Open Letter to the LSB from Concerned KPFA Paid and
Unpaid Staff
KPFA is first and foremost a radio station whose
listeners count on the Pacifica Radio airwaves to
provide an invaluable, independent source of
multicultural news, information, music, and arts
programming. There has been unparalleled community and
national support in keeping this radio station alive
and functioning by delivering KPFA back to the people
from the devastating forces of the previous Pacifica
National management and board. But once again, as in
those terrible years surrounding the KPFA lockout and
shutdown of 1999, KPFA is in a perilous place. Once
again, it is a Pacifica governing body which has the
power to break this place apart, and threaten its
function at such a critical time.
Our newly elected KPFA Local Station Board is deeply
divided, and has devolved into factions where extreme
and constant mistrust, maligning, and infighting have
spilled over into attacking KPFA staff to such a
degree that the workplace is rife with fear, anger,
compromised productivity, and the lowest morale since
1999.
Many staff members are aware of the following:
In the past few months, a number of Station Board
members have targeted KPFA staff and management with
demeaning and potentially libelous accusations about
staff performance. They have fueled Internet hit
pieces which have gone after several employees at
KPFA. Some LSB members and their close allies have
suggested that staff members are plants of former
Pacifica Chair Mary Frances Berry. A board member has
insinuated that our interim General Manager is a
COINTELPRO agent. One LSB member attacked KPFA's
youngest and newest staff members for their alleged
ignorance and immaturity in understanding station
affairs and supposed slave mentality. Particularly
disturbing are the anti-worker attacks by a group of
LSB members, some of whom are union members,
characterizing the station's staff as being only
interested in keeping their jobs and expressing
hostility to the integrity of the paid staff's union.
In addition, the work of unpaid staff members has been
devalued.
Staff representatives on the LSB are routinely
insulted in the course of LSB meetings by fellow board
members. Some members of the LSB have even called for
crushing the will of the staff. A letter protesting
such behavior by certain LSB members towards KPFA
union and non-union staff, written by the Secretary
Treasurer of Communications Workers of America Local
9415 to the LSB, has yet to be addressed.
The LSB Chair asked that a now-resolved internal staff
issue be broadcast far and wide to the public via
email, even though it was a personnel and union matter
beyond the purview of the LSB. In doing so, she has
rendered the station vulnerable to potential
litigation by the maligned staff member. Additionally,
an internet editorial was written about the incident
by someone close to the LSB Chair, which
misrepresented the facts of the incident.
Our morning newscaster was named in a public meeting,
and scorned by an LSB member, for a newscast she wrote
which the LSB member cited out of context and without
checking his facts; indeed she was attacked for saying
something that she did not say.
Our interim General Manager has been subjected to
repeated ridicule, harassment, and insult by the Local
Station Board Chair about his alleged ineptness at
fundraising. The LSB Chair went so far to refer to him
as the kiss of death. In fact, this is just one in a
series of attacks on the interim GM.
Some staff on the payroll prior to 1999 have been
accused of being saboteurs from former Pacifica
Executive Director Pat Scott's regime who continue to
block progress and continue in taking down the
station, even though these same people risked arrest
and were arrested, risked job loss with no other means
of financial support while protesting, broadcasting,
and while testifying before California state
legislators in defiance of orders from Pacifica's
Executive Director and the Chair of Pacifica's
national board.
The affirmative action-based Apprenticeship Program
has been demeaned in public, and dismissed as not
serving the community's training needs in radio
production, even though graduates of this unique
program are teaching, producing, operating broadcasts,
and coordinating the radio-related needs of
collectives coming into KPFA from many different
communities of all ages and abilities.
It is our understanding that there are some members of
the LSB who would seek to cut music programming, when
in fact music and arts programming are integral to
Pacifica's mission. Since the LSB does not have a
mandate to make programming decisions, we are
disturbed by LSB members' comments (including those of
the Chair) that they believe they were given a mandate
by the listeners to cut music in favor of public
affairs.
The KPFA Program Council cannot operate without a
quorum, yet both the Program Council and KPFA's
Interim Program Coordinator are challenged
