The Pacifica National Board (PNB) will hold its next meeting via conference call on Mon., Jan. 3, at 8:30 PM, and the following motions are very likely to come up for a vote. One pair of motions — both retroactive “bills of attainder” to punish someone without a trial — would disenfranchise WBAI’s voters by allowing the removal of Bernard White from not only the board to which he was elected by a wide vote, but also from membership in WBAI/Pacifiica. Another motion would require WBAI’s Local Station Board meetings to be held over the phone, thus restricting participation to a privileged few.
Please read on about why these are grossly unethical, compromise the integrity of the Pacifica Foundation, and violate the Pacifica Bylaws – and what you can do to express your opposition (see details on emailing the PNB here).
Note: You can hear the live webstream and later the recorded archive at www.kpftx.org . Disfranchisement, Nullification and Bills of Attainder
Unhappy because top vote-getter former Program Director Bernard White bested their multi-millionaire leader by an almost 2-to-1 ratio in spite of their violations of election rules and the racist lies in their campaign materials, ACE (a.k.a. the “Independents”) are attempting to invalidate the expressed will of the largest group of WBAI members who voted in the recent Local Station Board (LSB) election.
The ACE-ists, who supported the 2009 Spring Coup from the West Coast and engineered the disappearance of General Manager Anthony Riddle and the firing of Program Director Bernard White, are represented on the Pacifica National Board (PNB) by listeners Alex Steinberg and Jennifer Jaeger and WBAI Public Affairs Director Kathy Davis (not to be confused with Lisa Davis, a Justice & Unity member who served on the LSB for 6 years, and whose term recently ended).
At the PNB meeting on December 17, 2010, Kathy Davis brought a motion to retroactively revise the organization’s rules to allow the expulsion of White from his seat on the Local Station Board (LSB) and from membership in the Pacifica Foundation. At the same meeting, a PNB member from the Houston station, Richard Uzzell, brought a motion with slightly different terms but the same effect. The conference call ended before either motion could be taken up.
As revised in 2003, the Pacifica Bylaws state that a listener becomes a member and is able to vote and run for the LSB by making a donation of $25 or volunteering 3 hours in an applicable year. However, Davis’s motion would bar anyone fired “for cause” from sitting on a station’s LSB or from holding a membership in Pacifica. Coming from the group on the LSB that removed General Manager Riddle so that their hand-picked replacement could fire Program Director White, it is clear that this motion is a continuance of the targeting of Bernard White.
Davis’s motion is essentially a Bill of Attainder (legislation finding an individual guilty and punishing them without a trial – outlawed by the U.S. Constitution) that allows the ACE-ists to brand Bernard White guilty of the crime of being fired – unemployment and the trashing of his name not being sufficient harm done – and allowing them to revoke his membership as a consequence.
Making Public Meetings Available to a Privileged Few
Another nefarious piece of business before the PNB is Alex Steinberg’s motion to hold the next WBAI LSB meeting by telephone, thereby excluding the station’s members from participation. This meeting would be in lieu of a live, in-person meeting, which the Bylaws state “shall be held within the local radio station area in facilities of sufficient size to accommodate Members affiliated with that radio station and the public, preferably in the station.”
Steinberg would have the meeting web-streamed, and provide a telephone number where the public can call in their comments. This makes the meeting available to those who can listen on the Internet for 3 hours and who have access to a phone. Is that what we fought and paid for?
Who’s Who
The Actors:
Brought the attainder motions of disfranchisement and nullification: Kathy Davis, national boardmember from WBAI and Public Affairs Director, and Richard Uzzell, national boardmember from KPFT in Houston
Argued to push the nullification motion ahead of other business and proposing to shut the public out of LSB meetings: Alex Steinberg, national boardmember from WBAI
Argued to block White from running in the election: Former WBAI local boardmember and music programmer Delphine Blue and, following her, newly re-elected WBAI local boardmember Carolyn Birden.
Your Action:
Write to the Pacifica National Board – pnb@pacifica.org – and please copy us at info@justiceunity.org.
Demand that they STOP trying to thwart the voters’ will, violating the Bylaws by changing membership rules retroactively and without allowing for a vote by those affected, while targeting those they oppose. This behavior is not only totally un-Pacifican – it is also contrary to common human decency and the most minimal sense of fairness.
Recent Comments