Pacifica Network protests

["George Snedeker" <snedeker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pacifica Crisis
Letter from Juan Gonzales
May 20, 2001

Dear Friend,

We have reached a critical point in our campaign to save the Pacifica
network. Our movement is winning, but to achieve the quickest victory
possible we
need your help.

Last week, we achieved our most stunning successes yet:

On Monday, at a congressional forum in Washington, D.C., sponsored by
Brooklyn Congressman Major Owens, community activists, listeners, dissident
board
members, and fired Pacifica employees testified about the growing crisis at
the network. Pacifica managers refused Owens request to personally testify
and explain their actions and policies, while the entire forum was reported
in an extensive article in The Washington Post.

That same afternoon, Pacifica board treasurer Michael Palmer resigned. His
resignation followed months of protests at the offices of his employer, CB
Richard
Ellis. It came after two members of the Pacifica Campaign delivered a letter
to the company's CEO at corporate headquarters in Los Angeles and met with
a top assistant of the CEO. At that meeting they warned of more protests to
come if Palmer remained on the board. We believe his resignation was
directly
related to our peaceful but effective pressure.

Then on Tuesday, as several Pacifica stations began their May fundraising
drive, network management committed a major blunder by launching its most
obvious
attack yet on Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! Utrice Leid, the interim
station manger at New York's WBAI, and Steve Yasko, the national programming
director,
suddenly ordered that Democracy Now! would no longer use the main studio at
WBAI to originate the show. Instead, Amy was shunted off to a smaller and
technologically
inferior alternate studio at the station. When the fund drive started the
following day, Democracy Now! was pre-empted in New York without any warning
to Amy and without any explanation to the listeners. The same thing happened
at KPFK in Los Angeles, where management ran old tapes of the show but
broadcast
a short message falsely claiming that Amy had refused to fundraise. This was
an obvious lie since her show continued to be broadcast at the three other
Pacifica stations -- and at two of them, Berkeley's KPFA and Washington's
WPFW, she did fundraise. In Houston, they played the regular Democracy Now!
show
but KPFT did its own fundraising.

This attempt to silence Democracy Now! has sparked a furor among listeners.
WBAI and KPFK have been flooded with thousands of telephone calls, while
loud
protests occured outside each station. The outrage and phone calls continued
for the rest of the week virtually paralyzing phone lines and severely
affecting
fundraising. A full-scale listener rebellion is underway. On Friday, for
example, a day when WBAI usually raises more than $75,000 commemorating
Malcolm
X, the station barely registered $15,000 in pledges. Show hosts at the
station who backed the Christmas Coup were so stunned they repeatedly
referred to
the boycott on the air, as they launched into angry attacks against Amy and
the Pacifica reform movement.

Finally, on Friday our movement launched a daily evening news broadcast of
Free Speech Radio News, the program of the striking free lancers of
Pacifica.
More than 20 Pacifica affiliates dropped the Pacifica Network News (PNN) and
are replacing it with Free Speech Radio News as a way of registering
affiliate
opposition to Pacifica policies. We at the Pacifica Campaign have provided
funding to keep Free Speech Radio News as daily program for at least the
next
month, and hopefully longer. And, in what is sure to be a major
psychological blow to Pacifica, Verna Avery-Brown, the distinguised longtime
anchor of
PNN until she resigned in protest against the network's policies more than a
year ago, has now become the anchor of Free Speech Radio News.

Yes, this was truly a historic week. The hijackers at Pacifica are
shell-shocked, but they have not yet surrendered. This coming week will be
critical.
We have them on the ropes and we cannot let allow them to recover. In fact,
we must turn up the heat even higher, and turn off the water even more
completely.

We need you to become actively involved in one or all of three ways:

First, keep calling your local Pacifica station during fund drive to protest
what is happening to Democracy Now! and the entire network. Call as often as
you can and talk as long as you feel necessary to get your point across.

Second, participate in one of the many daily pickets outside Pacifica
stations in Los Angeles and New York. Daily pickets are happening in front
of WBAI,
120 Wall Street, from 7:30-9:00 am and 4:30-6:00 pm. At KPFK, there is a
daily picket 4:00-6:00 p.m. in front of the station at 3729 Cahuenga Blvd.,
North
Hollywood. At both stations, there will be a super picket on Thursday
afternoon in support of Democracy Now!

Third, send a financial contribution today to our Pacifica Campaign. More
than a thousand of you have sent donations since February. We thank-you. But
maintaining
this kind of boycott and pressure on the Pacifica board is expensive. We now
have four full-time organizers on staff in New York and four part-time
organizers
on staff in Los Angeles. We have reached hundreds of thousands of people
through our mailings, public meetings and protests. But we want to bring
this
campaign to a successful conclusion as quickly as possible.

Please make your tax-deductible contributions payable to the Institute for
Media Analysis/Pacifica Campaign. The check can be mailed to the Pacificia
Campaign,
51 MacDougal Street, #80, New York, New York 10012.

We are convinced that if we can keep the boycott strong throughout the next
few weeks, Pacifica will realize it has lost the support of its listeners.
At
that point, I believe, Epstein, Becker & Green will advise the Pacifica
Board that it is time negotiate an end to the conflict. Thanks for all your
support
and trust. We are within sight of victory, of reclaiming Pacifica for its
listeners, staff and community. Keep the pressure on.

Hasta La Victoria,
Juan Gonzalez