Hello KPFK Members & Staff
I’ve listened to KPFK daily for well over a decade after taking my dial off NPR. As a child in the 60’s my father often followed debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. and enjoyed radio theater on long drives across southern California.
Coming into this world with Ed Sullivan hosting the Beatles, my young world was full images: the Vietnam War, assassinations of JFK, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, RFK, Salvador Allende. Los Angeles was (and is) a multicultural melting pot where hippies, the military & its manufacturing, businesses & factories, everyone in the entertainment industry and thousands of households were all breathing the same smog.
My “woke” generation was challenged with the destruction of mankind by nuclear annihilation. The Cold War was hot. At 14 I recognized Einstein, a pacifist, laid down recipes for mankind’s destruction. Regardless of the rate at which we decide to destroy ourselves, the environment was being consumed at far too fast a rate to ever recover without reducing our consumption. It was clear we fight wars to gain control of resources. Alongside my engineering studies I concentrated on economics and global social issues. I have been blessed that my 35 year career to date has largely focused on conservation of resources within construction and operations in multiple industries from schools and campus settings to hospitals and semiconductor manufacturing. Everything has a cost.
I initially joined the LSB hoping I could help KPFK’s with my experiences in least lifecycle cost analysis, project management and planning & operations. While on the CM team at LA Valley College’s I enjoyed the staff I worked with when schematically designing the WiFi student station for a contractor install. Radio is a different industry than I’ve ever been involved with. The glimpse I’ve seen for the past three years on the LSB clearly highlights the differences between KPFK and other stations; we lack a clear and consistent funding stream. The best of families can argue over spending money, particularly when money’s tight.
In my next term I hope to contribute to healing KPFK by assisting the team to effectively leverage the infusion of new funding in the most effective way to grow membership without sacrificing our principals. Investigating the full universe of truths in our reporting and story telling opens listeners to question how to best improve our communities large and small. – My drunk uncles would discuss politics and economics at family parties when I was learning to walk.
Is society appropriately questioning our adaption of new technologies in our daily lives? Manufacturing requires a high level of social organization that can’t exist in anarchy. Artificial intelligence listens to every conversation taking information, resources and jobs away from people, a machine endlessly able to consume more energy. Consider human intelligence consumes 20 watts.
How can we do things more effectively with less effort?
I’d appreciate your vote to help KPFK continue questioning the status quo.
Thank you,
Carlos Zavala
|