For more information and to get involved, please visit the following websites: Listener Lawsuit: www.home.pon.net/wildrose /remove.htm PNN Strike: www.savepacifica.net/strike Save Pacifica: www.savepacifica.net Background: www.radio4all.org/freepacifica
	John Murdock, target of a campaign to useat rogue board members at Pacifica.

As this issue of MediaFile goes to press WBAI has been attacked by Pacifica with firings, lockouts, and banning of production staff. Update by Eileen Sutton 12/29/2000.

The struggle for control of Pacifica Radio rages on. In the protracted battle for the network's political soul, Pacifica management has aimed its latest salvo squarely at Pacifica's preeminent national program, Democracy Now!

Under the guise of "personnel issues," the management (which last year tried to shut down flagship station KPFA) presented a list of onerous "workrules" to Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman on October 16. These rules, Goodman says, would make it impossible for her to produce what is hailed by many as the most courageous and politically audacious news show in the country.

For years, Pacifica management has used Goodman's show to prove that ideological changes in the network are illusory. Now Goodman, who has earned the industry's top awards, is being pressured and threatened by management to tone down coverage of topics such as torture in East Timor, police brutality in the United States and the fate of Peruvian-jailed Lori Berenson. Should she disobey, she could be fired.

On October 18, Goodman sent a memo to Pacifica's national board of directors addressing what she calls the "crackdown" on her program and a months-long campaign of harassment, gender harassment, and censorship. Once the memo was leaked to the public, Pacifica responded by posting a statement of its own on its website. Critics say Pacifica's statement is a further attempt to smear Goodman.

Close on the heels of Goodman's challenge to the national board, both Media Alliance and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) called for a national day of protest to support the network and Goodman. On October 25, demonstrations took place outside every Pacifica sister station. (Houston station KPFT summarily fired George Reiter, producer of Thresholds, for demonstrating in support of Goodman.) FAIR also initiated a letter-writing campaign targeting Pacifica's national board members. At last count, board members had received well over 1,000 emails from Goodman supporters.

Goodman has since filed a formal grievance through her union. In the coming weeks, union locals across the country will be asked to support Goodman and the larger struggle to save the network by passing resolutions that condemn the anti-labor practices of Pacifica management. Resolutions can be sent to Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash at 2390 Champlain Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.

In a parallel and potentially significant move, Wash visited WBAI in New York at the end of November and gave station manager Valerie Van Isler two choices: Accept a severance package, or take a position with Pacifica national. (Since Pacifica seized financial control of WBAI, its listeners have been engaged in various strategies of fight-back, including organizing community forums, informational leafleting, and picketing.) Sources say Wash is attempting to install an interim station manager until a formal search can be conducted. Local WBAI management has asked for a meeting with Pacifica in response to this latest assault on the station's independence.

Democracy When?

Pacifica has long been a bastion of free speech--from broadcasting Alan Ginsberg's "Howl," to defying the House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunts, to airing the commentaries of death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Always influential, the network has been denounced on the floor of Congress and investigated by the FBI. But for some time now, Pacifica's free speech mission has been under assault from its own management and board of directors, which continue to arrogantly redefine the network's mission, critics say. This celebrated nonprofit, community-based, listener-sponsored radio foundation can now boast of maquiladora real estate brokers, media entrepreneurs, and a lobbyist for the National Association of Home Builders on its national board. If Executive Director Wash prevails, a Citicorp vice president for international banking and a consultant for telecom deregulation could be the next additions to the board.

Elected to the national board this past February was John Murdock, a corporate attorney whose firm, Epstein Becker & Green, is known for "maintaining a union-free workplace." Murdock has offered to rewrite the bylaws of the Pacifica Foundation, and board-watchers expect these changes to be presented at the March 2001 national board meeting. Murdock's firm is also representing the Pacifica Foundation in three lawsuits it currently faces--one from national board members Rob Robinson of Washington, D.C. and Rabbi Aaron Kriegel of Los Angeles, one from listeners, and one from Local Advisory Board (LAB) members.

The Robinson/Kriegel suit charges that the board has destroyed "any semblance of democratic participation, lawful governance, accountability and fiduciary stewardship." California's Attorney General also gave several listeners, led by North Bay resident Carol Spooner, standing to sue Pacifica. This suit charges the board with violating the network's mission. Pacifica's lawyers have tried to move both the listener lawsuit and the Robinson/Kriegel lawsuit to federal court in order, advocates say, to slow proceedings. The hearing to move the suits back to state court will take place January 9, 2001 at the Federal Courthouse in San Francisco.

The third suit, brought by the network's LAB members, seeks to reverse what many consider a veritable coup in the late '90s, which allowed the national board to sever ties with the entire constellation of LABs, thus becoming self-selecting and unaccountable. Unaffected by the delay in the other two suits, former Pacifica Executive Director Lynn Chadwick was the first Pacifica defendant forced to answer the LAB lawyers in a deposition on November 21. By early February, attorneys for both sides in the LAB suit hope to have completed over 35 depositions, including those of Former Board Chair, Mary Frances Berry, and other past and current members of the national board.

Activist Pressure

Outside the courtroom, activists have stepped up the pressure. On November 16, the Grassroots Radio Coalition organized the second national one-day boycott of Pacifica programming. A number of Pacifica affiliates and community stations have aired programs to educate listeners about the battle within the network.

Several affiliates are threatening to cancel their Pacifica contracts. Some already have--in solidarity with the majority of Pacifica Network News stringers who struck on January 31, 2000, to protest what they called rampant censorship throughout the network. Thousands of unionists, artists, academics, and activists across the country have supported the strike action and the strike fund, and many continue to honor the strike line by refusing to give comment to PNN. For the past 10 months, the striking reporters have produced Free Speech Radio News, carried once weekly by 41 community radio stations across the country.

Actions are also under way to get Murdock and treasurer Michael Palmer off the national board. Last month a phone, fax, and email campaign targeted these two members and a leaflet campaign was started in San Francisco outside the offices of C.B. Richard Ellis, a multinational commercial realtor, where Palmer works.

Free speech lovers continue to condemn the censorship at Pacifica. They condemn the firing of staff and programmers of color, the suppression and alteration of news, the threat of exclusion of progressive organizations, and the mainstreaming and left-cleansing that is under way at Pacifica. They protest the use of millions of dollars of listener funds for market research, corporate credit cards, and "security" costs. They denounce a corrupt, undemocratic governance process that involves the manipulation of by-laws, the stacking of the national board, and the illegitimacy of Pacifica's current leadership. And they continue to fight.

Eileen Sutton is a freelance reporter who helped organize the stringers strike against the Pacifica Netowrk News.