The main question is whether Mr. Guma is an effective and tenacious administrator. The Pacifica network, particularly WBAI, is dire need of . I have done battle with the race essentialists, known in Pacificaland as the 'Justice and Unity Caucus' for several years now. I sympathize with some of their ideological tendencies, but part ways with them on governance questions, where many of them seem to think that Pacifica should be run rather like Robert Mugabe's latter day Zimbabwe (he is a hero to many of them), in other words, to have its management infrastructure lubricated by a rancid stew of corruption with generous dollops of grandiose radical rhetoric thrown in to disguise the stench. To the extent that the race essentialists are complaining about Mr. Guma, it probably has more to do with their fears that he might actually be an honest man - and only incidentally a white one.
Mr. Guma's political views are of course of some moment given what Pacifica is about, but I have found that whatever a given person within Pacifica or any other organization may feel about a particular issue, is not necessarily an indicator of how effective and honest an admistrator he/she might be. Take for example KPFK GM Eva Georgia who is acknowledged in the introduction to Mike Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon. Ms. Georgia is originally from South Africa and is of mixed race descent - she is 'coloured' within the South African racial taxonomy, in the US she is a 'person of color'. The race essentialists and Ms. Georgia are allies within Pacifica politics, less as a function of any ideological symmetry and more a function of sharing a taste for the aforementioned management concoction.
As many of you are aware, CLR James wrote, "The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental. (283)"
I will now perhaps somewhat clumsily adapt James' statement to Pacifica thusly:
"The question of ideology is subsidiary to the question of governance in non-profit management, and to think of non-profit management mainly in terms of ideological tendencies is disastrous. But to neglect the ideological factor as merely incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental."
>From: martin <mschiller at pobox.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] the new pacifica ED
>Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 19:05:45 -0800
>
>On Jan 10, 2006, at 5:25 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>[Pacifica has a new executive director, whom the race essentialists are
>>complaining about because he's a white guy from Vermont. But he's right
>>up some people's alley. We're fucked.]
>
>We being? And how, why 'fucked'?
>
>Martin
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