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It's currently Wednesday 7/14/99 09:17:09, and I'm mostly late getting this page updated because of the stuff that's going on. Things have gotten into an extreme state. The Pacifica Foundation has used armed guards to throw the Staff of KPFA out of their radio station! Additionally, there's an E-mail from a member of the Pacifica National Board where he talks about the details of selling KPFA! Will WBAI also go on the block? Great news! The overnight programs at WBAI are now being Webcast thanks to anomalies.net! Paul Williams of UFO Desk convinced the Webmaster of anomalies.net to do it. In fact, Paul has his radio going overnight, and it's hooked to his computer, which actually does the rendering of the program into a streaming format. This is then immediately streamed to anomalies.net in California where it's made available to anyone in the world who wants to listen to WBAI. Right wing creeps have been murdering people over the last fortnight. One imbecile is known to be part of something called “The World Church of the Creator,” which is a white supremacist version of right wing nuttiness. Not surprisingly, their Web site is down now, but if they surface again I'll link to them so you can see what they're up to. Well, before Pacifica violently took over KPFA on July 13th, the big news was that 14 people were arrested at the demonstration in front of KPFA on June 21st. One of the issues was the armed guards that Pacifica had placed in the lobby of KPFA. Now we know that they were there to throw the Staff of KPFA out of the station when ordered to!  This past Friday a Teach-In was held in Berkeley, CA regarding the crisis at KPFA and in Pacifica, which owns KPFA and WBAI, along with three other Pacifica radio stations. Here's a report on it from one of the organizers. |
| Subject: Friday's Teach-In: Brief Report Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 00:16:59 +0100 From: Jeffrey Blankfort <jab@tucradio.org> Reply-To: freepacifica@penguin.josephson.com To: freepacifica@penguin.josephson.com Friday's teach-in at the University of San Francisco exceeded all expectations, drawing an audience of between 450 and 500, virtually all of whom remained to the end of the formal program and well into the question period which ended at 11:10 p.m. What was unusual about this teach-in was that the audience had a rare opportunity to learn about things that have happened behind the scenes at the station over the past few years, including the betrayal of the unpaid staff by the majority of the paid staff in 1997, who at management's dictate, voted the unpaid workers out of the union, committed themselves to a no strike clause in exchange for having their benefits grandfathered in and accepting a two-tier wage system. The core of the paid staff that accepted this agreement [not all of them, to be sure] are the ones who have tried, unsuccessfully thus far, to treat the present conflict as a straight management-labor dispute, a la Elan Fabbri, and make a private deal with Chadwick/Berry, and the same folks have been pushing for a Federal mediator, as if there wasn't already enough Federal meddling in Pacifica. Fortunately, it appears that the majority of the mediating team, will not allow them to get away with it That was just one of the issues that was news to the sitting listeners. Larry Bensky, former Pacifica president Petter Franck, Wendell Harper, who received a standing ovation for his ongoing courage on the air in speaking out against Pacifica's actions, Dennis Bernstein, Maria Gilardin, who exposed the strange love affair between CPB and Pacifica, Kiilu Nyasha, part of the Freedom as Constant Struggle Collective taken off the air in 1995, and Samuel Guia, the former paid staff member who exposed the union's betrayal. Also on the program were last minute additions, David Adelson, from the KPFK LAB who discussed the suit which will be brought next week against Pacifica by members of local boards from KPFK, KPFA and WBAI, with a view towards raising money for the suit, and last, but certainly not least, was Rafael Renteria, who closed out the formal program by reading his open letter to the KPFA staff, mediating team, and fired programmer, entitled, The Crucible, which appeared on this list on July 8, which was loudly applauded by the crowd. The program was audio taped and video taped. Thanks to John Sommers, when I get him a copy a transcript will assuredly appear on this list, and when I get a copy to Lyn, you will be able to hear the program on the freepacifica website. Also, I believe we can make copies of the audio available for $10, for two 90 minutes tapes. If I can find an inexpensive video copier, we will also have those tapes available, as well, at a reasonable price to be determined. Jeff |
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Pickles of the North and I went to Gerritsen Beach at Marine Park in Brooklyn the day after the last program in June to see if we could observe the horseshoe crabs coming ashore to mate and lay their eggs. I've gone on about the horseshoe crabs before, so I won't go into them here. Suffice it to say that we only saw a couple of dead ones, although they appeared to have died naturally rather than by assault from humans. We'll look for them again when they next swarm ashore in May 2000. Here's a photograph of your host recording the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender rally on June 20th, 1999. In a new low, Heritage of Pride, which runs the rally, put WBAI at a table that was outside the fence and not under the canopy. This year I brought my own half gallon of water and two sandwiches, but I'd not counted on Heritage of Pride denying us shade! Luckily, it was a cloudy day. 
There are a lot of issues that we can't talk about on the air at WBAI. But there is an Internet list called “Free Pacifica!” which you can subscribe to, and these issues are discussed there. If you subscribe to it you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list. You will also be able to send messages to the list. If you want to subscribe to the “Free Pacifica!” list just click on this link and fill out the form, and you'll be subscribed. Could open your eyes a little bit. The above list has occasionally produced a high volume of E-mail because of the attention that the issues have drawn. If you would prefer to subscribe to a low volume list that only provides announcements of events related to these issues then subscribe to the FreePac mailing list. |