Green Party of Alameda County Signs on to SF Green Party Statement to “Report Locally”

 

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The Green Party of Alameda joins the San Francisco Labor Councilthe Gray Panthers,ILWU Local 10East Bay Veterans for Peace,Sonoma County Veterans for PeaceILWU Local 10the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, the Richmond Progressive Alliance, the San Francisco Green Party and the Golden Gate Letter Carriers in calling for restoration of the KPFA Morning Mix to its 8 am weekday hour.

“Think globally, act locally” is as relevant today as it was in 1915, when Scots biologist, sociologist, and town planner Patrick Geddes wrote Cities in Evolution.  “We need locally produced, locally relevant programming to help us make specific connections between our daily lives and politics and those of the international community and the planet.”

We find it difficult to understand why you replaced The Morning Mix with syndicated programming produced in Los Angeles, because locally produced programming about politics, art, culture, and the environment in a station’s fm signal area is the heart of community radio. We need to understand the realpolitik immediately around us, in the San Francisco Bay Area, not just in Iraq, the Ukraine, Nigeria, Los Angeles, or the distant chambers of Washington D.C. or the United Nations.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the movement towards community-based and/or regional renewable power infrastructure has reached a critical stage. We need to understand every step forward or backwards as this story unfolds on the ground, in our City Council and County Board of Supervisors offices, in public agencies and at public gatherings. San Franciscans need to know what is happening in the City of Richmond, in Marin, Sonoma, and Napa Counties, and in East Bay and South Bay counties where citizens are attempting create renewable energy infrastructure.

Despite a California State mandate to produce at least 20% renewable power by 2010, PG&E is still producing only 19%, four years later, and doing whatever it can to stop Bay Area communities from creating clean energy buyers’ co-ops, or banding together as one and eliminating its dirty energy monopoly. PG&E strategists may have been most successful at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, where they have used the San Francisco Mayor’s office – which they traditionally control – to block the implementation of our renewable power plan Clean EnergySF for two years, even after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimous vote for it.

PG&E has also been able to activate its union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 1245, to oppose CleanPowerSF; this calls for the attention of a local labor reporter like Morning Mix host Steve Seltzer.

Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar lives within Southern California Edison’s monopoly and cannot possibly cover this as our local hosts can. We need diverse voices of hosts and reporters in touch with those on the ground, not the lone voice of Brian Edwards-Tiekert and/or his pinch hitter, Marie Choi, much as we appreciate the addition of Marie’s voice to the morning hours.

This is not a “narrowly focused, local issue,” as KPFA Interim General Manager Richard Pirodsky suggested the Morning Mix hosts had typically covered. in his parting lecture to the KPFA Local Station Board. We’re thinking globally and acting locally, for the survival of the planet and a sustainable peace rather than never-ending dirty energy wars. The same can be said of efforts to create municipal and regional mass transportation networks,local agriculture, just criminal justice, and other central elements of sustainable culture.

Every municipality in the Bay Area struggles with criminal justice issues including racial profiling, police brutality, police accountability, whether or not to arm police officers with tasers, whether to allow stop’n frisk, whether to allow Police Departments to report juveniles to immigration authorities, and police shootings of minority youth like Oscar Grant, Alan Blueford, Alex Nieto, and Andy Lopez. These police issues are all part of a national discussion, but local decisions determining how they play out here are made at multiple local levels every day. .

What does an LA or New York broadcast host know about the San Francisco Re-entry Council, which created a model for re-integrating ex-offenders that is now studied nationally? What do they know about former San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey, current Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, and Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s groundbreaking work in rehabilitation and re-entry?

How much can they know about Oakland’s infamous police corruption or the Oakland Domain Surveillance Center proposed barely a year after Occupy Oakland grabbed the national and international stage?

How much can they know about the Richmond Progressive Alliance and Contra Costa County’s struggles with the Chevron refinery, crude-by-rail shipments, and expanding oil infrastructure?

Citizens are working to stop potentially explosive crude-by-rail shipments from the Bakken Shale all over the U.S. and Canada, but shouldn’t we be specifically informed about the crude-by-rail shipments threatening our own communities here? If not for KPFA Morning Mix host Andrés Soto and the Richmond Progressive Alliance, many residents of the Bay Area might not even realize that crude-by-rail shipments now threaten their own communities, not just Contra Costa County’s.

