The biggest demonstration of concerned radio listeners in the annals of public broadcasting took place on Saturday, July 31st. Over 10,000 people assembled at Martin Luther King Jr. park with signs and placards calling for community control of KPFA-FM in Berkeley and the resignation of the Pacifica Foundation's Executive Board.
The road to that demonstration began with an incident. The overwhelming response to that incident revealed that, throughout the Pacifica community, thousands of people were deeply troubled by the network's lack of representative process.
On March 31st, 1999, the Pacifica Foundation's executive director Lynn Chadwick informed KPFA general manager Nicole Sawaya that her job with the station had been terminated, effective immediately. Chadwick told Sawaya that she was not a "good fit." The Pacifica Foundation, a non-profit organization, manages the affairs of five non-commercial radio stations throughout the United States. KPFA was the first; started in 1949, it is the oldest listener supported FM station in America. Sawaya's ousting came two weeks before KPFA's fiftieth anniversary.
The firing revealed an utter disregard for the first and most obvious rule of community radio: major policy decisions will be made in consultation with the community. Pacifica management talked to no one beyond its own inner circle before taking this drastic step. A strong, independent minded leader, Sawaya was very much liked by KPFA's staff and the larger community. Her ousting provoked a huge wave of protest from KPFA supporters across Northern California.
That night KPFA's news department prepared a report for the listeners about the sad decision. To the astonishment of the staff, Pacifica told the station's news director not to run it. The story was broadcast in defiance of the order.
Even before Sawaya's dismissal, however, Pacifica was clearly moving in an alarming direction.
On February 28th, the Pacifica National Board met in Berkeley and decided to remove Local Advisory Board (LAB) members from its national governance board. Local advisory boards are the backbone of community input into Pacifica national policy. They meet once a month and hear the concerns of listeners, volunteersÑwhoever has something to say. Formal LAB member presence on the national board helps keep Pacifica accountable to the network's stations.
Now that LAB members were gone, Pacifica's national board became a completely self-appointing body.
KPFA's signature voice, Larry Bensky, appeared before the National Board to argue against this decision. Bensky is a 30 year veteran of the Pacifica network, having won the Polk Award for his historic gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Iran-Contra hearings in 1986. Bensky warned the board that Pacifica's National Office was becoming unaccountable and top-heavy with staff.
When Pacifica terminated Sawaya as general manager, Bensky became even more worried about a management style that had now become autocratic. He took his concerns to the listeners on his regular Sunday program.
On April 9th, Pacifica responded by firing Bensky as well.
The coup strategy was now obvious to anyone who cared to look: centralize your authority, remove from any position of governance those who seem like they might question you, and fire your critics. These actions came from an organization whose flagship daily public affairs program is called "Democracy Now," and, in its own literature, refers to Pacifica as "democratic communications."
The KPFA community, outraged, took to the streets. For KPFA's listeners and staff, "democracy" is more than a word you put on a mass mailing to get someone to send you a check. Over 800 KPFA supporters demonstrated against Pacifica in front of the KPFA building on March 31st. On May 9th, 2,000 demonstrators gathered at Berkeley's Old City Hall to protest Pacifica's intransigence. KPFA's staff began airing regular public statements, demanding the reinstatement of Sawaya and Bensky and calling for the independent mediation of the dispute. The station's listeners responded by making KPFA's May/June subscription marathon the most successful in its history: 6,200 pledges made "under protest" of Pacifica's actions.
An ugly incident took place, and Pacifica used it against KPFA's paid and unpaid staff. Late on the night of March 31st, someone fired gunshots into the Pacifica national office headquarters. No one was hurt. After years of defending the free speech rights of anyone and everyone, Pacifica has sometimes crossed paths with fringe groups. Frightening but thankfully infrequent moments like this have been the price. Most of the time it has been station staff who have braved the dangers and threats.
But this was the first time in the organization's history that Pacifica used the event to hire on-site security guards. They were placed not in front of Pacifica's offices, where the shooting actually happened, but inside KPFA's studios. Lynn Chadwick then appointed herself general manager of KPFA. On Monday, June 22nd, a delegation of about a dozen people came to Chadwick's office to talk to her about her policies. They were led by a member of Berkeley's City Council and a Catholic priest. Chadwick used this event to justify the hiring of armed guards Ñ grey-suited, professional security gunmenÑto watch KPFA's staff.
Chadwick even denied KPFA staff access to door security codes. An organization founded by pacifistsÑWorld War II era conscientious objectorsÑwas now under lockdown at gunpoint.
Even before it had gotten this bad, Pacifica claimed its third victim. Robbie Osman had been a music and commentary programmer at KPFA for over two decades. So effective and influential was Osman's regular Sunday program that the great folksinger Kate Wolf wrote a song for it: "Across the Great Divide." Osman had for years been troubled by the direction Pacifica seemed to be headed. He actively spoke out against Sawaya's and Bensky's firing on his program.
On Friday, June 18th Pacifica's national office cancelled his show, dispelling any doubts about the Brave New Pacifica they have in mind: a rigid, top-down organization where policy will be made by a group of people who can be counted on the fingers of one handÑwith digits to spare. The following Sunday, KPFA broadcast silence when Osman's regular program would have been aired. Outside, demonstrators protested the firing.
Pacifica has tried to justify these actions by claiming that they want to bring greater diversity to the network. But KPFA's minority staff haven't bought a word of it. "KPFA's African American programmers will not be complicit in any Pacifica-driven purge of KPFA staffers under the guise of 'diversity'," a May 21st letter signed by 13 programmers declared. Scores of voices across the progressive community agree. Mumia Abu-Jamal, Alice Walker, Dolores Huerta, Noam Chomsky and many others have called upon Pacifica to practice what it preaches every day on Pacifica radio: There is no way to democracy; democracy is the way.
