The following is important news from the latest Pacifica Radio in Exile newsletter. It contains a link to Mr. Agarwal's letter of resignation. Mr. Agarwal's was one of the few balanced voices on the Pacifica National Board.
CFO AGARWAL RESIGNS
Berkeley - Pacifica Foundation Chief Financial Officer Sam Agarwal submitted his resignation today. Agarwal came to Pacifica in December of 2015 after the chief financial officer position had been vacant for six months following the June 2015 departure of his predecessor, Raul Salvador. Agarwal's departure leaves the network with no executive management, following a succession of volunteer executive directors for 24 of the last 29 months.
Agarwal's openness regarding the network's tangled finances was noticeable, as well as the detailed financial reports he struggled to be allowed to present on the national board's teleconferences.
His letter of resignation can be read here.
In it, he says: "I have concluded that under prevailing conditions, I cannot be effective at my job. There is a monumental amount of work to be done to pull the organization out of fiscal crisis, but I have not seen sincere efforts to do what is necessary to move forward. Although voluntary bankruptcy and re-organization may be the least desirable and most expensive option, yet with every passing day it may be the only option left because of dysfunction in the board, mismanagement and failure of leadership".
The Pacifica National Board was busying itself with a premature annual evaluation of Agarwal's job performance before launching a search for an execuitve director to replace former board chair Lydia Brazon. The Board will now have neither executive position filled as it faces significant challenges.
That's what he gets for doing his job. Listening to him telling them what their problems were and their ignoring him were exasperating, even as a listener I could imagine how he felt.
ReplyDeleteSDL
Maybe The Donald can take over Pacifica after he loses to Hillary.
DeleteKGT
I just heard Basir Mchawi (birth name Irving Cohen) say that when he was growing up in the South Bronx, "white people were the enemy".
ReplyDeleteKGT
I heard that, too. The man is a fool. Did you also hear that Puerto Rican woman say that she is translating "Dr. Ben"'s crap into Spanish? These are clueless fools spreading the lies of scam artists like "Ben" and Henrik. Clark.
DeleteFortunately, we are getting very close to a point where all their hate and idiocy is going to give them that final push over the edge. New York's air will be a lot cleaner without all that venom.
Don't hold your breath. BAI is like that line from MacBeth:Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow- creeps in its petty path from day to day".
DeleteKGT
To Anonymous above, the line is "creeps in this petty pace from day to day"
DeleteI know it's wrong, but I love Shakespeare. As a WBAI listener, I shouldn't be wasting my time with that dead white man with his evil white skin and should instead memorize the revolutionary poetry of Jitu Weusi. Forgive me!
In a sense unsurprising, yet striking nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteProffitt, now Agarwal, even Edwards-Tiekert move to academia… each and every after concluding the situation was absolutely hopeless, Agarwal’s closing notes notwithstanding.
As to be expected, yet unexpected as will, perhaps, be their closing notes as well.
Quite the wretched little bunch…
~ ‘indigopirate’
I believe the Mchawi tribe was related to the hekawi tribe . As in, where the hekawi ,
ReplyDeletethe tribe on F troop . True story! haha
Schmuckery is not relegated to WBAI alone. Basir Mchawi (Moishe Ginsberg) is an instructor at both Queens College and John Jay College in English- lol.
DeleteKGT
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is also at John Jay You have to wonder about the standards for faculty there.
DeleteForgot to mention that Null did another of his "slam Pacifica/WBAI" bits again Thursday. Go to about the last sixteen minutes of his show. Same old shit, really. Today he wants WBAI to be internet based.
ReplyDeleteSDL
This is amazing. To have your CFO flee less than 1 year after being hired. And to have him excoriate management on the way out. If this were any other organization, this would be devastating. But I doubt that it will have any impact on those clowns.
ReplyDeleteAs for Agarwal himself, I can only evaluate him based on the several board meetings I listened to. Based on what I heard, I found him to be a completely sane, reasonable and competent individual. Which raises the question of why he would accept employment at Pacifica in the first place. The only thing that I found lacking in Agarwal was an ability to effectively make clear how egregious the situation at Pacifica is and to insist on a timetable for action. He would start off saying all the right things, but inevitably, it would get smothered in the back-and-forth among the clowns. The meeting would end with no real change. IMHO, he should have told them straight out that they needed to stay in session until they passed an action plan with a timetable and that if the meeting adjourned without that being done, he would resign that very day and publicly state why he was resigning. Now he has quit, so he can no longer use the threat of a noisy resignation as leverage to get them to take action.
linda perry.... teaming up with sally obrien today to give us the "news" .... about mumia , ofcourse.
ReplyDeleteThis has to be intentional . Could any one group of people be this stupid?
"Some people are like clouds. When they disappear, it's a brighter day."
DeleteCongrats Adriana and your fellow Siegel/Brazon buffoons. All your constant SCREAMING hounded a good man out. What a 'brilliant' idea you had to push staff cuts and an early evaluation instead of actually paying for the 2014 audit. Please say hello to Lydia and her bogus affiliate director Darryl and her other bogus affiliate director Darryl.
ReplyDeleteIs it just my ears or is Adriana just always yelling and interrupting people? I think she is just rude as hell.
DeleteSDL
There is nothing wrong with your ears, SDL.
Deletethere is nothing wrong with your radio , do not try to adjust the dial.
