Pacifica Bylaws survey and website under attack by KPFT’s LSB

From members of the Rethinking Pacifica collective:

As people across the country are sharing and contributing to the Rethinking Pacifica bylaws survey, a small group of people have attempted to stop the communication. A motion was approved at the Aug. KPFT LSB meeting to shut down the website. Strong objections were made that the motion is censorship of the membership and an attempt to intimidate a KPFT LSB member who played a key role in initiating this effort. Former Pacifica interim Executive Director (and still a KPFT LSB member and PNB Director) Bill Crosier is actively working to fix the problems with Pacifica‘s governance and to do a survey to find out what Pacifica members and listeners want (as opposed to just what current board members want).

KPFT has a history of chaotic and dysfunctional meetings. It seems that the KPFT LSB majority don’t want open transparent exploration of our current governance problems – perhaps because the responses may indicate the membership is unhappy with our LSBs and may want changes.

Here‘s the motion that KPFT‘s LSB approved: rethinkingpacifica.org/censorship-intimidation-motion-by-kpft-lsb

The intimidation part of the motion calls for a committee to investigate Bill Crosier, followed (probably) by a “trial” to decide what sanctions they want to levy on him for organizing to bring people together fix our broken governance.  In the face of this intense opposition, Bill has said that he does not, and will not, yield to the intimidation tactics.

Update (Sep. 8, 2018): The investigation committee is meeting today, Sep. 8, at the Montrose library in Houston, 2nd floor, at 1 pm CDT. It was originally posted as an open/public meeting (which I wanted, too), but was changed to executive session on Wed. night). Anyone who wants to give “testimony”, though, is welcome to come and tell the committee what you think. Unfortunately, there’s been almost no publicity for this.

Observers of the situation have noted similarities to McCarthy‘s “House Unamerican Activities Committee” of the 1950‘s.

The censorship part of the motion called for Bill Crosier to take down the Rethinking Pacifica web site (rethinkingpacifica.org) and the associated survey (goo.gl/forms/IHnH68MT5I0H8igG3), to which that web site links. Of course, the Rethinking Pacifica group (including Bill) have no intention of taking down the web site nor the survey. There is no legitimate reasons for doing so. We don’t need permission from the LSB or PNB to do what we’re doing. Anyone can – and many have – done similar things with websites, petitions, etc., with no repercussions, including punishment for any email addresses they might have collected in those endeavors. We MUST reform our failing governance (our boards) if Pacifica is to survive, as so many Pacifica members have been saying. Instead of bowing to the KPFT LSB’s attempted censorship, We encourage everyone reading this to check out the Rethinking Pacifica web site and also fill out the survey.

One of the comments about the survey is that so far Bill has been the only person who‘s identified himself as being part of the group. Intimidation, harassment, and censorship tactics, as the KPFT LSB is doing, seem to be directed at anyone on our boards willing to push for change, and are one of the reasons why people have been reluctant to step forward publicly. If you are willing to let your name be made public as supporting Rethinking Pacifica‘s push to reform our governance, then please reply to Bill at kpft<at>crosierbiomed.com (replace “<at>” with “@”) and let him know.

Thanks to those of you who have provided so many positive comments about the need to reform Pacifica‘s governance so that we can not only survive, but grow and enhance the Pacifica mission, and to provide more news, music, public affairs, and culture that the other stations won‘t let you hear. To see some of the many comments and suggestions we‘ve received so far, go to rethinkingpacifica.org/2018/06/19/thanks-for-filling-out-survey or scroll down to the bottom of the Rethinking Pacifica web site and check out the post “Thanks for filling out our survey -and survey updates“.

Please share this post with other Pacifica supporters. Permalink: https://rethinkingpacifica.org/2018/08/30/kpft-lsb-attempt-to-shut-down-web-site/