1 August 1999

Straws of radicalism have been blowing in the wind here in Berkeley, California. The thirtieth anniversary of the 1969 battles in the streets to preserve the piece of open land known as "The People's Park" was widely publicised in the local media. Towards the end of the Spring semester, a six-person hunger strike was launched during a confrontation with the University of California over the future funding of positions in its Ethnic Studies Department, itself created as the result of radical direct action in the 1960s, a strike that ended in victory after the University agreed to meet the protestors' demands. But the issue that has brought the Berkeley Left back to life with a vengeance has been off-campus, the struggle over KPFA radio, which began as a tussle over the soul of the nation's oldest listener-supported community radio station, and is now a fearsome battle for its very existence. There have been massive popular mobilisations, daily demonstrations, round-the-clock activism, and the sprouting of a tent city in downtown Berkeley's Martin Luther King Avenue. Three thousand people filled the Berkeley Community Theater to hear Joan Baez sing at a benefit concert for KPFA on 19 July; ten thousand people marched from UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, to an open-air rally in MLK park on 31 July; the Berkeley Council has voted its unanimous support for the protests, there have been around a hundred civil disobedience arrests, and a series of teach-ins on the conflict. It is magnificent to watch, and it is certainly not over yet.

What is this crisis all about?

KPFA radio was founded in 1949 by World War Two conscientious objectors, a radio station built on ideals of pacifism, participatory democracy, social justice and free speech, supported by voluntary contributions from its listeners, and pledged to give a voice to those who were marginalised by the commercial American mainstream. Over its five decades of existence, it has been the strongest progressive Voice in American radio. During the 1960s, in particular, KPFA was a vital tool for the campaigners against the Vietnam war, countering official propaganda and helping to mobilise the anti-war demonstrations, coordinating the protests, bringing people together. And as the relentless logic of commodification and the pressures of market forces ensured increasing homogenisation of the American media, KPFA's refusal to behave like everyone else became increasingly unusual, and ever more admirable.

But the Pacifica Foundation, the incorporated body which ultimately owns KPFA, was itself changing. By the 1990s it was a national foundation operating five radio stations -- in Berkeley, Houston, New York, Washington and Los Angeles -- and, for complicated reasons, over the long term more and more power over the management of the local stations had become concentrated in the hands of the national board, which had itself become increasingly less accountable to the staff and the listeners of its stations. What started out as an experiment in participatory democracy is now run by a self-perpetuating oligarchy. And what sharpened the potential for confrontation was the existence of rival visions of what community radio should be: the KPFA people wanted local control and radical programming for Northern California's progressive community; the Pacifica people became increasingly attracted to the idea of making their stations much more conventional outfits, replacing local with national programming, closing down local newsgathering operations and finding financial support from large foundations and, perhaps, from corporate donors. KPFK in Houston had already been undergone a "Pacification", being overhauled to bring it into line with Pacifica goals, and as Pacifica committed itself to a Five Year Plan full of strategic targets, management euphemisms whose ominous implications for KPFA were clear. (How it pains the Turtle to oppose an institution that has its own Five Year Plan!). Over the last few years, the tension between KPFA and Pacifica has bubbled and frothed. At the end of March 1999 it boiled over, pitching KPFA into permanent crisis.

On 31 March the station manager Nicole Sawaya was abruptly fired by Lynn Chadwick, the executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, against the wishes of the KPFA staff and many of the listeners. The wound that the management had inflicted was then immediately inflamed, when a gagging order was imposed by management on the staff, who were forbidden from mentioning the sacking on the air. Imposing a gag order on a radio station that was about to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary of "free speech" broadcasting was a foolish thing to do, and the broadcasters were not intimidated. Larry Bensky, who had worked at KPFA for 30 years, articulated his concerns over the way Pacifica was runnning the station during his show; he was sacked, too, on 9 April.

The demonstrations of support for KPFA in the street outside the building had started from the moment Sawaya was fired, and the best sign that the listeners overwhelmingly supported the staff came during the KPFA fund drive in May and June when a record amount was raised for the station from its listener base, with 85% of the pledges having a message of protest attached to them, complaining about the management's policies. Pacifica was undeterred, and on 18 June, another longterm presenter, Robbie Osman, was fired for breaching the gag order.

Tension rose again at the end of June. After an unknown person fired a bullet into the doorway of the Pacifica headquarters, Pacifica management responded by stationing armed security guards -- not in Pacifica HQ, but in the KPFA building itself. No one thought they were there simply to protect the staff from random acts of violence, and the proof that they weren't came on 13 July, when the guards pulled the plug during Dennis Bernstein's Flashpoints programme. Bernstein had read aloud the text of an intercepted email message from one of the Pacifica board members which confirmed what many had long believed, but which Pacifica bosses had consistently denied, that members of the board were making plans to sell the station's frequency, to take KPFA off the air altogether, resolving this troublesome institution into exchange value, perhaps netting $60-75 million. Bernstein was forced away from the microphone and the staff were evicted, locked out of the building and placed on "administrative leave". The windows were boarded up; Pacifica started playing archive tapes all day long; and the protestors took to the streets again, this time to sleep there in the tents of the newly-formed Camp KPFA, and to stay there until they could have their radio station back. From time to time the police would come down in the middle of the night to arrest people for blocking the streets. And from time to time the KPFA staff would broadcast their usual programmes on "Radio Free KPFA" or "Radio Free Berkeley" -- the name was never too clear, and nor was the signal, which only travelled a dozen blocks or so -- sitting at a desk on the pavement in front of the boarded-up building, with the other protestors providing an enthusiastic studio audience.

