note from KPFA supporters of LSB

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The cry that there are barbarians at the gates masks the real challenge to
KPFA's future.

We will have to choose whether to defend the station's mission or defend
our own turf.

Dear Fellow KPFA Staffers,

An article in the Berkeley Daily Planet tells readers that KPFA is again in
crisis. And a widely circulated letter signed by a group of KPFA staffers
likens the crisis to that of 'the terrible years surrounding the KPFA
lockout and shutdown of 1999'.  Such news will be greeted with dismay and
frustration by KPFA's many friends.   The station and the network have only
recently emerged from that harrowing and exhausting fight for their lives
and listeners who rose to the station's defense and to the defense of its
mission with immense energy and who stood by KPFA throughout that long and
difficult struggle will certainly not welcome the prospect of another.

It is important that listeners and staff members learn what is happening at
KPFA and it's important that they have a chance to carefully consider what
recent events may mean for the station's future.  But by evoking the
specter of 'the devastating forces of the previous Pacifica National
management' the staff faction's letter misrepresents the nature and origin
of the differences and the character and intentions of the people with whom
they disagree.   The moment demands of all participants that we try to
inform and persuade rather than frighten those we address.  It is not
necessary to pull punches or to minimize points of difference and the
example of the near loss of Pacifica should never be forgotten but the
signal to noise ratio of that letter is not helpful.

During the Pacifica conflict the defenders of Pacifica's mission challenged
and, after tremendous effort, changed the governance of the network and of
the stations.  At the heart of the changes are new by-laws which were
crafted in a long, open, and inclusive, democratic process and which give
listener-members significant power in station governance through the Local
Station Boards (LSBs).   These new by-laws embody the hope that opening
station decision-making to listener input and, to some extent, listener
control will make the Pacifica stations more responsive to the progressive
community and protect them from possible future take-over attempts.

The present conflict at KPFA is a result of resistance from some station
staffers to implementing the reforms embodied in the new by-laws.

The signers of the letter fail to note some noteworthy differences between
the old Pacifica board and the reformers who seem to have so alarmed them.
The old Pacifica board built their power on the disempowerment of the
listeners and unpaid staff.  The reformers purpose is to bring listener
input into the station's processes.  The old Pacifica board was distant,
unelected, and unsympathetic to - even ignorant of - the Pacifica mission.
The reformers are long-time KPFA listeners and staffers who ran in the
recent elections for seats on the Station Board hoping to help make the
station as effective and vibrant a progressive voice as it can be.  One way
many Pacifica supporters came to appreciate the nature and seriousness of
the threat posed by the old Pacifica board was by witnessing the old
board's attacks on and eventually its attempt to eliminate Pacifica's
flagship program, Democracy Now!  The reverse is true in this situation.
The tension between the present reformers and the signers of the letter was
sparked by the decision of a reformer majority on the station's Program
Council to move Democracy Now! to a better, more accessible airtime (so
that listeners who work from 9-5 can hear it).

The old Pacifica board is not part of this dispute.   The success of the
KPFA community and of the nationwide Pacifica community in overturning
their undemocratic rule itself has created new challenges.  Our ability to
find our way in this new landscape will depend, in large part, upon whether
we choose to name the issues or to call names.

What's going on?

We have come to an impasse because some staff, long accustomed to the
previous unaccountable ways of making decisions and wary of changes in the
status quo, have flatly refused to accept the exercise of listener/board
participation mandated by the new by-laws and other agreements which came
out of the struggle.  One of the staff-elected representatives to the
Station Board articulated this view at a recent meeting of the Local
Station Board.  He told the Board that KPFA was like an airplane.  The
listeners were like passengers who should expect to pay for their tickets
and then remain in their seats leaving the crew to fly the aircraft.  It is
crazy, he said, to let the passengers into the cockpit.  He called the
listener board representatives and those listeners who had come to watch
the board meeting and to participate in the public comment segment of the
meeting 'self appointed guardians with too much time on their hands'.  His
unconcealed distain elicited outrage among many listeners  but he declined
a plea to apologize and his allies on the board refused impassioned
requests that they disassociate themselves from his offensive formulation
of the proper role of listeners in KPFA's deliberations.

The chief tactic of those who are resisting the democratization of
decision-making at KPFA has been to, as quietly as possible, subvert the
reforms while paying lip service to democratization.  They are not always
as open about their perspective as that staff-elected board member was at
that unguarded moment but the unfortunate fact is that the airplane analogy
is a frank expression of a widely held rejectionist stance.

