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Date sent: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 20:18:11 -0700
From: "Tracy Rosenberg" <tracyrose@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Alliance List" <alliance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
fulcrumsofchange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Fulcrumsofchange] Media Alliance Press Release on the
August 20th
Incident
For Immediate Release
August 23, 2008
Contact: Tracy Rosenberg
(510) 684-6853 Cellular
E-mail: tracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Community Journalist Roughed Up After KPFA-FM Calls Police on Volunteer
Training program graduate and former Elemental Roots co-host Nadra
Foster forcibly removed from radio station offices.
Berkeley ? On August 20th, 2008, the Berkeley Police Department was
summoned to KPFA Radio offices at 1929 Martin Luther King Jr Way to
remove an unauthorized visitor. The unauthorized visitor was Nadra
Foster, a graduate of the station's heralded apprenticeship program,
and a co-host of the Elemental Roots program which aired on Friday
evenings at 7pm for several years. Foster was doing some volunteer
work at the station, not unusual for an institution with over 200
formal volunteers who use the description unpaid staff to describe
their work producing 2/3 of the station's programming for free.
Foster was using one of the communal work spaces in the station, the
"Ujima Room" (together in the Swahili language), a 1st floor
production studio. While on the telephone arranging a ride home,
according to her brother Gideon Foster, Nadra was asked to get off the
telephone and apparently did not do so quickly enough. In a chain of
circumstances that remain unexplained, a decision was made by the
management team at KPFA and the next-door Pacifica National Office, to
handle the telephone overload by summoning the Berkeley Police
Department and reporting a trespasser on the premises.
The Berkeley Police Department sent a squadron of six officers and
removed the pregnant Ms. Foster from the premises by force, fracturing
her arm in the process. Ms. Foster was taken to Alameda County Jail in
Santa Rita and booked with two felony charges of battery on a police
officer. At Friday's arraignment, the charges were reduced to five
misdemeanors and bail was posted by her family later that day.
On an August 21st edition of Flashpoints that discussed the incident,
Hard Knock Radio producer Weyland Southon, who witnessed the latter
part of the arrest stated: "This is a place where we report on police
brutality. This is a place where we hold the police accountable for
wrong-doing. To bring the cops willingly into KPFA to deal with a
situation like this was short-sighted. Situations like this get us
killed".
Ms. Foster, who is the primary caretaker of two young children, is
still facing five misdemeanor charges, including one count of
trespassing, two charges of resisting arrest and two charges of
battery on a police officer. Her pre-trial hearing is scheduled at 9am
Monday at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in downtown Oakland. She is
currently being represented by an Alameda County Public Defender.
Pacifica Radio and KPFA-FM have issued no public statement at the time
of this release, although Pacifica Executive Director Nicole Sawaya
stated via e-mail that Pacifica did not intend to press charges on the
trespassing count.
Media Alliance Managing Director Tracy Rosenberg commented "Turning a
workplace dispute about telephone usage into a police action where
people are hurt is simply an unacceptable escalation of an ordinary
situation that is handled in a million workplaces everyday without the
use of police. It demonstrates a significant failure to implement
on-site the noble words of KPFA's mission - which revolve around
acknowledging and resolving conflict without the use of oppressive
force".
KPFA's unpaid staff organization which advocates on behalf of the
station's large unpaid workforce and had established grievance
procedures for volunteer concerns, was derecognized by interim general
manager Lemlem Rijio in August of 2007 and has not been reinstated.
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