Pacifica Restructuring Project, document 7 of 7

[On Tu24Sep (apologies for the delay) will be posted an analysis of this latest attempt to break-up Pacifica, & it will examine, in context, these seven docs. The post will synthesise & develop the comments already made.]

Significantly, you’ll search in vain for any reference here to Pacifica. It’s striking that none of their bios mentions Pacifica, none gives any connection with Pacifica – not a Pacifica member, not a Pacifica donor, not even appearing in a Pacifica broadcast. Scratching amongst the scratchings, all we have is an alternate who works at a radio station “that carries a number of Pacifica programs”. Well, knock me down with a feather.

In a nutshell, these non-profit/academic worthies have nothing to do with Pacifica.

Nevertheless, I can acknowledge that Ms Boghosian & Ms Ransby (please read her book on Ella Baker) are Calvinistic, striving to do good works on our mortal coil. Whether that may extend to PacificaWorld is an open question.

After all, the breaker faction have presented no evidence of the views of these worthies on Pacifica. Now, why is that?

It isn’t rational to vote for a set of by-laws, with individuals locked in, without knowing what they think about Pacifica, & what directions they see it going in. Trust has to be earnt. Trust doesn’t spring from a sculptured bio.

Note that although Ms B is a co-host of the invaluable Law & Disorder, a WBAI programme, that wasn’t judged as persuasive, as worthy of inclusion in her bio, a fact that could be used to help her become a Pacifica director – odd or what? Yesterday: https://lawanddisorder.org/wp-content/uploads/lawanddisorder20190916.mp3.

(The extra-size heads seem strangely appropriate, yes?)

Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MWZAASjhKpIFPWfBW4FoK3X6NouJnKj8sitJAi7-5D8/edit (at-large directors; 3 pages) & https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aTNTG_KYGHlABmFdC_YQ1AcnLI02VduFq5ELRFaXbrE/edit (alternates; 1 page)

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The Gang of Six:

Proposed Transition At-Large Directors for Pacifica

Click on names below for more information about each person

Heidi Boghosian is an attorney and executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute in New York, a charitable organization providing grants and support to activist organizations. As national executive director of the National Lawyers Guild from 1999-2014, she oversaw the growth of the Guild’s Legal Observer program after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and through the Occupy movement. Her nonprofit background includes serving as associate director of an alternatives-to- incarceration program for youth, serving as director of development at the Big Sister Association of Boston, and providing organizational management assistance to grassroots AIDS organizations through the Community Service Society of New York. She planned donor cultivation events for basic biomedical research at The Rockefeller University. She also worked in commercial operations at the ABC affiliate WCVB-TV in Boston.

Heidi wrote the book Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance (City Lights, 2013); it was published a month after Edward Snowden’s revelations. Her writings have focused on the policing of protest and the intersection of government and corporate surveillance.

Judy Graboyes has worked in the financial arena for over 30 years, doing accounting, asset management for affordable housing, and community development lending. She previously served as treasurer and on the audit committee for two Bay Area boards of directors; Conard House in San Francisco and Pie Ranch in Pescadero. 

She has a Bachelor of Arts in Management from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA and a Master of Real Estate Development from the University of Southern California. She has dedicated her career to affordable housing, and  is also a musician, activist, and event producer.

Bob King, retired President of the United Auto Workers, like all UAW officials started out as a worker on the shop floor and worked up through the ranks.  Bob was a skilled tradesman from Local 600, the notorious Ford River Rouge Plant. All through his career King was actively supporting and building organizations of international worker solidarity and direct united action of workers in solidarity with each other.

Known for his activism and passionate belief in social and economic justice, since retiring King has remained very active in social justice causes in his community and globally. 

He has been a visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, he co-taught a seminar for both undergraduate and graduate students on “Labor and the Global Economy”, and currently is a Lecturer at the University of Michigan teaching the importance of collective action and collective bargaining in winning greater economic equality in the US and the world.

In 1990 King led delegations to El Salvador to support trade unionists and church members who were victims of a long campaign of deadly bombings, death-squad murders and disappearances carried out by Salvadoran military officers trained by the U.S. military’s School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Ga. King has long been involved in efforts to close the school because its graduates use the training received there to terrorize religious activists, community activists, trade unionists, and political activists in Latin America.

