Programming

Recall ballots mailing 6/28, says Pacifica

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At long last, ballots which should have mailed in December 2011 are finally being mailed in the grassroots, listener-prompted recall election on Pacifica treasurer Tracy Rosenberg. According to the election supervisor Pacifica hired, ballots were scheduled to mail 6/26 but he has pushed that back to 6/28. Ballots are due back August 3.

“The waste of scarce resources that has resulted from Rosenberg’s role on the KPFA and Pacifica boards is really tragic,” writes labor journalist Steve Early, one of many new endorsers in the VOTE YES on the KPFA recall campaign. He adds that Rosenberg has played a central role in gutting the station’s finances and its most popular programming, and in many of the attacks on KPFA’s union workers, such as supporting Pacifica’s hiring of infamous union-busters Jackson Lewis.

Support for a YES vote has been flooding in. Here are just a few of the most recent endorsers: Paul George, director, Peninsula Peace & Justice Center; Andrej Grubacic, anarchist historian, author of “Wobblies and Zapatistas”; Charlotte Sáenz, community artist and educator; Iain Boal, social historian of the commons; Eric Klein, former tech producer for Free Speech Radio News & Flashpoints; Andrea Turner, KPFA Local Station Board member, cultural and community activist; David Martinez, filmmaker; Summer Brenner, author of “Richmond Tales”; Barbara Epstein, Professor of History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz; Peter Olney, ILWU organizing director (titles and organizations for ID only) | SEE MORE ENDORSERS

Listeners love KPFA’s new UpFront program at 7AM

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The new UpFront program from 7-8 AM hosted by KPFA’s Brian Edwards-Tiekert and KPFK’s Sonali Kolhatkar brought in the highest number of pledges per hour during KPFA’s spring fund drive, raising nearly $40,000 in just 7 days — an astonishingly good response to a new show rushed onto the air with virtually no advance publicity.

That helped KPFA’s drive finish up with nearly $690,000,  about 7% short of its $740,000 goal. You can see a breakdown of pledges by program here. UpFront‘s presence in the AM drive time also clearly pushed other slots to higher fund totals.

UpFront is an initiative of the KPFA News Department, which was given the green light by interim general manager Andrew Phillips, who admitted the decision was a “180- degree turn” for him and that “politics” had prevented him from acting sooner. Phillips told KPFA’s board on June 2 he’d received overwhelmingly positive comments about UpFront. He said the Morning Show was disbanded by Pacifica’s executive director Arlene Engelhardt in “a very abrupt, unconsultative manner,” as a result of which he heard “tremendous pain, anger, frustration, anguish from this community.” | LISTEN to Phillips (1-min audio) [longer discussion below, in the LSB meeting, part 1]

Save Free Speech Radio News

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YouTube clip of Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on FSRN
Democracy Now! in support of FSRN

Pacifica has apparently put those who provide the network’s national programming at the bottom of its list of bills to pay. It owes Democracy Now! and Free Speech Radio News (FSRN) more than $1 million. While Democracy Now! has enough resources to cushion the blow, Pacifica’s unpaid bills to Free Speech Radio News threaten its very existence.

FSRN was founded by freelance reporters protesting censorship at Pacifica the last time the network went off the rails. What started as a “strike cast” during the 1999-2001 Pacifica crisis later became an independent, worker-run collective producing news for Pacifica for over a decade.

“The idea that Pacifica will let this valuable news program die is shameful at best,” one FSRN correspondent told us. FSRN urgently needs to raise $40,000 this month to pay its contributors and stay on the air. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation at FSRN’s website.

We also encourage you to VIEW AND CIRCULATE this special video message supporting FSRN from Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!