After the immense effort by KPFA listeners to rescue KPFA and Pacifica from
an isolated and self-selecting clique it is heartbreaking to hear people
who should know better argue that the right to participate in station
decision-making cannot be entrusted to people who are 'unfamiliar with
radio' (as another catch phrase of the reform-rollback effort has it).
This is plain nonsense and it is sad to see that some of the same staffers
whose willingness to disempower listeners and unpaid staff did so much to
encourage and enable the Pat Scott/Mary Francis Berry/Lynn Chadwick assault
on the network have returned to their old analysis of who is and who is not
suitable for inclusion in station decision-making now that the threat from
the old Pacifica Board seems eliminated.

People untrained in making radio programs should not be engineering call-in
shows or asked to edit news feeds.  But KPFA's listeners and supporters are
capable of making thoughtful judgments about whether those call-in shows
are covering issues that are of importance to them and they can make
judgments about whether KPFA's newscasters or any other programmers are
performing up to their standards.

Democratization is needed for KPFA's future health and effectiveness;
bringing the perspective of listener-members into the station's 'internal'
deliberations will strengthen our work.   When has insularity ever
protected a progressive institution?  But reasonable democratization is
being resisted on the Program Council, at the Station Board, and in the
General Manager Hiring Committee that the board has organized to find and
vet a new manager.  A militant minority of board members backing a faction
of station staffers has time and again defied democratically arrived at
decisions, disregarded fundamental rules of order, and sought to nullify
by-laws-mandated reforms and in doing so have made democratic
decision-making all but impossible.  Then they point to the mess and invite
people to conclude that democracy itself has failed.

The Program Council, Democracy Now! and how we got into this mess

The present rift that divides staff member from staff member and board
member from board member first became apparent at Program Council.  That is
where some station staff began to stonewall the democratization that had
been won during the Pacifica struggle and that is where the rejectionists
started to cover their actions by misrepresenting the actions of the
listener, unpaid staff, and LAB representatives to the Council.  It's a
long story but it's worth knowing what really happened.

KPFA's Program Council is charged with making programming decisions for the
station.  In the years leading up to  the Great Pacifica Crisis only paid
station staff participated in its deliberations and decisions. Today it is,
at least in theory, composed of paid and unpaid staff, community
representatives who are appointed by the LSB, and LSB members.

Unpaid staff, community, and board reps were brought onto the Council
during the time of the Pacifica Wars when the demand for democratization
was strong and the necessity of maintaining listener support was
inescapable.  But once the usurping Pacifica board was defeated such
'members' learned that their right to take part in program decision-making
had an absolute limit.  Their power to participate in decision-making was
recognized only so long as they confined their authority to decisions that
did not affect the programs of long-time paid staff.

This became clear when morning programming became an issue on the Council.
During the run-up to the war against Iraq questions arose about the
scheduling of Democracy Now!  DN! is, along with Flashpoints, the station's
most popular and one of its most politically hard-hitting programs.  KPFA
was airing the wartime two-hour version of DN! broken into two parts which
the station aired from 6-7AM and then from 9-10AM, which is to say before
most people wake up and after most folks who work from 9-5 can listen.  A
temporary rescheduling of DN! during the crisis was proposed but rejected.

After the fall of Baghdad and after DN! went back to its one hour format
the question of when the program should be aired remained in the minds of
several of the Council members.  Council members who wanted to discuss the
question discovered that this issue could not be raised at Program Council.
  To be more accurate it was possible to put it on the agenda but never
possible to get to it.  Council members tried for weeks.  Weeks became
months.  Months became many months.  After it was inescapably clear that
the question was being intentionally kept from climbing to the top of the
agenda Council members who felt it was important to discuss the possibility
moved and seconded a proposal to begin airing Democracy Now! at 7 in the
hope that Robert's Rules of Order would be respected and a motion on the
floor could not be avoided.  No help.  More weeks passed.  Cries of
misconduct were shined on.  The subject was forbidden.  Beyond a certain
invisible line democratization was a pretense.

When Gus Newport became General Manager the unpaid staff, listener, and
board Program Council representatives, begged him to take over as chair of
the Council so that the issue could at last come up for discussion.  Gus
reluctantly agreed.  At long last a meeting date was chosen for the
discussion to take place and then rescheduled to accommodate the calendars
of the Council's paid-staff members.   The question of whether to change
the time that DN! is aired was to be the only item on the agenda.  There
would be no more avoiding the question.

The date and time arrived as did the unpaid staff, listener, and board
representatives.  There were no paid staff.  They just didn't show.  None
of the Council members assembled believed it was a coincidence.

