Yesterday the plaintiffs in four lawsuits against the Pacifica National Board came to a settlement agreement with the Board that basically mirrors the resolution the Board passed in late Nov. to transfer power to an interim board and re-establish democracy within the network. This agreement is legally binding, under a judge’s supervision, and so should be more likely to stick than Board’s own resolution, which as I noted Tuesday seemed to be slipping already.
Comments from various folks in the movement to reform Pacifica have been pretty optimistic. Here are some excerpts.
“The agreement brings to an end two and a half years of legal, political, and community struggle following an illegal change… in the method of selecting Pacifica’s directors, who had formerly been elected by the local station boards.”
In an e-mail sent out across many community radio e-mail lists, Carol Spooner, one of the plaintiffs and leaders in the Pacifica reform mov’t said:
“I am deeply happy — feeling almost serene for the moment. Everything that we could have accomplished through the legal process, I
believe we did accomplish — I believe we got everything we need in order to restore Pacifica.”
Juan Gonzalez, former co-host of Democracy Now, relased an only slightly more cautious statement:
“We never deluded ourselves, however, about such a settlement, knowing that in this, as in any bargaining process, the ‘devil is often in the details’…. For perhaps the first time in U.S. history, a people’s movement of listeners, employees and political activists succeeded in wresting majority control of a radio network away from a small corporate clique that had illegally seized the reins of power several years earlier. “
And Common Dreams features this report on the resolution from the Houston Chronicle (via machination).
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