I didn't make it out tonight--too tired after work. The local news KTVU (Fox) lead again with the story. This is from that story.
The demonstration or rally today was smaller, a few hundred, and a group put up a ladder to gain access to the offices through a balcony that overlooks the sidewalk. They made it inside, while the cops were brought inside and arrests were made. A second wave hit the balcony with the cops in place above and they were roughed up and arrested.
Meanwhile officialdom has gotten involved. Dion Aroner (former Dellums chief of staff and now the State House Representative for Berkeley) circulated a petition through the California Legislature to begin an investigation into Pacifica Foundation and its by-laws, to see if the foundation was in compliance with its own regulations on a 'no lock out' labor clause. Jerry Brown (formerly governor moonbeam, and sometime host on KPFA--with his own ego show), current Mayor of Oakland, issued a public statement for 'management to chill out'.
Protesters vow to be back tomorrow and are planning a free speech open street forum for this weekend. If the cops and city cooperate (which they have in their own reluctant and underhanded way), then MLK will be blocked again. The location is actually very good for this kind of street rally, (if the street is blocked off) because across the street from the KPFA office is a modest sized parking lot. The immediate area could probably hold about two thousand people--which would certainly be a nice show.
I must say, the tone of the rhetoric last night, the style of speeches and the general atmosphere were strongly reminiscent of the Free Speech Movement from thirty plus years ago. In fact it was surreal, since there were familiar faces in the crowd--transformed by age. Hopefully, this impression will not turn into a farce, which it could very easily. For those out there who don't know, this was the station that was the public voice of the real Free Speech Movement, back went. Later, during the anti-war demos, KPFA had a mobile van outfitted with transmitters and audio feeds that broadcast live on the scene, before the era of the satellite dish and mini-cam. We used to listen at night after big action days to see how ugly it was getting after we left--this went on night after night. They were also the first to broadcast the marathon chaos of the city counsel meetings of that era.
One of my work buddies called it a fight between the hippies and the yuppies. Another, Larry G, jokingly said, "right on, throw the Commies out, let's clean house." Larry's wife's best friend used to have a show on KPFA on women's health issues--so he was just talking out his ass. Beside the fact, his wife and her friend are Pitt River and Paiute and were part of the Alcatraz take over. Now they all wear designer glasses and drive Volvos--which I pointed out as profound moments of bad faith.
All day at work, I was thinking about KPFA v Pacifica and trying to find a way to conceptualize it so as to link it up to its larger scaled analogues. There is something very familiar about this fight. I have fought this sort of thing in other contexts, but it is extremely difficult to characterize just what it is about--beyond the immediate and concrete detail.
While it is about the corporatization of grassroots media, it is also about other things. In a political dimension, it could be seen as a transition from an old left progressivism to some slimy neo-liberal re-write of progressive politics. Although the litcritters will immediately pooh-pooh the idea, it is also a transition between a form of authenticity and its manque. In the visual arts, we would just call it studied, stilted, fixed, imitation, faked, repetitious, performed, proforma, or just plain dead. This might sound disingenuous, since KPFA has in fact been all of the above, and often. But, it has had its moments, and when they come, fewer and further between now, than before, they really do shine.
And, of course it is true that the crack-pots, the vaccines are bad (as Doug called them), the herbs cure cancer, vegetarian beef jerky, and fluoridation conspiracies definitely crawl out of the woodwork at KPFA and have for years--there is something about having weirdos around, that is somehow important--not just to some abstraction such as free speech, but important in the concrete process of generating politics, art and media.
After watching Lynn Chadwick's slimy performed assurances on tonight's news, I have absolutely no doubt about what she and Pacifica represent. She is neo-liberal tolerance sold as a commodity.
Chuck Grimes