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From: "Chug"
Date: Mon Nov 12, 2001 1:20 am
Subject: KPFT Interim LAB Elections

The listener community of KPFT/Houston is pleased to announce open public elections of the new KPFT Interim Local Advisory Board

Elections will be held on November 14 2001 from 6:30-8:30 PM at 803 Hawthorne, Montrose, Houston (L&G Community Center) and are open to all within the KPFT Signal Area.

The slate of candidates for the Interim LAB was drawn from an open nomination process over the last 5 days and includes a wide diversity of people with varied skills, including those with broadcast and other media experience, community organizing, outreach & activism, connections with Houston's music community and candidates with a wide range of professional skills. It includes both long-term Pacifica acitivists and new and old KPFT listeners unconnected with any established Pacifica reform group.

The slate can be viewed at
http://geocities.com/kpftradio/cand.html

(Outreach for nominations and voters has been done on Houston-area list servs and a KPFT email/phone outreach list but not unfortunately on the airwaves of KPFT. Candidate's page will be finalized on Monday with all the candidates and data)

Election is to an INTERIM board with a task to organize rules, policies and guidelines for direct listener election of a permanent KPFT LAB within one year (by 11/13/02). This will be done under the guidance of the PNB. The Interim LAB will be dissolved on or before 11/13/02 even if no elections have been held.

The by-laws for the Interim LAB essentially follow the 1998 PNB by-laws with few amendments and include open public meetings of all committees and subcommittees (http://geocities.com/kpftradio/bylaw.html)

The creation of an Interim LAB was necessitated by the illegal and ineffective nature of the current 5-member Houston LAB (4 white men, 1 white woman, 4 of them financial/legal professionals) This group is no longer meeting publicly, no longer notifies dissident LAB member Teresa Allen of its meetings and has been in persistent violation of every line of relevant Federal law and Pacifica Foundation by-laws. A modified summary of the LAB violations is here at http://geocities.com/kpftradio/oct15.html.

Several months ago, we notified Mr Ganter, the PNB and Pacifica management of these violations and gave them an opportunity to respond. They have not.

We welcome any Houston listeners on this list to vote in the upcoming election and hope all in the Pacifica community will support this step towards a KPFT that is connected and responsive to the community it serves.

Help us bring back community radio in Houston.

And see you in DC!

-Dan "Chug" Jones, for the KPFT Interim LAB Election Organizers

P.S. I would particularly like to thank Edwin Johnston, Cherie Gorman, Jo Ann Wolf, Ken Freeland and Stan Merriman among the organizers for their efforts in getting things together for this election in this (admittedly) short time-frame