January 2010
January 24, 2010 - Video
On January 18, 2010, Yakima celebrated Martin Luther King Day with its 25th annual Peace March, this year entitled "Remember, Celebrate, Act: A day on, not a day off. Many cultures, one voice." Afterward, at the Yakima Convention Center there were speakers and 4 people were honored for what they have done to improve the lives of their communities. Amongst them were Ricardo Garcia, former Executive Director of KDNA and the Northwest Communities Education Center, and the visionary that raised the money to build Granger's Community Center.
Also receiving "Spirit of the Dream" awards were:
Henry Beauchamp, the first black mayor of Yakima and a longtime community advocate and activist.
Sister Kathleen Ross, outgoing president and founder of Heritage University in Toppenish, which serves many low-income students who may not have otherwise receive an education.
The Rev. Robert Trimble, pastor of Mount Hope Baptist Church who led the successful effort in 2006 to rename B Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
January 18, 2010 - Martin Luther King Day
KDNA Tenth Anniversary – A Tribute to Senator Warren G Magnuson, Yakima Convention Center, November 10, 1989
On the occasion of its tenth anniversary celebration, KDNA paid tribute to Washington Senator Warren G Magnuson, who had passed away just five months before. Senator Magnuson was instrumental in helping KDNA to secure its construction permit and initial funding. He and his wife Jermaine attended KDNA’s ground breaking. As the Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, he was an outspoken advocate for public broadcasting and, in the Senate, introduced the bill that became the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
We are sharing this video so that you will better understand KDNA’s influential role in changing how Latinos and the Spanish speaking participate in, contribute to, and are served by public media. Before KDNA there was no similar programming available to the Spanish speaking of Washington State. It is unfortunate that the current management of KDNA is seeking to not only erase KDNA’s history changing record of community service, but to also deny those services to future generations.
January 16, 2010 - Martin Luther King March in Yakima
On Monday, Yakima will have its 25th annual Peace March, this year entitled "Remember, Celebrate, Act: A day on, not a day off. Many cultures, one voice." Afterward, at the Yakima Convention Center there will be speakers, and 4 people will be honored for what they have done to improve the lives of their communities. Amongst the honored will be Ricardo Garcia, former Executive Director of KDNA and the Northwest Communities Education Center, and the visionary that raised the money to build Granger's Community Center.
WHEN: Noon to mid-afternoon Monday January 18
WHERE: The walk will begin at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It will continue along the boulevard to Eighth Street and end at the Yakima Convention Center.
CONCLUSION: There will be speakers and award presentations at the convention center
Story in Yakima Herald-Republic
New: We have just created a YouTube “channel” for our videos. Please check it. Your comments would be appreciated. If you subscribe to the channel, you will automatically be notified as we add new videos. And, you can also rate the videos, if you so desire. Hopefully, we will get video from Monday's March and presentations. Friends of KDNA YouTube Channel
January 14, 2010 - Granger council acts to restrict mayor
by Phil Ferolito, Yakima Herald-Republic
GRANGER, Wash. -- Disagreements about how things should run at Granger City Hall sparked the resignation this week of City Attorney Bob Noe and prompted the City Council to place restrictions on Mayor Ramona Fonseca.
Tempers flared during Tuesday night's City Council meeting, when council members agreed to change the locks at the police station to keep Fonseca out. They also barred her from any contact with Spanish Radio KDNA -- where management problems persist -- for the next 30 days and ordered her to keep department heads informed of any contact she has with city employees.
"If they decide that's what they want to do and they vote ...," Fonseca said Thursday. "It doesn't mean that I agree with it."
Police Chief Robert Perales told council members that the mayor was interfering with his job. He complained that Fonseca questioned officers without informing him and would pop into the department unannounced while witnesses were being interviewed and where evidence was on hand, said Councilwoman Donna Shipman.
Former employees at Radio KDNA, which is headquartered in Granger, also accused Fonseca of forming an alliance with station director Maria Fernandez.
At Tuesday's meeting, union representatives for some of the fired workers played a telephone recording from Dec. 11 in which Fonseca is heard telling Fernandez's attorney that the police chief was preparing to enforce a restraining order at the station. Later that evening, four people were arrested for trespassing.
Shipman said council members felt they had to take action against Fonseca.
"The whole matter is we're trying to fix this," she said of the council's attempt to get community services restored in the building where Radio KDNA is located. The center has been closed because of an ongoing management-labor dispute.
"We can't have her in there," Shipman said.
She said Fonseca needs to keep her distance from the station until a committee set up by the City Council can meet with the station's board of directors. The city wants to make sure the community center is following requirements for a $1 million federal block grant that paid for its construction at 121 Sunnyside Ave.
When the city applied jointly with Northwest Education Community Center for the new building, it promised to include community services such as English classes, migrant worker services and domestic violence workshops in the center.
Shipman said the dispute between the radio director and station supporters and former employees is driving programs to leave the community center.
Council members said they don't want to get into any issues directly involving the station, but have set up a committee to make sure the grant contract is being properly carried out.
Fonseca said that as mayor, she should have complete access to the police department and that her communication with KDNA management isn't underhanded.
"They are asking me not to have communications with one of our biggest businesses here in Granger," she said. "I have contact with a lot of businesses on a daily basis."
Apart from her own squabble with council members, Fonseca said she was sorry that City Attorney Bob Noe had resigned.
Noe submitted his letter of resignation Wednesday, citing the fact that Councilwoman Julie Anderson-Sharp questioned his integrity at Tuesdsy's council meeting.