After discussing KPFA's morning schedule for more than an hour during which
those present considered analyses of fundraising results for DN! and the
Morning Show, data on how many radios were turned on at relevant times,
scheduling logistics and more, Aileen Alfandary, who had been hosting the
evening newscast, arrived at the meeting.  That meant that the meeting had
a quorum.  The question was put to a vote.

The Council members present voted unanimously (with one abstention) to air
Democracy Now! at 7AM and air KPFA's Morning Show from 8-10AM.  This opened
up the possibility of using the 5-7AM slot for new voices and wider
communities (consideration of an evening or afternoon rebroadcast of DN! to
accommodate listeners who had been tuning in at 9 but might not be awake at
7 was understood to follow shortly).

The vote was as much an effort to force the issue onto the table as an
attempt to impose a final decision.  It said to the absent Council members
in effect, if you don't get serious about discussing this issue this vote
will stand.  There is no reason why the absent paid staff members could not
have come to the next meeting and moved to reopen the question.  Not one
Council member would have refused.  In fact, the discussion would have been
welcomed.  But that would not have suited their purpose.  It had been clear
for months that opening the question was exactly what they had been
unwilling to allow.

Instead they chose to make an issue of the fact that the vote had occurred
when they were not present.  Today when listeners or other KPFA staff ask
the station's leadership how they justify refusing to accept the legitimate
decision of the Council they say that it is because the unpaid, listener
and board representatives snuck the decision past those who opposed the
change at a moment when they weren't looking.

But that won't stand up to the light.  The eight votes for the change that
were recorded at that meeting represented an absolute majority of the
membership of the Council.  Even if every other Council member had attended
and all of them had voted the other way the motion could have carried.
That means that there was no motive for the unpaid staff, LAB, and listener
representatives to rush a vote in order to take advantage of a moment when
those who might disagree would be denied their votes because they happened
not to be there.

When compelled to recognize that reality, the no-show Council members claim
that the unfairness of the decision lies in the 'fact' that because the
vote took place in their absence they were denied an opportunity to argue
their position.  But that can only persuade people who do not know that for
months they had refused unending efforts to bring the issue to the table
and that afterwards they chose not to exercise their power to put the
question back on the table.

The fact is that the decision was made with as much open discussion as the
paid staff Council members' determination to prevent a discussion would
permit.

In the face of the station administration's later refusal to implement the
decision of the Council the elected Local Advisory Board (the Local Station
Board established by the new by-laws had not yet been formed) voted to
recognize the propriety of the decision. At a two-day retreat the members
of the Program Council - meeting with then GM Newport - unanimously
reaffirmed its democratic composition (that is the inclusion of LAB, unpaid
staff and listener members) and its legitimacy as the station's programming
decision-maker.  Gus Newport publicly recognized the legality of the vote
also but he resigned before the change was implemented.

But the change was blocked.  Immediately upon rebecoming interim GM Jim
Bennett, who had chaired almost all of the meetings during which the topic
of moving Democracy Now! was kept from reaching the table, announced that
he would refuse to implement the change.  After the new Local Station Board
was elected under Pacifica's new by-laws it too voted to recognize the
right of the Program Council to make such a change and instructed Jim to
respect the legitimate decision of the Program Council.  The board required
that the change take place within four months.  The end of that four months
is only days away but it is clear that Jim intends to defy this board too.

Thoughtful readers will ask how anyone could expect to get away with such a
global refusal to respect fundamental rights and responsibilities.

The crapstorm that is being loosed upon the station and its listeners, the
fear mongering, the warnings about ignorant and hostile strangers seeking
to micro-manage everything, the wholly fabricated story that the board
wants to eliminate music programming, the demonstrably false charge that
board members have left the station open to lawsuits, the sensationalized
descriptions of normal discussion and questions from board members that
turn legitimate and appropriate or even sometimes angry and frustrated
statements and questions from the board into 'egregious charges', 'slurs',
'character assassination',  'potentially libelous accusations',
'challenges', 'attacks', 'anti-worker assaults', and 'threats' which
'demean', 'dismiss', 'ridicule', 'harass', and 'accuse' (all  of these
taken from the letter referred to above) are well suited to cover this and
other blatant refusals to play by the rules.

The strategy seems to be to create enough heat and raise a great enough din
that staff and listeners alike can be stampeded into reacting in
frustration and fear.  The hope is that people will be persuaded to accept
the suspension of democratic decision-making and return station governance
to the 'peaceful 'status quo ante (before 'outsiders' had a voice in KPFA's
decision-making structure).

