KPFA and the Amnesia Express - By Regina Carey, Joe Wanzala & Steve Zeltzer
Sasha Futran, a long time independent journalist and resident of Berkeley, has come under attack amidst malicious and false charges of being a ‘stealth candidate’ for the KPFA LSB. These charges have no basis in fact. This attack on Sasha Futran, and others associated with the Alliance for a Democratic KPFA, is clearly part of a concerted and malevolent effort to undermine genuine participatory democracy at KPFA.
On Monday October, 10, 2006 an anonymous blogger on the web site www.indybay.org charged that Alliance for a democratic KPFA candidate Sasha Futran had withdrawn from the election because she had allegedly been the “center of a controversy” during the 1999 station lockout, 'angling for Nicole Sawaya's job' and offering to share 'intel' with former general manager. The reality is that Sasha was founding a member of Take Back KPFA in early 90's along with Mariana Torres, Jeff Blankfort, Maria Gilardin and others, which began as a response to the then incipient efforts to subvert the network. She has fought corporatization and privatization at KQED as well as been an independent voice for media in Northern California.
Sasha Futran joined the Alliance for a democratic KPFA ( http://www.allianceforademocratickpfa.org/ ) to join others working to strengthen the ethos of community radio and the principle of participatory democracy at KFPA. Sasha has a long history of media activism including fighting corporatization and privatization on the KQED board and if elected she will make an important contribution to KPFA through the Local Station Board.
Soon after declaring her candidacy, Sasha noticed that the KPFA election process had many shortcomings and as a candidate she has worked to try to ensure that the all eligible candidates be allowed to run, candidates have carts and forums on the air to optimize their exposure, and that the local and national election supervisors follow the same set of bylaws and apply the rules equitable. It has been her opinion (a view shared by several LSB members and candidates on or associated with the Alliance slate) that the election supervisors were not doing enough to encourage the station to promote the election.
Partly due to a sense of total frustration about the unfair election process, she made a decision on Sunday October 9, 2006 to notify the KPFA and Pacifica election officers that she was withdrawing her candidacy. The next day, an internet attack was launched by an anonymous blogger who accused her of collaborating with the hijacking of KPFA in 1999 and being a ‘stealth candidate’. Significantly, the blogger appeared to have been provided with confidential files by KFPA management. By the time the posting appeared on indybay, Sasha Futran's decision was only known to the Pacifica and KPFA election officers, yet this information was used by the blogger.
In fact, Sasha had been approached by KPFA management consultant Gene Edwards in August 1999 to apply for the position of KFPA General Manager. After consulting with leading members of the Take Back KPFA Coordinating Committee, of which she had once been a member, it was decided she would go for a job interview to see what she could find out as well as share the concerns of listeners and potentially be a bridge between the Take Back dissidents and the station. She hoped to find out more about the then KPFA/Pacifica management and their agenda for the station and network. As Maria Gilardin, former development director of KPFA recalls, “I remember that many of us encouraged Sasha to apply. For a brief moment in 1999 Pacifica's demise was apparent to all. There was huge support for reform and us, the reformers. Naively maybe, some of us thought that the Save KPFA/Pacifica movement would be involved in or at least get consulted to create a new future.” She also adds, “By the time of Sasha's application Nicole had made it abundantly clear that she was not coming back and the staff had taken all kinds of steps, beginning with returning to the building after the lock-out without Nicole, that indicated their lack of support for her. I actually was shocked that there was such a difference between the public display of support for Nicole by staff - all those posters and speeches - and the lack of real solidarity with her. Staff could easily brought her back into the station by labor action.” In any event, the effort to recruit Sasha Futran never got to the job interview stage.
