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And you're listening to WBAI New York. It's just about seven o'clock on a Wednesday night time once again for off the hook
I
I
And the very good evening to everybody the program is off the hook
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening joined tonight by Mike good evening Rob T
Firefly good evening Kyle. Hey dudes. Welcome back from Seattle. I feel welcome and
Bernie s somewhere in Pennsylvania, I believe
Greetings from Northeastern, Pennsylvania. All right. Well, did everybody have a happy and productive April 1st, I hope
Well, we sure did we made an announcement yesterday concerning the upcoming hope X conference in July here in New York City
That we have a very special
keynote speaker a true hero to
America a household word we've been promoting this stuff for the last few days and yesterday we announced that in fact
Yes, Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker at Hope X
And we basically we gave out some some reasons why we thought Sarah would be perfect for this
apparently, there are still some people out there don't see the strong connection between the hacker community and and and and Sarah Palin
And well, we had a few things on our website which got quite a number of visits and comments
we mentioned in fact that hackers have been battling representatives of national intelligence in the fight for more transparency and of course Sarah Palin has
Been battling intelligence throughout her entire history
So we have we have that
we have the fact that
hackers have been trying to overcome
The tarnishing of our image our name by none other than Francis Packer
He's the guy that was somewhat responsible for the execution of King Charles way back number of decades ago quite a number
So we've been battling that all the time people seem to think that hackers exist just to execute Kings and actually that's not
that far up on the agenda and meanwhile Sarah Palin, of course has had to battle Michael Palin the
Comedian who has tarnished her name and has made many people think that this is just a Monty Python sketch
Which we can assure you she is not. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Kings
Well, yeah, then I guess it would be higher up on your list. I mean, it's not like at the top
It's certainly not executions, but you know, it's on the list
Do you know what you call people who who push for this type of thing? I do Republicans. No regicide
I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right? No. No, that's not my thing. Well, that's just to be
Francis Hacker was was a regicide. Oh, I learned that I think that's a thing
He did rather than a thing he is but well, it was anyway
He actually got executed later for doing this. It was a lot of execution going on back then
that'll teach him and then of course we also had the fact that both hacker and
Palin are two-syllable words with the same second letter and
A total of two vowels and they both are sort of pronounced in the same rhythm hacker Palin, you know things like that
so there's a lot of connections and
Well, I I'm sorry to say folks. It was an April Fool's joke
Sarah Palin will not be giving the keynote speech or any keynote speech at our conference
Not that I know of and in fact, I guess this is also to inform her that she should not be booking her
Travel arrangements now because she might have fallen for it as well
So we will be announcing though our real keynote speaker one of our real keynote speakers later this week. And in fact
the description holds
American hero household word. All right, so keep guessing who it might be and we will be happy to announce that
I think that's what's coming out tomorrow actually, so
exciting things happening in the world of
Hope hackers on planet Earth conference coming up July 18th through 20th. And again, if if you feel you have
something of interest to share with a few thousand hackers some kind of a talk or a panel or
Anything like that a special project?
Basically
We can do almost anything
So, please write to us if you have an idea for a talk speakers at hope.net
If you have an idea for a project projects at hope.net if you just want to volunteer and help out in various ways
Volunteer at hope.net. So all kinds of things Bernie anything you want to add to that?
Well, I did want to say to our audience that they can
know hope X conference will be happening July 18th through the 21st at
Hotel Pennsylvania, let me correct you there July 18th through 20th 21st is recovery
You'll be there to the 23rd cleaning up Bernie
I don't know if you got the alert on that
This wouldn't be the first time that she has fallen for a ruse by a satirical radio host
Well, I'm not sure I'm satirical. I really would like her to show I think it would be an amazing an amazing occurrence
But what she fall for in the past? Oh
French-canadian radio station called radio station
morning show guy funny guy called her opposing as
the French Prime Minister and
aired their conversation for
Like 15 20 minutes and she totally fell for it and then he started asking really silly questions and then she realized she'd been had
So, um, I think she tried to she tried to blame it on one of her staff. I think right exactly
Wow
It was all in good fun and we had a number of tweets going out to on the help X
Twitter feed that I believe
Got some attention and some confusion out there once a year
We get to confuse actually confuse people more than once a year, but it's all in good fun
I was gonna say our non April 1st tweets confuse people enough. Mm-hmm. That's true. That's true
But for one day a year we get to do it on purpose
Yes, I should point out though that everyone is welcome at hope so Sarah Palin if you're listening you can attend the hope conference
But you're going to have to pay for your ticket. Yes, please
We're not we're not trying to isolate people or make fun of them. We make fun of all kinds of people
They make fun of us. That's just how it works. So yeah, she showed up. She'd be welcome just like anybody else
Alright, we have tonight rather an interesting program a bit of a departure from what we usually do here on off the hook
Where we talk about technology and and hackers and things like that
But we're gonna talk about something a bit more I guess radio centric a bit more Pacifica
Centric closer to home something a little bit looking inward a bit closer to home
But 3,000 miles away because that's that's where it's that's where we're we're connecting to right now. Exactly
yeah, basically, we're gonna be looking a bit more into the
Institution that is Pacifica and what makes WBA I go and certainly we can bring the hacker perspective to that now
As you may know and many of our listeners may not know this they might just listen to off the hook on WBA
I will WBA is part of a family of five radio stations
So actually if you count translators and simulcasters a few more but for all intents and purposes
You have WBA I in New York. You have WPFW in Washington DC
You have KPFK in Los Angeles KPFA in Berkeley and KPFT in Houston
And those are the five stations that make up the Pacifica Network actually a lot more stations air Pacifica programs
But those are the five owned and operated stations part of the Pacifica
Foundation and the Pacifica Foundation was founded a long time ago. I think 1949
well before WBA I existed by Lou Hill and
It's it's basically been the inspiration for all non-commercial radio stations
Since then we invented we invented begging for money on the air. That's something
I'm not sure how proud we want to be about but we were the first
Radio network to do that and it worked worked fabulously. In fact, it's worked so well that we're still here in
2014 and
We've gotten here by not raising corporate money not having underwriting not having commercials and that says something
so you might hear a lot about how
Crazy it all is what a huge challenge it is to run BAI to run Pacifica
How it's all falling apart
But when you look at it, this place has survived and a lot of commercial entities have not so yeah, it's a struggle
It's hard. It's crazy, but it does work and it can work
despite ourselves I
Wanted to add that because it's such a unique resource and it's such a different model. It attracts a lot of people, right?