During King’s term as UAW President he assigned UAW organizers to work in Mexico with workers, students and independent unions to organize automotive facilities in Mexico.

In his earlier life, he joined UAW Local 600 in 1970 when he was hired at Ford’s Detroit Parts Depot and began his electrical apprenticeship in 1972. King, a member of the UAW International Skilled Trades Advisory Committee, was elected vice president of Local 600 in 1981 and president in 1984. He was re-elected in 1987 and was twice elected chair of the UAW-Ford Negotiating Committee.  While at Local 600 King was active in the fight to end apartheid, the successful campaign and legal action to open Dearborn parks, support for UAW Colt strikers, and many other social justice fights.

Barbara Ransby is a Professor or History; Gender and Women’s Studies; and African American Studies, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  She is an historian, writer, and longtime political activist. Ransby has published dozens of articles and essays in popular and scholarly venues. She is most notably the author of an award-winning biography of civil rights activist Ella Baker, entitled Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (University of North Carolina, 2003), which won no less than six major awards.

Dr. Ransby’s most recent book is Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the 21^st Century (University of California Press, 2018). Ransby has also published in numerous scholarly and popular publications. She also wrote Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Yale University Press, January 2013).  She serves on the editorial boards of The Black Commentator (an online journal); the London-based journal, Race and Class; the Justice, Power and Politics Series at University of North Carolina Press; and the Scholar’s Advisory Committee of Ms. magazine. In the summer of 2012 she became the second Editor-in-Chief of SOULS, a critical journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society published quarterly.

In terms of her activism, Ransby was an initiator of the African American Women in Defense of Ourselves campaign in 1991, a co-convener of The Black Radical Congress in 1998, and a founder of Ella’s Daughters, a network of women working in Ella Baker’s tradition. She has published and lectured widely at conferences, community forums and on over 50 college campuses. Professor Ransby received a BA in History from Columbia University and an MA and PhD in History from the University of Michigan. 

Walter Riley is a lawyer practicing criminal defense, civil rights, and police misconduct. Growing up in the Jim Crow South lead to activism very young. He served extensively with Durham’s and North Carolina’s NAACP and as President of the Young Adult Chapter received national recognition for organizing voter registration campaigns, lunch counter sit-ins, job campaigns, and desegregation protests in public accommodations, schools and businesses. He chaired Durham’s chapter of CORE’s Freedom Highways Project to desegregate public facilities on Highway 1 from Maine to Florida and was a CORE South East Regional Organizer in the early 60s. He has been honored in Durham, N.C. for leadership and activism in the civil rights movement. He became a student activist at San Francisco State University, joined Students for a Democratic Society, then Progressive Labor Party; opposed the Viet Nam war, Organized a Black Anti Draft Union in the community, worked with the Black Panther Party, became a founding member of Peace and Freedom Party, Co-Chaired with Eldridge Cleaver the Black Caucus of Peace and Freedom. His activism has included workers rights, labor, education/schools, anti apartheid, police misconduct, voter registration and cultural activism.

Riley is currently a member of the California Bar Association, National Lawyers Guild, Charles Houston Bar Association, the ACLU, #BlackLivesMatter, and Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). He has served on the Boards of Global Exchange, Berkeley Jazz School, Oakland Music Conservatory and The East Bay Center For Performing Arts. Walter Riley is the Chair of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. He was the lead attorney for the Black Friday 14, and other #BlackLivesMatter protesters. He has received numerous awards.

Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive magazine, a one-hundred-nine year-old Madison-based progressive bi-monthly. Prior to that, he served over two decades as WORT’s Operations Coordinator. He worked at the station in music and news programming since 1983. In addition to working as a journalist in the U.S., Cuba, Nicaragua & Mexico, Norm has been involved in the collective management of two Madison institutions – Lakeside Press and Mifflin Street Co-op. He is also former Director of the Old Town School of Folk Music-Madison, and served in the 1970’s as Facilities Manager for the Northwestern University Archeological Program.

He is active in the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, the GrassRoots Radio Coalition, IndyMedia, and AMARC: the World Association of Community Broadcasters. His reports and interviews have appeared on Free Speech Radio News, Democracy Now!, and AirAmerica, and in print in Z Magazine, the Capital Times, AlterNet, Toward Freedom, the Tico Times, the Feminist Connection, and elsewhere. He is co-editor of the book REBEL REPORTING: John Ross Speaks to Independent Journalists.

He has covered the WTO meetings in Seattle & Cancun, the FTAA meetings in Miami, the Democratic Conventions in 1996, 2000 & 2008, 2012, and the Republican Conventions in 2004, 2008, 2012 & 2016, and the Spring 2004 & 2009 presidential elections in El Salvador, Mexican presidential elections of 1988 and 2006, and the November 2013 presidential election in Honduras. He has coordinated community radio coverage at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2002, 2003 & 2005, and the Polycentric Forum in Caracas, Venezuela in 2006, the WSF in Nairobi 2007, Belem in 2009, Dakar in 2011, & Tunis in 2013 and 2015, Montreal in 2016, and the US Social Forums in Atlanta & Detroit. He also coordinated the IraqJournal website in 2002-2003. In 2011, he regularly reported on protests in Madison, Wisconsin for Iran’s PressTV and other outlets. 

Stockwell also is an experienced graphic designer and artist, and has prepared numerous successful grant applications.

~~~

The Three In-Waiting:

Alternate Transition At-Large Directors, 

if any of the ones listed here decide to withdraw 

before new Directors are seated in 2020

Terri Burke has been Executive Director of the ACLU of Texas since 2008. In those years, the Texas affiliate has grown from a staff of seven to a staff of 70. Headquartered in Houston with offices in Austin, Dallas, El Paso and Brownsville on the border, the ACLU of Texas has been a leader in supporting immigrant rights, criminal justice reform, voting rights and in holding the line in the Culture Wars battles at the Texas Legislature. Instead of law school, her “postgraduate work” after the University of Texas was in reporting on how the sausage is made in two very different state legislatures; as a business reporter covering a boom and a bust; and as a senior editor and an editor-in-chief, leading two different staffs to Pulitzer Prizes. A native Houstonian, her newspaper career took her through Dallas, Austin, Albuquerque, Abilene (Tx) and Hartford, Ct. She served on the boards of Planned Parenthood of West Texas, Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and the Day Nursery of Abilene (a non-profit preschool and day care). Burke served for 10 years on the board of the Texas Association of Managing Editors, including a two-year term as President, and five years on the board of the Nonprofit Management Center of West Texas, which served nonprofits in 24 West Texas counties, including a three-year stint as board president for an organization that provides resources, training and support for nonprofits ranging from direct service providers to arts associations and museums and civic engagement organizations. She is married with two daughters, one son-in-law and a practically perfect in every way granddaughter.

Mustafaa Carroll is the past Executive Director of CAIR (Council on Amercan-Islamic Relations) in Dallas and Houston, and a management consultant

Louis Vandenberg is Director and General Manager of KUCR, the University of California-Riverside radio station that carries a number of Pacifica programs

Pacifica Restructuring Project, document 6 of 7

[On Tu24Sep (apologies for the delay) will be posted an analysis of this latest attempt to break-up Pacifica, & it will examine, in context, these seven docs. The post will synthesise & develop the comments already made.]

The breaker faction’s petition is disingenuous in claiming it concerns “proposed Amended and Restated Bylaws”. No: it’s not as innocuous as that. No: it’s a complete set of new by-laws. Not ‘amended’ & ‘restated’, bland, ‘nothing to see here, move along’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKnX5wci404

No: it’s a new constitution.

In its scope & urgent timetable, it’s an attempt at revolutionary change. By its content, it is reactionary & authoritarian, it is anti-democratic. By its scope, it creates a new Pacifica, refounding the Foundation.

1) The LSB’s are vaporised:

“Upon adoption of these Bylaws the Local Station Boards authorized under the previous Bylaws shall be terminated” (Article X; page 14, my emphases); presumably this is when ‘the people’ have spoken, that is, when the National Elections Supervisor certifies the election result, not when the Pacifica National Board votes to accept the NES’ final report.

2) The serving directors have their terms ended during the last 14 days of Jan2020 – leaving the Board solely occupied by six non-Pacificans. From this point, the whole Pacifica membership will no longer elect the majority of directors:

“By approval of these Restated and Amended Bylaws by the Members, the following individuals are appointed to serve as Transition At-Large Directors: Heidi Boghosian, Judy Graboyes, Robert “Bob” King, Barbara Ransby, Walter Riley, and Norman Stockwell. Their terms shall commence at the first meeting of the Transition Board which shall occur during the during the [sic] last two weeks of January 2020. The terms of the previous Board of Directors shall expire on that date.” (Art. XV [their typo], Sec. 1; p. 16)

