Michael Novick: On-Air Forum Opening Candidate Statement

I'm Michael Novick, running for the LSB because of the crisis facing the station and our society. KPFK must live up to the mandate of its mission at this critical moment of war, social conflict, environmental devastation and economic hard times. A few years ago, KPFK played a leading role in bringing all the different anti-war groups together to build a coalition of coalitions for a single joint united anti-war protest in L.A. The general manager went to New Orleans to assist the survivors of Katrina, racism and government malfeasance. The station had an activist orientation coming off the successful struggle to democratize Pacifica and reverse the corporate agenda. We restored previously banned and fired programs of color like Freedom Now and American Indian Airwaves, and added Spanish and indigenous language programming. This inspired our listeners to action. Audiences grew and we routinely held short, successful million dollar fund-drives. This year, as the station has tried to 'mainstream' its sound, it has become increasingly irrelevant to and disconnected from grassroots communities in survival struggles over unemployment, imprisonment, foreclosures, gentrification, the militarization of the schools and the border, police abuse. As a result, we had a month-long fund-drive in June that failed to meet its goal, requiring a second mini-marathon in August. As a rank and file labor leader from the teachers' union, an anti-racist activist and publisher of "Turning the Tide," as the former elected listener chair of the KPFK Program Council, as a grandpa, bus rider, and renter, I'm running with the slate you can learn about at www.grassrootskpfk.net to help the station regain its cutting edge commitment to the community. We're a diverse group politically, racially and in other ways, but we're united by a set of human rights and social, economic and environmental justice principles. I urge you to vote for Aryana Gladney, Lawrence Reyes, me -- Michael Novick -- and the other GrassrootsKPFK candidates to help KPFK live up to its potential and aspirations for a better world and new way of life. Thank you.

Check out the principles at www.grassrootskpfk.net. I'll bet you agree with them, and probably most of the people running for LSB do, too. But the key is to implement them, to energize the station through a dialogue with our listeners and the larger community. I've been a coalition builder for years -- from the Winds of Change conference that gave birth to the Change-Links calendar, to the Crack the CIA Coalition that united people from south, east and west LA. When I was chair of the Program Council, we met in Long Beach, Pasadena, East LA, downtown, and south LA, and the LSB should do the same. I hope you'll vote for me, Michael Novick, and the others at grassrootsKPFK dot net to re-energize the station, reconnect with the communities in resistance to the Empire, and not only to restore the news, but to make some news, and to make some history, too! Vote for Aryana Gladney, Lawrence Reyes, me, Michael Novick, and the other candidates of grassrootsKPFK.net. Thank you for your time this evening, thanks for supporting the station, and thank you for your vote.

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