[lbo-talk] WBAI crisis

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Tue Nov 18 17:38:42 PST 2003


http://www.wbai.org/vol/folio/10-03/06pgrm_sched.html

Gary Null, aargh, still there. Mike Levine, is a former DEA agent who I think is not all that progressive. These folks, besides Doug, are solid, Michio Kaku, Bill Weinberg, the anarchist chronicler of the EZLN. The show on weaponry sounds interesting from Tom Wisker, http://www.wbai.org/programs/weaponry/index.php http://libraryautomation.com/nymas/ . Elombe Brath, an Old School Black Nationalist? http://www.savewbai.tao.ca/archive/savewbai00028.html
> ...[an error occurred while processing this directive] HEH!!!
Elombe Brath on WBAI
> From Eileen Sutton <efsutton at earthlink.net>
> Date Tue, 16 Jan 2001 12:39:28 -0500
> Brath is a veteran producer at WBAI...
=========================================== THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF LISTENER SPONSORED RADIO Resistance Grows Against Pacifica Board Coup at WBAI by Elombe Brath As the controversy over the changes at radio station WBAI, 99.5 FM, deepens, it has caused division among its listenership as well as among WBAI staffers, paid and unpaid workers, volunteers who have accepted the recent coup d’etat as a fait accompli and prefer to keep their feelings to themselves. Who is right and who was wrong, who was responsible for what many feel is possibly one of the most divisive situations in the the station’s over 40-year history. WBAI was founded on January 10, 1960 [yesterday marked its 41st anniversary as a radio station], the third of what now is a network of five FM stations: KPFA, the founding station, located in San Francisco (1946), KPFK in Los Angeles, both in California; KPFT in Houston, Texas; WPFW in Washington, D.C.; and, of course, WBAI in New York. Its founding father, Lewis Hill, was a pacifist who served time as a political prisoner for his beliefs, so deep was his commitment. Hill founded KPFA in the immediate post-World War II period, seeking to develop a non-commercial broadcasting outlet for the expression of voices promoting prospects for peace, global justice, anti-nazism and anti- fascism, and to discourage the ravages of exploitive war against colonized peoples. Those voices were mostly represented by other pacifists, many engaged in the antiwar movement, and other activists on the left of the political spectrum. The current crisis at WBAI is not a new phenomena but has evolved out of the ongoing struggle of producers trying to continue Lew Hill’s mission in the context of developing contemporary political realities. It represents the struggle of those who continue to uphold the mandate of listener-sponsored radio which is directly in conflict with the profit motivated concepts of mainstream media (i.e., commercial or corporate-financed media.) This present conflict between listener-sponsored, coporate-free radio and that of the interests of corporate financed, pro-capitalist media, is in reality part of a continuum of a historic struggle for the soul of revolutionary radio versus the prevailing order of preserving the capitalist status quo and the neoliberal agenda for the furtherance of multinational globalization. Throughout its 40-year history, WBAI, the New York affiliate of the Pacifica Foundation’s five station network, there has been episodic eruptions among the different broadcasting outlets over the political character and content of radio programming. The latest developments at WBAI are part of this legacy of a continuing struggle to maintain the content and character of listener-sponsored/commercial-free radio and elements like those who have hijacked the Pacifica board. The re-writing of the Pacifica bylaws a few years ago allowed board members to escape term limits and almost become lifers in the governance of the overall operation of its affiliates. They subsequently expanded their membership by including recruits from corporate institutions that has now pitted the station’s local management aligned with the board against its paid and non-paid staff members over the dismissal of three employees: Valerie Van Isler, a 20-year WBAI veteran and general manager of the station for the last 10 years; Bernard White, another 20-year veteran, WBAI’s program director and former co-host of Wake Up Call, the station’s morning show; and Sharan Harper, Wake Up Call producer [not a production as the Associate Press has erroneously reported] and WBAI union (UE) shop steward. Just as the incoming administration has revealed its agenda by President-select George W. Bush announcement of his cabinet choices and some folks appearing shocked by individuals whose raison d’etre is in direct conflict with the department they were chosen to preside over, the additions to the Pacifica National Board are equally revelatory. The following listing of those currently are on the board and individuals expected to join them, and their links to contradictory occupational histories are in direct conflict to WBAI’s advocacy of “speaking truth to power”, especially regardlng how issues pertain to established programs that expose governmental and corporate abuse, is the result of an ongoing investigation by those WBAI journalists - particularly Attorney Mimi Rosenberg, co-host of WBAI’s labor program Building Bridges - who continue to struggle to return the station back its mission and its listeners. To wit: David Acosta, KPFT, Chairman, whose term expired during March 1999, is a certified public accountant in Houston, Texas. His name is listed basically as the board’s chairman, not because he is a CPA from Texas. Ken Ford, PNB Vice-Chairman, Executive Committe term is supposed to expire this month and his board term