It's a cool thing
It's a it's a really important thing to have a voice
As we've often said during fundraisers and stuff in the middle of the dial here in New York City huge audience tri-state area all of that
Is fantastically important and a lot of people want to have access to that
and so BAI and other members of the Pacifica Network attract a really diverse group of people and
part of making it work is all of those people being able to get along in one way or another and and and the
Institution can move ahead
And when you have all kinds of different people you have to come up with processes and ways to
Make decisions how to move forward and that's kind of been something that's changed and and had different formats throughout the history
As far as I know of Pacifica and WBAI alike
So I think we're gonna get a little bit more insight into where that stands now and how we've how that's kind of led us
To where we're at with the network and the station itself. We've had all kinds of people on these airwaves
We've had Bob Dylan. We've had William F Buckley. We've had Allen Ginsberg
basically
even Bill Clinton was
Called in to our radio station once and had the misfortune of being queried by Amy Goodman and couldn't get off the phone for a long
Long time, but that's the kind of thing that happens at a radio station like this
Yeah, George Carlin. Are you telling me Bill Clinton doesn't know how to like hang up the phone?
He has somebody to do that for him. You can't like signal to that. Well, I think about it
He was he was president of the United States at that time for the president of the United States to hang up on somebody
That's a headline right there. I don't think he wanted to do that not on Election Day, which is when he was making all those calls
But the point is and and we were responsible for the seven dirty words because we're the ones that aired the George Carlin sketch
Right here on this radio station
It's a lot of history here and we had Julian Assange in the studio before anybody really knew who he was
and the thing is there are going to be all kinds of things like that in the future as well if we do what we
Do and we continue to do it properly
But what you may read about in the mainstream media is how crazy it all is how all these factions and groups are at each
other's throats how
nothing can get accomplished how stations are going bankrupt or off the air or not able to pay their bills and
Yeah, you know what? There is a degree of truth to that. There is there's a lot of craziness that goes on around
These particular entities these stations
I'm not exactly sure why that is and maybe we can find out in the next hour or so
Why this kind of thing happens and then I digress is there I would add that this is exactly what I meant
Like it's because it's so different that it works that way. Yeah. Yeah, you won't you won't see this happening at NPR or
PBS or anything like that. So, okay, you might have heard that
first of all, you probably heard that there was all kinds of
conflict and
And
disagreement at WBA I that we've had all kinds of trials and tribulations
since Superstorm Sandy where we
were forced to move from our Wall Street studios and here we are basically on WH CRS couch up here in Harlem and
Yeah, fine. You know, we we had a real issue with expenses
We were paying a huge amount of money for the Wall Street offices something like $25,000 a month
We're forced to pay over $50,000 a month to be on the Empire State Building with our transmitter
that's that's a necessity if you want to broadcast to the full area that our
commercial style frequency will afford us you have to be in a place where the signal will get out and we do reach four states
And that's pretty incredible KPFK in Los Angeles most powerful
Transmitter west of the Mississippi. These are facts. These are amazing things and
We're able to continue doing that because of the support that we get from our listeners, but yes, there is all kinds of conflict
We had to move to Harlem. We had to lay off a huge part of our staff a lot of cutbacks
because things were basically mismanaged for a long long time and just weren't run properly now
Similar stories have taken place at the other four stations to varying degrees
But there's also I'm gonna not really get into the particulars too much because I don't understand them and whenever someone tries to explain it
To me I get a headache and I think probably most people listening would as well
but the network itself has been embroiled in all kinds of conflicts and and battles and things like that the most recent being
previous the previous month in March when the
the executive director of Pacifica summer Reese was fired by a board that
well, the legitimacy of this has been contested and and it's quite a
Quite a battle of words going on right now as to who has authority to do what?
but basically the gist of it was that that they issued this notice saying that she was fired and
and and summer Reese has has said quite adamantly she does not believe that that is that is valid and that
They have no authority to do this
So what this boils down to is right now at this moment right now at this very particular instant
Summer Reese is still in her office in Berkeley at the Pacifica National Foundation in that office right there and
She's basically been living there. She's barricaded in that office
Because she refuses to leave and that is that is a Pacifica moment
Summer Reese joins us on the phone now from her barricaded office in Berkeley summer. Are you there?
