http://www.lasarletter.com/votekpfa/
“It’s appropriate for listeners to be involved, but there’s a tendency to jump to the step of lighting torches and storming the castle. Of course, when you get to the castle there’s only one kind of conversation you can have.” —Robbie Osman, 1992
KPFA’s Robbie Osman, easily one of the best community radio deejays in the United States, was quoted as saying the above in 1992 by journalist Paul Rauber in the East Bay Express. The quote came after one of the founding meetings of Take Back KPFA (TBK) at the Ashkanaz theater/dance hall in Berkeley. Twelve years later this eloquent caveat still rings true, especially now that TBK's dream has come true. Today Pacifica is the most democratically run radio network in the United States. This month thousands of KPFA listener subscribers will receive ballots in the mail to elect nine listener candidates to the frequency's 18 member Local Station Board (LSB). The LSB performs crucial tasks like sitting on KPFA management hiring committees, overseeing the station’s budget, and appointing members to the Pacifica National Board (PNB). The PNB oversees the Pacifica foundation, which owns five listener supported radio stations in the United States, including KPFA.
Sure enough, the winners of this election will be faced with one broad question—what kind of conversation will they want to have with the Castle?
Dwarfed by the November presidential campaign, you are probably wondering if the KPFA race will really make a difference. The answer is yes. Pay no attention to cynics who roll their eyes when it comes to KPFA politics. KPFA’s weekly audience ratings are small compared to commercial stations, but the numbers are nothing to sneeze at. They vary from 140 to 200 thousand listeners, depending on who counts and when. And quality plays just as much of a role as quantity. Every listener survey I’ve seen from the late 1940s through the early 1990s shows that the most informed, politically active people in the San Francisco Bay Area listen to KPFA. Progressive teachers, doctors, lawyers, legislative aides, union organizers, taxi drivers, nurses, business entrepreneurs—they represent KPFA’s core audience. They listen hungrily to Democracy Now, Larry Bensky, Flashpoints, Hard Knock Radio and the KPFA News.
"If KPFA disappeared, the Bay Area left would be drastically weakened," my friend Barbara Epstein, professor at UC Santa Cruz, once told me. KPFA plays a decisive role in setting the progressive agenda for the leftmost region of the United States. You bet this election will matter.
Unfortunately, the torches have definitely been lit around Castle KPFA of late. For the last year a critical mass of frustrated station activists have waged a campaign to further "democratize" the frequency, which is already saddled with more democracy than it can handle. Committees to advise various station departments about what they should say have been established. A veritable civil war has raged over when to schedule Democracy Now and how to hire a new station manager. Now a slate of LSB candidates are running who want to create a democratically elected Program Council for KPFA, as if the complex task of good journalism can be accomplished by ballot.
For station activists these reforms will allow KPFA to "move forward," as it is often put. The problem is that there is no consensus at KPFA on what "forward" really means. Pretending that one faction's version of forward is everyone's means that the kind of negative momentum we've seen over the last 12 months will continue to polarize the station, creating a decision making vacuum into which the marginal and the misguided will rush.
The divide is already extreme. On July 22, 66 members of KPFA's staff issued a cry of pain in the form of a statement directed towards KPFA's LSB, whose chair has wondered out loud if it is time to "take back" KPFA yet again. The protest charged that staff were being deluged with numerous Internet "hit pieces," libelous accusations, calls for "crushing the will" of various programmers, and comparisons with former Pacifica heavies Mary Frances Berry and Pat Scott. "There is an unprecedented environment of threats, slurs and character assassinations taking place . . . " the statement concludes.
I, better than most, know that during Pacifica wars exaggerated claims of injury rule the roost. And station staff are no innocents themselves when it comes to nasty rhetoric. But even if this cahier des doléances is only half right, it portends to do exactly what its authors warn, prompt "a steady departure of employees due to low morale."
The decision-making and leadership void those departures would create scares me more than anything else. Broad hints of the consequences have already surfaced. On May 30th, despite my protests, KPFA broadcast 14 hours of programming allegedly dedicated to exploring "Afrikan consciousness." This extravaganza included the comments of speakers who proclaimed without interruption that white people are mutants, AIDS may not exist, HIV tests are bogus, the Egyptians built pyramids on Mars, and homosexuality is a treatable condition.
More recently an afternoon programmer on KPFA interviewed noted conspiracyist Mike Ruppert. I do not object to people like Ruppert appearing on Pacifica radio. But the interviewer offered only softball questions as Ruppert declared that Vice President Dick Cheney, "on the day of September the 11th, as he was supposedly rushed to the bunker, was running a completely separate, parallel, and superior command, control and communication system out of the presidential emergency operation center, and that's where the attacks were coordinated from and that's what superceded everything taking place."
In response to my complaints regarding a lack of appropriate skepticism (or at least some kind of alert and clarifying response, eg: "Mike, dude, just checking in here—are you saying that Dick Cheney, like, blew up the WTC on September 11th?"), some tell me that we should simply let the listeners "decide for themselves," regarding such statements and claims. This is a cop out. Journalists are responsible for thinking critically and independently about their subjects, no matter what their sympathies. I cannot imagine how a democratically elected Program Council will further that ideal. I can imagine ways in which it would become a launching pad for aggressive people with irresponsible agendas.
I and others have repeatedly raised these concerns over the last year. The response has been uniform. Such fears, it is claimed, are promoted by KPFA senior staff to protect their jobs, turfs, and personal fiefdoms at 94.1 FM. But where is my turf? Rest assured, I have no job or program anywhere in or around KPFA (and believe me, I want none). All I have is a historian's understanding of the heights to which KPFA can ascend, and the depths to which it can fall. If I could shout loud enough so that everyone in the KPFA community could hear me, I would cry but two words: "Time Out."
On the left of this Web page [actually, pasted below --ED] you will find my endorsements for the upcoming station board election. My first and most emphatic recommendation goes to Sherry Gendelman, attorney-at-large in the city of San Francisco. Sherry played a crucial role in the lawsuits that led to the democratization of Pacifica radio. I believe that she can play an equally important role in making that democracy work. Mark Hernandez's knowledge of radio, technology, budgets and non-profit management continues to impress the hell out of me. The rest of my endorsees seem capable of having more than one kind of conversation with the Castle, and that, right now, is what KPFA needs the most.
Subscribers, KPFA is truly your station now. You took it back. Now please take good care of it.
Matthew Lasar
"Please vote for Sherry Gendelman, Mark Hernandez, Willie Thompson, Annie Hallatt, Yasuo Monno, Tom Blanks, and Rosalinda Palacios in the upcoming KPFA Local Station Board elections." —Matthew Lasar
For more information please go to KPFA's LSB Elections Site http://election.kpfa.org/
_______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com