Berkeley – On August 20th, 2008, the Berkeley Police Department was summoned to KPFA Radio offices at 1929 Martin Luther King Jr Way to remove an unauthorized visitor. The unauthorized visitor was Nadra Foster, a graduate of the station's heralded apprenticeship program, and a co-host of the Elemental Roots program which aired on Friday
evenings at 7pm for several years. Foster was doing some volunteer work at the station, not unusual for an institution with over 200 formal volunteers who use the description unpaid staff to describe their work producing 2/3 of the station's programming for free.
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Foster was using one of the communal work spaces in the station, the "Ujima Room" (together in the Swahili language), a 1st floor production studio. While on the telephone arranging a ride home, according to her brother Gideon Foster, Nadra was asked to get off the telephone and apparently did not do so quickly enough. In a chain of
circumstances that remain unexplained, a decision was made by the management team at KPFA and the next-door Pacifica National Office, to handle the telephone overload by summoning the Berkeley Police Department and reporting a trespasser on the premises.
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The Berkeley Police Department sent a squadron of six officers and removed the pregnant Ms. Foster from the premises by force, fracturing her arm in the process. (*Update: A Monday morning doctor visit confirmed the arm injury as a "severe sprain"). Ms. Foster was taken to Alameda County Jail in Santa Rita and booked with two felony charges of battery on a police officer. At Friday's arraignment, the charges were reduced to five misdemeanors and bail was posted by her family later that day.
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On an August 21st edition of Flashpoints that discussed the incident, Hard Knock Radio producer Weyland Southon, who witnessed the latter part of the arrest stated: "This is a place where we report on police brutality. This is a place where we hold the police accountable for wrong-doing. To bring the cops willingly into KPFA to deal with a situation like this was short-sighted. Situations like this get us
killed".
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Ms. Foster, who is the primary caretaker of two young children, is still facing five misdemeanor charges, including one count of trespassing, two charges of resisting arrest and two charges of battery on a police officer. Her pre-trial hearing is scheduled at 9am Monday at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in downtown Oakland. She is currently being represented by an Alameda County Public Defender.
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Pacifica Radio and KPFA-FM have issued no public statement at the time of this release, although Pacifica Executive Director Nicole Sawaya stated via e-mail that Pacifica did not intend to press charges on the trespassing count.
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Media Alliance Managing Director Tracy Rosenberg commented "Turning a workplace dispute about telephone usage into a police action where people are hurt is simply an unacceptable escalation of an ordinary situation that is handled in a million workplaces everyday without the use of police. It demonstrates a significant failure to implement on-site the noble words of KPFA's mission - which revolve around
acknowledging and resolving conflict without the use of oppressive force".
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KPFA's unpaid staff organization which advocates on behalf of the station's large unpaid workforce and had established grievance procedures for volunteer concerns, was derecognized by interim general manager Lemlem Rijio in August of 2007 and has not been reinstated.
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In this <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REbDCcLkaxg"> video</a>, there  is a segment where Ms. Foster discusses the incident.
<br> Long-term programmer Miguel Molina <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vii7ZiU2gPs"> discusses the event </a> here.