It can come as a surprise to no one that the refusal of the station's
administration to respect the decision of the Program Council has caused a
controversy that has spilled over into the Station Board. At this moment
almost any consideration that comes before the board is measured in terms
of opposing sides and weighed in the context of a 'larger battle'.

An example:

The Local Station Board is required by Pacifica's new by-laws to supervise
and evaluate the station manager and to approve a pool of candidates when a
new manager must be hired. Gus Newport recently resigned as manager of KPFA
and the LSB has created a committee to find and vet possible replacements.
A nine person hiring committee made up of paid and unpaid staff and LSB
members has been selected, the LSB members by a vote of the board and the
non-LSB staff members by a vote among the staff.

A shameless effort to manipulate this process has been mobilized.   Here's
what happened.

A subcommittee of the board (the Personnel subcommittee) - one which was
not democratically chosen and which was not given the mandate to recruit
and vet a manager by the board or the by-laws - announced that it had
changed the make-up of the hiring committee that the board had created.
This committee announced that it had 'removed' the chair of the Hiring
Committee (who also is the elected chair of the LSB) from the Hiring
Committee entirely.  No one can maintain with a straight face that the
subcommittee has the authority to do this.

The runaway subcommittee 'notified' the chair of the Hiring Committee that
they had excluded her from participation in the work of the committee.
Inevitably, this precipitated a clash within the Hiring Committee.

There was no possibility that such a move would not force the focus of the
committee to change from the work of finding and vetting manager candidates
to fighting a dysfunctional internal battle.   As of this writing the
urgent work of this legitimate, by-laws mandated committee has ground to a
halt.

Conclusion:

It's fair for listeners and station staffers to ask the following question:
if democratization is so adamantly opposed by an element of station staff
and if achieving it is going to result in such conflict, is opening up
decision-making at the station really worth the cost in effort and hard
feelings?

There are at least two reasons why the reforms embodied in Pacifica's new
by-laws and the democratization of the station's programming
decision-making must be allowed to work.

It is important to make certain that programming decisions support the
mission of the station rather than the interests of the decision-makers.
That necessity demands that KPFA depend, in large measure, on
democratically chosen representatives from the station's listenership and
the broader progressive community who have no personal interest in the
outcome of programming decisions (beside the interest we all have in
empowering, informing, and inspiring a progressive movement), to evaluate
and ultimately shape our programming.

It may disappoint, but it should not surprise KPFA's supporters to learn
that the station's staffers, people whose voices have become the voices of
friends and who listeners may have even grown to think of as the very
voices of progressive politics, can be as jealous of their perks and
privileges as people in other political and social arenas.  But human
beings are human beings and we simply must protect our progressive
institutions by creating and fighting to defend rules and practices that
require that policy and programming decisions be made by people who are
disinterested and accountable.

Those of us who produce KPFA's programs and whose power, pride, and perks,
may hang on such decisions will have important and useful perspective and
information to contribute to such discussions.  You can be sure that we
will express strong opinions.  But KPFA's airtime is a commons to be used
in the common interest not a commodity to be possessed forever or to be
divided up among the loudest, strongest, most deeply entrenched, or first
in line.  And for that reason disinterested discussions and disinterested
conclusions are what's needed and those will most reliably come from
disinterested decision-makers.

After long years of insular practice KPFA's program decision-making has
grown to be too responsive to the give and take of the station's internal
carrot and stick economy and too unaccountable to the needs of the
listeners, the demands of the times, or the requirements of Pacifica's
mission.  The Democracy Now! question is one example; we run our most
effective audience magnet before most people wake up and after many people
who work from 9-5 can listen. Even having a decent discussion about
changing that proved impossible because at KPFA the demands of turf and
power take precedence over the needs of the listeners or the station or its
mission.

Here's another example of how the absence of listener input distorts the
station's structure and programming and inhibits our effectiveness.
Consider this question: why doesn't KPFA have a Public Affairs Department?
 We have a Music Department, and a News Department, and a Drama and
Literature Department.  It's possible to imagine a Public Affairs
Department that has a staff that is comparable in size to the staff of one
of our larger daily programs; let's call it three or four full-time
positions divided up among one or two full-time and several part-time paid
staffers.  The PA Department staffers would not be on-air people but people
who had roots and connections in a wide variety of political movements and
Bay Area communities.   Their job would be to help people from those
communities and movements produce many forms of programming: segments for
magazine programs, short term series, thematic day long programming, and
hard-hitting investigative documentaries.