3) These six directors, all alone. Accountable to no-one, least of all the Pacifica members. Able to decide to do whatever they want, taking whatever seductive advice is fed them – such as a detailed version of the Peter Franck break-up plan, the one published less than a year ago, on 23Sep2018 (please see the posting of it here, https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/09/13/peter-franck-plan-b-a-friendly-divorce-to-save-the-stations-23sep2018/).

The facts are plain: they are a committee, a junta, a dictatorship of six, a hexumvirate. The Roman conception of a dictatorship was an individual selected to rule, for a definite period, in a state of emergency, through special measures, & here we have the collective version: the Gang of Six do what they want for between 92 & 114 calendar days, until a date during the first 10 days of May next year (1+29+31+30+1 = 92 calendar days, & 14+29+31+30+10 = 114):

“the At-Large Directors shall constitute the full Board of Directors and shall be authorized to take any and all actions they deem necessary for the Board of Directors to take that are not in conflict with law or these bylaws.” (same passage, my emphases)

Here, read online (click the ‘magnifying glass’) or download: https://mega.nz/#!77YFgSyD!0gUc8su6NPL6154QN-1YNQbbrg8NTlptPahjv-M4VRY

Pacifica Restructuring Project, document 5 of 7

[On Tu24Sep (apologies for the delay) will be posted an analysis of this latest attempt to break-up Pacifica, & it will examine, in context, these seven docs. The post will synthesise & develop the comments already made.]

The change envisioned by the breaker faction isn’t piecemeal, as implied by the form of this document, which takes part of an existing by-law & compares it with an amendment. No, that’s a gross misrepresentation of their by-laws proposal. The breaker faction’s petition is disingenuous in claiming it concerns “proposed Amended and Restated Bylaws”. No, it’s not as innocuous as that.

No: it’s a complete set of new by-laws. That’s why they don’t reproduce from the current manual, by-law after by-law after by-law, page after page after page, all that’s in the current by-laws having no correlate within their proposal. For if they did that, it would be plain to see how fundamentally different it is. Just compare their 19-page proposal with the 45-page, smaller font, Pacifica By-laws manual, 1Jan2016 version, which alone has a four-page Contents: https://mega.nz/#!qyBgCK6J!99O3H916evVwa5U0FSef2ONlL8pkQU4OZKLZIfXzq6Y.

So what does the new Pacifica constitution do?

• guts the organisation of membership participation in governance;
• makes outsiders a permanent majority of the PNB;
• only one director from each station means giving monopoly representation to each station majority: it eliminates the diversity of views at each station, homogenises what is heterogeneous by effectively denying that the others exist, & leaves only one director voice to address the station’s Community Advisory Board;
• abolishes what remains of local decision-making by members;
• cuts in two the number of local discussion forums;
• centralises decision-making, institutionalising PNB supremacy;
• concentrates the focus of the organisation onto a PNB that now has a non-profit/academic outlook, one tilting to the outside, away from the Pacifica members;
• . . . one could go on . . .
• . . . just to say, given all this, why would anyone stay a Pacifica member?

All this means that the breaker faction are moving against the members. The breaker faction wresting from the members their rights. The naive would say this is surprising within Pacifica – but there are many reactionaries in PacificaWorld, of all sorts of stripes, not just secrecy/pseudo-confidentiality fetishists.

As illustration, a principal member’s right is participating in Pacifica’s governance – and participation is a primary democratic quality & value. So the breaker faction is an anti-democratic force. Eat yer 💗 out, Amy G.

In its scope & urgent timetable, the by-laws proposal of the breaker faction is an attempt at revolutionary change. By its content, it is reactionary & authoritarian, it is anti-democratic. By its scope, it creates a new Pacifica, refounding the Foundation.

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/167GWfIlL4gF1URtLGTa8rdXuAWWqxLSv1GyneoOfTxY/edit (4 pages)

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Comparison of Current and New Bylaws

This is a summary that compares the current Pacifica Bylaws, approved in 2003 with amendments since then, and the new proposed Amended and Restated Bylaws of 2019. For detailed comparison, please refer to those documents.

Membership Contribution.

Under the proposed new Bylaws [italics added throughout for readability]:

The Listener-Sponsor annual Membership contribution will be $50, or fifteen (15) hours of volunteer service. 

Staff-Membership requirements are unchanged.

Under the current Bylaws:

Listener-Sponsor annual Membership contribution is $25, or three (3) hours of volunteer service. 

