Tag: Tracy Rosenberg

Bay Area activists have been objecting to Urban Shield, the nation’s largest Homeland Security-funded weapons expo and counter-terrorism drill, since 2013. On Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 11 a.m., the board will meet to consider task force recommendations to change the event from a SWAT-focused police militarization convention to a natural disaster-focused community recovery and resilience event.

On March 27, the San Francisco Bay Area’s Stop Urban Shield Coalition claimed victory in its four-year battle to stop Urban Shield, a war games and weapons convention for cops held in Alameda County every year since 2007. I spoke to Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of Media Alliance and co-facilitator of Oakland Privacy, a citizen’s coalition that works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. She has worked with the Stop Urban Shield Coalition since 2014.

On June 20, the Berkeley City Council, only months after being swept in by a progressive majority, rejected the call of hundreds of people to terminate a series of entanglements between local police and the federal security forces of the Donald Trump administration. The resistance failed to resist. In the nation’s heartland of dissent. What went wrong, and why? Petitions, a huge crowd, support from prominent public figures, fact sheets, a city poll dominated by those wanting a pull-out, three hours of public comment with no support for anything other than getting out. None of it mattered.

On Tuesday evening, Dec. 17, 2015, the Berkeley City Council voted to keep sending officers to the annual Urban Shield war games and weapons expo, even after one vocal citizen held up the expo’s best selling T-shirts and read their inscriptions: “Black Rifles Matter,” “This (barrel of a gun) is my peace symbol” and “Destruction cometh. And they shall seek peace. And there shall be none” (Ezekiel 7:25-27, King James Bible).

Tracy Rosenberg is the executive director of Media Alliance, an action and resource organization in Oakland advocating just, accountable and diverse media. She has been a listener representative on the KPFA Local Station Board since 2007 and a member of the Pacifica National Board of Directors since 2010. We asked her to comment on the situation from her perch as an insider. Here’s what we talked about.

On April 11, a large number of people affiliated with KPFA radio station convened at Laney College in Oakland to discuss a number of issues that have been plaguing the station for decades and are threatening to rip it apart with a race and class civil war. Unaddressed racial and class disparities at KPFA have caused a number of Black broadcasters to abandon ship.

For the second week in a row, one of the largest audiences for any show on KPFA was disappointed not to hear the People’s Minister of Information JR Valrey and his Block Report on the air Wednesday at 8 a.m. Instead we heard an announcement by interim general manager Andrew Phillips that JR has been suspended. Getting punished for doing “too well” happens to Black folks much too often. Sign the two petitions to end the suspension of JR Valrey from KPFA and attend the Town Hall Meeting, Thursday, April 11, 6 p.m. at Laney College. This story is constantly being updated with new signatures and comments.

As part of a larger effort called the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, a delegation representing Bay Area organizations is petitioning Conngresswoman Barbara Lee to ask the FCC to address the high cost of prison phone calls by passing the Wright Petition.

The fierce debate about competing visions for KPFA and Pacifica Radio continues, with the focus now on the attempt to recall Tracy Rosenberg from the KPFA Local Station Board and the Pacifica National Board and the competing campaigns to keep Tracy on the board. Mail your ballot in time for it to arrive at KPFA by Aug. 3.

There’s more mischief underway at community radio station KPFA. KPFA subscribers will soon be receiving ballots in the mail asking them to vote on whether media activist Tracy Rosenberg should be recalled from her seat on the KPFA board. This swiftboat-style attack on the station’s hardest working board member must be defeated!

To increase revenue, KPFA is considering some major changes in the morning programming lineup. If you are a KPFA listener, you are welcome to join the debate. If not, why not give KPFA a listen today? KPFA aspires to be real free speech radio and its mission is to bring warring factions together.

Your guest, Mr. Krasny, Larry Bensky, broad brushed all but a few us who work at KPFA as “clowns” and “conspiracy nuts,” as opposed to the real journalists on the Morning Show and KPFA News.

The KPFA management plan was to remove Flashpoints from the 5 p.m. evening slot and replace it with a syndicated news program from an external source. To remove Hard Knock radio from the 4 p.m. evening slot and replace it with a syndicated Baltimore NPR program hosted by Michael Eric Dyson. Siding with management to advocate for unfair reductions that violate the basic seniority provisions in their own contract and endorsing slates in board elections is the kind of behavior that gives unions a bad name.

A group that had formerly called itself the Concerned Listeners, a faction in the community who are partisan supporters of the status quo controlling clique that runs KPFA and who oppose accountability and participation by “outsiders” in the station, is now calling itself Save KPFA.

KPFA's election season has begun, with ballots and postcards arriving on our doorsteps. What should members do? There’s a really short answer. Don’t vote for the Save KPFA – Concerned Listeners – candidates. Any of them. No matter what.

At 4 p.m. on her very last day of employment as the executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, Nicole Sawaya permanently appointed Lemlem Rijio as the general manager at KPFA-FM, a position Rijio has been occupying on an interim basis for two years. Rijio has been under fire as of late, with Berkeley police violently arresting a station programmer who had allegedly been banned in a dispute over copier usage. Seventy-four of 215 station staffers have signed a statement of no-confidence in her leadership.