Sunday's Town Hall Meeting on KPFA

Sunday's Town Hall Meeting on KPFA
at the Black New World, 836 Pine, West Oakland at 3pm

by The Minister of Information JR

On August 20, '08, the management teams at KPFA and the Pacifica Foundation called the Berkeley Police on Black KPFA programmer and single mother Nadra Foster for supposedly being banned from the station, and refusing to leave. The reality is, as discussed in the staff meeting after the incident, that Nadra was never officially "banned," because staff and other management were never alerted, as well as it was never put into writing. To add insult to injury, another manager at the station, Michael Yoshida, admitted that he has personally let Nadra into the station's studio on a number of occasions.

When the Berkeley Police arrived at the station, they slammed Nadra to the ground, kicked her in the face, severely sprained her arm, hog-tied her, and had her jailed for 2 days. She is now fighting 5 charges which include "trespassing," "resisting arrest" and "assault on a police officer." Once the management teams were confronted with the community outcry after the incident, KPFA Interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio tried to shift the blame from her staff, Pacifica's staff and the police to Nadra being banned and refusing to leave.

This recent case of police terrorism at KPFA symbolizes and illustrates not just the anti-Black and anti-community nature of what KPFA currently is, it shows how Black and white liberals alike act when faced with terrorism in the Black community or for that matter death. August "Fef" McCoy, another young Black KPFA programmer, was murdered in Vallejo, days after Nadra was terrorized by the police inside KPFA. Still to this day, there has been no radio memorial or even an announcement on the air informing the listeners.

Both of these recent incidents scream for the need for a daily or at the least a weekly Block Report Radio Black public affairs show on the airwaves of KPFA. If other people will not talk about news in the Black community, we will have the airtime available to talk about our own issues. Quiet as kept, no other programmer at KPFA has done an interview on the air to further expose what happened to Nadra or Fef, although a few have gone on the air to express their solidarity, which we appreciate.

These are just some of the issues that we will be dealing with and organizing around. Others include decertification of the unpaid staff by management, the death of KPFA's functional Program Council, as well as the myriad of sexual discrimination cases that the station is currently mired in. I hope to see everybody there, because it is going to take a mass movement to change the racist climate at KPFA, as well as to protect the safety of all of KPFA's employees.

If you would like to see more information on the police terrorism case of KPFA Black programmer Nadra Foster, you could hit up http://www.blockreportradio.com

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The Minister of Information JR
POCC Block Report Radio
http://www.blockreportradio.com

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