The disinformation on this blog (http://allianceforademocratickpfa.blogspot.com/ ) and its attempt to slander Sasha Futran relies in large part on amnesia about the chronology of events leading up to the lockout in 1999 and ahistorical tendency to see 1999 rather than 1991 as the point of departure for the effort to save the station. As Lyn Gerry has noted, in late 1994 a group of people inside Pacifica Radio's national directorate seized control of the institution and announced that "vast changes" were to take place and warned others that those "[w]ho do not feel that they can assist Pacifica in its present mission are advised to resign. If there are indications that actions are being taken collectively or individually to countermand the policies, directives, and mandates of the Pacifica Board, the Board will take appropriate steps." ( Principles or Principals: The Fight for Free Speech Radio by Lyn Gerry - http://home.pon.net/wildrose/gerry.htm. )
This blog attempts to distort the context in which Sasha Futran was recruited for the General Manager position by suggesting that Futran was collaborating with the hijackers by having been recruited to apply for the General Manager position to replace Nicole Sawaya. In fact Nicole Sawaya and Lynn Chadwick had both been hired by Pat Scott in 1997 as Director of Operations and Planning and General Manager respectively. Scott also recruited Mary Francis Berry to be chair of the Pacifica National Board. Berry later appointed Chadwick who in turn later fired Sawaya.
To the extent the authors are ignorant of, or willfully distort the history of the Pacifica struggle, they provide an opportunity to educate - or remind, as the case might be, the wider community about what actually happened in Pacifica during the 1990s and how it relates to the situation at the network today.
(For more related history and background see below)
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Gerry also noted in the same article that "the coup leaders have strong government ties. Pacifica's present and former Chairpersons both are highly placed in the organization of the perpetual Democratic Presidential hopeful Jesse Jackson, and Berry, the current Chair, is a Federal appointee of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Recently departed Board Secretary Roberta Brooks orchestrated the heist of Pacifica while serving on the staff of Democratic Congress member Ron Dellums." It is worth noting, (without necessarily making any inference other than noting the complex web of allegiances among people involved in Pacifica) that Conn Hallinan, along with the aforementioned Roberta Brooks, was recently part of a 'host committee' for a fundraiser for a Democratic candidate for Congress (http://www.ruthgroup.org/2006/09/16/jerry-mcnerney-w-barbara-lee/ )
Until the 1999 lockout, Sawaya and Larry Bensky and indeed all the key staff members at KPFA had all collaborated with the agenda of the hijackers as laid out in a document called "A Vision for Pacifica Radio: Creating a Network for the 21st Century, Strategic 5 Year Plan" which was completed in November 1996 after 18 months on a closed-door drawing board. Indeed by the time Sawaya had been hired, KPFA had already been 'pacified' in March 1995 when Pacifica secretly hired the union-busting American Consulting Group to draft new contracts stripping workers of input, eliminating right to strike, and removing unpaid staff from union protection. ( http://forum.wbai.net/tab_6-01/8_timeline.html ). Dennis Bernstein, Wendell Harper and Samuel Guia were the only paid staff members who refused to sanction these new contracts.
Sawaya, while by all accounts a competent manager, was an integral, albeit passive, part of the long-term effort to subvert Pacifica. While at KPFA she certainly did not initiate any effort to reverse the agenda of the hijackers, indeed she likely was not even aware of what was afoot. At any rate, under her stewardship KPFA remained on the course set by the then PNB and Sawaya was a team player until she (along with Larry Bensky) was fired for not acquiescing to the increasingly onerous directives issued by the expanding bureaucracy of the Pacifica National Board.
Conversely, as noted above, when Sasha Futran was recruited to apply for the for position, she did so in consultation with members of the Take Back KPFA movement which was distinct from the Save Pacifica movement which was comprised largely of people like Larry Bensky who had not actively opposed the hijackers despite all their depredations dating back to 1991 (http://forum.wbai.net/tab_6-01/8_timeline.html ) mainly because they had thus far remained unscathed or had indirectly benefited.
Finally, the following link contains some interesting information from Jeff Blankfort about that episode and the role played by Mary Tilson, who is currently running as a staff candidate for the LSB. http://www.peak.org/mailing-list/archive/grc/msg00962.html Tilson, (who is currently running as a staff candidate to for the KPFA Local Station Board) was the Pacifica secretary under Pat Scott and who blocked efforts by Jeff Blankfort and then Pacifica National Board chair Jack O'Dell to obtain copies of the minutes of the Pacifica meetings which were at that time being held behind closed doors disguised as 'retreats'.
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