In September, I was elected by the Unpaid Staff Organization (UPSO) at KPFA to represent the volunteers at the station on the Program Council for one year in an election that none of the candidates contested, including the one who lost. At the first meeting of the Program Council in a year and a half, we were given an introduction syllabus by KPFA Interim Program Director Sasha Lilley as to what she wanted our role to be.

In this paperwork that she gave us, management openly wrote that Nov. 20 would be the last day on the Program Council for the Unpaid Staff representatives, although we ran for a year-long position. Had management stuck to its own schedule of Program Council meetings, we would have had a total of three before management would try to unilaterally overthrow us. Last week's meeting was cancelled by management, so now the total meetings are reduced to two, and that's if the Nov. 20 meeting goes down.

Some might ask why is this such an important issue for the San Francisco Bay View to be covering? It is because access to media should be a human right, realizing that people who have no access to injecting their voice into the media will continuously be exploited by coverage that distorts what they stand for, resulting in their consistent loss in the court of public opinion when it comes to their political and cultural needs and wants.

At KPFA, the domestic Black community is on the brink of what I just described. KPFA, as "liberal" and "progressive" as it claims to be, a station located in the middle of Berkeley, still to this day does not have a radio show that speaks to our condition in America. Now take into account the fact that white programmers control most of the programming, music as well as public affairs. You could just look at the topics that are picked on the news, the Morning Show, Sundays, as well as Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, which comes on twice a day, while Black people don't have an hour a week to discuss issues pertinent to us on the airwaves.

Black listeners and subscribers need to quit being so apathetic when it comes to addressing what we need from KPFA, which prides itself as being a radio home for voices like Paul Robeson, Malcolm X and the Panthers. From an insider's perspective, it is starting to look like Black listeners and subscribers are complying with the apartheid airwave rules that are coming first out of the office of the Black Interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio, who has a relationship with her employee and second-in-charge, Sasha Lilly, and much like George Bush and Dick Cheney, we can't tell who is in charge.

We as a community have to get past surface nationalism, meaning because Lemlem is Black, she is for us. Because Sasha was hired by Lemlem, she is for us. If you need an example of what I'm talking about, look at Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell in the U.S. government - their Black faces do the bidding of their white masters. That's what's happening at KPFA, and I ask that you call into live shows and make your opinion known as well as stop subscribing to a station that doesn't care if your community is even heard on the air.

Email POCC Minister of Information JR at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and visit www.blockreportradio.com, hiphopwarreport.com and myspace.com/blockreportfilm.

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