<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "> Marco said"<div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"> Matter of fact-- and I don't know why this didn't occur to me until <div>now-- If you know individual MCPB board members' contact info, send that <br>to me and I'll hold onto it for a week or two, and if I don't see it on <br><a href="http://kzyx.org/">kzyx.org</a> I'll just publish it myself. They're all public people engaged <br>in a tax-funded public endeavor and they shouldn't expect to be allowed <br>to go incommunicado like Secret Agent X-9.</div></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div>Excellent idea. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Regarding the difficulty of unionizing KZYX airpeople.<br><br>--by Marco McClean<br><br> .... Here's a problem I see: after decades of management's <br>tyrannical winnowing and arbitrary choosing and kicking-out of <br>airpeople, the pool at KZYX is artificially stuffed with the sort of <br>people to whom it would never naturally occur to do or say anything <br>outside of the power's comfy margins, so people like Toni Rizzo actually <br>/don't/ feel muffled or tyrannized over, so they're inclined to think <br>anyone who objects to or even notices tyranny is wrong or even crazy, <br>even people with genuine Kafka/horror stories about how they've been <br>treated. There are people remaining on the inside (and people too newly <br>arrived to have pushed one of Mary Aigner's freak buttons yet), <br>airpeople who are too timid to break out and speak up, but-- say they <br>do; the majority will overwhelm them the same way whether they squeak <br>from behind a rock or shout from the housetops, and that's the catch: if <br>this particular system were fair and democratic at all it would look <br>much less fair and democratic for missing its false veneer of fairness <br>and democracy. It's a kind of publicity math puzzle that naturally plays <br>into the hands of the bad management/board. It's a propaganda trick that <br>rigs itself.<br><br> I agree with Mary Massey and so many others on the outs: Mary <br>Aigner has got to join us in being on the outside. But so does Stuart <br>Campbell, who plays information goalie for the board of directors who <br>individually hide from dealing with the public on station issues. When <br>you send something to the board, on the web page or via email, it <br>doesn't go to the board; it goes to Stuart Campbell and /he/ decides <br>what part of it to send along to the others, if any of it at all. It <br>means the board members are wielding power from behind (or underneath) a <br>rock, given only the information Stuart wants them to have, and given <br>(and giving) the false impression of transparency, and that is <br>intolerable. Let Mary Aigner and Stuart keep their own radio shows, if <br>they want to, but they shouldn't have any special power over everyone <br>else. For the time being, Stuart's on the board; shouldn't that be <br>enough power for him?<br><br> If the rationale for Stuart Campbell being an information goalie is <br>that it spares the board members from having to spend five minutes a day <br>dealing with the public, and the other board members go along with that, <br>then why are they directors of a public radio station? To accompany <br>their power over the /tax funded station/ they should each be fully open <br>to the public's input in every aspect of their byzantine pretzel of a <br>process. And they should be individually contactable by airpeople who <br>feel that this or that board member might be sympathetic to a problem <br>they're having with, say, Mary Aigner or whoever becomes the general <br>manager now that John Coate has fled, because once it's come to the <br>point of recognizing a problem, that airperson has no incentive to <br>discuss it with the very person who will be kicking him or her off the <br>air on the next pretext that conveniently arises. Because, without <br>access to the individual board members, that's always been the entirety <br>of the approved grievance procedure at KZYX: going to the same person <br>who just unjustly yanked your airtime out from under you, in private, <br>and expressing your disappointment, leaving unsatisfied, and then going <br>away forever, having been told to keep your mouth shut, which I'm pretty <br>sure wouldn't please Toni Rizzo. It's like anything else: until it <br>happens to you it seems unlikely. Once it happens to you its a different <br>story, though.<br><br> The best answer to these problems --in addition to handing Mary <br>Aigner her final paycheck and keeping her cleaning deposit, and if <br>board/management will not allow a regularly scheduled truly open <br>conversation on the air-- is to put an open unmoderated public forum on <br>the KZYX web page, that airpeople and board members and the public <br>interested in the workings of the station can all read and participate <br>in, out in the light of day. I've suggested that several times. I have <br>had no indication that it got past Stuart, who replied simply, "We're <br>not going to do that."<br><br> Here's a start: the individual board members' email addresses, at <br>least, should be on the station's contact page.<br><br> Matter of fact-- and I don't know why this didn't occur to me until <br>now-- If you know individual MCPB board members' contact info, send that <br>to me and I'll hold onto it for a week or two, and if I don't see it on <br><a href="http://kzyx.org/">kzyx.org</a> I'll just publish it myself. They're all public people engaged <br>in a tax-funded public endeavor and they shouldn't expect to be allowed <br>to go incommunicado like Secret Agent X-9.<br><br>----------<br><br>Marco McClean<br><a href="mailto:memo@mcn.org">memo@mcn.org</a><br><a href="http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com/">http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com</a><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Kzyxtalk mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org">Kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/listinfo/kzyxtalk">http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/listinfo/kzyxtalk</a></div><div><br></div></body></html>