We will have to choose whether to defend the station's mission or defend our own turf.
Dear Fellow KPFA Staffers,
An article in the Berkeley Daily Planet tells readers that KPFA is again in crisis. And a widely circulated letter signed by a group of KPFA staffers likens the crisis to that of 'the terrible years surrounding the KPFA lockout and shutdown of 1999'. Such news will be greeted with dismay and frustration by KPFA's many friends. The station and the network have only recently emerged from that harrowing and exhausting fight for their lives and listeners who rose to the station's defense and to the defense of its mission with immense energy and who stood by KPFA throughout that long and difficult struggle will certainly not welcome the prospect of another.
It is important that listeners and staff members learn what is happening at KPFA and it's important that they have a chance to carefully consider what recent events may mean for the station's future. But by evoking the specter of 'the devastating forces of the previous Pacifica National management' the staff faction's letter misrepresents the nature and origin of the differences and the character and intentions of the people with whom they disagree. The moment demands of all participants that we try to inform and persuade rather than frighten those we address. It is not necessary to pull punches or to minimize points of difference and the example of the near loss of Pacifica should never be forgotten but the signal to noise ratio of that letter is not helpful.
During the Pacifica conflict the defenders of Pacifica's mission challenged and, after tremendous effort, changed the governance of the network and of the stations. At the heart of the changes are new by-laws which were crafted in a long, open, and inclusive, democratic process and which give listener-members significant power in station governance through the Local Station Boards (LSBs). These new by-laws embody the hope that opening station decision-making to listener input and, to some extent, listener control will make the Pacifica stations more responsive to the progressive community and protect them from possible future take-over attempts.
The present conflict at KPFA is a result of resistance from some station staffers to implementing the reforms embodied in the new by-laws.
The signers of the letter fail to note some noteworthy differences between the old Pacifica board and the reformers who seem to have so alarmed them. The old Pacifica board built their power on the disempowerment of the listeners and unpaid staff. The reformers purpose is to bring listener input into the station's processes. The old Pacifica board was distant, unelected, and unsympathetic to - even ignorant of - the Pacifica mission. The reformers are long-time KPFA listeners and staffers who ran in the recent elections for seats on the Station Board hoping to help make the station as effective and vibrant a progressive voice as it can be. One way many Pacifica supporters came to appreciate the nature and seriousness of the threat posed by the old Pacifica board was by witnessing the old board's attacks on and eventually its attempt to eliminate Pacifica's flagship program, Democracy Now! The reverse is true in this situation. The tension between the present reformers and the signers of the letter was sparked by the decision of a reformer majority on the station's Program Council to move Democracy Now! to a better, more accessible airtime (so that listeners who work from 9-5 can hear it).
The old Pacifica board is not part of this dispute. The success of the KPFA community and of the nationwide Pacifica community in overturning their undemocratic rule itself has created new challenges. Our ability to find our way in this new landscape will depend, in large part, upon whether we choose to name the issues or to call names.
What's going on?
We have come to an impasse because some staff, long accustomed to the previous unaccountable ways of making decisions and wary of changes in the status quo, have flatly refused to accept the exercise of listener/board participation mandated by the new by-laws and other agreements which came out of the struggle. One of the staff-elected representatives to the Station Board articulated this view at a recent meeting of the Local Station Board. He told the Board that KPFA was like an airplane. The listeners were like passengers who should expect to pay for their tickets and then remain in their seats leaving the crew to fly the aircraft. It is crazy, he said, to let the passengers into the cockpit. He called the listener board representatives and those listeners who had come to watch the board meeting and to participate in the public comment segment of the meeting 'self appointed guardians with too much time on their hands'. His unconcealed distain elicited outrage among many listeners but he declined a plea to apologize and his allies on the board refused impassioned requests that they disassociate themselves from his offensive formulation of the proper role of listeners in KPFA's deliberations.
The chief tactic of those who are resisting the democratization of decision-making at KPFA has been to, as quietly as possible, subvert the reforms while paying lip service to democratization. They are not always as open about their perspective as that staff-elected board member was at that unguarded moment but the unfortunate fact is that the airplane analogy is a frank expression of a widely held rejectionist stance.
After the immense effort by KPFA listeners to rescue KPFA and Pacifica from an isolated and self-selecting clique it is heartbreaking to hear people who should know better argue that the right to participate in station decision-making cannot be entrusted to people who are 'unfamiliar with radio' (as another catch phrase of the reform-rollback effort has it). This is plain nonsense and it is sad to see that some of the same staffers whose willingness to disempower listeners and unpaid staff did so much to encourage and enable the Pat Scott/Mary Francis Berry/Lynn Chadwick assault on the network have returned to their old analysis of who is and who is not suitable for inclusion in station decision-making now that the threat from the old Pacifica Board seems eliminated.
