A community organization that is membership-run must have a deep commitment to radical transparency. KPFA and Pacifica spend tens of thousands of dollars every few years to elect institutional leadership from the membership base. In order for those elected board members to really represent the members whose votes they requested, their actions as elected board members must be available to the members without undue hassle.
KPFA’s local station board has banned the videotaping of public open meetings of the board and has prevented the recording of votes in the meeting minutes unless the majority of the board consents, which they have not.
These kinds of undemocratic actions make it very difficult for members to know how their representatives voted on their behalf without doing hours of research listening to lengthy audiotapes with no indexing for when votes actually occur. If the board takes a raise of hands or voice vote and then “agrees” not to record the votes in the minutes, there is no way for a member not physically in the room at the time of the vote to know how their representative voted on their behalf. We wouldn’t tolerate this from elected officials in a government.
Rescue Pacifica candidates support the right of any member to video tape a public LSB meeting and oppose the use of parliamentary procedure to prevent roll call votes on issues of substance.
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