This may not be of concern to KPFA’s wealthier subscribers who never have and never will have to live next to an oil refinery, a crude-by-rail transit line, an oil storage tank, or any of the radioactive and otherwise toxic sites that the U.S. Navy abandoned all around San Francisco Bay. They may never have to face any number of other injustices in their daily lives, but if KPFA is to foster real community within the fm signal area it claims to serve, in accordance with its mission, it must consider these injustices to some as injustices to all. It must not exclude them from the station’s early morning hours.

On July 12, 2014, the Green Party of Alameda signed on this statement.

August 2nd Community Town Hall

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“National Live-Stream Community Town Hall Forum About Pacifica Radio: “Community Radio, Morning Mix, & Pacifica”

Featuring Morning Mix hosts, Community Members, and Programmers from other Pacifica stations via Skype. 

Saturday, August 2 from 1:30 – 4 pm

Fellowship Hall 1924 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA 94609. (At Bonita Ave, one block east of MLK Way & three blocks west of Shattuck Ave)
This location is wheelchair accessible via the ramp on the Bonita Avenue side of the building.

Sponsored by the Social Justice Committee of the BFUU and the Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.

Stick Up For Labor Programming in Drive Time: SF Labor Council July 14 6:00pm

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Last month the San Francisco Labor Council passed a  resolution calling for the return of the Morning Mix.

San Francisco Labor Council Resolution To Bring Back The Morning Mix

Now the bureaucracy at CWA Local 9415 is asking them to repeal it, without a vote of the membership of the bargaining unit. 

The Labor Council acted in the interests of working people by supporting labor and multi-voice working people’s programming as a component of AM drive time.

One hour for the people!

Please come, especially if you’re a union member to say: “We staff or listeners of KPFA thank the San Francisco LaborCouncil for its June 9 resolution calling for the return of the Morning Mix. We ask the Council to stand by that resolution, and reject any motion to repeal it.  The Bay Area needs to hear the Morning Mix again.

Plumbers Union Hall 1621 Market Street San Francisco on Monday July 14th at 6:00pm

Text of the resolution: (Passed June 9, 2014 and endorsed by GGLC Local 214 and ILWU Local 10)

Whereas, KPFA Radio 94.1 FM, with a powerful radio transmitter, has been a megaphone for community free speech radio throughout northern California for over 65 years, and is the flagship station of the Pacifica Radio Network; and

Whereas, for the last 3 and a half years KPFA has aired a ground-breaking labor and community program called the Morning Mix – broadcasting at a time when more working people could hear it, during “drive time” from 8 to 9 AM, Monday to Friday; and

Whereas, the rotating hosts of the Morning Mix radio shows on KPFA have featured the voices of Bay Area working people and their issues, to a degree not found on any other Northern California station with the reach and power of KPFA. This included regular reporting on labor and community struggles – about the postal workers’ fight against privatization; the concerns of teachers, dockworkers, transit and healthcare workers, and immigrant workers; as well as the community fight in the city of Richmond against toxic pollution by Chevron Corporation; and

Whereas, the Morning Mix provided regular announcements of Bay Area labor and community events, so working people could be aware of these activities and participate; and

Whereas, late in the evening on May 21, KPFA and Pacifica management abruptly, and without proper consultations, cancelled the Morning Mix and replaced it with a syndicated program “Uprising” produced in Los Angeles that does not cover Bay Area issues and events; and

Whereas, we need more local labor and community programming on KFPA radio, not less – especially since working peoples’ stories are almost completely ignored by the mainstream media. This program change is a tremendous loss for the radio listeners in the Bay Area.

Therefore be it resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council calls on KPFA/Pacifica management to reinstate the Morning Mix drive-time radio show. We need more labor and community programs on the radio – not less!

And be it further resolved, that this resolution be submitted to other Bay Area labor councils for concurrence and action.

KPFA News Reporter Ann Garrison: “iGM Richard Pirodsky’s parting lecture addressed to the entire LSB, UCR and Save KPFA”

There have been claims in various online forums, that departing iGM Richard Pirodsky’s farewell lecture to the KPFA Local Station Board was directed only at United for Community Radio (UCR), not at our station board’s other faction, Save KPFA.