Did I get any of that completely wrong
But I mean the office isn't barricaded during working hours the staff is here doing their jobs and everything but yes
I am in my office and
And most of what you said made a lot of sense in terms of all the turmoil that has
Well, we'll discuss that because a lot of our listeners will say, okay, that might make sense
But in the bigger scheme, it really doesn't make any sense why this keeps happening
But let me just ask you as far as the the day-to-day operations
How do you operate a radio network when you have to barricade yourself in in your office what would happen if say you left now
Well, it's pretty difficult. I mean, they're they're trying to reinstall
CFO who was on leave
Improperly they tried to take over the bank accounts last week, which if
the board member who tried to do that who isn't even allegedly an officer on the board if the bank had
Acquiesced which thank God it's a bank and they they require legal things like approved minutes
But if that had happened payroll wouldn't have gone out for employees throughout the network
So the behavior of this board majority has
Already seriously jeopardized the organization
They were warned on the day that they took the vote to allegedly terminate me with no notice
The the board minority was ambushed by the board majority because this was not on the agenda and no one knew it was happening
And they'd been warned by their insurance carrier our insurance carrier that day that any further reckless employment decisions without
HR
Expertise could render the organization uninsurable. So it's it's been interesting. I've been dealing with you know, CPB
The auditors that people that we actually have to continue doing business with on the outside world who?
you know
Recognize that what's going on here is
Insane and makes no sense, but it's certainly difficult in terms of running day-to-day operations, of course
Yeah, summer. It sounds like you have three different things going on. You have these like immediate
Thick curveballs being thrown at you like
These kind of breaks and protocol and think disruptive things like payroll as you've mentioned
you've also got immediate things like
that are affecting the network broadly like with
CPB and stuff like that and then you also have the kind of regular operations of managing all these really valuable resources and
incredibly precious network
So it seems like you've got you know, many layers of things just to get kind of a normal
Operational schedule going it's really amazing like hearing your story and the perseverance here
Well, thank you. I appreciate that
I mean, it's Pacific as a difficult network to to run even when we don't have board attacks going on because you know, we're
very diffuse organization with a lot of
distress but
You know CPB funds the day that this occurred March 13th was the deadline for one of our
radio stations to turn over its books because our audit is months late at this point and
Because of the refusal of that particular
Station's business office to reconcile its books for 18 straight months
so we have you know back to October of 2012, we've had to postpone our audit and
It essentially means that the CPB funds that everyone has been breathlessly waiting for that are you know past due?
By an extensive period of time at this point. It's over a million dollars. That's already owed to the network
None of that will be dispersed this fiscal year because we won't possibly be able to finish our audit in
Time to actually see any of that money this year and so I you know
I mean just that alone is a huge issue and was what you know was occurring the day that
The day that this vote went down was the day that we we honored our severance obligations to our WBII
employees who were laid off last year and
With the day these books were supposed to be turned over
And we had a lot of deadlines going on that apparently the board didn't think were important to me
Sure, sure and in a lot in light of those
Challenges ahead what kinds of things do you need? What kinds of things do you think would really be?
Good and positive to good in like moving the network and these stations in a forward direction
What kinds of really integral things from the community or from sure from the organization?
There would be really crucial at this moment. Maybe a top five or anything you can think of
You mean like presumptively once we get past legally dealing with this attempted coup d'etat?
What is actually I need to focus
Yeah, well obviously I mean we have critical infrastructural needs we are millions of dollars in debt as an organization
We were able to you know, reach that hurdle of paying the severance obligations to our laid-off staff
but I mean, you know best of all being in New York how
the situation of WBII and how much attention it really needs to be able to save our station there and I
Not be in the vulnerable position of having someone, you know
Try to swap or buy the license and you know
And part of what's going on here also is the the change in the board dynamics in terms of the majority
Changing to where there's a two-vote majority
Politically has changed hands and a lot of those people have expressed a desire to liquidate
New York in one way or another so there is a feeling that some of this sort of crash and burn technique
That's going on right now where you can guarantee
Financial distress for the organization be increased dramatically by their actions that
Part of it what may be motivating that is a desire to be able to justify doing things to a station on the East Coast
You know, but I think you know if we can if we can when we overcome
What we should be focusing on are all the things necessary to make a radio network survive in a changing media environment that has financial
distress
We have on the East Coast, New York, Washington DC and Houston, Texas all need new transmitters in the long run
it's particularly critical in Texas and DC because they're both operating at low power and
for Texas they're in their license renewal period just as New York is and
They can't even get the transmitter up to full power for one day so that they can renew their license
And this is critical and the board isn't even discussing issues like that. So in terms of community engagement
I'm hoping we're going to come through on the other side of this clean house as it were and
Reengage, you know the listeners and supporters of the network and I would like to see us
You know focus on our programming on our equipment on
Maybe deploying things in a digital fashion in a more meaningful way because we all talk about it
but there isn't a real organizational focus on that and
Building new audience, you know actually dealing with the fact that our listenership is low
But we have really valuable resources great signals and a lot of fantastic shows. So I think
we have to get past the
what's going on politically with the board structure and frankly with cleaning up things like accounting practices and
stuff that I've focused a lot of my attention on since I've been the executive director of
administrative functionality and
Basic business practices throughout the network so that it's a functional organization and then you can focus on your mission
but if you're constantly doing cleanup on your basic back-office procedures because they are not being done correctly and
There's strong resistance to implementing appropriate procedures and you know
Accounting internal controls and that sort of thing then you don't get to focus your attention on the mission and the programming and the audience
So it's a has to be a complete refocus of our energies to where we fix things so they work, right?
