Shel Plotkin Candidate Statement

Qualifications
I was a co-host on the Wizard Show from 1980 to 1995 when the show was taken off the air during the attempted takeover. Besides myself, there were Bob Nelson (astronomer at JPL) and Fleur Yano (physics professor at CSULA) as co-hosts. Many guests were nationally known scientists and a few internationally known. A major program feature was the call-in portion when listeners could discuss their views directly with our guest scientists. The Southern California Federation of Scientists (SCFS) produced the show with the objective of explaining scientific technical details in terms untrained listeners could understand. Our theme song, "We're Off to See the Wizard" from the Wizard of Oz depicted our point of view. Details not explained satisfactorily during the interview and discussion part of the program were the subject of listener phone-in conversations.

As for my own technical qualifications, I worked for Los Alamos, Pr. Mugu, UC Berkeley, USC, Hughes Aircraft, TRW, and RAND before going into private practice as a consulting systems and safety engineer. Most of my consulting work was performing accident analyses but much effort devoted to L.A. transportation problems with possible future solutions and development of a smogfree internal combustion engine. Wind energy development in Vietnam was another project through SCFS.

Organizations include SCFS, Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition, Death Penalty Focus, and Monthly Review (MR) Discussion Group. Both SCFS and MR have their offices as a part of my office. As a community representative for about 18 years, I'm a member of the Epidemiology Advisory Panel for Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley. I'm also on the Board of Directors for Committee to Bridge the Gap, which is a member of the Science and Technology Collective I organized for KPFK.

Platform
As good as KPFK is, there are certain aspects needing improvement. In summary, these aspects include better compliance with legal requirements having to do with working conditions and disability access as well as better compliance with KPFK's mission.

While legal requirements are relatively straightforward, programming content and KPFK community activities are not quite so transparent. As for the latter, it is training of young people (older too for that matter) and better coverage of local conditions and activities is what I have in mind. Inclusion of more minority people and other disadvantage groups in KPFK operations is needed. Of prime concern is that specific efforts be made to insure the airing of high quality programs regardless of the ethnicity or gender of the programmers.

Needless to say, I have a major concern for the airing of more hard science programs including technological developments as well as basic technical grounding for making decision. KPFK listeners have to have the educational grounding to decide pertinent technical matters as citizens in this technical world we live in. Severe crises are coming that threaten the survival of humankind. KPFK has to educate listeners as to how these problems dovetail together and what the possibilities are for solutions toward alleviation of human suffering.

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