Changes in Board of Directors: Composition and Manner of Election.

Under the proposed new Bylaws:  

The Board of Directors will consist of 11 Directors:  Six (6) At-Large Directors and five (5) Station-Representative Directors.  There will be no designated “Affiliate” Directors’ seats on the new board.

The six At-Large Directors will be elected by the Board of Directors as a whole (except for the Transition Board, see below.)

The five Station-Representative Directors will be elected directly by the membership at each station (KPFA, KPFK, KPFT, WBAI and WPFW), one from each station, with both listener-members and staff-members voting together.

There will be no Staff seats on the new Board of Directors.

Under the current Bylaws:

The Board of Directors consists of 22 members:  20 Directors elected by the Delegates (members of the Local Station Boards) – 4 from each of the five Pacifica stations — plus 2 “Affiliate” Directors are elected by the Board of Directors from nominees from stations which air some Pacifica programming but are not owned by the Pacifica Foundation. 

Currently, the Delegates at each station each year elect 3 listener members and 1 staff member from among themselves to serve on the national Board of Directors.

Directors’ Terms and Term Limits

Under the proposed new Bylaws: 

Directors’ terms will be three (3) years with a two-term limit, requiring a 1-year hiatus before being eligible to run again.  Terms will be staggered so no more than 1/3^rd of the terms will expire in any given year.

Under the current Bylaws: 

Directors’ terms are one (1) year.  Directors may serve no more than 5 consecutive years.

Local Station Boards and Delegates

Under the proposed new Bylaws:

There will be no Delegates, no Delegate elections, and no Local Station Boards.  The members of the current Local Station Boards may join their station’s Community Advisory Board (CAB) but will have no role in governance.  A CAB is required at each station by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and will operate under the CPB requirements.  https://www.cpb.org/stations/certification/cert3

Under the current Bylaws: 

The members at each station elect 24 Delegates – 18 elected by the Listener-Sponsor Members and 6 elected by the Staff Members.  Half of them are elected in each of two consecutive years, and the third year there is no election.

The Delegates elect from among themselves 4 Directors each year – 3 Listener-Sponsor Members and 1 staff Member.

In addition to electing Directors, the Delegates serve on Local Station Boards (LSBs) for their stations, with the station General Manager as a non-voting member.

Eligibility for Service on the Board of Directors

Under the proposed new Bylaws: 

Staff-Members and persons hosting or helping to produce a regular program airing on any Pacifica radio station will not be eligible for service on the Board of Directors, nor are any station or Pacifica Foundation employees.

No person who holds an elected office,  or is running for election for office, at any level of government (federal, state or local) will be eligible for service on the Board.

No two members of the Board of Directors related by blood or marriage/domestic partnership within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity may serve on the Board at the same time.

Station-Representative Directors must be Listener-Sponsor Members in good standing of their station at the time of nomination. 

At-Large Directors will be recruited by the Board of Directors based upon needed skills on the board and/or background and accomplishments in fields related to the Foundation’s core “peace and justice” mission. 

Under the current Bylaws: 

Three of the 4 Station Representative Directors from each station each year are Listener-Delegates, and 1 is a Staff-Delegate.

No person who holds any elected or appointed public office at any level of government — federal, state, or local — or is a candidate for such office, is eligible to serve on the Board.

There is no consanguinity rule under the current Bylaws.

Reduction in Number of Elections

Under the proposed new Bylaws:

After the transition, there will be 1 election every 3 years at each station where Listener-Members and Staff-Members, voting all together, directly elect one Station-Representative Director for their station.  There will be no additional elections of Directors or Delegates by the Members.

Under the current Bylaws:

There are 2 elections in every 3 years.  The members elect half of their 24 Delegates (18 Listener Delegates and 6 Staff Delegates) in each of the two elections in consecutive years.  The third year there is no election.  

Members’ Rights

Under the proposed new Bylaws: 

Members’ rights will remain unchanged as to inspection of Minutes and records. 

Voting rights will remain unchanged on the sale, exchange, transfer or disposition of all or substantially all of the Foundation’s assets; on the sale, exchange, transfer or disposition of any of the Foundation’s broadcast licenses; on any merger, its principal terms and any amendment of its principal terms.; on any election to dissolve the Foundation. 