A PA Department like that could be wonderful for the political ecology of
the station.  It could bring activists into the station - not just to be
interviewed but to become part of KPFA's life and process.  But as things
stand now it will never happen.  The old decision-making structure,
controlled, as it was and is, exclusively from within the power elite of
the station has not and will not create a Public Affairs Department like
that.  Starting one would upset the apple cart; actually many apple carts.
Only by incorporating listeners, people who are not hoping to get or keep
their own program, into governance and programming decision-making can the
station get beyond petty turf protection that has (this is truly
incredible) left KPFA without a Public Affairs department for years.

Here's the other reason that we can't let democratization be rolled back.
The old board's effort to remake Pacifica, to fire the audience and use the
stations to build a new, more mainstreamed radio empire, or to sell one of
the stations and fund heaven knows what grandiose scheme did not suddenly
appear in the Spring of 1999.  It first took root in changes in station
decision-making which disenfranchised KPFA's listeners and unpaid staff and
made local decision-making subject to national oversight.  KPFA's core paid
staff should have, but failed to, whole-heartedly resist efforts to
disempower listeners and unpaid staff.  Only when the usurpers thought that
the community had accepted their powerlessness did they feel strong enough
to try to hijack the network altogether.  That's why the attempts to
discredit and disempower the LSB are short-sighted and dangerous.

An effective, empowered, and locally elected LSB is all that the by-laws
provide to protect the stations from another take-over from Pacifica
Central.  The lesson that we were forced to learn at immense cost is that
an empowered listenership is the most reliable guarantor of the station's
and the network's progressive mission.  A staff and listenership which will
accept a disempowered LSB has, practically speaking, accepted that
legitimate power ultimately resides in Pacifica Central.  We should not
step onto that slippery slope again.

The station is at a crossroads.  Finding KPFA's way safely forward will
require the vision and the courage to risk taking a democratic path. The
democratic decisions of the Program Council, the necessary work of the
Manager Search Committee, and the legitimate authority of KPFA's long
fought for elected Station Board ought to be respected.  If they are not
respected they will have to be fought for.  The alternative is rule by an
oligarchy with turf protection, personal privilege, and spin control,
occupying the place where co-operation, open discussion, and mission driven
decision-making, should be.  The end result of taking that path will not be
good for KPFA or its listeners and especially not for its mission.

Yours very truly,

Nick Alexander: Unpaid Staff Organization Representative
Juan Amador: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Mehmet Bayram:  Voices from the Middle East and North Africa: Middle East
Radio Project Collective (MERP)
Dennis Bernstein: Flashpoints
Dogpaw Carrillo: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Solange  Echeverria: Flashpoints
Bonnie Faulkner: Guns and Butter
Arihua Ferriz: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Omar Flamenco: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Nora Barrows Friedman: Flashpoints
Jasmin Garcia: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Leah Gardner: Pushing Limits
Miguel 'Gavilan' Molina: Flashpoints
Nauthal Gonsalo: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Lisa Gonsalvez: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Miguel Guerrero: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Peggy Hecker: Pushing Limits
Robert Knight: Flashpoints
Esin Kunt:  Voices from the Middle East and North Africa (MERP)
Norma La Brava: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Adrienne Lauby: Pushing Limits
Sandra Lemus: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Ventura 'Mr. Chuch' Longoria: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Falcon Molina : La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Leroy F Moore, Jr: Pushing Limits
Robbie Osman: Across the Great Divide
Miguel Perez: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Kevin Pina: Flashpoints/Haiti
Malihe Razazan: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa: Middle
Eastern and North African Perspectives Collective (MENAP)
Pedro Reyes: La Onda Bajita/Radio Del Barrio Aztlan
Jan Santos: Pushing Limits
Sureya Sayadi: Voices of the Middle East and North Africa (MERP)
Doyle Saylor: Pushing Limits
Mina Sepher:  Voices from the Middle East and North Africa (MERP)
Sue Supriano: Steppin' Out of Babylon
Barmak Saemian:  Voices from the Middle East and North Africa
Gulden Yazgan: Voices from the Middle East and North Africa (MERP)
Steve Zeltzer: Labor Collective, Middle East Radio Project

*Use of specific program names is for the purpose of identification only.

KPFA staff who would like to add their names to this letter please contact
Robbie Osman: email / staffletter@xxxxxxxxxx

The other staff letter which this letter refers to can be found at
www.kpfa.org/staff.  Having published that letter, KPFA's administration
should publish this and any other message from KPFA staff on these
questions and it should distribute to KPFA staffers this and other letters
on this important subject just as it did that letter.