the Pacifica community has more than imagined itself, it has manifested itself on several important occasions:-
http://dbacon.igc.org/PJust/16RecoveringPacifica.htm
Three weeks ago the Pacifica Foundation, which owns KPFA's license, locked the staff out of the station in an incredible night which saw its two news directors, Aileen Alfandary and Mark Mericle, arrested for trespassing as they sat in the newsroom fielding calls from reporters from coast to coast. Fifty-two others were arrested along with them, including Dennis Bernstein, yanked off the air and suspended after broadcasting a press conference on the daily newsmagazine Flashpoints, which talked about previous arrests at the station.
The arrests and lockout galvanized an already-angry community. By the weekend before the lockout's end, fifteen thousand people had marched through Berkeley streets to protest Pacifica's campaign against the station. They were led by the station's staff -- paid and unpaid programmers walking together, older white news reporters beside young hiphop apprentices, African-American program producers in step with union stewards.
It was a clear demonstration of the source of the pressure which forced the reopening of the station - community power.
>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Report from KPFA CAB meeting
>Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 00:30:39 -0400
>
>Dick Grippon wrote:
>
>>sheeeeeeeeeeeeit. I was involved in two community research programs. teams
>>of researchers crawling all over said community. on one, the director of
>>the research program was a high-minded intellectual type. we spent two
>>years asking, "what is a community?" and once you answer that question,
>>"how, exactly, do you study it in good faith?". there's no clear cut
>>answer, but one thing: simply pointing out disagreements within a
>>so-called community isn't enough to claim there's no such thing. to have a
>>disagreement at all pressupposes that something is shared among those who
>>disagree. and there, you have a place to start. community are imaginary.
>>and there's nothing wrong with that. you, of all people, should appreciate
>>that.
>
>Where did I point to disagreement as fatal to the notion of community in
>that passage? I said that the use of "community" is often performative, in
>that it tried to summon something into being merely by naming it. It has to
>be imagined by its participants, not its namers.
>
>Doug
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