And then we can do what we all think we're here for which is I would think radio and programming, you know
Now summer, um from the outside from someone not familiar with this whole story
This could seem like a case of just oh, someone was fired and they don't want to leave
But can you explain a little bit about why that is not the case way what's going on here? Sure
You know, I've I care very much about Pacifica and I've invested not only my own time, but my family's I mean
We're highly invested in the survival of the organization long before I had a paying job here
If it was just about my firing every attorney has looked at my contract agrees
It's ironclad and I could sue for hundreds of thousands of dollars and that would be that they violated my contract straight up
I think they intended to violate my contract because we're back to a board that is intentionally creating legal and financial liability for the organization
For some reason. Yeah, why would a board do that? That's what I don't understand. I don't think anybody else really gets that
Okay, so this isn't we don't have normal boards most boards actually do things which are productive and healthy for their organizations
We have political
parties
essentially running for the board
the factional control of the board switched hands for the first time in about five years and
The people that are now in the you know, a sensible small majority here
We all know that there are many bids and offers coming in on the New York signal and have been for well over a year now
One of the people that voted to do these various things who was like a second on some of these motions going after me
Immediately put a motion up to reconsider swapping the New York signal one of the other people involved with this said
I don't think we should take commercial offers off the table and
The employer of the board member who brought the motion to fire me and who a month earlier had brought a motion to fire me
When he was first seated on the board didn't know this man from Adam
but he's an employee of Dan Siegel a former board member and
that former board member said to my face that he was in favor of dismantling the network because of
Organizational Darwinism because he only cared about seeing KPFA survive
So the current alleged board chair is from KPFA and a lot of this seems politically coming from the West Coast
So why would board members crash and burn an organization because if you create enough financial liability
It becomes vulnerable to hostile takeover and that's a fact and that's what I think we're seeing here
You cannot be warned by every attorney that every single attorney that advised this board when they bothered to have legal counsel
Which was rarely in the last six weeks
Has told them you can't do this. You're gonna violate her contract, you know
You're breaking the law the insurance carrier tells them you're gonna become uninsurable and that's because we've had so much employment litigation in the past
We've had no employment litigation while I've been the executive director, but they're about to try and break that
So if I was just wanted to sue I would have gone and sued but the organization cannot afford to have me
Sue we don't have the money to pay my contract
because they've breached it any more than we have to pay all the people we already owe money to and
So I think there's some pretty nefarious stuff going on here
You wouldn't violate every single law and procedure along the way as a board if you weren't trying to create liability
I mean if they had wanted to fire me and not violate my contract they could have tried, you know, writing me up
I've never had a performance evaluation. So I think it's specific bad actors
You know probably working in concert with people who don't really know the consequences
Well one thing I definitely like to avoid in this hour is any kind of finger pointing to one side or another because as you've
Mentioned there are multiple sides multiple factions and over the years. We've seen one side take over another side get purged, etc
Etc. It's like, you know a mini state in some part of the world where it's all kinds of revolutions and and
Changes in direction and to be honest it it just never seems to actually
Get traction where we start moving forward and continue moving forward
It's it's basically one step forward and another step backwards and I don't know if we're making any any progress whatsoever
And I think to to most of our listeners and to most of our staff here in New York
I think I speak for most of them and just saying that they want to do radio. They want to hear radio
They want to focus on the things that make this place great and they don't care about all this infighting and squabbling
What side it is right what side is wrong, you know
There are a lot of good people on all of the sides because I know people on all the different sides
And there are all sorts of things that are relevant and all sorts of things that are irrelevant to what it is
That we believe in and I really wish that we could just somehow
Put this aside and focus on on getting this place to where it should be. We are a radio station
We are a radio network that can reach millions and millions of people with fantastic programming
Relevant issues that need to be addressed. We had the Gulf War and we spent most of the time around Pacifica
squabbling over various
infighting and
debates over what kind of power will be had if somebody gets elected I've literally seen people on on both sides or
multiple sides of the issue
Stooping just making fun of each other's names and things like that. It's really really silly and
We have to change something, I don't know though
I don't have nearly enough knowledge to be able to address this intelligently what it is
It needs to be changed, but it just seems to me one thing we can all agree on is that this is not working
Well, I think I think there is widespread agreement on that. I think what you're really talking about is structural change
I mean the law the more in-depth and dealing with this situation if you look at the last 15 years
I mean the post new bylaws era of really expensive elections of
Turning everything into because I I don't think I mean I know when I came on the local board in Los Angeles
I didn't know that it was the equivalent of party politics you get to the board and you think oh
I'm here to serve this radio station
I'm here to do good things for a radio station and then you get into the environment and people have you know political sides I
Believe that one in the long run what needs to come out of this is a complete restructuring of the governance structure
We shouldn't have
Elections every two out of three years that cost a quarter of a million dollars each
to elect people who
Literally are not expected to raise even five dollars in the course of a year for the for the sake of the radio station and
Where so much attention there's so much energy within the organization that is diverted to these
Political struggle all the time of one sort or another
I
think that
One has to address the structural issues you have to address the bylaws you have to address how the organization is being run
And I agree with you. I don't think the listeners care at all about this
I mean people talk about that during election season
Why would most listeners actually care about?
Who they're electing to the board because they don't know who they are they care about what they hear on the radio
And that is what where most people's engagement would legitimately be whether they're producers or hosts or listeners
So I think there's there's been a lot of actually I
Would say hopeful energy that's coming out of this struggle to deal with this abuse of power by the present board
And I think that's because people want to see the organization saved from
What's been going on for so many years and to do that you have to address the structures?
