For more information and the ONLY non-censored listserve open

to the ENTIRE KXCI community,  please join the KXCIBulletinBoard discussion group

by clicking on the "JOIN THE DISCUSSION GROUP" link

to the left of this page.

(or)

For more information please contact:

(via snailmail)

Kali Holtschlag

PO BOX 297

Dragoon, AZ 85609

(or email)

kali@theriver.com

(or)

Send emails to:

commrad2003@yahoo.com

(or)

kali@theriver.com

A brief History of the Movement to Save KXCI

(added 5/15/05)

 At some undetermined point in the past the Bylaws of KXCI

were changed from a membership–elected Board to a majority

self-appointed structure.  The right to make bylaw changes was

changed from exclusively membership controlled, to allow this

majority self-appointed Board to make changes at will.  The

Democracy Initiative (DI) began as an internal group of programmers

who were dissatisfied with the unfair and undemocratic actions

of management.  When their concerns were ignored or worse,

retaliation against some occurred they went public.  The decision

was made to do a membership bylaw election.  Lifetime member

and former Board member Bill Risner asked for and was refused the

list of members so that petitions could be mailed to the membership. 

The refusal by KXCI membership resulted in a court decision

against KXCI.  Beginning with The Amy Goodman visit in fall of 2003,

the DI collected the needed 10% of membership signatures.  These

were turned into KXCI on January 12 2004.  During the time from

January to present, the DI has attempted to negotiate a fair election process and has been met with all manner of tricks, stalling, and manipulation by KXCI management including an attack on the

profession of Bill Risner. 

Originally the struggle was to gain fair treatment for the volunteers

at KXCI, the heart of operations.  During the growth of that process

it became evident that Membership’s Democratic rights had been

stolen as well.  Our petition called for several changes to the bylaws. 

A volunteer representative to sit on the board, some sort of

grievance procedure for the volunteers, membership control of

bylaw changes and a board structure of 10 elected, 5 appointed plus

the one volunteer representative.  KXCI has grudgingly adopted two

of our provisions:  the volunteer rep and the grievance procedure,

policy that any normal ethical organization would have already

had.  They have also now altered the Board structure to 9 elected,

9 appointed, plus the volunteer representative.  This does not give

the Membership the supermajority control over the board that the DI

had petitioned for.  Nor does it restrict access to the bylaws from

the Board.  They can change back or to any structure they please

at any time.

The new changes look almost reasonable and it would be difficult if

not impossible to win a PR battle against the resources of KXCI and

this appearance of “fairness”.  Therefore the DI withdrew the petition

in November 2004.  The decision was made to try to participate in

the process from inside, by running a slate of candidates in the next election.  As usual with democracy, it takes citizen awareness and involvement.  Clean, third party supervised elections are a start.  Educating and informing the membership is another avenue.  KXCI

has operated in a hidden and secretive manner for so long that

most members are not even aware of their rights, much less that

they have been stolen!

We recognize that KXCI is a precious resource in an ocean of

corporate owned and controlled media.   We also strongly believe

that the small struggle we are experiencing is a reflection of the

bigger national and even world picture.  KXCI is owned by the membership; it should be governed and controlled democratically

by its owners.  Not by a group of unrepresentative unelected, unaccountable, self-appointed cronies.

For more information about elections please join the discussion group.