TakeBackKPFK Community Radio

Although the author of this is not clear, the points in the article are clearly cited.  From L.A. Indymedia.  -ed.

by Wachale Sunday, Oct. 04, 2009 at 12:51 AM

An untold chapter on the tactics used by Aaron and her CTSK to win the 2007 election at KPFK that propelled her climb to controlling Pacifica Radio.

Voted yet in the KPFK Local Station Board elections? If you haven’t, read this first. If you have, read this and then ask the KPFK Local Elections Supervisor for a replacement ballot.

In 2009, the Committee to Strengthen KPFK is trying to buy an election. In 2007, they tried a lawsuit against the Pacifica Radio Foundation.

In 2009, CTSK, led by Grace Aaron, has foregone most of the manipulations they used to win in 2009. This year, the CTSK group has shrunk and their endorsements have shriveled, so it’s resorting to the mainstay of Democratic politics: money. They’ve marshaled their friends who still have excess money to seduce witless voters with another round of costly mailers and the back page of Change Links. Whether money buys elections at the potentially, and sometimes actually, radical community radio station remains to be seen. Ballots are due in on October 15.

The 2007 CTSK leader, Grace Aaron, has stepped away from openly leading CTSK, since she’s now heading the whole Pacifica shebang, of which KPFK is but one part. She’s both Chair of the Pacifica National Board and Executive Director. Have you heard the current fund drive? The snake oil and hocus pocus are not just a transparent appeal to aging baby boomers’ lost youth, it’s Aaron’s vision of a KPFK make-over. The same pablum is being doled out across Pacifica stations.

Ever wondered why KPFK’s news is now broadcast out of Berkeley?

Aaron will term out in March, but she’s leaving in her wake the rest of the CTSK slate, led by her husband, Ken Aaron.

Grace’s rise to power began with the 2007 elections, but she first flexed her muscle in a lawsuit to squeeze one more CTSK member on to the KPFK Local Station Board. The story never made it to LA Indymedia, but the whole account is in the Local Election Supervisor’s report.

Makes you wonder what Grace and CTSK will do to Pacifica and KPFK if they don’t win this year.

Here’s the long, sordid, and revealing tale: Read more…

Sherna includes part of an explosive email by Brian Edwards-Tiekert at the end of this article.  -ed.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Six years ago, preparing for the very first KPFK Local Station Board elections, Ed Pearl, Don White, Jack Van Aken, Arturo Lemus, Alan Minsky, and I joined together with others to form (the now defunct) PIRCR (Progressive Independents for Responsible Community Radio). We engaged actively in that election and won the majority of seats. Today, Don White is deceased; Arturo Lemus has dropped out (and is in Ventura County); and Alan Minsky and Jack Van Aken are silent on the current LSB elections.

Ed Pearl, on the other hand, is not silent. Unfortunately he is misinformed and completely out of touch with what has really been happening. Relying on others, especially Carole Spooner, he has promoted voting for all fourteen candidates featured on the expensive, slick flier that CTSK (Committee to Strengthen KPFK) sent to all listener subscribers. CTSK was founded by interim Executive Director Grace Aaron, and its slate endorses her husband, Ken Aaron.

Because I believe in due process for both paid and unpaid staff and open hiring practices, and because I believe that respect for the listeners means good programming and not filling our airwaves with “mumbo jumbo” and pseudo-science, and because I believe in remaining true to the radical vision in the Pacifica Mission, I have joined along with other radical programmers and grassroots activists and groups in endorsing the PRINCIPLES of the Ad Hoc Committee for KPFK Community Radio.

Above all, because I am quite aware of how the current Grace Aaron led Pacifica Administration has misrepresented both the current problems and her allegedly successful remedies, I have not been silent.

If you want to understand more, I urge you to read the following response to Carole Spooner by Brian Edwards-Tiekert, KPFA LSB Treasurer and one of the best number crunchers in Pacifica. It is the best response to Ed Pearl’s uncritical embrace of CTSK- see especially, the last section, “Performance.” It might just open your eyes!