And I think that conversation is going to end up coming out of what's going on now
I know you had a point go ahead. Yeah, I did want to point out though
uh, well, I agree was try to get off the top of the
Political
infighting and motivations, this is not an unprecedented
Scenario on first we have to can't ignore the fact that WBA I as a as a
radio station resource is
conservatively conservatively
Estimated to be valued on the commercial market for somewhere between 65 and a hundred million dollars
Is that about right summer? Yeah, that's in the estimations. I have okay now
Massive that's a massive amount of money. We have something a resource like that
With different factions that can control that potentially control it there is
There can be a lot of infighting. I being from the Philadelphia area. I can remember a similar situation not with the radio station
but with a
Not let's get too far afield here
But with the Barnes the Barnes Foundation was famous nonprofit organization the Barnes Museum of a famous collection of
Incredible artworks by a dr. Barnes and the foundations board was just infighting and they racked up all these legal fees
And certain factions in the board wanted to bring move the museum from the suburbs into the city
beautiful setting the city where it was a
teaching institution and
Really good movie about this called the art of the steel where?
It documented how how this certain factions the board managed to rack up all these
legal fees through
lawsuits like has been going on at
Pacifica and
basically driving the foundation into
into bankruptcy which then
required
This the resource to be sold and the art museum that sold and brought it turned into a commercial
tourist attraction in Center City Philadelphia as opposed to the teaching institution
It was once in in the outskirts of Philadelphia, so this this is a kind of a pattern
I've seen myself with nonprofit foundations where it can be
misused to
Take control of a very valuable resource and WBA is not just a valuable
Intellectual resource
Community research resource, but it's a lot of money, and I don't think it should be sold
But you can't ignore the fact that there's there's all this money sitting on the table that people are trying to grab
And that's that's my concern I
I think summer that it is inspiring to to look at it very much like in operations
And as you said structurally that you know the people that should be on the bylaws in these these elections
I think that era. I think it has not worked, and I think
The politics should stay on the air
I think the people that are passionate about keeping ready if you're righteous about keeping the radio station operating and
Solvency you know that kind of stuff
That's the kind of politics that need to be on a board and these quote factions need to be on the air
You know that's a that's and there needs to be a separation there, and it seems like it's just long
Long since been all kind of one beast
and it's it's the too chaotic and it really needs to be about people that care about the operations and the
The institution being there and then we can get into politics and who believes what and that kind of thing
I don't believe that that really has been helpful too much to the institution in fact. It's been disintegrating it
See radio is something. I think we've all been touched by the magic of it. It's not many times. I find myself
Sitting in my car waiting to hear the end of something on the radio
I should be going inside because it's just that riveting that good
And I think that's something that I've heard many times on Pacifica stations
But not nearly enough because
Well, we we don't focus enough on the magic of radio rather than the the pettiness of some of these
There's infighting going on or just maybe the same old thing week after week
And I hope that that's not something that we are guilty of on our show
We try to mix it up a bit and and and branch out as much as possible as we're doing tonight talking about something completely
different that hopefully is of interest to the listeners and it should be of interest to anybody listening to this radio station because
You might not be able to listen to this radio station if things go a certain way
some are you mentioned that
there are people interested in in swapping frequencies putting us on a
Lower power frequency further down dial or just selling the station
Altogether most of the people who want to do that aren't here obviously because they don't recognize the value of the place
They don't actually listen to the radio station over the radio
Where most of the magic is anybody can just turn on the radio and hear what's going on
That's what drew me into this place. I think that's what drew just about everybody into WBA. I
how much of a threat is that really that that you've seen on a day-to-day basis where the the the prospect of selling WBA I
Or swapping it down the dial for something much less powerful. How real is that?
Well, I think the pressures are very real real
Pacifica legitimately is
millions of dollars in debt
BAI is
Has had tremendous difficulty meeting even reduced operating expenses and is still struggling with that
WPFW is operating at low power for an incredibly long period of time now and
Struggling KPFT is struggling and operating at low power. Neither station has you know, really the reserves to
To do what it means they need to do with their equipment and the two, California stations which appear to be
Doing better financially don't they spend what they make?
I mean, they're not actually in good financial shape either and have to have long fund drives and
Have trouble meeting their operating costs and the Pacific and National Office
The way the structure works there are what we call shared expenses things that are for the whole network
But New York and DC aren't able to contribute to those at all and haven't been in a long time
so there are real financial pressures and
if you're from another station, it seems like the
the willingness to consider cannibalization of
Certain parts of the system in order to support other parts of the system seems to be really present and then you know
We're talking money and the types of amounts we're talking about millions of dollars
It depends on you know, how different individuals may view what they could do with that and whether they think you know
The AI is being adequately used now as a resource, I mean obviously different people bring different perceptions, but I think these are real threats
There are real offers
And the reckless behavior, I mean one of the reasons people have been so outraged across the country
But what the board has done has nothing to do with me as an individual
You know, it has to do with recklessness in terms of the behavior of the board where you would
Intentionally create hundreds of thousands of dollars of liability and completely disrupt the functionality of the organization
At critical, you know a really critical place in its history and that is it's so grossly irresponsible
that one does have to look and say okay, so are there other reasons for this and
Certainly, I mean from the story that was just told about you know, that other organization
If a board can drive its organization into such distress that it ends up having to liquidate assets. I mean
That could be a scenario that some people are desiring because they can say ah, look we have to do this
There's no choice anymore. So I think those are I think these are real dynamics at play in the present situation and
Shouldn't be discounted as not being part of what's happening
We also have real financial accountability problems in Pacifica of a deep deep nature
In 2012, which was our last audited tax year
Half of our money was classified by our auditors as being in suspense accounts and they they call it suspense account something
Which is unexplainable or lacks sufficient documentation
It means we can't tell for sure what you did with this, you know as an organization like every year
We've been cited for lack of internal controls and that's something I've been pressing very hard on all around the network
You're in New York
So, you know things like premium fulfillment making sure that you're actually honoring the public when they order things from the station
A lot of this is just basic again basic business standard business practice
But if organizationally people are not doing what is standard and you encounter resistance
Every time you try to implement these things there must be you know, there are reasons for these things
So I think that the what could be perceived as severe problems in our accounting controls
They factor in with making a weakened organization and a weakened organization is more vulnerable to whatever forces are on the outside
Who may be interested in assets and we in fact we own incredibly valuable assets
You know, the licenses are granted to us, you know by the FCC so we don't own them in quite that way
but you know, we have stewardship over incredibly powerful licenses and
You know people desire them and commercial operators also desire them and the actions of the present board
Do not indicate, you know a prudent care for the assets of the foundation and
There's been enough talk about people's desires to do various things with the New York signal
Potentially the other signals any of the stations that are perceived at this point as being I think in a weakened position
Have some vulnerability. It's just there's been a lot more interest in and you know publicity around what's going on in New York
we're speaking with summer Reese executive director of Pacifica currently barricaded inside her office in in Berkeley as
Members of the Pacifica National Board attempt to have her fired. It's just another day Pacifica. It seems
Summer how you feel about taking some listener phone calls?
