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Community Announcement #3 - The Fight for Radio Cadena III
Radio Cadena continues to be held hostage by Station Director Maria Fernandez and Jorge Lobos. Mr. Lobos continues to show negligent leadership of the Board of Directors by not holding regular board meetings open to the community.
In the last few weeks, a committee of community people supporting the employees has been very active attending community fiestas. They have distributed flyers like this one to make the community aware of what is happening at the station. Maria and Jorge have reacted with anger and threats towards the community. They even harrassed Lupe Sotello (added as explanation: not a member of the committee who was working at an informational booth for her employer at one of the fiestas) threatening to call her superiors and have her fired.
Maria has reacted with vengeance and recently placed another KDNA employee, Jesus Sosa, on suspension without pay and with the intention of firing him. Maria recently terminated Saida Birrueta after placing her on suspension without pay. Maria continues to treat all the employees that went out on strike with humiliation and excludes them from active participation in the organization. For these reasons the community has come out to protest the injustices of Maria, Jorge, and the Board. One of these protests was held in front of the Department of Agriculture in Yakima where Mr. Lobos works as a pesticide trainer of farm workers.
Yes, the station continues to be held hostage - there is no transparency by the Board of Directors in how they are dealing with the problems at the station. There are no public meetings. They are not announced on the radio. There is no documentation of their actions. To top it off, last week Maria Fernandez, Ninfa Gutierrez and Natalia Ibarra confronted Daniel Capetillo, President of KDNA’s Community Advisory Committee telling him in no uncertain terms that they are going to reorganize the committee because in their opinion they don’t like the way the Committee was representing the station.
Thank you for accepting this flyer. For more information on the hostage situation of Radio Cadena go to www.kdna.fm
