KPFA’s Flashpoints: A Death Deferred

I and many others have written KPFA management protesting their attack on “Flashpoints.” I have read over this post carefully and followed all the links, but I still don’t find this post convincing. It seems like you’re saying that the most unforgivable thing “Flashpoints” did was to attack KPFA’s calling for the arrest of Nadra Foster. Do you think “Flashpoints” shouldn’t have attacked KPFA’s action leading to her arrest and beating?

Wow Ernesto–you are the same Erensto who ripped Flashpoints off KPFT air, as program-direector, right? Honesty in journalism journalism. You seem to support the ever unbiased aileen alfindary, whose news budget went up under the current regime, by nearly $60, 000 in the first year,according to the official PNB budgets for fiscal 2005/2006 , and kept going up. Flashpoints was cut that same year, and ever year since. This despite the fact, that for the last fifteen years, Flashpoints has raised on average, well over five times Aflindary’s KPFA news. And this despite the fact that the news has three times the budget, and five times the plant space in the station.

We have already recieved 2500 letters from supporters and sustainers and big donars from all over the country: All of them know how much they gave, and why? (By the way, its hard to raise money, when management censors your main guest, an hour before air time, on the first day of a fundraiser, and forbids you to use your planned thank you gifts. Please, google “catherine austin fitts/kpfa censorship.)

Your blogging is uninformed and silly. Just for the record: You seem to have swallowed the crap about 20% across the board cuts, but under current management, Flashpoints has been cut fifty percent. How has the morning show done, as of right now? Budget cut or expanded under current management? Same question for the News, way up or cut back 50% like Flashpoints.

By the way, outside the room where nora’s hours were cut in two, there is an open job hire posted for Mitch Jesserich, new show Letters to Washington: So is KPFA hiring some and firing others? And of course, never much of a news person, you skipped the newsy stuff:like the fact that KPFA management broke the contract and violated Nora Barrows Friedman’s core seniority rights, but hey, why bother with the facts, when it is so much easier to fire of an attack, based on your own deeply felt feelings, and profound bias. Maybe, crrent management busted the budget, and is trying to use it as an excuse to get rid of a few enemies, by breaching the contract. why else violate it? best Dennis Bernstein, Executive producer, Flashpoints

” All I know is he said, I once was blind but now I see….”-
Matthew

Wait a minute! I am something you or Dennis will never be…a black female reporter, with prior corporate, commercial, nonprofit, NPR radio and television experience, prior to working in the newsroom at KPFA for three years. I am in California as a result of my then husband being named morning personality and program director at KBLX, where he continues on air as we speak. After I retired as a supervisor from media/ communications with the City of Oakland, I volunteered to work in news at KPFA, my beloved favorite radio station. From the first day, Aileen Alfandary made it clear, covertly and overtly that she supported a white male supremacy agenda. Mark Mericle agreed and gleefullly proclaimed aloud, “…the world is ruled by white men”. I thought God or Ethics ruled the world. Oh well, maybe just my world.

From 2005 to 2008 I wrote up Aileen three separate times and at least a half dozen other staff members who thought to harass me with behaviors that legally constitute a hostile work environment. I submitted this documentation to KPFA Human Resources, and found them more
accusatory than objective, until I hreatened to sue Pacifica for its entire budget, which is how I got their attention, and is why Alfandary was moved to mornings from evenings. During my entire tenure there I continued to document abuse both verbally and in writing, that included acts of retaliation for my original write ups. I have copies of everything I wrote and in each instance, with varying degrees of success my concerns were addressed and always sustained. They would have fired me or barred me from the station if Lemlem hadn’t feared losing in court. I continued to submit documentation to KPFA Human Resources citing racist and sexist behavior by Aileen Alfandary and among the others I wrote up was Eric Klein. My concerns were again sustained by Human Resources, but again, only after I threatened to pay a lawyer five grand toward a lawsuit that would take their jobs and budget. Two staff members exhibited behaviors sufficiently egregious that they were required to apologize to me, in writng. I still have those letters. But regardless of all of this, you sir, may well choose to swallow whole Alfandary’s/Lemlem’s babble and bullshit, but that speaks more to your depth, sophistication and credibility or lack thereof than to Dennis’because Dennis gets it…and neither of you have or will ever experience what I have. Just look at me as an older, more experienced Nadra Foster. And as for where I place my KPFA donation money, at least Dennis sees and recognizes truth and then dares speak out. You on the other hand are a well meaning mistake.

