John Wenger Candidate Statement

I want to help KPFK better fulfill its tremendous promise. I am well qualified because I can solve challenging problems. I have grantwriting skills; extensive experience developing the Pacifica bylaws; two years experience on the KPFK Finance Committee; and seven years phone-room experience. I am expert in election protection, and expert in Information Technology. I am a co-chair of the LA County Green Party, and am studying ways to fight global warming. I am a trained researcher with a Ph.D. in Physiological Psychology from the University of Washington, where I learned grant-writing skills, which I would like to use to help KPFK. Pacifica Network is chartered as an educational non-profit corporation and is therefore eligible to apply for educational grants.

Listening to KPFK got me started in grassroots activism. KPFK announced that they were seeking people to help write new bylaws for the Pacifica Foundation, so I joined the KPFK Bylaws Committee, and worked for almost three years on the bylaws. That introduced me to other aspects of KPFK such as the Local Board, and National Board meetings, and working in the phone room during fund drives, which I have done for the last seven years. Board meetings taught me about both local governance and national governance issues across the network.

Working in the phone room during fund drives allows one to speak with the listeners who are sponsoring the station. One also meets the on-air programmers, the staff, and the management. This all combines to inform one about the big picture of KPFK, and I highly recommend it.

I joined the KPFK Finance Committee a couple of years ago to learn where the listeners’ donations go. This has not yet been completely successful since sometimes the National Office, and sometimes local management, seems reluctant to release reports to the committee. If elected to the LSB, I will make financial openness one of my major goals, specifically financial transparency to the listener-sponsors to the maximum extent allowed by law.

I also work in the area of election protection. I am a member of the technical team that supports California Study Ballots, and member of the Election Defense Alliance.

I am active in the Media Reform Movement, and spoke against media consolidation at the last three FCC hearings in the LA area. I am the Co-Chair of the LA County Green Party, and am particularly interested in fighting global warming, and supporting sustainable living.

My major KPFK issues include:

Opposing the creeping centralization of powers within Pacifica, and KPFK;
Increasing the involvement of volunteers within KPFK;
Increasing the diversity of political programming, with more comparative analysis, to fulfill the educational mission of KPFK;
Improving Information Technology Infrastructure of the station, including obtaining appropriate computer support for the phoneroom volunteers.

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