PacificaWatch

And being PacificaWorld, some of what she calls her progress reports are undated & some are unnumbered. This one is undated, but the URL includes “08.28.19”. It’s also unnumbered, but it’s the 7th. It’s thin, two pages. It came after a very long gap: six had been published in seven weeks, the last on c. 13June, then we had to wait ~76 days for this one. Very odd, not least because two fundamental sets of facts should have been established, & made public: the list of the over 100 verified candidates, & the size of the 10 elector rolls (listeners & staff for the five stations). Only the former has been published.

What is most distinctive, & worrying, about this report is that it doesn’t give the record date membership figures, the jargon for the day when a snapshot is taken of the enfranchised. Yes, NES Penaloza spoke of “# electors” (unpaginated page 1), but added, “note that this number will fluctuate over the course of the election due to membership additions or deletions”. Yes, there will always be challenges to the elector rolls, but why has the NES not made public the record date elector roll totals? Are the rolls so chaotic – again – that the NES was unable to take the snapshot at 30June? One has no rational alternative but to assume this is the case, given (1) the unexpected words chosen by the NES, (2) her inability to give a progress report for 11 very long weeks, & (3) the absence, even now, of the 10 totals of the elector rolls at the record date, 30June.

Conclusions:

• the membership lists & volunteer records were so chaotic, unreliable, that the NES was unable to extract elector rolls at the record date, Su30June;
• this is prima facie evidence that the NES has been unable to make the elector rolls materially accurate;
• the NES is doing what’s done in PacificaWorld, she’s muddling through – and trying to cover herself by being careful with her language;
• given this, it behoves any diligent director, or candidate, to see the unadjusted record date elector rolls, & publish those 10 aggregate figures – data that members & listeners have a right to know;
• if indeed the NES was unable to extract elector rolls at 30June, then she needs to explain publicly, in writing, why this was so;
• given the lack of any public evidence in the last 10 months (!) showing an improvement upon the Oct2018 judgment of the then NES, Graeme Drew, that materially accurate elector rolls don’t exist, the only rational conclusion is that the 2019 election, just like the nominal 2018 one, is a pseudo-election; &
• if evidence to the contrary exists, then there is every good reason for NES Penaloza to publish it – otherwise Pacifica elections, regrettably, continue to lack credibility. But concerning this, do any Pacifica ‘leaders’ care?

Putting these current travails to one side, what was Pacifica’s membership, say, at the beginning of the century? Remember when the Iraqis were invaded? (It’s almost misanthropic to use the impersonal abstraction, Iraq.) A few months after this, in Sep2003, Pacifica was getting ready for its own major event:

About 90,000 of Pacifica’s listeners and 700 of its volunteers and staffers are eligible to vote in the first election under the bylaws, estimates Carol Spooner, secretary of the network’s interim national board. Elections are scheduled to end by Jan. 30.

Mike Janssen, ‘Radio that’s representative: Listeners control vote for Pacifica boards’, https://current.org/2003/9/radio-thats-representative/

Since then, membership has fallen 48.8%, so effectively halving, to 46 463 (45 520 listener-members & 943 staff-members – note that the latter has increased).

A few years prior to those Local Station Board elections, WBAI had “nearly 20,000 members before a bitter year-long fight over control in 2001” (https://www.thevillager.com/2016/02/null-sues-wbai-endgame-near-for-iconic-radio-station/). And today? It’s fallen by 58%, to 8 379.

Here are the more recent figures for Pacifica’s five stations, as provided for the last three LSB elections.

The numbers: listener-members; staff-members; all members

1. Quantitative data: listener-members

This is the headline put in yesterday’s Facebook post:

over the last three years to 30June2019, West Coast stations’ membership fell 9.5% (2 881) whilst the East Coast rose 13.8% (1 752); & over the last 7½ months to 30June2019, KPFA fell by 8.2%, so by 1-in-12 (1 285), KPFK fell by 8.1% (1 163), whilst WBAI grew by 20.2%, so by 1-in-5 (1 375)

(the 2019 figures are assumed as at 30June, the intended record date; please note the correction of the West Coast fall: I had mistakenly used the Texas demise)

Should have added:

for Pacifica, a three-year fall of 6.8%, roughly 1-in-15 (48 836 − 45 520 = 3 316)

The figures at the record dates of the last three elections, 30June2016, 19Nov2018, 30June2019 (assumed), with some computation:

2. Quantitative data: staff-members

The figures at the record dates of the last three elections, 30June2016, 19Nov2018, 30June2019 (assumed), with some computation: