Pacifica Network at odds over
diversity and democracy
By Chris Anderson
July 31— Eighteen months after scoring a landmark
legal victory in California Superior Court and reclaiming five of the
only progressive radio stations in the United States, Pacifica Radio
supporters and board members are attempting to formulate a new set of
national bylaws. But talks collapsed in late July amid waves of bitter
recrimination.
Three out of five Local Station Advisory Boards (LABs) rejected the
proposed bylaw draft, known as “Draft B.” The climactic vote
came Monday night in Los Angeles, with the KPFK LAB voting down the
draft by a margin of 12 to 11.
The next evening’s meeting of the WBAI-LAB provided the final nail
in the coffin to Draft B. WBAI (99.5-FM) listeners who spoke out at
the meeting voiced support of the draft by a margin of 15 to 3; the
Local Advisory Board rejected it 2 to 12, with one member abstaining.
Opponents of the draft were ecstatic. Calling the defeat of Draft B
a “stunning victory for affirmative action,” Sheila Hamanaka,
co-chair of Rockland County Friends of Pacifica, wrote in an email that
“taking a short time to resolve [Draft B diversity] concerns...
will result in a set of bylaws which will hopefully contain meaningful
affirmative action remedies and allow for full development of empowered
local boards.”
Draft B supporters were gloomy. In a response to Hamanaka, WBAI listener
Paul Surovell claimed that the failure of Draft B marked a victory for
the old corporate Pacifica Board majority and their “allies on
the [interim board] who want Pacifica put into receivership based on
the failure of the [interim board] and LABs to adopt bylaws.”
The gloom stands in sharp contrast to the hope engendered in the winter
of 2001-2002, when the “re-taking” of the five Pacifica Radio
Stations by community activists and former station employees was hailed
as a rare triumph for the left. On Jan. 13, 2002, Miguel Maldonado,
chairman of New York’s WBAI Local Advisory Board, called the developments
at Pacifica “a historic event in independent media history,”
but added that “we look forward to the full democratization of
the network.”
When asked in July how the democratization at WBAI was proceeding, a
year and a half after the settlement that ended the decade-old conflict,
Maldonado chuckled ruefully. “Ugly,” he said. “It’s
ugly.”
Democratization
at Pacifica
Founded in the late 1940s by a small group of radical pacifists, listener-sponsored
Pacifica operates high-powered FM stations in Berkeley, Los Angeles,
Houston, Washington, DC, and New York that can reach approximately 20
percent of the US population. Located in the middle of the FM dial,
WBAI’s 50,000-watt signal alone has a potential audience of more
than 20 million people in the tri-state area.
Throughout most of the 1990s, the network was engulfed in a power struggle
between community-minded activists and a politically centrist corporate-backed
elite who had seized control of the Pacifica National Board (PNB) and
fired or banned many Pacifica employees. In January 2002 the long struggle
seemed to come to a dramatic end, with a combination of political and
monetary pressure, listener lawsuits and protest marches forcing out
the corporate PNB members.
In handing down the settlement that ended the activists’ lawsuit
against the PNB, Alameda Superior Court Judge Ronald Sabraw ordered
that an Interim Pacifica National Board and Local Advisory Boards be
created to revise the Pacifica bylaws and supervise elections for Local
Station Boards in each of the five station areas. Once formed, the station
boards will select a new Pacifica National Board.
For the last 18 months, though, attempts by the interim board to formulate
a set of bylaws and election rules for the station boards have come
to naught. In its most recent board meeting on June 26, the interim
board was unable to agree on a formal bylaw proposal, and the matter
was referred back to Judge Sabraw. On July 8, Sabraw ruled that one
potential draft of the bylaws, “Draft B,” had made sufficient
progress to be voted upon by all five LABs. The resulting rejection
by the listener boards on Draft B moves the bylaws drafting process
into uncertain territory.
Despite its seemingly technical nature, this disagreement exposes fundamental
rifts within the Pacifica community.
The main point of contention is over racial representation: namely,
how to ensure that local stations, their station boards and the national
board include the full spectrum of historically under-represented minority
groups.
The two primary drafts, A and B, both contain language mandating the
creation of committees of inclusion that will “monitor the diversity
of both station programming and staffing in consultation with the Local
station Boards.” The difference between the proposals is that Draft
A gives the committees of inclusion additional powers, such as permission
to add up to five unelected members to station boards if elections do
not produce an “adequately diverse” board.
Supporters of Draft A contend that strong diversity remedies are necessary
to ensure adequate minority input into the Pacifica governance process.
Hamanaka says, “I think this issue of institutional racism is a
serious problem at Pacifica.” She goes on to argue that it is “absolutely
vital that there be a serious and aggressive program of affirmative
action” for the station boards. In the view of Draft A supporters,
the diversity guarantees contained in Draft B do little to promote diversity.
Supporters of Draft B, for their part, argue that the committees of
inclusion proposals in Draft A subvert the democratic process. While
Draft B supporters acknowledge the importance of diversity, some claim
that Draft A’s proposal to allow unelected representatives is a
power play on the part of long-time producers and hosts rather than
a genuine solution to promote racial diversity.
Patty Heffley, a plaintiff to the original listener lawsuit, expresses
the view of many disgruntled Pacifica activists. “There are a lot
of people using race to muddle up things, because they don’t want
to relinquish power.... They don’t want to have democratic Pacifica
elections in New York City.”
Maldonado agrees. “This whole conflict is about power, basically.
The fight at WBAI is all about who has the power, and who does not.
And no one has been willing to talk about that during this entire process.”
Bob Lederer, a longtime WBAI staffer and active member of the Pacifica
reform movement since December 2000, takes issue with activists who
see manipulation as the primary motivation of Draft A supporters. The
claim “that Draft A would assign discretion to this committee of
inclusion to pick and choose who should sit on the local boards ...
is completely untrue,” he says.
According to Lederer, in Draft A demographic goals are set for an election
area, and if they are not met in an election, a formula comes into play
to determine who is added to the board.
Supporters of Draft B remain skeptical. “The main sticking point
is that people in control now want to remain in control,” argues
Heffley. “And over a period of time, elections will change that.”
Diversity in New York
Maldonado supports Draft B. “Not,” he says, “because
it’s a perfect draft, but because I think that it addresses some
of my main concerns, which is the fact that it allows the people more
freedom to vote, and elect whomever they feel like.”
As an advocate for greater inclusion of Latinos in WBAI, Maldonado believes
that a fair, honest election will “give New York’s Latino
community a chance to play a role in WBAI that it never has before.”
Despite claims by Draft A supporters that their diversity language does
the most to ensure a representative board, Maldonado feels that these
advocates are missing the point. “At WBAI we have to depend on
people feeling sorry for the Latino community in order for us to get
anything. I want... minority groups in New York to have power at Pacifica
because their communities support them, not because some power at WBAI
feels they need an extra board seat.”
Supporters of Draft A contend that placing so much faith in the listenership
and the democratic process is misguided. They contend that years of
corporatization at Pacifica have created a listener base that is unrepresentative
of the diversity the stations are trying to achieve. Lederer explains,
“While we’re not saying our listeners are reactionary, it’s
a problem to say that the voters will be inherently progressive and
that they’ll vote in a progressive way across the spectrum.”
Regardless of how listeners might vote, both sides see developing a
stronger connection to the listener base as crucial to preserving the
network. Maldonado says, “We’ll have to move beyond this conflict,
and we’ll have to get the community more involved. Because if we
don’t, you can say bye-bye to Pacifica as a functioning network.
Pacifica will be gone.”
Source: The Indypendent, a
publication of the New York City Independent Media Center
