Letters to the Folio

VII

Querido Friends & Family,

Yesterday Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi was found NOT GUILTY by a unanimous vote of the jury at the courthouse in Oakland! We give deep thanks for the support and love that all of you have given Kahlil in the long months of this trial. The community support has been the critical part of keeping our strength and positive outlook.

This is a victory on many levels. Of course, it is a victory for Kahlil, our family and friends, and all of the supporters (which are all over the world!). In addition it is a victory for all activists that are targeted by the police. It appears that this case will also have significant consequences for the city of Berkeley, as they now know that the head of their police union lied under oath in court.

In his comments at a press conference in front of the radio station, Kahlil spoke of the many times police have used excessive force and falsely arrested other youths of color, where there was no video tape, no family, and no supporters. We are thankful that we had all of these for this case, but we know this is just one case in the wider picture. The struggle continues against the relentless brutality of the police and their intent to support the prison industrial complex by locking up people of color.

Let us rejoice in the sweetness of this victory, and may it give us all more energy to continue our work.

PA'LANTE.....SIEMPRE PA'LANTE....

Lila Jacobs, Kahlil’s mother

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Dear and Beloved Friends,

In 1962, when I was 16, I started listening to KPFA Radio. Remember "The Midnight Special" on Saturday nights? My memory is dimming. I guess it was the equivalent of Hip-Hop music today. Anyway, my listening choice worried my mother. I was hearing about things I'd never heard of before. We were the last of the beat teenagers, back then, before we were hippies. I heard about the City Lights Bookstore and cut school to go to San Francisco and check it out. I started buying weird books and trying to understand them. I went with some friends to a coffee house in North Beach and listened to jazz. Wow. I was a kid from posh Marin County hearing poetry and Indian ragas and jazz. Political awareness began to dawn. Civil Rights, the Free Speech Movement, the Vietnam War, Feminism, New Age Healing, Deep Ecology, Gay & Lesbian Liberation, all these dirty wars all over the place, Latin America, East Timor, Cointelpro.... Judi Bari, Noam Chomsky, Helen Caldicott, Bill Sokel, Mary Berg, Bill Mandel, Mamma O'Shea, Robbie Osman, Jennifer Stone, Larry Bensky, Chris & Philip on the way to work in the morning, Dennis Bernstein on the way home... KPFA let me know about these people and things, and so much more.

Oh, I didn't want to know sometimes. Hell, some of it was plain crazy, stupid, foolish. This has been such a painful generation to live in.

Over the years my life has taken many turns. Both my children were born before I was 20, then I was divorced & I cracked up and there are years I don't really remember. Lost years. So, so alone much of the time. But then, sometimes, I'd turn on a radio to stop the silence, and I would hear someone on KPFA who made me feel connected again.

I am so grateful to all of you at KPFA, and all the listeners and supporters who made it happen all these the years.

Lord, you don't know what a miracle it is to CARE. So many people don't, you see. And don't know that they don't care. Have lost the ability to care or never developed it. It's damned uncomfortable. That's why they want to clean you up or shut you up and take you off the air -- whoever they are -- the cooperators, the collaborators -- the ones who think "market share" and "mainstream message" and all that other gobbledygook is the most "effective" way to educate the masses. There is evil in this world. It finds these collaborators and uses them to silence the voices crying in the wilderness. Evil is afoot at Pacifica these days. All the perfume in Arabia can't cover up the smell.

So, I bless you and keep you in my heart, dear friends, and send my love. And I say we must all fight with whatever we have to keep your fractious, croaking voices on the air.

Carol Spooner, Santa Rosa, California

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Ya’ll are awsome!

The Folio is my principal contact w/KPFA and it’s worth a lot more than I’m sending you. I want you to know how important your work is. Listening on line is too difficult to listen very long because the internet signal is intermittent (probably my computer). I look forward to bringing California voices to the Utah airwaves.

My message to others -- send the $10, like I have, to keep and strengthen the Folio.

Love and solidarity, the Media Affinity Group is our community service.

Alan Naumann, Orem, Utah

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Cable one reception problem:

Many K P F A listeners live in areas where reception is blocked by hills. Even parts of Berkeley are blocked from reception of K P FA which is the reason for the advent of K P F B. I myself am one of a number of listeners who live in the eastern part of Santa Rosa where the K P F A signal is blocked by hills. Until recently we were able to receive the signal through our local cable company which used to be post - Newsweek cable, now Cable One. The reception was always good and I considered it a fortunate accident that a corporate cable company would carry my favorite radical radio station.

However, what I suppose was the inevitable finally happened. The K P F A signal started cracking up about six months ago. Ever since that time the signal has a varied from fair to poor. Half the time and it is impossible to listen or hear what is going on.

My friend, Alan, another listener from eastern Santa Rosa, contacted Cable One and ended up talking to of the responsible party, the chief engineer, who explained and that he had purposely changed the direction that the antenna faces in order to pick up some commercial stations that he felt were more important than K P FA.

I discussed this problem in my North Bay affinity group and Jim, one of our members, contacted Tomas Moran, who I understand is making some effort to influence the cable company. Otherwise, I am a loss as to what to do, short of moving to another part of the county, which seems a little extreme. But I do consider it at times because K P F A is such an important part of my life. More than that, it is an important tool of community organizing and a source of information for the region. When open access to information is blocked in a portion of the State the corporate worldview is strengthened to the detriment of populist and progressive ideas and issues.

John Zook, Santa Rosa, California

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Dear KPFA "Northbay",

I greatly appreciate your newsletter and look forward to its’ arriving. It’s full of opinions and thevariety that the station has historically represented. Despite this, the article by John Martinez is not the kind of item that does anybody any good, other than to possibly inflate the author’s view of himself. It’s full of name calling and negative put-downs. Obviously, the author wants us to think of him as some kind of heroic type. (witness the photo of him "confronting" the KPFA program director.) I don’t know any of the people who he talks about in the article, but this guy is "a natering nabob of negativism." Are you really going to publish MORE articles by him? I don’t know WHAT you could be thinking of...

Sincerely,

David G. Williams, San Francisco, California

 

(This response from John Martinez. The Folio editorial staff independently found and used the photo referred to.)

David:

The photo image in the article came out overly militant compared to the reality of the low level of activism in Southern California. I didn't choose the photo or the verbal description beneath it. Actually KPFK PD Kathy Lo at that moment confronted me, having the need to say how she thought I was "incredibly weak", at that moment I walked away & Mexcia activist Olin Tezcatlipoca (pictured in the background) took it from there. It was a case of a lack of communication between myself & the Folio Editorial Board.

The same Kathy Lo used to brag about my work until I started to criticize KPFK's decline in being community accessed & it's mainstreaming of program content. Re: the article "inflating" myself as "some heroic type"...after 7 years of Chican@ Radio programming experience I consider those years as foundational, that have given me the potential to create a media/radio project that has never been done at Pacifica--or if we loose it, elsewhere. Rather than a hero, IF I'm able to help retake KPFK/Pacifica, then it's another successful project in my life experience. The article was in a sense therapeutic.

After 2+ years of internal exile, subjected to management/staff insults/harassment as I worked in the building almost 7 days a week...the whole KPFK experience was an exercise in self-control. But my silence due to being out-numbered & my rationale that what went on the air overrode the internal reality did leave some personal baggage that I'm ridding myself of now. Re: the article being full of "name calling & negativity", the article offered honest examples of the polemic history of KPFK, and the times I criticize someone in the article (parts 1 & 2), I stand by it...those descriptions are understatements of how antithetical KPFK as a whole has become related to the Mission Statement. Your comment that you "...don't know any of the people who he [I] talks about..." as it was explained to me by the KPFA Editorial Staff, the article was to introduce (for better & worse) the reality at KPFK in the context of the current Pacifica Crisis. Remember the names of Marc Cooper Mark Schubb Kathy Lo Betto Arcos and others, they're the entrenched regime at KPFK insulated from new generations of progressive/alternative tendencies in Southern California. They're the self proclaimed radio-media gatekeepers of 'progressive politics' on KPFK's 112,000 watt signal, that are 'too hip' to take seriously the issues/politics of the day.

Lastly, I don't even know what your "...nattering nabob..." means, but it's indicative of Pacifica's traditional assumption that White/Anglo (in the context of your statement, linguistic) Centricity is the 'canon' we all must aspire to. Sorry, I rejected the lie re: the inevitable process of White American assimilation years ago.

John Martinez

 

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