actually was supposed to expire last June, is a lobbyist for the National Association of Home Builders, “the third largest trade association political action committee in the U.S. [which] raises more than $2 million each election cycle”, according to Josie Byzek in an article entitled “Living in the Past”which appeared in the May/June 1998 edition of the Ragged Edge. Based in Washington, D.C., the NAHB boasts that it is expanding its headquarters, projecting the doubling of the building to nine stories, while covertly, as attorney Rosenberg points out, “is spending big bucks to prevent any legislation on the state level that might mandate any access features for the disabled.” Indeed, as Byzek has written, the “NAHB has used its sources to fight the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Housing Act and its access guidelines - and fair housing compliance in general...successfully [defeating in 1998] access legislation sought by disability organizations, including Independent Living Centers, in Virginia, Georgia and Illinois.” Ford and his friends at the NAHB have persistently fought against such “basic access standards, universal design, or a ‘visitable’ single family home provides for at least one no-step entrance, wider doorways and passageways through ground floor rooms so as to accommodate a wheelchair user, an accessible bathroom at ground level with bathroom walls that would support grab bars. Universal design permits all people, including people with disabilities, to enter and function. It permits people to age in place, live independently and avoid institutionalization.” Having a sense of Mr. Ford and his associate’s work-related past practice, it is both understandable and tremendously important to remember that the question of NAHB’s disregard for the rights of the disabled having access to his or her domain, or the rights of all tenants to decent and affordable housing, would indeed be a target of a noncommercial radio station like WBAI - and vice versa. More directly to our concern about Ford’s relation to WBAI is the fact that he was reported in the New York Times to having complained that WBAI loyalists are “mired in the 1960s”, adding whose opinions are currently “not only insignificant but irrelevant” in today’s media market. Not so insignificant but extremely relevant to us is that Ford’s opinion seems to be based more on wishful thinking than on historical fact. For instance, most of the struggles in developing nations occuring today over demands of indigenous peoples to reclaim their stolen land and economic control of their respective countries are grounded [not “mired”] in the historic post-World War II anti-colonial struggles. These conflicts developed after some of those who had been conscripted by their colonial rulers and taken to fight in Europe to free Europeans from nazism and fascism, returned home after the war and found themselves once again subjected to subservient status in their own countries. Thus, they soon found themselves being forced to organize national liberation movements and resort to initiating armed struggles against racist and fascistic white settler colonialists backed by the U.S. and its western allies which denied Africans the same rights that they had fought for Europeans to have in Europe. Michael Palmer, Treasurer, was initially nominated by KPFT, is employed as a “salesperson/and real estate broker in commercial real estate”, engaging in the selling of property at CB Richard Ellis, considered “to be the dominant, most highly regarded investment properties sales and acquisitions advisor in every market and sector in which we choose to serve our clients.” In this regard, we are concerned that Mr. Palmer was the author of a 1999 internal e-mail posted to then-PNB chair Dr. Mary Francis Berry which discussed the merits of whether the sale of KPFA was more viable than that of WBAI. This disclosure reaffirmed the suspicions by many who had previously surmised that WBAI, at 99.5 FM, being right in the middle of the FM dial, was possibly worth anywhere from $100 million to $200 million and was being considered for sale by those who now control Pacifica. Karolyn Van Putten, a member-at-large, from Westernrn Public Radio, in Fort Mason, San Francisco, is said to have been “handpicked” by Dr. Berry, former PNB chair and a leading member of outgoing President Bill Clinton’s Civil Rights Commission. Dr. Berry is one of the prominent leaders being spotlighted the investigation of the disenfranchisement fiasco in Florida during the Election 2000 fraud. However, she apparently has no problem in disenfranchising employees at WBAI who had constantly appealed to her for a number of years about assistance in alleviating deplorable conditions which eventually led to the present crisis at the station. In any event, her choice of Ms. Van Putten has led to even more intransigence by the board in its relations with WBAI as she has taken a rigid position of refusing to meet with community groups, boasting that she speaks for the Board. Even more frightening are two newly appointed board members. Bertram Lee, Sr., from Pacifica’s WPFW affiliate, also serves on the Board of Directors of Reebok, the multimillion dollar sneaker firm which WBAI has broadcasted hours exposing their exploitive sweatshop operations in Indonesia. Mr. Lee is what his industry calls a “big buck boom and bust” businessman, meaning that he “buys and sells radio and television stations (e.g., CBS affiliate in Boston and WKYS in Washington.)” He is also co- owner of the Denver Nuggets basketball team. John M. Murdock, another Washingtonian from WPFW, is an attorney, in fact, a senior associate at Epstein, Becker & Green, P.C., “one of the world’s