Okay, well it could be it could be a lot of fun
But let me just ask you you're mentioning all the problems that the stations were having all five stations having
difficulty just meeting expenses
and I assume this is without all the all the craziness going on with with
Factions on the board and and plans to to take the network apart
Let me ask you. Do you think it's?
Radio is sustainable at in this day and age with all the other
Media that's out there all the competition
Is it even relevant anymore? Yeah. No, I think radio is completely relevant
Sustainable, it's a changing marketplace and that those are the kinds of things that organizationally we should be focused on
What should we be doing in the next five years?
We know we know NYC received a big grant, you know, ten million dollars to deal with digital technology
Obviously, we should have some attention focused on that aspect of our business
I think the answer is yes because other people are listening to other radio stations
They do have listeners still not everybody has moved to listening on their telephones yet
so it's still completely relevant, but
We have to sort of go back to our roots and find who we are, you know
somehow the entire mission has gotten subverted and
Everything is about all this side minutiae that has nothing to do with putting varied programming out on the air
That's completely alternative to the mainstream
I think that the public it's really interested in completely alternative to the mainstream because people know things are messed up and
You know, they want information people are hungry for real information. They're still hungry for real information
You know, it may change formats a little it may come packaged differently, but there is always stuff going on in the world
you know, we're living in the age of the NSA and
Collapsing economies all over the world. Of course people need information, but we have to give it to them
And that's part of the overall like what Pacifica needs to do
I feel we need to have a more open shop mentality at our radio stations
We're so close that new programming can't find any room on our airwaves
So we decry that we don't have new listeners
But we also don't allow anything to come in and get on the air
So those are sort of corporate cultural issues for the whole foundation
Like why isn't there a regular evaluative process so people have the expectation that shows may be moved every year or two
just because
You're reviewing how they're doing and whether people are listening and you're gonna
Allow room for new ideas from the community to spring up and and get on the air
So I think yes, but one has to be lively and present and and really available
And I mean there are things going on in the Bay Area, you know inventors
There's this fantastic invention lab over in San Francisco and it's like wow, this is cool
And I'm like, I'd love some of this on the air
But you have to create a venue where that's welcome and that's what you know
Pacifica needs to go back to that where we are a place where you can come in and do creative stuff and find a
Welcome, you know find a welcome environment not one where you're like, oh my gosh, what's going on around here, you know, right?
right, so basically fundamentally changing just the way that we
We open up the doors to people and present things on the radio
You mentioned people listening on their phones people still could be listening on their phones to Pacifica
We can have Pacifica apps and all sorts of things like that
So definitely it's not beyond I think radio is still and radio is still the thing that people listen to when they're traveling
I mean, it's still feel fills a lot of niches that you know screens don't fill
So I think that you know, we have a long time that we can continue broadcasting
But only if we get our act together, okay a phone number is 2 1 2 2 0 9 2 900 Rob
Did you have something look at me expectantly Mike? Go ahead. I did want to ask you summer
Besides of course their financial support. Are there things that listeners can do if they want to maybe help the situation?
Well, there are petitions out there that hundreds of people have signed there's one because we're in Berkeley next to KPFA
So there's one at support KPFA
Supporting, you know me and against the board actions that are being taken people have been writing letters and articles and I
would say, you know the more public support there is the better, of course and
There's litigation going on and I think this will continue to develop and people may end up wanting to support those types of things to
Address again, we're talking, you know in the long run structural issues and kind of insisting that boards act with you know
Actual fiduciary behavior towards the institution and not to achieve other objectives
Okay, let's let's try and take our first listener phone call because a number of people have been waiting and hopefully we won't screw this
up too badly
Let's hit this button and good evening. You're on WBA. I was summer Reese
And first I'd like to thank you summer for for what you've been doing
To me you're
Maybe I'm I don't know to me. You're saving our station and I just think it's wonderful
But what I wanted to say two things one is there are companies
That are run like extremely well and set up so that things like this wouldn't happen
I don't know. I'm forgetting which ones I've heard about in the past, but that's something
You know to think about of a way that we could follow some other path
But what I also wanted to ask you is I don't understand these I still I'm not clear
The people if things were sold and money what came to somebody
Can these people actually are there people who are going to get this money? This is what I'm not getting here
well, I
Wouldn't have any knowledge as to whether anyone had what would be the equivalent of a side deal?
