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TROUBLE AT KPFA
da Flower Punk
July 10, 1999Lew Hill is probably rolling over in his grave due to the trouble at KPFA.
KPFA is the flagship station of the Pacifica Radio Network, a station Hill and other pacificists founded 50 years ago in Berkeley. KPFA went on the air on April 15, 1949, and this should be a time of great celebration at the station and the network it spawned. After all, how a station like KPFA even survived the McCarthy years is amazing enough. But survive them it did, and KPFA was an important part of what helped make the Bay Area become such a special place in the 1960s and beyond.
It was at KPFA, for example, that many Bay Area young people in the late 1950s got their first tastes of Buddhism from Alan Watts, Beat poetry from Allen Ginsberg, bluegrass from Jerry Garcia (on Phil Lesh's program), and alternative political thought of all kinds. At a time of great conformity and organized repression, KPFA stood out as a beacon of free thought, free artistic expression, and free speech.
Over the years the station -- and the Pacifica Foundation, which was set up to run it -- grew, even as it remained true to its original values. Stations like WBAI (New York), KPFK (Los Angeles), and several others became part of the Pacifica network. It was on these stations that dissent, from the Korean and Vietnam Wars to more recent conflicts such as those in the Persian Gulf and Yugoslavia, could be found on the air. They are places where artists like Utah Phillips and Negativland could air their thoughts and their crafts.
Yet 1999 is not a time of celebration and renewal at KPFA and Pacifica. Instead, the station (and to a lesser extent its sister stations around the nation) finds itself embroiled in tremendous conflict with the Pacifica Foundation.
The trouble began soon after Lynn Chadwick was hired as executive director of Pacifica in October 1998. Nobody expected trouble with Chadwick; she seemed to have a long history of feminist broadcasting credentials. But that's just on the surface. Dig a little deeper and the trouble with Chadwick soon became clear.
Lynn Chadwick, it turns out, is good friends with Robert Coonrod. Coonrod is currently head of the Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB). If you've noticed your local PBS station is becoming more and more like every other commercial station on your radio and television dial, that's in part Coonrod's doing. He controls the major portions of the purse strings to these stations; it is under his guidance that PBS accepts ever increasing amounts of corporate funds, complete with the advertising and the strings attached to programming decisions this has entailed. As far as coverage of America's international relations, for example, PBS stands more for Pentagon Broadcasting Service than Public Broadcasting Service.
But this should be no surprise to anyone familiar with Coonrod's career and ideology. Before being chosen to head the CPB Coonrod was a leader at the United States' main international propaganda outlets, Voice Of America and Radio Marti. Both are Cold War relics whose main mission is anti-communist propaganda over the airwaves. Radio Marti, for example, was established during the Reagan administration to broadcast anti-Castro messages into Cuba 24-7-365.
Soon after Chadwick became executive director at Pacifica, she began making noises about how Pacifica's democratic governance structure was at odds with CPB guidelines. Though the network is primarily listener sponsored and commercial free, Pacifica gets about 15 per cent of its annual operating budget from the CPB, about $750,000. It wasn't CPB that brought this up; it was Pacifica, under Chadwick. CPB later acknowledged that Chadwick's concerns had some validity. The problem was that there was overlap between the local station's governing boards and the national network's governing board.
Chadwick proposed that the two sets of boards be completely separated to conform to CPB guidelines, something no one at the Pacifica stations had a problem with. What people did have a problem with is that Pacifica decided that rather than have any elections for the national governing board they would make a self- perpetuating board, a board that selects its own members without any input from the local stations and listeners that comprise the other 85 per cent of Pacifica's funding. They also comprise the philosophical backbone of Pacifica's reason for existence. No one ever imagined a network dedicated to democracy would, could or should operate under non-democratic conditions. Chadwick's actions blindsided the organization.
It was KPFA General Manager Nicole Sawaya that first raised the red flags about what Chadwick and Pacifica were up to. Sawaya was KPFA's most popular GM ever. A station like KPFA may lean left, but the diversity of opinion and ideology among its staff could hardly be broader. Acrimonious debate has always been a hallmark of KPFA's internal operations because acrimonious debate is a hallmark of democracy itself. Democracy is a very messy system at best, after all. When one considers the alternatives, however, democracy still comes out smelling like a rose, acrimonious debate aside. In spite of this diversity of opinion, Sawaya was able to unite the station's staff and listenership like no one had before her, with the possible exception of Lew Hill himself.
Sawaya pointed out, for example, that the network could become more democratic, not less, and still be brought into compliance with CPB guidelines. All the network had to do was hold two sets of elections, one for national board and one for local board, and eliminate overlap between the two. This was something Chadwick and the Pacifica board wanted no part of however.
Sawaya did some other things that raised the ire of Chadwick and Pacifica as well. She asked questions about the national board's finances. When Pacifica was founded, each station gave one-half- of-one per cent of the money it raised to the network for national operations. Today that figure has increased to over 17 per cent. Sawaya wanted to know where all that money was going. Pacifica has always insisted its books are open to the public; but not only wouldn't they answer Sawaya's questions, all Pacifica will show anyone is its yearly IRS documents reporting how much money the non-profit has in the bank. They will reveal nothing about exactly how much they take in, or how any of that money is spent.
In late February 1999, Pacifica held a meeting in which they changed their governance structure to become a self-perpetuating rather than elected board. They allowed public comment, but only after they already changed the rules. To add insult to injury, the majority of Pacifica board members all left the meeting before the public comments began.
