The latest flap between management and unpaid volunteers at Communist radio station KPFA in Berkley, CA has left tensions high there, after a pregnant volunteer staffer was forcibly arrested for refusing to leave the station.
Management banned Nadra Foster, an unpaid producer at KPFA, back in May because she uses the station as a daycare center for her kids, makes personal calls on the station’s phones and prints personal documents using company resources. Foster showed up at the Literally-to-the-Left-of-Trotsky station a week and a half ago and began work. “I have keys to the station and have been working on shows,” she said afterwords at a court hearing.
According to police reports, Foster was causing a disturbance and refused to leave. She acted belligerent towards the officers and refused to show ID. While attempting to remove her from the station, Foster flailed, punched and bit them, which lead to a call for backup.
Six more officers arrived and, after a dramatic scene, eventually had to use “the wrap,” a restraining device, on Foster and literally carried her out of the station as she screamed and cried. Foster was treated for her injuries and then booked into Santa Rita jail.
Staff volunteers have been trying to build a Utopian management structure at the station, where Noam Chomsky is a moderate, for some time. About 200 volunteers work there, with about 60 paid employees, which is extrordinarily huge for a radio station these days. Sometime in 2007, volunteers were unionized, in an effort to combat what they say is parent company Pacifica Radio’s attempt to “ethnically cleanse” the station of its “organic” content providers to make the station more like NPR.
Obligitory calls of “racism” were made by radical Bolsheviki who side with the unpaid staff volunteers. Self-describe “Minister of Information” JR Valrey, another KPFA unpaid staffer, said in a written statement, “The station reports on police terrorism. Police should not have been called to deal with a black woman.” Other black radicals have called for “reparations” which include a prime time radio show focused on African-American news and opinion.
Many questions remain unanswered about Nadra Foster. As an unpaid staff worker, with two kids and no “baby daddy” in the picture, where does she get an income? How can she spend all her time at a volunteer job with two children and a third on the way? As she obviously can work, why isn’t she working at a paid job? These and other issues remain to be seen.
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The only good thing about Pacifica is that the NY station plays Jean Shepherd tapes.
The biggest problem is that Pacifica stations are even on the air at all. Y’know, it’s hard deciding which is worse….Hannity, Colmes, Sliwa……or the auditory excrement that wafts out of Pacifica’s transmitters. Transmitters that are probably held together with scotch tape! The prize for rubbish programming, I think, goes to Pacifica. But much of the commercial radio programming is only, perhaps, just a tad better, that Crap-cifica.