A Steering Committee, representing many constituencies throughout KPFA, was formed to negotiate a just and fair resolution of this conflict with Pacifica.
Perhaps unnerved at this display of unity, on Monday, July 12, Pacifica National Board Chair Mary Frances Berry flew in from Washington, D.C. in a bid to divide the group. Berry's "invitation only" press conference was a virtual seminar in top-down management. She held it on the 21st floor of Oakland's non-union Marriott Hotel. Only certain journalists were invited. "You're not on the list," security guards told a columnist from the San Jose Mercury News. "Go away."
Pacifica spokesperson Elan Fabbri's justification of the secretive conference betrayed the extent to which Pacifica regards KPFA's activist constituency as alien. "It wasn't to exclude anyone," she was quoted in the Berkeley Daily Planet as saying. "It was to try to keep the protesters away."
At the conference Berry announced her refusal to deal with the full Steering Committee. She would only formally mediate with the union, she declared. KPFA union stewards wouldn't budge. Negotiate with the Steering Committee, they insisted.
The next day Media Alliance intercepted a disturbing memorandum to Mary Frances Berry from Pacifica National Board member Michael Palmer. "I salute your fortitude in scheduling a news conference opportunity in the beloved Bay Area regarding one of the most pressing issues of our time," Palmer's sarcastic message began. "But seriously, I was under the impression there was support in the proper quarters, and a definite majority, for shutting down that unit [KPFA] and re-programming immediately. Has that changed?"
The memo, which Pacifica admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle is authentic, went on to extoll the benefits of selling KPFA or Pacifica station WBAI in New York City: "My feeling is that a more beneficial disposition would be of the New York signal as there is a smaller subscriber base without the long and emotional history as the Bay Area, far more associated value, a similarly dysfunctional staff though far less effective and an overall better opportunity to redefine Pacifica going forward. It is simply the more strategic asset."
Palmer's memo was particularly worrisome, given Mary Frances Berry's live comments on KPFA on May 5th, 1999. One caller asked her a pointed question. "I've heard from what I consider to be reliable sources that the Pacifica Governing Board is exploring . . . the possibilities of selling one of the stations' licenses to endow the rest of the Pacifica network. I've heard of KPFA and possibly WBAI being one of those stations. And I'd like you to answer if that is a possible plan for KPFA." "The answer is no, no, no, no." Berry declared, according to a transcript of the program. "Did you hear me? The answer is no. I'll take another question."
Pacifica's credibility had clearly fallen more than a notch. Despite warnings to remain silent, KPFA staff knew that, more than ever before, they had a responsibility to raise the question of Pacifica's policies over the airwaves.
Pacifica management's response was ruthless and quick. On Tuesday, July 13th, they locked KPFA's staff out of the building. Listeners heard KPFA investigative reporter Dennis Bernstein protesting as security guards forced him out of the studio. Fifty-two staff and community members were arrested and cited for trespassing on the premises of the radio station that they have kept alive and well for decades.
The next day another large demonstration took place in front of the boarded up station. Novelist Alice Walker, poet June Jordan and writer Daniel Ellsberg again pledged their support to KPFA. As Robbie Osman told the protestors, the Pacifica Foundation has committed the ultimate blunderÑstripping us of our illusions.
But Pacifica continued working overtime to create new illusions. In a gesture evocative of the Pacifica National Office's sense of loyalty, they dismissed their Communications Director, Elan Fabbri, and hired an expensive public relations firm, Michael Fineman and Associates. Despite repeated assurances that they were not considering selling KPFA, on Wednesday July 28, National Board member Pete Bramson held a press conference to charge the opposite. Bramson said that during a Pacifica National Board Executive Committee telephone conference the day earlier, Pacifica board member David Acosta: "proposed taking out a five million dollar loan against the value of the KPFA license. That could happen quickly. He proposed selling the KPFA frequency, which has an estimated value of 65 to 75 million dollars. That would take longer to accomplish. With a small portion of the proceeds from the sale of KPFA, Acosta proposed that Pacifica set up another Northern California stationÑperhaps in Palo Alto, which Mary Berry said might be a friendlier city than Berkeley. A possible Palo Alto station would have only a fraction of the potential audience that KPFA currently can reach."
Perhaps fearful of the rising public concern that these revelations were creating, not only among KPFA's listeners, but among increasingly sympathetic reporters, that same day Mary Frances Berry made KPFA's staff an offer. Her presentation of the proposal once again showed Pacifica's contempt for any kind of clear institutional process. Berry told reporters that KPFA's staff were free to return to the building (save Nicole Sawaya and Larry Bensky), that the gag rule would be lifted, and that after a period of six months Pacifica would review KPFA's performance to see whether it had met the foundation's alleged goals for diversity and outreach.
But, to the frustration of the KPFA Steering Committee, Pacifica did not put the offer in writing. In fact, when the Steering Committee asked Pacifica's negotiators for the proposal, they discovered that Berry's offer had taken her representatives by surprise. Even worse, when Shirley Dean, mayor of Berkeley, inspected the still boarded-up KPFA building, she found the floors littered with debris and much of the equipment damaged. Until the building is once again made safe, only ten staff members can enter it at a time, Berkeley's fire department has ruled.
These are the events that have sparked the worst crisis in the history of community radio. How will it be resolved? Will Pacifica become an unaccountable, highly centralized organizationÑits direction subject to the whim of a few individualsÑor will it preserve the spirit of community involvement that has made the KPFA experiment so unique for half a century?
That depends on you. The nation's community of community radio knows that the future of grass-roots broadcasting in America will be decided in Berkeley.
Keep your eyes on this website and your ears to KPFA for further news about how you can help us all win (www.savepacifica.net).
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited