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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. |