Members will have the right to recall their elected Station-Representative Directors. 

Staff Members will no longer be eligible to serve on the Board of Directors.

Under the current Bylaws:

Listener-Sponsor Members and Staff-Members vote separately in the Delegate elections.  The Delegates then elect from among themselves 3 Listener-Sponsor Member Directors and 1 Staff-Member Director from each station each year.

Amending the Bylaws

Under the proposed new Bylaws:

The Board will be able to amend the bylaws by a 2/3^rd majority vote of all the Directors, provided written notice is posted on the Foundation and station websites and a means is provided for members to submit comments to the Board prior to the vote.

The Members will be able to propose Bylaws amendments, by a petition of 1% of the Membership and a majority vote of the Members. 

No Amendments changing the number or manner of nomination of Directors of either class may be adopted without a vote of approval of the Members.

No Amendments that would adversely affect the rights of the Members, or any class of Members, may be adopted without a vote of approval of the Members, or class of Members, as the case may be.

Under the current Bylaws:

Currently, amending the bylaws requires the majority vote of all the Directors plus a majority vote of all the Delegates of at least three (3) stations.  Members may also propose amendments by petition signed by 1% of the Membership and, if their proposed amendments are not approved by the Directors and Delegates, then the Members may adopt the Amendments by a majority vote of the Members.

No amendments that materially adversely affect the rights of the Members, or any class of Members may be adopted without the vote of approval of the Members, or class of Members, as the case may be.

Voting on any amendments must be completed by December 31^st of the same calendar year as the amendments are proposed.  Amendments proposed by petition of the Members are considered “proposed” when they are submitted to the Secretary of the Foundation.

Transition Board Provisions

Under the Proposed New Bylaws[:]

Six Transition At-Large Directors will be seated at a Board meeting during the last two weeks of January 2020.  They are: Heidi Boghosian, Judy Graboyes, Bob King, Barbara Ransby, Walter Riley, and Norman Stockwell. Their biographies are posted here.

If any of those six becomes unable to serve before the first meeting of the new Transition Board in January, then those remaining will select alternates in the order they choose from the following alternates:  Terri Burke, Mustafaa Carrol, and Louis Vandenberg. Their biographies are posted here.

The 5 Transition Station Representative Directors will be elected by the members early next year and will be seated at a Board meeting during the first 2 weeks in May 2020.

The 2019 Board’s terms will expire upon the commencement of the January Transition Board meeting.

Pacifica Restructuring Project, document 4 of 7

[On Tu24Sep (apologies for the delay) will be posted an analysis of this latest attempt to break-up Pacifica, & it will examine, in context, these seven docs. The post will synthesise & develop the comments already made.]

Six Q&A.

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hx55oqvlMJd0j_h8IoKvVd8c-vijuFDwSBgwva-EvYg/edit (1 page)

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FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions about the Proposed new Pacifica Bylaws

A: They are merged with the Community Advisory Board for their station, and of course may volunteer at their station.

A: YES! That’s still important, too.

A: Absolutely not. Your station needs your financial support, as well as volunteer hours, to keep going. Go to your station’s web site to donate today, or do it in the next fund drive.

A: The At-Large Directors will bring additional skills and experience, professional contacts, non-profit experience, and national perspective that the station representative Directors may not have.

A: See the Introduction – it explains why it’s so important to replace the Bylaws with something that will create more functional governance and a stronger network.

A: The people who drafted these Bylaws are not in agreement about what programming is best, the appropriate authority and influence of paid versus unpaid staff, or many other issues. What brought us together are the current, unambiguous realities. Our current governance structure is not leading the organization toward greater strength and stability, rather it has failed to meet the changing nature of the media environment, and it has failed to deal effectively with financial realities. This is not about individuals, programs, or management choices.  The Pacifica Restructuring Project represent a diversity of views, many conflicting. This is about being honest with ourselves about Pacifica Radio’s long-term viability unless it is restructured.