As the story grew and grew, Pacifica battened down the hatches, repeatedly and bizarrely refusing offers to talk to the press and other media. Pacifica executives had talked of the need to bring "diversity" to KPFA's listenership, implying that the listeners were all grizzled white leftists who didn't deserve their own radio station, an absurd position that was daily refuted by the vocal involvement of numerous Black and Latino groups and activists in defending KPFA's autonomy -- most spectacularly from the hip hop parties in the street and the ubiquitous Dr. Loco's Rockin' Jalapeno Band. The executives' cooing over KPFA's failure to embrace minorities also ignored the historic role that KPFA radio has played in covering racial politics and minority issues -- the first station to give the Black Panthers a platform, the only Bay Area station to have a correspondent in Nicaragua at the time of the Revolution, a station which consistently broadcasts Mumia Abu Jamal's commentaries from his Pennsylvania Death Row cell --, and trampled on the elementary truth accepted by all at KPFA that worthwhile diversity needed to be built from the bottom up, and never simply imposed by management fiat.

After they had lost the battle for public opinion, Pacifica sacked its spokesperson Elan Fabbri (known as Fabbri-cator to the protestors) and paid a lot of money -- the money pledged by listeners under protest, remember -- to a San Francisco public relations firm, Fineman Associates. Michael Fineman was not perhaps prepared for the barrage of odium that would be directed his way, and after being bombarded with emails and phone messages, having his offices picketed daily and receiving many visitors who wanted to know just what he thought his firm was doing, he ended its relationship with Pacifica after two weeks, cutting and running before his own PR got too bad. Fineman Associates was famous for rescuing the fruitjuice company Odwalla after they someone died of e.coli from one of their drinks; but as someone helpfully pointed out, they were only able to salvage Odwalla's reputation after the company had removed the poison from its product. Pacifica seemed to be hoping that spin alone could save the day.

In this, as in so much else, the Pacifica management reflects the twisted practices of Clintonism at their all-too-typical worst. Using the progressive language of diversity and multiculturalism, the board seeks to gut the nation's most progressive station of radical content to please potential sponsors and increase market share and market value. Executive director Lynn Chadwick takes a leaf out of the President's book when she talks of how she feels the pain of the situation in her occasional interviews -- but the pain that there is was deliberately inflicted by her own crass tactics, her own gag rules, her own armed security guards --, and during those same interviews, even as she doesn't quite manage to apologise for last week's lies, she starts sending a few more into circulation. Most deliciously of all, it has been reported that Mary Frances Berry, the chairperson of the Pacifica Board, telephoned Janet Reno's Justice Department to ask them to ask the Berkeley Police Department to be a little bit more heavy-handed in its policing of the demonstrations. As non-violent civil disobedience returns to the streets of Berkeley, it couldn't possibly be the case, could it, that the person in America who actively strives for more vigorous policing is also in fact the chair of the United States Civil Rights Commission? Yes indeed: step forward, Dr. Berry!

The mainstream media loves this dispute because they can bang on about the return of the sixties. And yes, there are some formidable beards on display, and some inspirational grey-haired comrades out there on the streets. But there are a lot of younger people too, for an impressive multiracial, multigenerational coalition has been built, and along with the older methods of organising and confronting Pacifica at every turn, the modern techniques of grassroots mobilisation using the world wide web (http://www.savepacifica.net, from where these charming graphics have been downloaded) and email lists are also playing a key role. "Thank you, Pacifica, for bringing us together", proclaimed a speaker at the 19 July rally, for the Bay Area Left is united in struggle -- a remarkable enough occurrence for this typically fractious bunch -- and a lot of people are enjoying themselves enormously out in the sun, defending their radio station. The artwork being produced for the demonstrations is smashing, the placards are sometimes extremely funny. The local long-distance militant telephone company Working Assets has even set up a toll free phone line to Dr. Berry's personal office line , making it that much easier to put her voicemail system under perpetual siege. But underneath the exuberance is a palpably grim determination, that this one will be seen through to the end.

Faced with the imminent loss of its community radio, thousands of people in Berkeley have been jolted into realising just how much KPFA means to them, and will fight like tigers to keep it. The commitment, the enthusiasm, the resourcefulness, the wit and the sheer style of the campaign to save KPFA is admirable, inspiring, and moving, too. In the last couple of days, Pacifica has been forced onto the defensive and started to offer concessions: the staff has been let back into the KPFA building, and management is offering to withdraw for the next six months, but not enough guarantees have been set out in writing to convince the sceptics that they don't still plan to destroy the station in one way or another over the months ahead. It's not yet clear how this will turn out. But for the moment at least, La lutta continua!

And so, in light of this impressive recod of fifty years of hard work at the grassroots, for the unity it has fostered, and for the loyalty it continues to inspire, the Turtle is proud to offer its inaugural cyberspace salute to KPFA!

The Turtle Salutes KPFA!