People are laid off every day and they suffer, it happens. The real question is, is this retaliation. Are lay offs being used to discriminate against staff unfriendly to management, that too happens all the time. Which is why we have union process and procedure that hopefully is not corrupt, like KPFA’s present management. Unions hold retaliation as illegal and usually seniority rules. Nora, may be experiencing retaliation, a fair and thorough review of the law and facts will determine this, I know union regulations about retaliation do not apply to Eric Klein, who was one with management from day one. In my experience, Eric Klien was all too happy to follow Alfandary’s lead: I had to document, write up and report him to management for a pattern of behavior and series of incidents in which he threatened, verbally assaulted and attempted to intimdate me out of the newsroom and ‘his’ studio.

Something you sir, apparently don’t ever have to worry about, not as long as you defend their bullshit and remain blind to the truth. Dennis, on the other hand is a symbol, he represents all that is different and unique at KPFA. He should be considered a Pacifica and KPFA treasure. Everybody listens to him on the way home. ( Online listeners are people who can afford computers and cuts back the audience numbers by wealth and privilege, whereas anybody can afford a radio, and those audience numbers must be considered in any program popularity review. THIS IS community radio, right?) Who does not know this???!!

I The way the response to Dennis’ post was glossed over is shocking. I remember being so inspired years back that Flashpoints was airing in Texas – and the solid reporting by Flashpoints when the station was horribly physically attacked. Ernesto, did you have any say in Flashpoints removal there? Here in the bay area, Fox News is capiturimg market share, but I will not stand for Flashpoints being targetted. I will make my facebook and outside political activity and union work with CWA central to the defense of Flashpoints – especially Nora be made whole with return of wages. No mention was made of Robert Knight in Ernestos post. What exactly happened to him and Mitch Jesserich?

Moz

I have not come to bring peace but to bring…”
-Matthew

Name calling is not a negative if the name you call accurately describes an oppressor, or its tool. To call a thing by its name is to define it, and to define a problem is to solve it. To tell the truth is to call a thing by its name, otherwise it is a palpable lie. Further, it is not easy to get rid of employees perceived as disruptive by management, unless said employees fall to hopelessness or ignorance and give up without a fight, for fear of being labeled as disruptive.

There is recourse to injustice. You can sue in a court of law, those who corrupt process and procedure. Individuals have recourse to power through court systems, the governmental system of checks and balances, the fourth estate and the Constitution, all are designed provide some measure of protection. It is easier to be misled and stay lost rather than think and try to find your way. Respect has its root in the Latin; (v.) specto, spectare, “to see”. Jurisprudence and union contracts forbid retaliation which by definition, occurs when (KPFA) management or any power seeks to undue or unseat fair and legal pro labor judgements or councils, vacate court rendered orders and decisions, including state, federal and ADA law and then couple that with employee directed punitive behaviors. Retaliation and harassment are disruptive. I call disruptive, those fools with power who use power to unfairly punish otherwise loyal employees and end up poisoning a multimillion dollar radio station chain.

U.S. law is unique in that when fairly applied and administered it can and indeed does render some measure of justice, otherwise you and I sir, would not be in a public forum discussing anything, in fact this would be an entirely different conversation, and Lewils Hill would never have gotten a license to operate, much less could he have been called the name “Conscientious Objector”. When law has no conscience you best not object. Think about Nat Turner, John Brown, Denmark Vessey, Crispus Attucks, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Cesare Chavez, Toussaint L’Overture and a thousand other nameless martyrs and saints to the cause of justice. Every one was once considered far more than disruptive. What name do you think they were called?

To follow your train of thought to its logical conclusion, would you also vacate Brown vs. Brown as inconvenient? What about fugitive slave laws? Don’t want to disrupt laws sanctioned by the southeren states, now do we? After all work makes you free. I say the failure to disrupt a corrupt system is itself evil. The society or person who allows evil to exist and does nothing is disruptive, not those who plead against it. If you then, call saints disruptive, ignore their claims of conspiracy and go whistling home to dinner, by what name should you be called? The Civil and Revolutionary Wars from which this country was born rage on. Either you are with us or against us. I suggest disruption is an appropriate civil action, born in the blood of those who fought so we could debate the question in comfortable blogs like this one. And just as they had reason then I have reason now, to call names and be disruptive for to be anything less and to do anything less is to be a well intentioned mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. I suggest you rethink your reference to name calling as negative, and that you rethink the names you bow to.

Call me a name, call me disruptive if you like, that I may stand beside those who have stood before me, and been called names far worse, for now their names are the platforms from which we speak and define our experiences as ones of comparative ease, relative comfort, truth, justice and peace.

The question before us now, sir, is by what name are the saints and martyrs to call you?

Love your site,

Maggie Kaigler