largest labor and employment practices with management [nearly 300 attorneys practicing in 10 offices throughout the U.S. - and affiliation worldwide] on every aspect of labor and employment law.” This includes “counseling employers on matters relating to executive compensation; wrongful discharge; plant closings; downsizing; and work-force restructuring; job actions; work stoppages; union campaigns; contract negotiations”, as well as “matters arising under NAFTA, Gatt and advising management on employee counseling and discipline.” Therefore, Mr. Murdock is a lawyer whose responsibility is to defend practically everything that WBAI’s investigative journalists and scores of their guests have provided documentation that clearly reveals a borderline criminal conspiracy against working people all over the world. This is the reason he was targeted by protestors who picketed his office at Epstein, Becker & Green, P.C., not because - as some argue - he’s just a “young, bright African-American attorney trying to make an honest living.” The PNB’s new thinking about the selection of its peers is further revealed with its choice of two proposed additional members slated to become board members which have caused us even greater concern. Luis Wilmot heads the Texas Partnership for Competition, “which advocates further deregulation of the telecommunications industry in Texas” with the backing of AT & T and believes that regulators and legislators must foster the proper environment that will encourage high tech companies are to invest in media facilities wanting to take advantage of advanced technology. As Rosenberg points out, “This fits in with the theory that the object is to target a more affluent audience rather than a less affluent audience for Pacifica.” Francisco Rocciolo, a New Yorker, is vice-president of Citicorp’s private banking unit in charge of international banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. You can rest assured that Mr. Rocciolo would not be appreciative of WBAI’s probing journalism Citicorp’s financial operations in these areas, particular Africa; it certainly didn’t when we used to lift the lid off its then Citi-Bank and friendly Chase Manhattan bank’s manipulation of Africa’s fragile banking infrastructure decades ago. There is a record of empirical data that spells out clearly the history of why the current situation at WBA is not merely a debate over whether those who have taken a strong position against the Pacifica National Board’s attempt to redirect the station’s programming away from its historical mission to give voice to the communities and their activists who are engaged in struggles for social justice and have been banned from such expression on commercial stations and a new infusion into the governing board of people whose interests more reflect the corporate world that Pacifica had been founded to fight against and who intend to either mainstream the affiliates programming into a less confrontational format or else sell a resisting station outright to the highest bidder. I might add, that with the proposed naming of Michael Powell, the son of Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell, by President-select George W. Bush, to replace William Kennard, the Clinton administration’s appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent agency - under the Commerce Department - of the U.S. government, gives us further caution. Since the FCC has tremendous power over communication legal matters, especially pertaining to radio and television issues, the loss of Kennard, who was a progressive voice for the broader inclusion of so-called minorities having access to the airwaves, will be replaced by Mr. Powell, whose politics are more aligned with those of his father and his latest patron, George Dubya, WBAI radical journalists are particularly sensitive shifts in potential policy dilemmas that are hardly noticed by the average person - and could care even less. These above stated conflicts of interests are the underlining contradictions that are at the heart and soul of the current crisis at WBAI. And unless this is understood, then there can be no resolution of the problem and, if not resolved, then the lone voice of radical, progessive radio in New York (if not the whole U.S.) will become the latest casualty of a move by conservative forces within this country during the last 20 years to dominate the airwaves with rightwing slanted programs and reactionary personalities as hosts to promote an anti-affirmative action agenda.
> From the Rush Limbaughs nationally to the local Bob Grants and their ilk,
> the
electronic mass media spew forth volumes of anti-minority immigrants (unless criteria for entry is based on Cold War philosophical orientation) propaganda, along with other racist so-called anti-crime “War on Drugs” campaigns which railroad certain segments of the population to continue providing fuel for the expanding incarceration numbers of the U.S. prison industrial complex, and appeals for the establishment of a nationwide moral code of conduct based on a theocratic state edict enforced by either the federal government or regional state or local municipal executive branches and co-religious Christian “mullahs” in this country’s individual states. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF LISTENER-SPONSORED RADIO Resistance Grows Against Pacifica Board Coup at WBAI http://savewbai.tao.ca To unsubscribe from this list email lists at tao.ca with: unsubscribe savewbai or visit http://lists.tao.ca Prev by Date: WBAI Overview Next by Date: New York Newsday Letters

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-- Michael Pugliese



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