Anderson-Sharp, an administrative assistant at the Yakima Police Department, was elected in November. At Tuesday's meeting, she and Noe clashed over the state's public disclosure law and the Granger City Council's executive sessions.
Anderson-Sharp contended that the council should have met behind closed doors to discuss Perales' complaints about the mayor. But Noe said in his resignation letter that the topic would not have met the legal litmus test to have an executive session.
Referring to his 21 years as an attorney, he noted that in addition to his legal work for the city of Granger, he also has worked as city attorney in Union Gap, Selah and Tukwila. He was Granger's city attorney for three years.
"To lose him over a situation like this is really sad," Fonseca said.
Anderson-Sharp denied questioning Noe's integrity, but she said, "As a council member I have a right to question when something isn't in the best interest of the city.
"If he feels he needs to resign, I guess that's up to him."
Story in the Yakima Herald-Republic
January 11, 2010 - More letters
We have received these additional letters:
January 10, 2010 - Waiting
It has been three weeks since the Washington State Commission on Hispanic Affairs (CHA) wrote to Irma Prieto, the new NCEC board chairperson, and to Juan Orozco, representing the community. In the Commission’s letter, which you can read below, it expresses dismay at what has become of what was once a national model for partnership, collaboration, community service, and participatory radio. And, as you will see, the Commission traces the damage directly to the hiring of the current Executive Director – the same one that Irma Prieto recently described as "doing the job".
In its letter the CHA offered to try and assist in finding a resolution, but its overture appears to have been rejected by Prieto and the Board. As best we can determine there has been no response to the CHA letter from NCEC/KDNA. The Commission, Mario Paredes of Consejo, and others keep offering to help resolve the dispute. Even the Yakima Herald-Republic Editorial Board wrote "Seeking an unbiased, outside arbitrator may seem like a fruitless strategy at this point, but it's worth a try". But the NCEC/KDNA management seems resolved in only one thing: to destroy KDNA. If the Commission’s offer results in nothing else, it shows that they stand with the community and its cry for justice, and that the pretenders to the throne, Prieto, Lobos, Rohde, and the rest of the board can do nothing but refuse to hear, sitting like three monkeys with paws over ears.
We will not be discouraged. As more people in government, in the non-profit service community, in business, and in philanthropy learn the truth of this struggle, they will unite with the community and demand that the current board and executive director be removed and replaced with responsible representative members of the community that possess honor, integrity, and understand that the airwaves belong to the people.
Please continue to write to your legislators, congressional representatives, and senators. And yes, please write to the funders. The few groups still continuing to support NCEC and KDNA need to understand that the programming has changed and the money is not being used for the purpose the funder intended, and is instead paying for the systematic, if inept, dismantling of a cultural institution.
To read the Commission letter with larger text, click here (PDF)
January 6, 2010 – Playing Politics
It may be winter, but the Mayor of Granger may be feeling some heat. Last week we reported on her memo to the Granger City Council calling for “neutrality”. Granger citizens, though, are saying that pretending to be neutral is not an option, and have asked the City Council and the Mayor to take some positive action on their behalf to restore the station to the community to whom it belongs. Members of the City Council were moving on investigating how Fernandez is failing to fulfill her obligations in using the building for community service, when Mayor Ramona Fonseca sent them the memo saying they must not get involved.
Fonseca, while claiming neutrality, appears to have been caught in a bit of intrigue by her own carelessness. A recording of her voice leaving a message on an answering machine is now circulating. Evidently she thought she was calling the attorney representing Fernandez and the NCEC/KDNA board of directors. Instead she dialed someone that has now taken the recording public, including delivering it to the Granger City Council. The call was made December during the sit-in, prior to the arrests. In it, she is clearly acting more as a courier and informant for the NCEC/KDNA management, than as a public official responsibly representing the needs and wishes of her constituents.
"Gary, this is Ramona Fonseca mayor from Granger I just went in and did the directive and copies of orders and within the hour umm there will be a process going on...and you didn't hear this from me but when I got there he was in his office talking to Bob Koerner...in Chief Perales's office talking and probably planning on how their going to do this but anyway I didn't say that...Good By”
So far the extent of Fonseca's deal brokering is her memo where she talks of offering a “neutral place” for the community and NCEC board to meet, which is about as absurd as it can get. The Granger Community Center housing KDNA belongs to the community of Granger and to the State of Washington, and locking them out of their building through chicanery and deceit is shameful.
Fonseca was elected in 2007 as part of a slate of candidates offered by something called The Progressive Majority. As has become so often the case, words meaning one thing have been turned on their heads to mean exactly the opposite. There has been nothing “progressive” in Fonseca’s behavior here. There is already talk of “recall”. Fonseca should quickly take this opportunity to champion the people’s cause and restore her name.
If you want to let The Progressive Majority know how their candidate is doing, they have a web form here: TheProgressiveMajority
December 30, 2009 - Is it the eleventh hour?
Seemingly out of the blue (it is a blue moon tomorrow night), Ramona Fonseca, the Mayor of Granger, who has spent days ensconced in closed meetings with Maria Fernandez, has strangely decided that the city of Granger must now maintain neutrality. Most peculiar, given her non-neutral involvement with the phony restraining order that was served on a KDNA employee later fired, as well as with the restraining order issued against the community during the sit-in. Perhaps Fonseca was concerned that the Council might take a position in support of the community trying to get KDNA to resume the Mission that it has abandoned? For today, she appears to be following the lead of the Commission on Hispanic Affairs.
See December 2009 posts