I I'm just looking sort of institutionally there are five
Stations all of whom have some local interest and there is a perception at least in some signal areas
That if one station were liquidated or you know in some way
Became financially their assets became available that they would be spread around the rest of the network and so that it wouldn't
That the benefit would not necessarily devolve only to the local signal area
But might in fact be something that was a benefit to other signal areas
So it's basically station versus station with some of these I'm serious organizational cannibalism
I mean when I had someone who was a board member describe it as organizational Darwinism. I was like oh my gosh
You know really so
So I would say that that certainly you know
Something that wouldn't fall into the same illegal realm that individuals profiting off of something would but is certainly ethically questionable
Let me just ask you since we're talking about the value of radio and the things that come out over the airwaves as you know
With our massive layoffs here at WBAI. We were forced to close down our entire news department and
obviously a station like WBAI is
The news is just so important and not having that I think has been a real detriment to what we present on the air
How high do you hold?
Restoration of our news department as something
That's necessary
Well, I think news is incredibly important in general and I think everyone was most unhappy about the news department being laid off
you know of all things I
Have to be honest like from again from an organizational perspective
the first thing I'm looking at is like that we need stability of funding for regular basic operations regardless of
Anything that is on the air the fact that we have equipment breaking down in stations
They can't renew their licenses because they can't actually broadcast at full power. Is it such a critical level?
And that we are in such debt, but in the long run
I think news is something worth investing money in even though generally it doesn't pay for itself, but that's that's everywhere
I personally feel coming like through this present political struggle of dealing with you know trying to do the right thing here
the larger discussion about
How the economic resources in Pacifica are expended needs to happen kind of network wide in terms of you know
Are we are we a community radio network or are we something else?
Do we pay to put certain programs on the air and strips or is it better to invest that money back in?
Production support for volunteer programming and I think that's part of that discussion that needs to happen in terms of how do we spend?
Listener resources for what we put on the air. So yes, I support restoring a news department
but news is very expensive and I think we have a lot of stuff to do between here and there and
Overall, we need to have a broader discussion as to what we do with the money and what we pay to put on the air
Because that is there's a fundamental philosophical issue there as to whether you're paying some programmers to be on the air
or whether you don't do that and you just pay for the like administrative support services that you and
Technical services that you have to pay for and I think that's a legitimate discussion because Pacifica is
Having to raise so much money and it spends all of that money and there are no reserves and we're in a kind of
As people call it like the death spiral of fun drive. Sometimes we're we're in fun drive five times a year
obviously that's exacerbated in New York because of your incredibly high fixed costs there with the tower rental at Empire State and
You know
That's the best location in the city and the only one that's going to reach as broad an area as you have
So it's a great place for the station to be but we simply have to you know
Have more listeners and bring in more money in relationship to what we're spending
Yeah
radio station on top of the Empire State Building is not something you want to cut back on something you want to expand with and
Use as a valuable resource
That's yeah, a lot of people don't seem to really understand that and that's it's very frustrating people
Yeah, because they're like can't you go to a lower elevation? I'm like, okay
So those tall buildings in Manhattan they work like mountains if you actually want to be heard all over the city
You have to be above them, you know, and people don't understand that in and you have to broadcast, you know
Yeah, it's not it's not advantageous necessarily to move to another location
And it isn't as easy as all that and we would have to replace our transmitter because it is also old and that's about a
Quarter of a million dollars so it isn't like we can just hop from you know
The frying pan into the fire on that it's the right place
We need to rebuild the station and the programming and the listeners and and then we can afford the rented Empire State
Well, New York is filled with talented people as a lot to talk about we have the facilities to broadcast to them
we just have to get over these hurdles of
Destroying each other and if we can do that
I think we have the future is actually bright because wow
We have these five full power radio stations in really big markets
That's more than a lot of other organizations that would kill for this kind of access have
So, yeah, let's let's look at it that way maybe this I agree
It's it's completely optimistic if we focus our attention on the right things and yes get out of the you know
Where so much attention is we have the possibility of completely, you know being rebirthed here and reinvented and you know
Absolutely finding where we were and making it glorious again WBI still has so much love
I mean when I talk to people in New York it it has so much behind it that you know
It's it's very easy to see a bright future, but you have got to like be focused on the right things
Focus on the future. I mean we have a great past to focus on we can't focus on that primarily in the future
We have to look at a lot of people even though we're still on the air
We still exist and that's something I think we can all work on. Let's take another listener phone call two one two, two
Zero nine two nine hundred two. Good evening. You're on WBA. I was summer race
Speak up, please
I want to make a comment on here. Go ahead
All right, so I'm 24 years old right I'm living in Patterson, New Jersey, okay, and
I just feel like a major major
Issue with WBA I is that they really don't cater to the younger generation
It kind of hangs on to the older generation
Let's say like 50 years old and older and a lot of young kids like me
Well, I'm a little different, you know, I'm totally like I'm up for listening to all of this stuff, but a lot of young people
They want to hear that news, but it's just not
Put on in the correct way
What what would you change?
Well, I just put a lot a lot of more a lot more younger people, you know, like a 20 year old
Teenagers like they can a lot more internet content
Okay, so Summer, what do you think about that?
