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Lawsuits officially settled 12-22-01 |
From: Carol Spooner Sat, 22 Dec 2001 13:51:38 -0800 December 22, 2001 Dear Friends, Hallelujah! The Pacifica lawsuits settlement agreement is now "fully executed". The last necessary signatures were filed with the court on Tuesday, and on Thursday the parties exchanged the names of their appointments to the new interim board of directors. The former "dissident" directors appointed Teresa Allen (KPFT), Pete Bramson (KPFA), Janice K. Bryant (WBAI), Leslie Cagan (WBAI) and Rob Robinson (WPFW). The former "majority" directors appointed Marion Barry (WPFW), James Ferguson (WPFW), Dick Gregory (??), Wendell Johns (WPFW) and Bert Lee (WPFW). Four of the five local advisory boards (LABs) have held elections and the chairs of those boards have appointed those elected -- Dave Fertig (KPFK), Ray LaForest (WBAI), Carol Spooner (KPFA) and Jabari Zakiya (WPFW). The KPFT (Houston) LAB chair has not yet appointed anyone. Former dissident directors Tomas Moran and Aaron Kriegel have decided to step off the board, and former majority directors George Barnstone, Valrie Chambers, Bob Farrell, John Murdock and Krishna Roy are also resigning. The interim board hopes to meet by telephone conference call before the end of the year (holidays and peoples' schedules permitting) to elect officers and to take some preliminary actions on urgent business, and then to have an in-person board meeting in New York the second or third weekend in January. Any telephone conference call meeting will be web-broadcast. Notices of meetings and agendas will be coming out as soon as possible. We expect to act as quickly as possible to address the many critical issues and problems now facing the Pacifica radio network and all five stations -- "Democracy Now!", those who have been fired and banned throughout the network, the "gag rule", financial mismanagement, management evaluations, programming reflecting Pacifica's purposes and mission, new bylaws and democratic structure, etc., etc. In the meanwhile, we are hearing of firings and suspensions continuing at WBAI in New York and KPFK in Los Angeles and other attempts to establish "facts on the ground" before the new board can convene to establish some order and sanity. This is deeply disturbing. I have always believed that rebuilding Pacifica would be as difficult as this long battle to reclaim Pacifica has been. Our work is cut out for us! It took a 2-1/2 year legal battle to regain control of Pacifica -- with all of your help, financially, writing letters, picketing, protesting, organizing and much much more. Now, with all of your help, we can begin the rebuilding.
FINANCIAL SETTLEMENT
HELP PAY OUR FINAL LEGAL BILLS
The listeners' lawsuit has about $100,000 in final expenses -- including huge amounts of our lawyers' time in November & December spent in negotiations, as well as sending our lawyer to Houston for 4 days of depositions, and massive amounts of lawyers, paralegals, and secretarial time spent in intensive preparation of the case for trial. Without that work, we could not have kept the pressure on them that finally brought them back to the negotiating table to settle the lawsuits with the transfer control of Pacifica. We have approximately $40,000 in the bank -- so we need to raise another $60,000 to "pay the freight" it took to get us this far.
Please consider making a tax deductible donation before the end of
the
year. Gifts to the Marin Health Fund/Public Media Initiative (MHF/PMI)
are
tax deductible -- you can do this on-line at
If you do not need the tax deduction, you can make non-tax deductible gifts to the Committee to Remove the Pacifica Board, and mail them to 1136 Wild Rose Drive, Santa Rosa, CA 95401, or you can give to the Committee on-line at www.paypal.com (you need to give them our email address: wildrose@pon.net) Thank you everyone so much for your support these past 2-/12 years. We couldn't have done it without you! With the Winter Solstice the light returns.
Carol Spooner
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