Re: The Economics of Community at KPFA and Pacifica

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sasha Lilley wrote:
>
>
> I still don't think you've defined community here.
> The community we are producing for surely extends
> beyond what you refer to as "the grassroots
> organizations forming the LSB movement".  As I see it,
> it goes even beyond those who listen to KPFA or
> Pacifica.

The following observations are utterly helter-skelter, but that feature
might exhibit to those engaged in the debate how much or how little
sense they are making to any outside observer.

I have no opinion (no basis for forming an opinion) on the specific
issues being debated, so this comment is on an extremely abstract level.
On the basis of reading the exchange so far, I would say that
organizations like Pacifica probably can't survive! They present an
attractive target to outside interests, and have (nor can have) no
binding principles which give them coherence over time. This is why it
seems to an outsider as though Sasha and Doyle simply aren't speaking to
one another, nor are they even appealing to a common audience.

The exchange _seems_ to indicate that there is no way of forming a base
(a "community") that can defend the station against "outside" attacks
without creating an antagonistic contradiction between that base and
those who actually keep the station going.

Or to put it another way, Pacifica is running into the problems which
Democratic Centralism was invented to resolve (but which in _most_ of
its forms failed to do so). Media have to be owned, it seems, but no one
at Pacifica knows for sure (it seems) who owns it.

Put yet another way, since no coherent "left" exists in the u.s., there
is no way for an "independent" left media to be responsible to anyone or
anything except the whims/convictions of whoever has power in them.

Posters with rather different political perspectives have indicated that
they though the need was for "professionalism," but professionals are
either hired hands or petty producers.

Most independent left media in the past have failed to survive (or to
maintain continuity), because there institutional integrity usually
depends on the political judgment of an _owner_; owners die; boards
change in composition. It is, for example, incorrect to see _The Nation_
as having continuity over time. A new _Nation_ gets formed whenever the
ownership changes. (This is even clearer in the case of the New
Republic.)

The National Guardian (later The Guardian) lasted for quite a few
decades with some continuity, but eventually went under do to changes
and disputes such as seem to characterize the present fight (or fights)
at Pacifica.

(Still strictly from a distance looking on) My prediction is that
Pacifica will become just another Public Radio, surviving nominally but
no longer serving any principle except surviving. That will be very
professional but not very left or even liberal.

Parties survive a bit longer (usually) than independent organizations,
but they change inside as well so the continuity is apt to be deceptive.


> I have heard LSB members and their supporters refer to
> KPFA as a collective, which we clearly are not.  We
> have unionized paid workers, unpaid workers, a
> management structure, the LSB, and listeners.

Who, then, is the "we" that has all these things?

Carrol