Well, hi. Yes, I think that goes back to what I was calling the closed shop mentality at most of our radio stations
The programming grid has stayed relatively the same for many years and when things get changed they are
They're not met happily, but that's because there's no process
there's no system if you have a regular system of
Evaluating programs and having feedback and the idea that you will make space available for new talent to get on the air
We are an educational institution and there is an apprenticeship program out at KPFA, but we don't have that at other stations
I think the way we should be doing it again. This is about where you spend your resources
Do you spend them on a few personalities that are on the air?
So you pay for the talents of just a few people or do you maybe?
Spend them on acquiring more equipment for training and actually invest in training community members to be able to go out and say cover news
stories or produce their own shows on topics of interest and
Create collectives
I think the thing is to have open air time and space and a process by which you evaluate
Programs and a focus on being a community radio station that draws from the community on a regular basis
So that new talent is nurtured and gets an opportunity to be heard on the air and to work with more experienced people
so that you have people paired, you know and interning with people that have been on the air a long time and
Give people a skill set to be able to go on the air and actually sound decent be able to you know
Edit and produce it's a matter of will and focus and and what you think is important
But yes
If we remain closed to where everyone is protecting territory because it's a lot of in my opinion a lot of what goes on at
Different stages the dynamics in Pacifica, but instead of being an open place and a creative place
Yes, you won't attract young people because you're not
Allowing them to do anything with the station. It's a vibrant dynamic with the public
They have to be able to come in the station
Feel that it's their station and be able to participate in what goes on the air if you expect them to be
Participatory and listening to it, you know, it's interesting about this summer. Is that we're here at WHC our Harlem Community Radio, basically
We're they've given us part of their studios to
To camp out in until we have something more permanent arranged and right now
I'm looking into another studio filled with students that WHC our is teaching actually what we're talking about right now
They're teaching them radio. They're all
experimenting using microphones and
And this is great seeing people
Getting involved. Why aren't we doing the same thing or how many of these people might maybe we'll cross over into this room one day
And and be on a radio station that reaches four different states
We need that kind of outreach as well
And it's been a long time since I've I've seen a whole bunch of bright new faces coming into the studios at WBA
I it requires an institutional sea change and a desire to be that type of
Institution to be one that trains new people up in how to do radio and not one that says this is the same hour time
Slot I've had for the last 40 years and I refuse to be moved even one inch and that's you know
It's because people feel threatened and and one has to do it in a non-threatening way
That's embracive of the people that have been there forever also because it doesn't mean get rid of it shows that been here a long
Time so we you don't do it that way. It should be holistic. So
You know, that's it's the organization if it is going to continue into the future
Obviously to have a future has to bring in new people and that is a big problem within Pacifica. Our demographic is
It's around
Also, I don't know let's say with the premiums
You have premiums that are
$50 $100 $200 or like something so simple like a set of CDs or a flash drive and
Young people these days we hear that and we're just like that's ridiculous, you know
$100 for a flash drive. Well, how much do you pay for a coffee mug on NPR?
As compared to
Okay, go ahead summer
Well, I'm just gonna say the idea of premiums is that you should be supporting the radio station
And that's why you have to build up the listenership again
Because if people are pledging just because they want to get a product
That's not in the long run healthy for the station or for the public. So
For young people I've advocated for quite some time that we institute like a text us five
Type of program where you can text us five dollars just because you like the show that you just heard do digital downloads
T-shirts, you know the things that are inexpensive, but where you can still support the station
but the idea obviously is that whatever donation should be that because you're supporting the station and that you're getting something as a thank-you gift and
Depending on the flash drive. You might get a lot of programming on this is sometimes those flash drives are actually really fantastic
But I hear you completely
One needs to have ways for people to be able to support no matter what's going on for them economically
Let me also speak to that callers point, which is a very good question to start with
We've been on the air here at off the hook for 26 years, but
When the day comes when something else comes along
That caters to a different kind of an audience. It may be a younger audience or a more relevant audience. I
Would hope that we would not be obstinate and say no
This is our time slot forever and ever and I don't think really that's healthy radio at all
And hopefully we will remain relevant, but we'll see I do know this conversation go on forever
Young people, you know, we can understand it the most like very straightforward to the point good to hear
All right, well remember BAI is the only place that would let us do a show in the first place
But thanks. Thanks for those words summer
Well, that's why it's important to save BAI because there needs to be a place for hacker shows. I'm serious
Do you mean that's why it's important? Yes
Summer are there any final words because we're pretty much out of time here. You're there hold up in your office in in Berkeley
It's a very unusual situation
Maybe not so much so for Pacifica, but it's sort of sort of part of the magic
But something I hope that we get past so that we can start rebuilding the actual radio part of the magic
That's the part of the magic. I want to work on to organizational structure
That's healthy so that we can produce good radio and serve the public. Yes
All right, is there any email address or any website you want to give out?
Sure support KPFA is where you can find the petition to support me and I can review reached at summer in the desert
Comm oh boy hijacked my email so you can't get my regular email right now through the organization. Oh, you email was hijacked
Wow, how about that sure is so don't write summer at Pacifica because you'll just be talking to Margie Wilkinson
Okay, well that's
We haven't launched a national website yet
They took this on and went ahead and started posting everything that was going on in terms of articles the petition to support me the
Recall petition going on with one of the staff reps who voted to do this, you know
So I would go there and you'll be kept pretty updated on what's happening
Okay, summer Reese hang in there and let us know what what happens
Hopefully we can continue this conversation and at a future date take more phone calls
And just improve this place make it better and whoever is on one faction
We need to work together and build a decent radio network our email address
Oth at 2600 comm another reminder this Friday
2600 meetings if you want to get involved in the hope conference show up to the one in New York City
We'll see you there and we'll see you next week. Have a good night
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