Pledge to Restore the Morning Show

Pacifica’s executive director told the City of Berkeley Commission on Labor that she did not anticipate any further layoffs at KPFA. It now appears that was untrue: more layoffs are imminent.

Thanks to all of you who have been responding to SaveKPFA’s pledge drive to restore the Morning Show and protect all locally-controlled programming. We’ll total the amount and present it to Pacifica management as part of a special fund. This pledge will go in its entirety to KPFA.  LEARN MORE: PLEDGE ONLINE | PLEDGE BY MAIL

Protestors also gathered outside of Pacifica headquarters today, World AIDS Day, to present over 600 signatures from AIDS organizations, doctors and others objecting to the network’s hiring of an AIDS denialist at its New York station, WBAI. Here’s a report from John Hamilton of the Pacifica Evening News.

More elected officials have signed the letter to Pacifica management, including State Assembymember Tom Ammiano and San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos. The letter notes that Pacifica’s actions “violate both the spirit and the letter of the democratic constitution of Pacifica’s unique experiment in listener-employee run radio,” and call on Pacifica to sit down with KPFA’s union and local supporters and “negotiate a collective solution that will be fair and accepable to all: cancel the layoffs and start over.”

Educators of all kinds — professors, teachers, researchers, writers and university staff — from around the nation are signing onto a letter of support for KPFA, which you can read here. If you’d like to add your name, please contact us.

Listeners at sister station KFCF in Fresno, which plays many KPFA programs, are also concerned, as this article in the Community Alliance newspaper documents.

KPFA’s local station board will meet on this Saturday, 12/4 at the North Berkeley Senior Center (1901 Hearst Ave, one block north of KPFA) starting at 11:00 am. This is the meeting at which the new LSB members will be installed. Please join us. Berkeley’s Labor Commission will meet about KPFA on Wednesday, 12/8 at 7 pm at the West Berkeley Senior Center (1900 6th Street at Hearst). We hope you’ll come and support KPFA’s hard-working staff.