Josh, if you want to bring back the SaveKPFA/Wellstone Democrat "Morning Show," you should attend the KPFA Local Station Board meetings. You should call for an effective Program Council that can field your programming suggestions. There must be due process by which programming decisions can be arrived at fairly. It's a wonder why you don't question the CWA union, which replaced the previous Electrical Workers Union at KPFA. Before the CWA engaged in, essentially, union-busting at KPFA, unpaid workers had more rights. Since the CWA, there is class division at KPFA between paid workers and unpaid workers. The SaveKPFA faction (including Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Aileen Alfandary, C.S. Soong, Sasha Lilley, et al.) will never debate anyone publicly because they have an indefensible position.

Instead, you say you only support KPFA through SaveKPFA because you perceive this to be the only way 'your community' can have a say. Who is 'your community'? Where are you coming from? Who do you represent? KPFA's listenership is broad and diverse. And there is bound to be disagreement. Only through fair and transparent due process with an open, video-taped and YouTubed, LSB and Program Council process can we hope to balance the true needs of KPFA's entire listenership.

You should read all available information, not just one side, such as www.SupportKPFA.org, Daniel's Free Speech Zone, and other varied sources.

What you propose is for those with the most money to exert disproportionate influence at KPFA. What you propose is to undermine the Executive Director because you cling to two particular hosts. This is unacceptable.

Yes, Jackie, Barbara Ehrenreich is wonderful sometimes. When she wants to be. She can be a good truth-teller.

On the matter of unhappy service workers: it's sad when one wants to take their family out for a special meal once in a while. Even your local breakfast joint can run a family $50 they can scarcely afford. It's already expensive, as it is. Perhaps, a family can scarcely afford it, so it's a rare special occasion. Then, adding insult to injury, families are pressured into leaving tips and low-income families have to pretend like they're the wealthy tipping kind.

I understand in England tips are refused because workers there understand tips lower wages. Fundamentally, tips are an insult, a condescension, from a wealthier person telling the worker, 'here, peasant, take my chump change.' But most restaurants create this unspoken pressure to expect tips. I'd rather pay more at a restaurant that pays it's workers honest wages and doesn't reduce them to begging for tips when they're already working an honest job, expecting an honest wage with dignity and social equality.

Another thing that occurs, especially in chain restaurants, is that given the poor quality of the corporate food, families are less likely to complain about diminishing quality because they feel bad for the poor server hoping for the tip.

As for Ehrenreich, I was impressed by her the first few years. Then I wondered why she never became a more pronounced significant leader rallying the masses. After some years, however, one realizes that the most effective and charismatic truth-tellers nowadays will never use their charisma or popularity to galvanize the masses to seriously challenge the corrupt and rotten system we live in. It seems, fear prevails and no one wants to follow in the footsteps of a Martin Luther King, Jr. or a Malcolm X. Keeping in mind the unfortunate necessity of the cult-of-personality syndrome at this stage of our collective societal evolution, it seems the best possible leaders these days will not assume their responsibility to lead the masses in serious challenges to name names or fight the system and its corrupt plutocracy.

Instead, we have well-funded groups like MoveOn.org that usurp precious political energy to support Democrat candidates or countless single-issue organizations that will never truly challenge the ruling elites, which only perpetuates the corrupt twin-corporate party system. The years go by, from the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s, and we do the same thing: complain, protest, and pray for change, instead of unionize, strike, boycott, or reject corrupt political parties. Then we listen to Democracy Now! and belly-ache about how disappointed we are. When will we learn? It seems, as people of conscience, we fetishize corruption and bad news, but continually make the same mistakes. Then we have our über-intellectuals happily dealing in lofty abstractions, which low-income families can rarely relate to and which rarely, if ever, motivate potential leaders to truly radical action.

Sure, people like Barbara Ehrenreich or Noam Chomsky or Van Jones may make a good speech we agree with now and then. But will they ever truly fight the good fight to the end, facing down the full brutality of the plutocracy, as true people's champions like MLK or X and others have done? Will they ever truly challenge the corrupt corporate political parties which deceive the masses every time.

Perhaps, not until Democracy Now!, KPFA, and Pacifica not only speak truth to power (which has no conscience), but speak truth to each other (the people of conscience) and analyze the errors of social movements in real time (not just from generations passed) and motivate real struggle, general strikes, and rejections of the corporate political parties. We need more public debates and town halls. We need more courage, beyond fetish.

Thank you Jackie, KPFA, Pacifica, and the listeners for being there. Thank you for reading this. Please let me know what you think.