On Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007, Masters stated on his program, "Lich Doan is also our assistant producer, and he can't come in now, of course." The attached audio clip includes the statement at second 30.

To those familiar with the KPFK election, Masters' reference to Doan told his listeners that Doan continued to work for him on his program and was running in the election. Masters admitted his knowledge of the conflict between Doan's working for a programmer and representing listeners with the comment "he can't come in now."

KPFK programmers and staff elect board members in a separate election. Programmers having influence on listener board members would defeat the separation of the groups in the KPFK governing scheme.

Doan is running as a listener sponsor "slate candidate" for a group calling itself the "Committee to Strengthen KPFK." The slick slate mailer of the group identifies Masters as a member.

In the KPFK candidate statements, Doan said he was a "volunteer."

On receipt of the Committee's slate mailer, a poster on one of KPFK's little used listener forums stated: "2 LAB candidates told me yesterday that some LAB candidates have gained access to the list of Subscribers and are using this for direct mail/email solicitations of their votes.... Who at KPFK could have allowed such an invasion of privacy? Who permitted the use, partial or complete, of anyone's personal information given to KPFK only to assist the station to survive to then be used for individual power grabs?"

Another poster asked, "How are non-insiders supposed to know what is going on in the LSB election and how to cast an intelligent ballot?" No one has yet answered her post.

The listener forums are at www.kpfk.org. Click on the "Listener forums" link.

Board candidate Leslie Radford, at http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/11/210215.php stated, "KPFK, bastion of radical free speech, at the end of this election in a little more than three weeks, could be the voice of a faction of the Democratic Party and their allies, the voice of those who posted their vicious attacks on L.A. Indymedia, the voice of Sheriff Lee Baca."

One observer asked if Hillary money might have financed the committee and slate mailing with the objective of keeping KPFK from becoming a hotbed of Naderism, if Nader runs as a third party candidate in 2008.

Miles,

May I repost this on radiojustice.net, listing you as the author, or course?

--Leslie

Certainly, feel free to repost the article and file.

This is a paste of a comment appearing on Leslie Radford's article

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/11/210215.php

The comment is at the bottom.


WHOA! KPFK Story and comments now gone!
by This isn't suspicious, is it? Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007 at 1:52 AM

Check it out. Grace Aaron's post on the KPFK elections has been disappeared. SO have all of the links under "comments" to these KPFK stories. You know, someone had just issued a juicy challenge to Aaron, to get her to prove what action she had taken as KPFK Board chair to avert a looming financial crunch for the station and the network, and now it's just all gone. NONE of the comments on KPFK are any longer visible. Guess someone got upset because it was going badly for the "Committee to 'Strengthen' KPFK" slate.

Imagine that.

Gimme a friggin break. He mentioned the guys name. B.F.D.
Hardly an endorsement, and in no way a campaign violation.
This is no where near as bad as the violations you committed in the on air forum. You and others on your SLATE have specifically named and defamed other candidates on the air. A clear violation of the fair campaign provisions which you were all require to sign before running.

Reality check, I am not Leslie.

I recommend apology to Leslie.

Such attacks are not doing the slate side any good.

So you'd have no problem if a host, say, mentioned my name before and after every break? I might be able to arrange that . . . Just said my name, "Leslie Radford." No comment, no endorsement. That's fine with you, right? I'll get right on that.

My real problem is figuring out how Masters' assistant producer got on the ballot as a listener candidate. As you well know, dah-link, a staff member is defined for election purposes as someone who puts in 30 hours between June 1 to August 31, paid or unpaid. Doan was regularly mentioned as Masters' assistant producer during that period. If he was in studio for those thirteen weeks, that's 26 of those hours right there. Now, you tell me an assistant producer does nothing over three months besides sit in the booth.

And no, I never defamed any candidate on air. You really ought to fact check before you make big ol' unfounded accusations. That's kind of basic to being a researcher, isn't it? Listen for yourself. That forum and the Spanish version that follows it are my only appearances on-air since this began, except for the on-air announcements.

I hear those are on-line somewhere, but I haven't found them. I do mention other candidates in mine, those I endorse, but naming them isn't against the rules. The on-air announcements were all screened before they were broadcast. No defamation there . . . so plz, sources from now on, if you're going to continue this.

Or you can just continue with the pathetic distortions and lies, and I'll continue to call them out for what they are.

Are you the same Miles that once ran IRS records?
I thought you were smarter than to get sucked up in all of Leslie's propaganda.

No, Reality Check, I mean Eben Rey, he's apparently smarter than to get caught up in your propaganda.

some people, like me a moment before I found these articles about KPFK on this site, have been reading the neglected but useful KPFK LISTENER FORUM on "our " website.

There may be others who did not 'think' of looking outside to find information about the food-fight going on about balloting and all the hateful accusations that they too might like to learn about.

I am suggesting:

post both places in case anyone else also wants TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON....

what KPFKers really act like when they have a chance to gain power & prestige & position = not much different than other political govt contenders for their spots it seems.

Let's have information crossed over so more people who care can say or read or be thought-provoked over the big differences that are emerging - that will affect all listeners for a while, anyhow.

Please share, here, there, any & everywhere !
pretty pleeeeeeease.......

It would be really helpful if you would repost anything you find useful over here, over there, since you've found the wonderful world of LA Indymedia.

Time is tight for me right now, but I agree, all of this should be available to as many voters as possible. Hope you can help.