Sherna Gluck,
(Unpaid) Staff Representative, KPFK Local Station Board, former member of WLA Free Pacifica Neighborhood Network Read more…

Greetings!

I am sista Tej Grewall. I am of Indian descent, born and raised in Southern California, and have also resided for some time in India and Jamaica. I grew up watching tourists from all over the world at my parents’ retail stores in Newport Beach.

The Arts, Culture, Multi-Cultural, Globalism, Music, Color and Numbers are bell-ringing terms for me.

I earned my degrees from UCSB in both Art Studio and Global / International Studies (Emphasis in the Cultural Ideologies of South / East Asia).

I honor the Pacifica Mission Statement, will continue to excercise it and maintain its practice as a volunteer, ANY DAY. I read it the first day I came for the recent June Fund Drive, and believe that is what truly magnetized me to KPFK.

I am running for the election to become a member of the Local Station Board in order to be a voice and liason between especially the youth and the outreach programs being proposed, here at KPFK. Read more…

My name is Chuck Anderson. I am president of the O.C. Chapter ACLU, Chair of the O.C. Peace and Freedom Party, Vice President, Elders Council, Alianza Indigena, organizer and cofounder of the KPFK Support Group with seven plus years antiwar and human rights weekly street corner protesting. I am past president of O.C. Veterans for Peace, past president of The Tustin Municipal Employee Association and former Board member of O.C. Unitarian Church. I am a volunteer for Change Links, KPFK, The World Can’t Wait, member of NAACP, CAIR, ARA, AL AWDA, Viva Palestinia, KPFK Outreach Committee, a volunteer for ANSWER Los Angeles. I am a Pan Africanist, Bolivarian and support open borders, open arms and open hearts for all immigrants.

I fully support Spanish programming. An energetic effort must be made to return full representation of the African American community. Read more…

Listen to a special message from Lawrence about KPFK.

The Hidden Theft at KPFK and the Ongoing Firings, Purges and Bannings: You’re Next????

An analysis of why KPFK sounds different, and why it’s losing listeners (and money).

What’s missing on the airwaves of KPFK and Pacifica? In the name of belt-tightening and fiscal responsibility, the network and the station have once again begun purging the voices of grassroots activism, and particularly from poor and working-class communities of color, communities of resistance.

At KPFK, local news is gone, Jerry Quickley is gone, even the new general manager is already gone. Are you hearing from the young people struggling for a meaningful, quality, liberating education? Have you heard about grassroots resistance to gentrification in Boyle Heights or Venice? Do struggles against organized white supremacists, police abuse or Zionist aggression going on in Orange County make it onto the air? Has KPFK provided significant air-time for a new generation of activists to host their own shows and bring their own perspectives to bear, offering fresh solutions to long-standing complaints?

Is Pacifica creating a buzz and forcing the corporate media to cover stories through independent, aggressive investigative journalism? Does open, scintillating debate or honest self-critical examination of issues and weaknesses facing the left in the era of Obama happen on-air?

Has the listenership been informed about or allowed to comment on the future direction of the station and the network?

Can you hear beat reporters exposing spineless Democrats in Sacramento, educational privateers at LAUSD, or police abuse around Southern California? Is there significant coverage of and from the diverse Asian communities of the L.A. basin?

If your honest answer to these questions is a truthful “NO,” then you must act now to change the status quo at KPFK and Pacifica before it’s too late. Only concerted action and support for a slate of community-rooted dissidents can save KPFK and Pacifica.

Pa’lante En Lucha
Lawrence Reyes

Our station KPFK and the Pacifica Network is being primed for a take over by a collection of Non-Profiteers that has been set in motion by the individual’s hell-bend on obtaining power.

Some of us saw it coming. We were running as a loose coalition of candidates for seats on the board of the non-commercial station, and we couldn’t miss what was shaping up as we watched these individual’s rake in donations to finance their campaigns for the KPFK local station board, even as they curried favor and allies from among and staff and Programmers to take over the board.

In so doing they introduced all of the unfairness and imbalance inherent in unregulated campaign financing into the local political culture  – the fishbowl, really – of not-for-profit, progressive community radio. Read more…