It did seem that way to many members of UCR, because Richard was obviously arguing that we should all roll over and accept the LA program that displaced coverage of politics, art, culture, and the environment in our own fm signal area.  However that is not how Richard explained it to me in the e-mail that I’m attaching a screenshot of.  He said that all but three LSB members, whom he did not identify, had been seething with him after the lecture.

This e-mail should also expose the lie that Save KPFA’s LSB members and supporters have not attempted to tell KPFA’s manager how to run the station; he says here that the entire LSB has been telling him how to run the station ever since he arrived.  Former LSB member Sasha Futran even appeared at the initial KPFA staff meeting with Richard to tell him that he was doing more harm than good and should resign.

 Here’s what Richard said, for anyone who can’t open the screenshot:

As for the rest of your email, clearly you and I were at different meetings on Saturday.  I told the truth and ticked off everyone, not just UCR.  With about three possible exceptions by my count (and those three may be so pleased that I am almost gone they feel they can be magnanimous), the entire LSB was seething that after telling this iGM for over a year how he should manage the station, he would (while physically exhausted, mentally drained, and emotionally spent) have the temerity to tell them how they should govern.

Pirodsky-Claims-Equal-Nastiness

East Bay Veterans for Peace Says Restore The Morning Mix

On Saturday, June 14, 2014, VETERANS FOR PEACE East Bay Chapter 
#162(VFP-EB#162) voted to endorse the below petition for the Morning 
Mix and local programming, and also the same time voted to 
co-sign/co-endorse the SF Labor Council Resolution (of June 9) calling 
for the reinstatement of the Morning Mix to drive-time at KPFA.

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BELOW IS THE PETITION ENDORSED BY VFP-EB#162

Support local community activist programming
at Pacifica and KPFA

We oppose the displacement of the 8:00 AM Morning Mix show on KPFA 
with a network show “Uprising” hosted by Sonali Kolhatkar from LA. A 
new small majority of the Pacifica board of directors are replacing 
local community “activist oriented” programs with what they perceive 
as higher value national programming. We believe that the need for 
local community and labor programming in prime-time is a key factor in 
building support locally and regionally for KPFA and all Pacifica 
Stations. We strongly urge the KPFA Interim General Manager Richard 
Pirodsky, Pacifica Executive Director Bernard Duncan, Pacifica Board 
Chair Margy Wilkinson and the Board of Directors to respect and 
support the needs of the listeners in protecting and advancing local 
community programming throughout the network.

ILWU Local 10 – Executive Board – Supports SF Labor Council Resolution to Bring Back The Morning Mix

The executive committee of ILWU Local 10 adopted this resolution:

Reinstate the “Morning Mix” drive-time radio show –

Say No to Cuts in Labor/Community Programming on KPFA Radio

Whereas, KPFA Radio 94.1 FM, with a powerful radio transmitter, has been a megaphone for community free speech radio throughout northern California for over 65 years, and is the flagship station of the Pacifica Radio Network; and

Whereas, for the last 3 and a half years KPFA has aired a ground-breaking labor and community program called the Morning Mix – broadcasting at a time when more working people could hear it, during “drive time” from 8 to 9 AM, Monday to Friday; and

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Whereas, the rotating hosts of the Morning Mix radio shows on KPFA have featured the voices of Bay Area working people and their issues, to a degree not found on any other Northern California station with the reach and power of KPFA. This included regular reporting on labor and community struggles – about the postal workers’ fight against privatization; the concerns of teachers, dockworkers, transit and healthcare workers, and immigrant workers; as well as the community fight in the city of Richmond against toxic pollution by Chevron Corporation; and

Whereas, the Morning Mix provided regular announcements of Bay Area labor and community events, so working people could be aware of these activities and participate; and

Whereas, late in the evening on May 21, KPFA and Pacifica management abruptly, and without proper consultations, cancelled the Morning Mix and replaced it with a syndicated program “Uprising” produced in Los Angeles that does not cover Bay Area issues and events; and

Whereas, we need more local labor and community programming on KFPA radio, not less – especially since working peoples’ stories are almost completely ignored by the mainstream media. This program change is a tremendous loss for the radio listeners in the Bay Area.

Therefore be it resolved, that the San Francisco Labor Council calls on KPFA/Pacifica management to reinstate the Morning Mix drive-time radio show. We need more labor and community programs on the radio – not less!

And be it further resolved, that this resolution be submitted to other Bay Area labor councils for concurrence and action.