The Bay Area progressive community unites for the first time in 50 years around the progressive listener-sponsored radio station. Can we win?

As this issue of MediaFile goes to press, Media Alliance has been transformed by the struggle to reclaim local progressive broadcaster KPFA from the clutches of its "parent" organization, the Pacifica Foundation. In other words, we're going nuts over here. Nuts in a good way. Really.

Now, as the media hubbub around the KPFA lock-out subsides, as staff and community recover from weeks of scab programming, Media Alliance continues to organize for the only kind of change that will prevent Pacifica from destroying KPFA and its sister stations: national, institutional change.

The conflict between the KPFA community and Pacifica's national management that had simmered for years finally exploded July 13, when Pacifica's armed guards tried to drag veteran journalist Dennis Bernstein out of his studio. KPFA News Director Mark Mericle broadcast the ejection live, and Bernstein's shouts were heard throughout the Bay Area. Moments later Pacifica pulled the plug and began playing canned programming in place of the station's vibrant live coverage.

But management's blatant act of intimidation, after years of disrespect for staff and listeners and a February power grab by the national board, galvanized longtime listeners and newcomers alike. By 6 p.m. on the night of the Bernstein scuffle, hundreds of people from all over the Bay Area had gathered outside--and inside--the station. Pacifica, which owns five progressive stations nationwide, then took over the station by force.

Forty of us sat down inside the station, a peach-colored downtown Berkeley building paid for in full by our listener contributions. We guessed that Pacifica had decided, however haphazardly, to embark on some kind of endgame strategy to shut the station down. Revelations that national board members planned to sell either KPFA or WBAI in New York had rocked media-watchers that day. There was a sense that the time for a showdown between Pacifica's secretive and autocratic management and the station's listeners and staff had arrived. Later that night 52 people--including the KPFA news staff, Media Alliance staff, and East Bay and San Francisco community leaders--were arrested. Pacifica boarded up the building after the demonstrators were hauled off to jail, but not before another 12 people were arrested for lying down in front of Berkeley police paddy wagons.

For over three weeks since that night, the movement to reclaim the station was a news staple: KPFA supporters hit the front pages of the Bay Area daily newspapers for nearly two weeks. Hundreds of television, radio, and newspaper stories flew from our street actions and press conferences.

Nearly a hundred peaceful demonstrators were arrested. Two weeks of an around-the-clock vigil in front of the station were complemented by daily protests, mass weekend rallies, and performances.

For 23 days the Bay Area's most powerful community radio station remained boarded up, a victim of the relentless campaign of censorship and intimidation orchestrated by the bureaucrats who control the Pacifica Foundation and own the station's license. Tens of thousands of people rallied and new supporters arrived every day. Finally, after hiring a notorious high-priced PR firm, Fineman and Associates, Pacifica blinked.

It was a strategic blink.

With great fanfare and much self-congratulation Pacifica Board Chair Dr. Mary Frances Berry announced to the press, not to staff or community, that she expected station staff back in the station on Friday, July 30 at 9 a.m. After repairing some of the physical damage done to the station during Pacifica management's control of the facilities, KPFA returned to the air Thursday, August 5 -- live but by no means secure.

Pacifica had successfully sidestepped the fundamental issues that led to the lock-out, and won a temporary victory in the press. The board leadership was still in power, its undemocratic governance structures intact, its open consideration of a sale of KPFA no longer a secret. Pacifica stations across the country continued to censor programming that mentioned the KPFA/Pacifica conflict.

But, Berry said, she would be charitable enough to allow staff to run KPFA for six months to a year. She did not say what would come next. Presumably because, as most observers suspect, what comes next is a sale of the station once street heat has died down.

That's where the issue of sustainability comes in.

Though the station's political edge has dulled in recent years and fractures around race, class, and gender have pointed up how far "progressives" have to go in creating egalitarian institutions of our own, the station remains the place where listeners can hear about the realities of their own lives, instead of the fabricated materialist fantasies that permeate mainstream radio.

Now comes the longer-run struggle for the body and soul of the station. After the TV cameras are gone, now that mainstream journalists' interest in the fate of free-speech radio is cooling, this is where our new work begins.

