elections and governance

600+ KPFA listeners tell Pacifica: quit stalling on recall vote

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As of early December, over 600 listeners have signed a petition demanding that the Pacifica National Board immediately delegate responsibility for running the pending recall election on KPFA board member and Pacifica treasurer Tracy Rosenberg to a neutral third party and have the election conducted promptly. On November 1, KPFA management certified that listener-members had submitted more than enough valid signatures for the vote to proceed.

Many who signed the petition added comments. “Pacifica, stop stalling,” wrote  Amy Smith, “KPFA’s listeners want a fair vote!”  The election “must be in the hands of a neutral third party,” wrote Mary B. Skinner, because “current management has clearly shown it is incapable of such trust.”  In addition, fourteen members of KPFA’s Local Station Board have signed a letter urging impartial oversight of the vote. | READ PETITION COMMENTS | READ BOARDMEMBERS’ LETTER

Under Pacifica’s own policy, ballots must go out within 60 days of the certification, and are due back within 35 days after mailing. This puts the balloting period in December and January. So far, there’s been no word from Pacifica on what it will do. SaveKPFA supporters suspect that Pacifica may time the ballots for the holiday season, when they expect attention to be lowest. In fact, the Pacifica National Board decided to move its discussion of the recall into closed session — a clear violation of the open meeting rules in Pacifica’s bylaws.

Rosenberg allies try to squelch elections
Faced with SaveKPFA‘s successful recall petition, some members of Pacifica National Board seem to be thinking that listener participation isn’t such a great thing after all. By-laws amendments drafted by Rosenberg’s allies that are due to be voted on in December would raise the number of signatures needed for a recall from 2% to 10% of the membership, dramatically restrict the time in which signatures can be gathered, and force members filing a petition to bear all costs of the vote.

Donate, endorse to help SaveKPFA get the word out
Given these obviously undemocratic maneuvers, SaveKPFA is concerned that Pacifica may attempt to delay the recall vote indefinitely. If so, we’ll have to go to court to get Pacifica to allow KPFA’s listeners to have their say. To cover potential legal fees — and campaign costs once Pacifica does get a ballot out — we’ve set up an online account for SaveKPFA where you can give a donation of any size. “SaveKPFA is an all-volunteer organization,” said treasurer John Van Eyck. “We appreciate any support you can give for legal costs or election mailings, and we also strongly encourage you to donate to KPFA as well.”

If you’d like to be listed on SaveKPFA materials as endorsing the recall, please email us with your name and how you’d like to identified.

More mismanagement at Pacifica
Continuing developments confirm that the Pacifica National regime for which Rosenberg serves as treasurer is disastrous. As reported earlier this month, KPFA’s union has discovered Pacifica diverted workers’ retirement plan contributions for months. As KPFAWorker reports, while Pacifica claims it has restored the money it took out of workers’ accounts, it “still has not notified affected employees, apologized to them, nor made them whole by paying them interest.”

We now have some indication of where the money’s been going. Starting in July, Pacifica covered the payroll and benefits for WBAI in New York — over $130,000 per month. Publicly, Pacifica had been bragging that WBAI was experiencing a “turnaround” under the management that the network’s executive director, Arlene Engelhardt, installed without the approval of WBAI’s staff or local board.

Management at WPFW in Washington, DC is also on the ropes. Washington’s City Paper reports that more than 80 staff members there have signed a letter of no confidence in their manager, accusing him of lengthening fund drives, imposing steep austerity measures that affect union workers but not managers, and holding such disregard for input from his own staff that he hasn’t called a meeting in 8 months.

Art by Bob Baldock for the film KPFA on the Air

KPFA’s awesome Occupy coverage
As the Occupy movement has erupted, KPFA’s coverage has been stellar, with breaking news updates from protests, live broadcasts, and interviews that bring in-depth analysis to the movement.

Here are just a few recent highlights: Mitch Jeserich‘s anchoring of a live broadcast of former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich addressing a crowd of 10,000 on Sproul Plaza; comprehensive coverage of protests from the Pacifica Evening News; KPFA news anchor John Hamilton‘s report for Democracy Now on the police violence at Occupy Cal; and a fascinating interview on Letters and Politics about the most historic occupation in U.S. politics — the Bonus Army encampment in Washington during the Great Depression.

A big thank you to behind-the-scenes technical staff, like Antonio Ortiz, Frank Sterling, and Dev Ross, who’ve gone above and beyond to get live broadcasts on the air. Thanks to everyone at KPFA — from board ops and engineers, to reporters and music programmers — who’ve participated in this important coverage.

KPFA board member makes news
SaveKPFA activist Dan Siegel, who serves on both the KPFA and Pacifica boards, made national headlines when he very publicly resigned as an unpaid advisor to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan because of her decision to forcibly remove the encampment in downtown Oakland. He was interviewed on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.  (Believe it or not, Pacifica is still spending listeners’ money fighting in court to kick Siegel off the national board.) 

Local board discusses programming, budget
KPFA’s Local Station Board met November 19, and among other things, had a lively discussion about KPFA’s programming.  “We need to talk to a wider audience,” said SaveKPFA-affiliated board member and journalism professor Conn Hallinan. KPFA needs to reach people “who don’t have the same politics as we have,” he said, adding, “for that, we need to be good.” Programming discussed in part 3 of the meeting. | LISTEN to 3 minute clip, or the entire meeting: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

Support the KPFA Crafts Fair
KPFA’s biggest fundraiser of the year is coming up: the annual KPFA Crafts Fair on December 10 and 11. It’s an amazing event full of artwork, music, and an opportunity to do your holiday shopping in a way that supports local artisans. All proceeds stay with KPFA — Pacifica doesn’t take a cut of event revenue. Check out the Craft Fair’s webpage, or like its Facebook page. See you there!

