KPFA Board Manager Fired; No Word from KPFA Board to Listeners

The capitalist press, the 1/14/06 SF Chronicle, gives the subscribers who pay for KPFA the first official announcement that yet another KPFA station manager has been fired. We never received any official announcement via Email or postcard or any other means from anyone on the KPFA Local Station board that this has taken place. This is gross mismanagement on the part of LSB and must end immediately.

Steven of the SF Chronicle reports the news at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/14/BAGBJGNC851.DTL

Once again, Roy Campanella, like Gus Newport, tried to make changes but was blocked by the entrenched uncooperative paid staff of KPFA and did not fire them, as must be done.

There is no union contract that allows for insubordination. Any order that the staff refuses to carry out an order that is not illegal or immoral is grounds for immediate termination. If any of the long time staff do not like this, they had better retire immediately because this is the last time this will happen. The next station manager is hereby notified that every single staff member who refuses to carry out the orders of the station manager is fired immediately upon such refusal.

The listners, who pay for the existence of KPFA, voted for a Local Station Board which in the majority supports moving Democracy Now from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. and possibly having it repeated at 7 p.m. or even at 10 p.m., as the evening news used to be repeated shortly before midnight. This was supported TWO YEARS AGO, and still has not been carried out.

The listeners also do not pay for any government hearings, which should NEVER be on KPFA. We pay for the regular programs. This past week we had an entire week of worthless hearings in which the Senate prepared to rubber stamp yet another fascist judge to sit on the supreme court.

--From Tuesday through Friday, we never heard Democracy Now or the Morning Show.

--We did not have any publicity in the morning for the Labor Heritage Festival occurring this weekend in Burlingame. A labor movement is crucial to making any substantive change in this country. We only had about 5 minutes on Flashpoints' program on Friday at 5 p.m. That is insulting.

--We did not have any discussion in the morning of the pending barbaric murder of Clarence Ray Allen at 1 minute after midnight on January 17, 2006. It is not enough to discuss that on Flashpoints or the evening news. Considering all of Europe, most of Latin America including Mexico, Australia, South Africa, Senegal and the Ivory Coast have abolished the death penalty, the urgency of abolishing this barbarism mandates as much coverage of this horror as possible, we need far more discussion not only of the necessity of abolishing the death penalty, but also of abolishing prisons and the very concept of punishment and instead promoting rehabilitation with our tax dollars.

--We urgently need far more regular labor programming on KPFA. A pre-recorded or live broadcast of labor news and culture from the US and around the world could be at 6 a.m. every day during the week. Americans, for example, need to learn the necessity and mechanics of a general strike for both economic and political goals. It is done all around the world in both rich and poor countries.

--Guns & Butter needs a prime time slot, instead of 1 p.m. on Wednesdays as it is as urgently needed as all labor programming. It does an excellent job of blowing the whistle on all fascist programs perpetrated by the US government, both Democrat and Republican, and gives voice to labor issues.

Please complain to the entire Local Station Board via Email of:
(1) The complete lack of notification of the subscribers of this latest firing of a station manager;
(2) The necessity that the next station manager must be told to fire anyone immediately upon their refusal to carry out his/her orders;
(3) The urgent need to move Democracy Now 7 a.m.
The LSB can be reached at:
http://www.kpfa.org/lsb/index.php?page=contact
and
http://www.kpfa.org/lsb/index.php?page=members