Paradoxically, we should take heart that our struggle has reached this point. Mainstream journalists can understand a lock-out, and KPFA supporters were savvy. At every turn we pushed free-speech and censorship issues to the fore. We wore gags and drew attention, again and again, to Pacifica's hypocrisy. Our movement grew deeper and wider as a result of the media play we received.

But when Pacifica made a conciliatory gesture of doubtful sincerity, the story got more complicated. Big media side with power, particularly if power is working hard at making itself look benevolent. That's exactly what Pacifica, with the pricey advice of Fineman and Associates, did. The principles of community control and democracy in progressive institutions are more remote to mainstream reporters than are those of free speech. They tend to lose the story when it turns on subtler forms of control: The staff is back in the station, what's the problem?

Well, there are a bunch of them. Namely that just because the staff is in the station today is no guarantee they will be there tomorrow, it's no guarantee Pacifica won't pull the plug again or sell the station's license for the tidy sum of $70 million. Berry refuses to sign a no-sale agreemtent. Chadwick has ordered a hiring freeze at the st ation, leaving five paid positions unfilled.

Then, more complicated issues of ownership and control appear. Pacifica technically "owns" KPFA's license, but the station exists only because of community financial support.

Who controls community institutions? How can we build a viable, accountable, and radical national radio network? These questions lie at the heart of the KPFA/Pacifica conflict. These are questions that can't be addressed on the front page of the paper or in 3 minutes on the evening news. And they shouldn't be.

The community groups, activists, and programmers will need to hash them out. And we'll need to be in it for the long haul. That means fighting nationally while continuing to organize locally. The movement for accountability and democracy in Pacifica is spreading fast. Tuesday August 17 was a national day of action, with teach-ins, testimony, and rallies at all five Pacifica stations. At a rally at the Oakland Federal building several African-American and women KPFA programmers signed civil rights complaints against Pacifica Board Chair Berry, and Executive Director Chadwick and filed them with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Berry is also chair of the Commission.

Maybe the Commission will take action, maybe not, but these tactics reflect the community's understanding that Pacifica management's use of diversity and audience-broadening as justification for an oppressive and censorious centralization campaign must be fought on all fronts, and that attempts to divide and conquer must be rendered unsuccessful.

Chadwick and Berry's incantation has been diversity. They seem to believe that if they repeat the word enough their record will go unnoticed. Berry and Chadwick have professed--to the press at any rate--a willingness to negotiate. But the facts tell another story. The woman whose firing galvanized station staff, station manager Nicole Sawaya, is Lebanese American. She asked tough questions of management--particularly about where all the money raised from listeners was going. Many of the programs and political views cut from the air came from communities of color. They also presented sharp challenges to the political center of the Democratic party, where Pacifica's management is firmly ensconced.

Most telling, at Pacifica stations where management has operated with a free hand, programming and debate have narrowed. Houston's KPFT has seen multicultural programming wither and die. According to former program manager Rafael Renteria, eleven languages could once be heard on the station; today programming is in English only. Washington D.C.'s WPFW no longer has a news department.

During the four months in which the KPFA community called for mediation, Pacifica continually veered into the territory of outright intimidation and censorship. Before the lockout armed guards patrolled the station. Management turned over letters, emails, and phone messages to the Berkeley police department. Berry and Pacifica Executive Director Lynn Chadwick called on Berkeley police to crack down on peaceful protesters.

Politically connected Berry even asked the Justice Department to investigate the Berkeley police for not acting more forcefully against community radio partisans camped outside the station. In fact, Media Alliance board member Noelle Hanrahan and KPFA local advisory board member Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi were hospitalized after brutal arrests.

That's not community radio, that's corporate intimidation, backed by government coercion. Such behaviour is antithetical to the principles of a progressive radio network, and it's urgent that the leadership that ordered such actions step down from

   Pacifica.Photo © 1999 Rebeka Rodriguez

For updates check out www.radio4all.org/freepacifica or www.savepacifica.net or call Media Alliance at (415) 546-6334, ext. 352.