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The crapstorm that is being loosed upon the station and its listeners, the fear mongering, the warnings about ignorant and hostile strangers seeking to micro-manage everything, the wholly fabricated story that the board wants to eliminate music programming, the demonstrably false charge that board members have left the station open to lawsuits, the sensationalized descriptions of normal discussion and questions from board members that turn legitimate and appropriate or even sometimes angry and frustrated statements and questions from the board into 'egregious charges', 'slurs', 'character assassination', 'potentially libelous accusations', 'challenges', 'attacks', 'anti-worker assaults', and 'threats' which 'demean', 'dismiss', 'ridicule', 'harass', and 'accuse' (all of these taken from the letter referred to above) are well suited to cover this and other blatant refusals to play by the rules.
The strategy seems to be to create enough heat and raise a great enough din that staff and listeners alike can be stampeded into reacting in frustration and fear. The hope is that people will be persuaded to accept the suspension of democratic decision-making and return station governance to the 'peaceful 'status quo ante (before 'outsiders' had a voice in KPFA's decision-making structure).
It can come as a surprise to no one that the refusal of the station's administration to respect the decision of the Program Council has caused a controversy that has spilled over into the Station Board. At this moment almost any consideration that comes before the board is measured in terms of opposing sides and weighed in the context of a 'larger battle'.
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It may disappoint, but it should not surprise KPFA's supporters to learn that the station's staffers, people whose voices have become the voices of friends and who listeners may have even grown to think of as the very voices of progressive politics, can be as jealous of their perks and privileges as people in other political and social arenas. But human beings are human beings and we simply must protect our progressive institutions by creating and fighting to defend rules and practices that require that policy and programming decisions be made by people who are disinterested and accountable.
Those of us who produce KPFA's programs and whose power, pride, and perks, may hang on such decisions will have important and useful perspective and information to contribute to such discussions. You can be sure that we will express strong opinions. But KPFA's airtime is a commons to be used in the common interest not a commodity to be possessed forever or to be divided up among the loudest, strongest, most deeply entrenched, or first in line. And for that reason disinterested discussions and disinterested conclusions are what's needed and those will most reliably come from disinterested decision-makers.
After long years of insular practice KPFA's program decision-making has grown to be too responsive to the give and take of the station's internal carrot and stick economy and too unaccountable to the needs of the listeners, the demands of the times, or the requirements of Pacifica's mission. The Democracy Now! question is one example; we run our most effective audience magnet before most people wake up and after many people who work from 9-5 can listen. Even having a decent discussion about changing that proved impossible because at KPFA the demands of turf and power take precedence over the needs of the listeners or the station or its mission.
(snip)
Here's the other reason that we can't let democratization be rolled back. The old board's effort to remake Pacifica, to fire the audience and use the stations to build a new, more mainstreamed radio empire, or to sell one of the stations and fund heaven knows what grandiose scheme did not suddenly appear in the Spring of 1999. It first took root in changes in station decision-making which disenfranchised KPFA's listeners and unpaid staff and made local decision-making subject to national oversight. KPFA's core paid staff should have, but failed to, whole-heartedly resist efforts to disempower listeners and unpaid staff. Only when the usurpers thought that the community had accepted their powerlessness did they feel strong enough to try to hijack the network altogether. That's why the attempts to discredit and disempower the LSB are short-sighted and dangerous.
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The station is at a crossroads. Finding KPFA's way safely forward will require the vision and the courage to risk taking a democratic path. The democratic decisions of the Program Council, the necessary work of the Manager Search Committee, and the legitimate authority of KPFA's long fought for elected Station Board ought to be respected. If they are not respected they will have to be fought for. The alternative is rule by an oligarchy with turf protection, personal privilege, and spin control, occupying the place where co-operation, open discussion, and mission driven decision-making, should be. The end result of taking that path will not be good for KPFA or its listeners and especially not for its mission.
Yours very truly,
Nick Alexander: Unpaid Staff Organization Representative Juan Amador: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Mehmet Bayram: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa: Middle East Radio Project Collective (MERP) Dennis Bernstein: Flashpoints Dogpaw Carrillo: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Solange Echeverria: Flashpoints Bonnie Faulkner: Guns and Butter Arihua Ferriz: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Omar Flamenco: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Nora Barrows Friedman: Flashpoints Jasmin Garcia: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Miguel 'Gavilan' Molina: Flashpoints Nauthal Gonsalo: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Lisa Gonsalvez: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Miguel Guerrero: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Robert Knight: Flashpoints Esin Kunt: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa (MERP) Norma La Brava: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Sandra Lemus: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Ventura 'Mr. Chuch' Longoria: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Falcon Molina : La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Robbie Osman: Across the Great Divide Miguel Perez: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Malihe Razazan: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa: Middle Eastern and North African Perspectives Collective (MENAP) Pedro Reyes: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan Mina Sepher: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa (MERP) Barmak Saemian: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa Sue Supriano: Steppin' Out of Babylon Gulden Yazgan: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa (MERP) Steve Zeltzer: Labor Collective, Middle East Radio Project
KPFA staff who would like to add their names to this letter please contact Robbie Osman: email / staffletter at robbie.org
The other staff letter which this letter refers to can be found at www.kpfa.org/staff. Having published that letter, KPFA's administration should publish this and any other message from KPFA staff on these questions and it should distribute to KPFA staffers this and other letters on this important subject just as it did that letter.