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It really shouldn’t really be possible, but Eben Rey, a Black lesbian programmer at KPFK who’s running for the local station board with the slate called “The Committee to ‘Strengthen’ KPFK” is a right wing conspiranoid who runs links from her website to CNN’s arch racist prime time host Lou Dobbs. She also shares the extreme racist Right’s paranoia about the so-called North American Union, the latest bogeyman of racist organizations like Southern California’s “Save Our State,” a group that has marched openly in the company of Nazis, and which recently held a rally denouncing the “North American Union” at the Westwood Federal building, a rally featuring Black Republican and Minuteman Ted Hayes. Hayes promotes the same basic line as Eben Rey. Dobbs is on record repeatedly supporting the Minutemen, and denouncing those who call the group racist. He’s declared, “"I support the Minuteman Project and the fine Americans who make it up in all they've accomplished, fully, relentlessly, and proudly." Dobbs supports the Minutemen; Rey supports Dobbs. And The Committee to “Strengthen” KPFK apparently has no hesitation about promoting Rey as a “bridge builder.” Rey was obviously thrilled to interview Dobbs on her program, in a 25 minute segment, calling her chance to talk with the xenophobe “absolutely fantasic.” (Listen here.) Rey claims in her candidate statement “There are so many great things in store for KPFK. As we get back to the mission of bridging divides through music, art and politics we have and will always prove the naysayers wrong!” Apparently, getting back to the mission of bridging divides means going back to the era of Pacific’s “Hijackers”, including former GM Mark Shubb, who purged virtually all programming by and for the African American and Chicana/o communities from KPFK’s airwaves. But Rey praises Schubb, and buries the truth, saying “I came into Kpfk (sic) during Mark Schubb's tenure when training workshops welcomed new blood into the station and gave them the skills to succeed.” The other “bridges” Rey is building on her program’s website include links to the right wing Ludwig Von Mises institute (click ”Mark Thornton” at the bottom of her main page) and the virulently anti-communist Epoch Times out of Taiwan ( Click Eben’s “darling”, Sherry Chung, also at the bottom of the main page.) Rey is undoubtedly the only lesbian in town to provide us with a link to the ultra conservative and intensely hompophobic WorldNetDaily and that ultra-republican stalwart, Human Events, which features Ann Coulter on its editorial staff. Rey doesn’t miss a beat, also offering to connect you with rightwingnews.com/ on her links page, where, fittingly she also keeps a link to Paranoia Magazine. No kidding. Other matters pressing for Rey’s attention include a link to a video on an “alien autopsy” from the “Roswell” incident, which shows someone endlessly poking around on a 3rd rate “B” movie dummy, and a link to an internet poll you can vote in, but where you can vote for nothing but Republican candidates for president. It’s quite safe to say that Eben Rey is herself a Black Republican. Despite her endorsement of Dobbs and his xenophobic vitriol, she would apparently consider herself a “moderate” to “liberal” Republican. She openly endorses Republican candidate Ron Paul for president of the United States. Her paranoia about the “North American Union” is so intense that she says “What this means is that you will have to register as a Republican to vote in the Republican primary in California's closed primary system! OMG yes!! But this is a part of the new rules for radicals which are those whom seek to work the system instead of having the system work you! Go to California’s Secretary of State website for information and forms to do so.” So, there we have it; KTLK, the AM talk station, takes on Right wing hosts and raises the slogan ”Progressive, the New Mainstream.” Eben Rey does them one better, saying the “new rules for radicals” mean joining the Republican Party. Makes you wonder what they mean by ‘The Committee to “Strengthen” KPFK.’ Rey, in her candidate statement, says she aims to bring “unity and support to the programmers, staff and management of Kpfk (sic).” But, at a station like KPFK, (where after several years on the air, Spanish language programming still remains controversial), endorsing the racist and xenophobic positions of a Lou Dobbs and the radical right wing paranoia of groups like save Our State around invented issues like the “North American Union” can only bring division and intercultural hostility, not the “unity and support” Rey pawns off as her actual intention. ‘The Committee to “Strengthen” KPFK’ recently released a full color, glossy brochure promoting all their listener candidates for the Local Station Board, a brochure that was mailed to every single KPFK subscriber. It cost thousands of dollars, dollars that might otherwise have been used to actually strengthen KPFK, dollars that have no place in an election that will determine the control of a radio station founded by radical pacifists and anarchists, one that pioneered the concept of the listener sponsor, precisely in order to avoid the control of those with the deepest pockets. They did so because as they stated in the network’s mission statement, they wanted to promote understanding across cultural boundaries, not, like Eben Rey, Mark Schubb, Ann Coulter, Ted Hayes, Lou Dobbs or the Minutemen, to fuel Right wing paranoia and xenophobia, not to deepen the divisions between us, but in order to really bridge them, in fact and in practice. Vote For independent grass roots street activists for the KPFK Board -- Vote OUT the xenophobes and their endorsers. |