Nicole Sawaya's contract was up for renewal in late March. The Pacifica board decided not to renew her contract, sparking further outrage at the station. By now national and local broadcasters began appealing to listeners over the air for help. Pacifica flipped. In April, Pacifica fired veteran broadcaster Larry Bensky -- who dedicated 30 years to the network -- for discussing the issues on the air.
Robbie Osman, whose Across The Great Divide folk show ran for 22 years on KPFA, was the next fired for discussing the issues on the air.
It would be one thing if Pacifica had always been a commercial, hierarchically organized station. The firings and the policy changes are the concern of staff and listeners, however. KPFA has always prided itself on being "free speech radio," and it gets the vast majority of its support from listeners. That Pacifica is trying to enforce a "gag rule" at "free speech radio" is anathema to everything the station and the network has stood for.
KPFA is now in open revolt against the Pacifica network. Protests outside the station and on the air are a daily occurrence. At times as many as 2,000 people have gathered to oppose Pacifica's authoritarian and anti-democratic actions. Specifically the protestors demand the rehiring of Nicole Sawaya Larry Bensky and Robbie Osman, as well as mediation to resolve to underlying issues that have led to this dispute.
Here's where it gets even wilder. Pacifica has completely dug in its heels against the democratic revolt at KPFA and its sister stations in the network. The Chairperson of the Pacifica Foundation is Mary Frances Berry, a longtime civil rights activist and scholar, who was appointed by President Clinton to head the US Commission On Civil Rights. Berry is a woman of great loyalty; unfortunately her loyalties are sadly misplaced with Chadwick rather than her old democratic ideals.
When 14 respected members of the Berkeley community blocked the doorway to Pacifica headquarters recently to prevent Lynn Chadwick from entering her office without meeting with protestors, Berkeley Police were on hand. The protestors included several members of the Berkeley City Council, a progressive priest, labor leaders, and other well-known and responsible civic leaders. They were completely non-violent and completely rational. Given that fact, Berkeley Police did nothing -- until Chadwick lost it and made citizen's arrests, forcing the police to clear the doorway. The next day Mary Frances Berry called her friends at the US Department of Justice, demanding to know why the police didn't act in Pacifica's interests sooner and more forcefully.
Whether Berry called Attorney General Janet Reno or the number two person at Justice is disputed; that she called is not. The number three person at the Department of Justice -- the man who oversees all federal funds for local police departments -- called the chief of the Berkeley Police Department the next day to investigate. Clearly this action was meant to pressure the Berkeley police; their federal funds could be at stake. A clearer abuse of power by a federal official for their own, non-governmental, personal interests is hard to imagine.
Berry and Chadwick have tried to play the race card in portraying their actions. They have said they want more diversity at KPFA and Pacifica. Don't buy it: Every person of color at KPFA (and there are many) has registered their outrage with Pacifica's actions in open letters to the board.
Pacifica has ignored all this protest except to see it as a threat. In June Pacifica added armed guards to the station founded by pacificists! Five of them now patrol KPFA 24 hours a day. It is the armed guards, not the broadcasters, who decide who gets access to the station. When African American vocalist Joey Blake was prevented from entering KPFA for a scheduled interview last Sunday morning by these guards it would seem to be case the US Commission On Civil Rights should be investigating. Instead, however, the guards are controlled by Mary Frances Berry and Lynn Chadwick. What a conflict of interests. What a mess.
You might be thinking, "what does all this have to do with me?" But jamband fans who live far away from Berkeley (or Northern California, KPFA covers a tremendous region of the state and on the generally commercial part of the dial), still should be interested.
For one thing this is a matter of democratic principle. KPFA and Pacifica represent one of the only major alternatives on America's radio dials. What Buckminster Fuller called the "Grunch of Giants," the endless mergers and corporatization of independent entities, must be stopped at KPFA and Pacifica. It would be one thing if KPFA's listeners weren't providing for the station, of course. But KPFA's listeners consistently bring the station's fund drives in over budget. (90 per cent of the most recent fund drive's pledges were made "under protest," something Pacifica refuses to acknowledge.)
Furthermore, the abuse of government power in this case must be challenged: Mary Frances Berry has proven herself unfit not only to head Pacifica, but she must now be forced from office as head of the US Commission on Civil Rights.
More directly for jamband fans, KPFA and the other Pacifica stations are among the only major stations in the nation that support up-and-coming bands, and bands that have been making great music for years but are not commercial radio friendly. All day Sunday KPFA plays American roots music. Most every night KPFA plays free-form radio, and every morning they play music of the world. On all of these shows one hears the world's best music, regardless of its commercial viability. This is something every music lover should support, regardless of personal politics.
These are not just local issues either: KPFA can be heard anywhere in the world on the net at http://www.kpfa.org.
Lynn Chadwick and Mary Frances Berry must resign or be forced from the Pacifica Foundation Board. You can help. Log onto the website http://www.savepacifica.net for further details on what's going on, and what you can do to help.
Armed guards at KPFA, to "protect" the station from its own broadcasters? Pacificist broadcast visionary Lew Hill is surely rolling over in his grave.
_______flowerpunkprods______ Da Flower Punk would rather be discussing all the great new music and the music festivals happening than this, but this is too important to ignore. For Flower Punk reviews of recent CDs, or of the High Sierra Music Festival, go to http://pauserecord.com .
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