ReplyDeleteIt is the morons ON the radio . haha
(JustAlistener)
ReplyDeleteThings had already reached the point where when we realized Mr Argawal was reasonably competent and took his duties seriously, we knew he wouldn't be with Pacifica for long.
BTW how does an organization get a mortgage or sell a major asset when it cannot complete an audit or retain a CFO?
i suppose they can sell assets, but at fire sale prices.
Quite right, of course – Agarwal and Edwards-Tiekert made precisely that point with respect to mortgage and/or sale, repeatedly.
Delete~ 'indigopirate'
Hmmmmm, let's see...in WBAI's case, the "asset" list would be a short one:
DeleteA card table.
One or to "Mr. Microphones".
A disk-copying machine.
Copy of "Broadcasting for Dummies" (like new).
Four "Mumia" posters.
Three boxes of unsold and/or undelivered "thank you gifts".
Five cartons of unpaid invoices.
And, of course, a case of outdated, rancid Gary Null's Puce Stuff...
DeleteDon't forget a "Free Joe Doherty" banner.
DeleteKGT
There's a worn out phrase that talks about, "Speaking truth to power." It seems that is what Mr. Agarwal did. And they did not like him for that. He screamed for a recovery plan and their reply? "Well 'plan' is just a four letter word."
ReplyDeleteSam, if you are listening, you done good. Well done and thank you for peeling back the layers of idiocy. But I fear your efforts will have been for naught. They have not heard your message. Or maybe they heard but did not listen. Or they listened but did not care. I dunno.
Pacifica will not go bankrupt. That is too hard a task. Instead they will wait for the creditors, the vultures to descend. All the lights will go out, one by one. Rents unpaid, evictions will follow. Payrolls unpaid, what do you think? All the lawyers will revel in it.
And then we all can have fun on ebay, dollars on the dime, picking up pieces of a broken dream that some of us thought had come true.
Jim
The zombies who want you to think WBAI "speaks truth to power are not comfortable with the truth, nor do they have any measure of "power." They are lemmings who have reached a dead end and know that the game is finally over. Watch this "family" turn on each other as they go over the edge.
DeleteGood post, Jim.
I'm listening to Allan Weiner on WBCQ 7.490 khz shortwave right now doing some pitching during their fund drive. It's absolutely amazing how he is explaining what the money is needed for with absolute transparency. No, there are no premiums on offer, just the existence of the station. It's a total breath of fresh air from WBAI and its practices.
ReplyDeleteYou can listen online, too. Check them out for their truly varied programming at:
http://www.wbcq.com/
And if you have a few extra Dollars, do give it to them. Allan Weiner has dedicated his life to the station and deserves some support. If you have a show you'd like to put on the air worldwide, maybe you can buy some cheap airtime.
SDL
Th transparency you describe is the way it was when we instituted the annual fundraising marathon fifty ears ago.
DeleteYes, giving us a rundown of all costs and expenses, what they're doing at the station, etc. Such transparency that Weiner even told us the shipping cost of the new transmitter. Reimers? No transparency because that would be boring. Sure...
DeleteThink of it. A privately owned station with a far greater range of opinions and entertainment than the peoples' station gives us more transparency.
SDL
Reimers said on his on-air report that transparency begins and ends with the GM.
DeleteFYI: Allan Weiner is owner, GM, PD, chief engineer and just about everything else at WBCQ.
DeleteSDL
He gave a show to my email friend Hal Turner. The first amendment is alive and well.
DeleteKGT
Bottom line - WBAI is a station with a political line, started by that late scumbag, Samori Marksman.
ReplyDeleteI think Elombe Brath was pulling his strings.
DeleteKGT
Every cloud has a silver lining. WBAI's lack of an adequate telephone system delayed the Ron Daniels show by about 15 minutes and his nonsense was replaced by listenable music for that period of time.
ReplyDeleteWhat we need is WBAI's lack of adequate producer/hosts to show Daniels and those who share his racist opportunism the one-way exit. Departure... not delay!
DeleteYou can say anything you want against Ron Daniels; but don't dis Sista Asiba Tupahache.
DeleteKGT
prescod and guest .. going for the record of saying the words african american and black ,
ReplyDeletethe most in a one hour period , in human history. Not to mention this is BORING AS HELL.
From Tracy Rosenberg:
ReplyDeleteThe enclosed is a transcription of a voice mail message left for me this AM while I was in a meeting.
"Hi Tracy. This is agent Gary Barker from the Federal Communications Commission. I received your complaint in regards to station WBAI not having a telephone line at their main studio. In the midst of the investigation, I spoke with them and they are hopefully going to have that resolved within the next day or two. I just wanted to update you and inform you on the investigation being conducted and thank you very much for your complaint. If you would like any additional information, please call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx".
As a reminder, it is a violation of federal telecommunications law for an FCC NCE licensee not to maintain a local or toll-free grounded telephone number at their main studio location. This is part of the public safety infrastructure of the United States in the event of catastrophic Internet and wireless failure.
a) The Pacifica national board should make entirely sure Mr. Barker's hopes are realized and the violation is resolved "in the next day or two". Please report back at your September 15th meeting.
b) When there is an FCC investigation in process regarding a Pacifica-owned broadcast license, it must be reported immediately to the board of directors. I sincerely hope it is not news to any member of the PNB that an FCC investigation is in process.
I assume you will take my word for the message transcription, but if you need an mp3 file of the voice mail message, I will prepare that upon request.
- Tracy
Thank you, Tracy. I have also posted this more prominently.
Delete