You CAN request a new ballot if you do so by November 30, if you want to change your vote.  And if you lost or never received your ballot, you can get one if you request it by that deadline.  Write to ballot@pacifica.org to request a new ballot.

The definition of a ‘staff member’ is defined in the Pacifica Bylaws. You can access the Pacifica Bylaws at the Pacifica website.

For your convenience I’ve quoted the section that refers to this:
Pacifica Bylaws
ARTICLE THREE
MEMBERS OF THE FOUNDATION
SECTION 1. MEMBERS DEFINED
There shall be two classes of members: (A) "Listener-Sponsor Members" and (B) "Staff Members", who shall collectively be referred to as "Members."…

B. STAFF MEMBERS
"Staff Members" shall be: (1) any non-management full-time or part-time paid employee of a Foundation radio station; or (2) any member of a Foundation radio station "Unpaid Staff Organization" or "Unpaid Staff Collective Bargaining Unit" which has been recognized by station management, or, if the station has neither such organization or bargaining unit, then any volunteer or unpaid staff member of a Foundation radio station who has worked for said radio station at least 30 hours in the preceding 3 months, exclusive of fundraising marathon telephone room volunteer time. Said volunteer work shall be performed under the supervision of the Foundation radio station management and shall not include volunteer work on committees of a Local Station Board. Radio station management employees and Foundation staff employees who are not employed at a Foundation radio station shall not qualify as Staff Members, however, such employees may qualify as Listener-Sponsor Members by contributing the requisite minimum dollar amount as set forth in Section 1(A) of this Article of these Bylaws.

I spoke with Lich myself before he became a Listener-Member candidate. He did so because he did not qualify to be a staff candidate because he doesn’t put in enough volunteer time to be eligible.
We actually went over this at a meeting of the Committee to Strengthen KPFK. We already had plenty of Listener-Member candidates (12 with Lich)!! It might even have been better for him to run as a staff candidate.

It’s interesting how Leslie and others, who purport to be in favor of affirmative action, diversity and youth representation, are so eager to try to disqualify Lich, a young Vietnamese-American, and Donna Warren, an African-American woman. Hypocrisy is certainly a universal human characteristic.

People who are fair-minded usually verify the facts before making accusations. To fail to do so just results in the mud being slung winding up in the slinger’s face.

Grace Aaron

Good to see you hear again. There a lot of questions for you on your thread.

But I never made an accusation about Lich. I posed a conundrum I had a problem with--how can an assistant producer for a 2-hour a week show *not* put in 30 hours over 13 weeks?

And for the record, I would have not questioned his candidacy if he had run as a staff member. His youth and "diversity" (Grace's word) shouldn't put him outside of the rules, though. And I have never tried to disqualify Donna Warren.

Plz, Grace read carefully and stick to facts on the ground. There are enough people around here making up stuff.

I find it difficult to believe as a matter of fact that Lich Doan did not qualify under the 30-hour 13-week rule.

Regardless, someone like Doan, under control of a programmer, should not be allowed on the LSB as a listener sponsor position.

Having separate listener and staff positions on the board serves the purpose of giving control of the station to listeners and keeping insiders at the station from controlling it themselves. This is a real danger. KPFK exists to serve its listeners, not the people who work there. The people who work there have incentive, time, and access and the ability to form slate committees to make the station work for their benefit. Separate listener positions limits the influence programmers can have and keeps them from taking over the station.

Time and time again, Masters has told us he has his own ideas over how the station should be run. Masters has a vote in the staff election.

Doan knows that while he may be an assistant producer on Background Briefing today, he may not be an assistant producer tomorrow, if Masters so decides. If Masters doesn't like what he does on the Board, Masters can make him not an assistant producer. Doan would have a conflict between representing listeners who would have elected him and Masters who controls his present professional position in the industry.

If Masters can do this, so can any other programmer. Staff could take over the entire board doing this.

Allowing such a situation to arise defeats the purpose of keeping staff from being able to dominate the board. The rule should be changed to prevent this from happening and to protect listener control of the station.

May,

Grace has almost told you what happened. After Lila et al. got done packing their slate with PDA members to get Marcy Winograd approved as GM, Ian Masters demanded his representative be on the LSB, too.

But Lich is a staff member, and the Committee had its 3 staffers. They didn't want to split that small voting pool 4 ways and risk losing a seat to Agustin or Margaret.

The Committee, as Grace says, pondered long and hard. What to do with Lich/for Ian? But Ian figured it out: Lich had a pretty good shot as a listener candidate, since Ian could plug him at the end of every show.

Here's the trick: the producers of each show (Ian Masters, executive producer for Background Briefing, in this case) certifies who qualifies as a staff member for the purposes of the election. So Ian doesn't certify him, or, as Grace says, "Lich didn't qualify." And he's all set up to run as Masters' candidate.

That was easy, wasn't it?

a detail--The committee thought about dumping Eben Rey but she was too good stirring up the station against Eva so they owed her (and who would want Eben mad at them)?

To be honest, I don't remember if it was Ian who came up with the idea of running Lich as a listener. In any case, presto! chango! a listener candidate.

Feel sorry for Lich. He doesn't get half of what's going on over his head. Up until the election, he thought everyone adored Ian but he's finding out his hero has clay feet.

The more this story goes on, the worse it gets.

Regardless of who gets elected, KPFK will have a divided board and community.

On the street, you are supposed to clean up your dog's mess. Lila and Grace created this mess. By analogy to your dog. Lila and Grace should clean it up.