The thirty sixth WBAI Local Station Board (LSB) meeting was held on Tuesday, November 1, 2005, at 6:30 PM at the Harlem State Office Building in Manhattan. This is not an official Web page of the LSB.

At the start of the meeting we were told that this time no one could even locate the single microphone that we'd used in the past at this location so there was no public address system at all.

The meeting started off with the Chair noting the passing of Rosa Parks and saying that we shouldn't have just a moment of silence or something but should say what we thought about Ms. Parks. So Marian Borenstein rambled on about Ms. Parks and told us all that the revolution wasn't over yet. And that apparently concluded the tribute to Rosa Parks.

Most amusing incident of the meeting: when we got to excusing absences one faction member tried to excuse the absence of Tiokasin Ghosthorse. He was told that Mr. Ghosthorse had indeed been there but had left. In fact Mr. Ghosthorse had left after the meeting had only been going on for nine minutes. But excusing Tiokasin Ghosthorse's absence is pretty much a reflex at every meeting so it's understandable that someone got caught in that rut.

The agenda had an item on it that would have had the LSB approving a bylaws amendment that the Pacifica National Board (PNB) had passed during its October 28-30, 2005, meeting. Among the problems with doing that were the fact that bylaws approval must be done at a Delegates' meeting and this was not a Delegates' meeting (a Delegates' meeting is not the same as a Local Station Board meeting), and the fact that the bylaws require the approval to be done within the same calendar month as the PNB passes the bylaws amendment in the first place.

The Chair sought instruction from her faction leader who said that the PNB had come up with the idea that when the bylaws say, “The Delegates shall vote on the proposed amendment(s) within the same calendar month as the Board [PNB],” they really mean within one month of that vote. But the fact that this was not a Delegates' meeting was undeniable. So voting to approve the bylaws amendments got removed from the agenda.

How the hell the PNB thinks that they're behaving legally by making believe that November is the same calendar month as October I just do not understand. At the PNB level there is also a requirement that there be 60 days' notice before the PNB votes on a bylaws amendment. The PNB's September meeting didn't happen due to Hurricane Rita. So they held that meeting in October. But they stopped airing the daily notices in September. I don't see how the PNB is in compliance with the provision of the bylaws that requires 60 days' notice. So I think that more than one provision of the Pacifica Foundation's bylaws has not been lived up to in this situation. Sounds like a ripe area for a lawsuit to me.

The faction currently in charge also refused to allow the member whom they illegally “suspended” on March 9, to vote or be recognized as an LSB member. They suspended him for six months, as of this meeting he had completed almost eight months of that suspension. They acknowledge that he'd written an apology but they say it's not good enough. The Chair made a big deal about how inadequate the apology was but then said she'd neglected to bring it to the meeting so we'd all just have to take her word for it. Yeah, right. So they're obviously just going to deny this elected representative his seat for the next year, unless something happens, like a lawsuit, to stop them. What a bunch of weasels they are.

I have written a statement about the illegal suspension of this LSB member and sent it to the PNB, the WBAI LSB and various public mailing lists and bulletin boards.

Back to the New Pacifica page.

To my home page.