legal

Pacifica moving forward, as injunction against fired executive issued

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silvergavelPacifica’s National Office next door to KPFA is functioning once again, three weeks after an Alameda County court granted the network a temporary injunction against former executive  Summer Reese, who along with her mother and a small band of supporters, were obstructing the network’s operations. UPDATE: The court issued a preliminary injunction reiterating its ruling against Reese 6/2.

Judge Ioana Petrou’s 17-page decision on May 12 demolished every single argument of the plaintiffs, the so-called “Pacifica Directors for Good Governance,” who filed a lawsuit on Reese’s behalf. Evidence raised during the hearing confirmed that Reese’s allies on the national board had prepared and signed a separate, secret contract with her that would have made Reese essentially unaccountable and unfireable — and given her a huge pay increase to $105,000 a year — all without the knowledge of the rest of the board.

For these reasons, the judge issued an injunction upholding the validity of the board majority’s action and ordering Reese to leave the national office immediately. But that injunction was temporary, and now the court will rule on whether to make the injunction permanent. While the issues are the same, Reese and her supporters are now challenging the right of Pacifica’s lawyers to represent Pacifica – a move clearly borne of desperation on their part.

“Loyalty” lawsuit against KPFA listener-activists dropped

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Some of the hundreds of listeners who pledged to restore the Morning Show
Some of the hundreds of listeners who pledged to restore the Morning Show

A lawsuit demanding over $800,000 in “damages” from four KPFA listeners who tried to raise money for KPFA has been dropped, with its initiator agreeing to pay all costs for SaveKPFA‘s legal defense team.

The SLAPP suit had been filed against the Morning Show 4 — elected KPFA board members Margy Wilkinson, Dan Siegel, Mal Burnstein and Conn Hallinan — who led a 2011 SaveKPFA campaign that collected over $60,000 in pledges to restore the KPFA Morning Show, after Pacifica claimed it had cancelled the show for financial reasons.

Hundreds of listeners made financial pledges in that campaign, but Pacifica refused to accept them. Shortly thereafter, KPFA partisan Daniel Borgstrom and his lawyer, former LSB rep Richard Phelps, slapped the four SaveKPFA board members with a lawsuit demanding $800,000 in “damages” for the fundraising activity, which they claimed was “disloyal” to Pacifica.

While Pacifica formally took no position on the suit, national board members such as treasurer Tracy Rosenberg had been publicly proclaiming the existence of the lawsuit as a “win” for her side. In January 2013, she and her allies on the PNB even passed an Orwellian anti-dissent “loyalty” measure targeting the SaveKPFA‘s activists, threatening to boot them from the board should Borgstrom win his lawsuit. Outraged listeners and staff wrote to the PNB when the measure was introduced earlier this year (a sampling of the letters is here.)

Thanks for your support, and congratulations to everyone who has worked to support KPFA through these difficult times!  Please renew that support by making your pledge to KPFA during this week’s fund drive.

Anti-dissent measure on Pacifica’s Jan 10 agenda

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Tell Pacifica: Don't Ban Dissent!On less than four days’ notice, the lame-duck Pacifica National Board has scheduled a vote on a resolution designed to prevent people who dissent from the current majority from serving on local or national boards.

After we alerted SaveKPFA supporters to this, hundreds wrote, calling the measure what it is: a political witchhunt.

“I’m stunned that a measure about ‘loyalty’ should even be considered by a Pacifica board,” wrote listener Alan Snitow. “Please stop this measure and repudiate its intent. The loyalty measure is the kind of pseudo-leftwing idea that merges Stalinism and McCarthyism.”

“How can you dare to try to turn Pacifica into a grotesque caricature of the reactionary tendencies KPFA was founded to oppose?” wrote listener Stephanie Reader. “This Orwellian ‘loyalty measure’ is yet more appalling evidence of how far over to the dark side some on the Pacifica board have drifted in their determination to run it without input from those who do the work, and those who pay the bills.”

The Pacifica’s board referred the matter to legal counsel for an opinion. That opinion has not been made public, but the “loyalty” proposal has reappeared on the agenda on the next Pacifica National Board phone meeting this Thursday, January 10, starting at 5:30 PM Pacific time. Anyone may listen to the live web-broadcast of the meeting at this link or this link.

ACTION ALERT: Please take a moment to send an email to Pacifica’s board demanding they reject this “loyalty” measure. Use our sample message, or write your own. | CLICK HERE TO SEND AN EMAIL

“This is about KPFA’s foundational principles of free speech and political dissent,” noted Local Station Board vice chair Sasha Futran. “If a measure like this actually ends up being adopted, Pacifica’s founder Lew Hill would not even recognize the radio network he created,” she said.

Although Pacifica’s Bylaws require the incumbent national board be replaced by newly-elected members this month, the incumbent boardmembers have unilaterally extended their own terms by delaying the first meeting of the incoming PNB until February. They may be hoping that buys them time to do more damage: the anti-dissent resolution appears at the top of a 10-page agenda stacked with items that promise to eviscerate local control at Pacifica’s stations and place massive bureaucratic constraints on the work of the network’s rank-and-file staff.