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We are members of KPFA, listeners and staff, who oppose the efforts of some current station board members to break‐up the Pacifica Foundation and operate KPFA as a stand‐alone station.
As KPFA and Pacifica gravitate farther away from the 1949 original mission of opposing all war, we need your support to start re-organizing all five Pacifica stations to slow the march toward a state of perpetual war.
The false economy of eternal war concentrates wealth farther up the scale, leaving a growing disadvantaged population with less economic opportunity.
KPFA and Pacifica have the capacity to confront the war machine, as was proven when the stations contributed significantly to the end of the Vietnamese war and toll of death and distraction across Southeast Asia.
● KPFA management’s cancellation of several programs, like Guns and Butter, Counterspin, and Workweek that challenge government war policy typifies this devolution and drives a steady decline in paying memberships.
KPFA management’s shift to merely reporting on global deterioration, rather than opposing it, means that members must demand a return to regularly exposing and confronting self-serving lobbyists and politicians. As it stands now, KPFA could easily be confused with the voice of the Democratic Party.
Please join with Rescue Pacifica to restore KPFA to the watchdog we need.
Together we must demand:
● Dispense with corporate wire services like AP and Reuters (Reuters literally helps ICE track undocumented immigrants through their corporate parent) in favor of using independent-only and alternative news sources.
● Reach out to diverse community groups to help us make programming together that speaks to their issues, their way, instead of just having people on as guests. KPFA should have regular co-generated specials with groups organizing their communities to go deep on local issues.
● Expand into video when appropriate. Digital cameras are easy and portable, bandwidth is cheap and sometimes you need to SHOW what you are describing. Clinging to parochialism about format is a recipe for failure. Content can be and should be multilayered and multimedia.
● No censorship. Broadcasts that don’t match the mission statement and offend community standards should be dealt with in the context of community board or a program council that, free of workplace politics, can measure content against articulated goals and decide if it is found wanting. Abrupt hierarchial decisions just create nepotism, fear of upsetting the boss and self-censorship. Risk taking should be encouraged. We want to air things now that 50 years later will still be frighteningly ahead of their time. We did it once, and we can do it again.
● Forget commercial underwriting. It’s a nice idea, but sponsoring a program means it belongs to the entity that pays for it. The programming has to belong to all of us.
● Practice radical transparency about governance. Post all the votes with names in a place easy to find. Post the station’s budgets and actual results compared to the budget in a place easy to find. Report to the members like they own the place, because they do.
● Keep the Pacifica Foundation intact. No one ever owned the very few pieces of mass media infrastructure not captured by six huge corporations and decided “eh, who cares, too much trouble”. A nationwide voice is impossible to replace and once lost, will never ever be reinstated. Care for public assets, value them and use them to make big trouble.