Web site of the Friends of KOOP .|. Save KOOP Radio
Illegally
forwarding our postal mail
While we can't prove who exactly did this, somebody filled out a Change of Address card to have all our postal mail forwarded to KOOP, about two weeks before the Special Membership Meeting we called, meaning that we didn't receive any petitions or proxies mailed to us by members during that time. Around the same time, Eduardo Vera started picking up the mail for KOOP. Never did Eduardo ever say, "Here's some mail addressed to you that came to the station somehow."
Lying about
why the station went off the air.
KOOP went off the air for a few days
in March 1999 when the station engineer repossessed some equipment
because KOOP had defaulted on its payments to him for the equipment.
[more
on that story]
But when listeners called the station to ask why KOOP wasn't
broadcasting, station manager Marcelo Tafoya falsely told them that
there was some minor technical glitch they were trying to
repair.
Filing a false
police report. When
the station engineer repossessed some of his equipment because KOOP
had defaulted on its payments, station manager Marcelo Tafoya called
the police and falsely told them that the engineer had stolen
equipment belonging to KOOP! Tafoya did this at the direction of
board president Teresa Taylor. [more
on that story]
Threatening a
church
Membership involvement is crucial to the operation of any cooperative. Yet when we scheduled a meeting for KOOP members at the Unitarian Universalist Church, board member Mac McKaskle called the church on 8/24/98 and threatened that if they allowed KOOP's membership to meet there, they could be involved in the legal action if the KOOP issue ever went to court. Is this the action of someone who really embraces cooperative principles?
Lying about a
benefit we held. When
a member called the station to inquire about a benefit that Friends
of KOOP was holding at the Continental Club, Eduardo Vera falsely
told the member that the benefit had been canceled.
Removing of
David Barsamian's "Alternative Radio" tapes from the
studio
KOOP airs a syndicated program by David Barsamian called "Alternative Radio". Barsamian has been very critical of KOOP's Board of Trustees (although not on "Alternative Radio").
On 8/24, Friends of KOOP member Vickie Benitez discovered that all copies of "Alternative Radio" had disappeared from the studio.
We don't know who did this, but naturally, we strongly suspect a supporter of the trustees (if not the trustees themselves). The trustees have a history of censoring that with which they disagree (such as trying to remove the link to this Friends of KOOP site from the KOOP site, and trying to intimidate the Unitarian church into not hosting the membership meeting).
So much for KOOP being a place for the "free exchange of different opinions".