Now! (DN!) to
Prime time, 7-8am and move the morning show to 8-10am. There was/is
significant listener demand/support for this time change. It is common
practice and common sense to put your most popular/dynamic program in
prime time. In May 2004 the LSB voted to move DN! to prime time as per
the Program Council’s prior vote. This has never been implemented.
WHY?
In 2007 GM Lemlem Rijio, quietly ended the Program Council. The LSB’s
CL majority ignored the previous Resolution codifying the Program Council
and did nothing to save the Program Council.
In 2007 GM Rijio took away the official status of the Unpaid Staff Organization
(UPSO). UPSO existed to represent the unpaid staff at KPFA, more than
200 people. These are the people who do the majority of the work that
goes on the air.
The CL slate literature for the 2006 and 2007 LSB elections was silent
on the important issues of the Program Council, UPSO and the DN! move
to prime time
In 2009 the CL LSB majority voted to meet only once every other month,
instead of every month as all the other stations do and KPFA had done
for 5 years. They ignored the backlog of work to be done and how it
delayed the selection of LSB members to important PNB committees.
Over a year ago they took the link to the LSB page off the front page
of the KPFA web site. They don’t announce the LSB meetings on
the front page of the web site and often don’t announce them on
the air as required by the Bylaws.
How has the CL maintained its slim majority on the LSB? Here are some
of the dirty tricks they have used to dominate the elections. In 2006
and 2007 GM Rijio refused to allow any election information to be broadcast
when the ballots were sent out. Rijio’s justification was that
there was a fund drive in progress despite election information being
broadcast during fund drives at other Pacifica stations. In 2006 and
2007 CL spent thousands of dollars and sent out a slate mailer to arrive
with the ballots during the election information black out, imposed
by their ally GM Rijio. To top that off, in 2007 when they finally did
run some candidate carts, they ran all 22 at once, with CL candidate
Sherry Gendelman’s first.
After the 2007 KPFA election there was only one news story on KPFA about
the election. Interviewed were Sherry Gendelman, Matthew Lasar, a CL
endorser, and Dan Siegel and Larry Bensky both CL allies and supporters
and both guilty of using station or Foundation resources to support
CL or attack their opponents in violation of election ethics.
No listener activist candidates were interviewed. Why is there a FOX
in our newsroom?
In the upcoming election there will be ample airtime for the election
since the new PNB majority has resolved that it will be so. Bonnie Simmons,
a CL/Rijio group member, recently made a motion to rescind the Resolution
to require ample airtime for the election. Does an open inclusive election
scare them?
“Our leadership elite may still want to believe in democratic
principles-they certainly profess that they do-but in practice they
have shown themselves all too willing to violate those principles in
order to gain or retain power”, Cornel West from his book Democracy
Matters, page 28. If democracy matters to you, it is time for a new
majority on the KPFA LSB.
Richard Phelps, former Chair, KPFA LSB, 35 year listener/subscriber,
former AM & FM radio announcer.
