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Next Board Mtg. March 8-10
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Progressive Portal
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Jan 14, 2002 10:05 PST
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The next meeting of the interim Pacifica National Board (PNB) is
scheduled for March 8-10, 2002, in Los Angeles, and the following
meeting is tentatively set to take place in the San Francisco Bay Area,
PNB Chair Leslie Cagan announced on Democracy Now! today (Mon.,
1/14/02).
Democracy Now! was heard on all five Pacifica stations today for the
first time since August, as Valeria Van Isler was restored as General
manager of WBAI. Van Isler had been ousted last year by the previous
Pacifica regime, leading to a "Christmas Coup" in which security guards
and cameras were installed and numerous programmers were fired and
banned from the station. Cagan spoke from the WBAI studio, where she and
new interim Executive Director Dan Coughlin were meeting with staff to
work out arrangements for the transition.
Cagain said it will take time to restore all of the pre-coup programming
to WBAI, declaring that Pacifica does not want to "ride roughshod" over
the rights of those whose programming now occupies those timeslots.
Cagan said Pacifica is about $3 million in debt, with perhaps half of
that owed to the high-priced law firms hired by the previous regime to
stave off a return to democratic control of the network. An anonymous
donor has offered $20,000 to hire a team of auditors for a two-week
investigation of the state of Pacifica's finances. The members of the
former regime who are still on the national board voted AGAINST
accepting this donation, clearly illustrating that they have an
obstructionist agenda.
With the removal of the WBAI interim general manager and the resignation
of the Houston general manager (Garland Ganter, who came to Berkeley in
1999 in an attempt to shut down KPFA), there may be only one serious
node of resistance remaining in the network: KPFK in Los Angeles, where
station manager Mark Schubb and on-air personality Marc Cooper have
railed against the new management, misleading listeners to think it is
the new regime (in power for just three weeks) that is responsible for
the financial crisis that has been developing over several years. KPFK
has refused the directive of the national Chair to restore Democracy
Now! to its previous timeslot (9 a.m.), and is instead airing the
program at 6 a.m. (The current management at WPFW in Washington, while
generally viewed as aligned with the previous regime, has apparently not
attempted to subvert the directives of the new leadership.)
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