Recall moves ahead, listeners petition for impartial oversight

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The campaign by KPFA listeners to recall Pacifica National Board treasurer Tracy Rosenberg has passed an important hurdle. KPFA management certified this week that recall petitions submitted by SaveKPFA activists contained more than enough signatures of KPFA subscribers.

The petitions included more than 800 signatures, and 462 were verified on the first pass as precise matches to KPFA’s subscriber database — more than the number needed for the recall to go forward. Subsequent matching accounting for name variations, address changes, and so forth brought the number of valid signatures up to 583, or 70% of the total submitted.

“We can’t wait any longer to recall Tracy,” said Pamela Drake, a member of KPFA’s Local Station Board.  She added that next week marks the one year anniversary of Pacifica’s purge of KPFA’s popular Morning Show, which Rosenberg was instrumental in engineering.

Running the recall election is expected to cost about $10,000 for printing and postage — or about 50 cents per KPFA subscriber. In the year since Pacifica’s elimination of the Morning Show, the loss in pledges during morning drive time has averaged over $8,000 per weekday.  “That means Rosenberg’s purges have cost KPFA hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Drake, “and more importantly, have deprived Bay Area listeners of consistent, hard-hitting morning programming.”

Recall ballots should arrive in listeners’ mailboxes next month. IMPORTANT: If you haven’t yet signed the listener petition demanding that Pacifica make sure the recall vote has impartial, third-party oversight, please do so now. | SIGN PETITION HERE

Silence from Pacifica on recall vote; Pacifica overrules KPFA board on budget

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Stack of recall petitions.

It’s been over a month since members of SaveKPFA submitted petitions seeking a recall vote against KPFA board member and Pacifica Treasurer Tracy Rosenberg, the driving force behind Pacifica’s destruction of KPFA’s Morning Show, and its war against the station’s workers and listeners.

Thanks to your efforts, a delegation of SaveKPFA activists submitted over 800 signatures from KPFA listener-members — that’s over twice the number needed — to trigger a recall ballot under the network’s bylaws, in which every current member is entitled to vote.

The response from Pacifica? Complete silence. KPFA staff confirm Pacifica has finally turned over the signatures for validation against KPFA’s member database, but from Pacifica, there has been no word on when the recall election will be held, or who will run it. All discussion of the recall process at last month’s 4-day meeting of the Pacifica National Board happened behind closed doors. The only information released from that meeting is that Pacifica has found a lawyer to tell it, bizarrely, that a successful recall would take nearly ten times the number of votes required by Pacifica’s bylaws.

This is a blatant misreading of Pacifica’s bylaws. Like most of Pacifica’s election manipulations, it probably won’t hold up in court. But it does demonstrate Pacifica’s willing to bend the rules in Rosenberg’s favor — which is why we need to demand a fair process.

ACTION ALERT: Sign this petition demanding a fair recall
KPFA listeners are signing this petition demanding that Pacifica run the recall vote promptly, and that supervision of the process be turned over to a neutral party (such as the American Association of Arbitrators, or California State Mediation and Conciliation).  CLICK HERE to add your support!
KPFA fall fund drive chart

Why a recall is important: a fund drive in crisis
KPFA’s Fall fund drive is struggling. Why?  Pledging from 6-10 AM has dropped over $9,000 per day since last year, before Pacifica cancelled the KPFA Morning Show and re-arranged the rest of the morning lineup in a shake-up engineered by Pacifica Treasurer Tracy Rosenberg (see this chart).

Prior to its cancellation, the Morning Show was KPFA’s biggest fundraiser. Andrew Phillips, the manager Pacifica installed at KPFA after the shakeup, has been unresponsive to calls from KPFA’s staff, listeners, and elected Local Station Board to restore the Morning Show.

So, what’s his plan?

First off: Longer fund drives. Phillips has already extended the Fall drive to 24 days — the longest in at least a decade. And, even with the extension, the fund drive is on track to finish at least $40,000 short of its goal.

Second: Kooky content. Last Thursday, Phillips put himself on the air for 90 minutes to hawk the DVD Zeitgeist, a bizarre amalgam of populist, religious, and right-wing conspiracy theories that allegedly provided inspiration to the man who shot Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

SaveKPFA is encouraging everyone who cares about the future of KPFA to contribute during this fund drive in spite of the lunacy — your donation secures your right to vote in the upcoming recall, and it deprives managers like Phillips of a pretext to lay off union workers.

Staff cuts loom, after Pacifica overrules KPFA’s board on budget
SaveKPFA-affiliated representatives on the Local Station Board worked hard this summer to craft a balanced budget for KPFA that would preserve the programs listeners care about, and put resources into off-air fundraising. KPFA treasurer Barbara Whipperman even brought to light a whopping $300,000 error in the budget template Pacifica had issued to KPFA. Fixing the error made it possible to budget for shorter fund drives.

Then, after KPFA’s budget was passed by a majority vote and sent to the network, Pacifica management moved the goalposts and overruled KPFA’s local elected representatives. Pacifica said KPFA would have to budget an additional $113,000 for “depreciation” —  an accounting abstraction that does not actually cost any money. Then Tracy Rosenberg used her position as Pacifica treasurer to unilaterally slash $121,000 out of KPFA’s personnel budget to pay for that depreciation.

The last time Rosenberg inserted herself into the budget-cutting process, Pacifica eliminated the most listened-to program produced at KPFA, and violated the union contract at KPFA by laying off staff out of seniority order, following a list Rosenberg herself drafted that included her political opponents. Which leads to an obvious question — who’s she targeting this time?

PLEASE MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD TODAY by signing this petition demanding that Pacifica fast-track this recall election under the auspices of a neutral third party. And give to KPFA to ensure you’ll be able to vote. You can make an online donation here.