How You Can Save Pacifica

By IAIN A. BOAL

The tsunami of abuse triggered by the alarm I sounded about the new crisis at Pacifica Radio in CounterPunch only confirms my diagnosis, were it not for the fact that among the torrents of sewage from envenomed nutballs there were many encouraging messages-in-a-bottle from dismayed supporters of the network eager to help save Pacifica once again.

There is no surprise, however, about the cast of characters who have lined up to shoot the messenger. Symptomatically, the interim Executive Director of Pacifica demanded that I retract what is all in the public record and dangled a lawsuit. It is an irony – or rather it ought to be – that the boss of a “free speech” radio network has a gag reflex.

A letter from a Pacifica Local Station Board incumbent/candidate from Los Angeles is a fairly typical specimen from the mailbag. Christopher Condon writes, “I have neither asked for nor received any endorsement from Grace Aaron. I know perfectly well Ms. Aaron's position and I have never raised the issue. It probably comes down to her signing my nominating petition along with many others, and I put ‘nominated by’ Grace Aaron along with others on my campaign statement.” Condon hangs himself with his own rope. As a cursory glance at my original piece will show, Condon either corroborates my point – the Executive Director didn’t endorse him, she just nominated him! – or confirms fears that far from taking a turn towards NPR (an allegation, by the way, I never made in the first place) the current regime is actually steering the good ship Pacifica onto the reefs of HIV denialism, fungus-inducing aerosols care of the CIA, 9/11 truthinesss, etc., etc. – in other words, conspiracist programming in the full-blown paranoid style complete with that tell-tale pressure in the voice.

My CounterPunch piece was neither about the cult of Amy Goodman nor the various factions jostling for their moment at the microphone. It was about the domination of the national and local boards by the likes of Aaron and Condon owing to a perverse governance structure, with grotesque consequences for programming and fund-raising.

More disturbingly, Gresham’s Law is operating to antagonize Pacifica stalwarts of generosity and good will like Noam Chomsky whose recent Riverside Church speech was offered as a premium without his permission and whose name was used to suggest that he was endorsing a particular slate in the current WBAI elections. Chomsky is so put out by the misrepresentation of his Riverside lecture on the front page of the WBAI website – implying that he has a new view on 9/11 – that he has threatened to forbid Pacifica to use any of his work for fundraising.

The religious affiliations, past or present, of the currently anointed favorite of the National Board is actually of zero interest to me, and irrelevant to my case. What matters is that Pacifica’s “new democracy” enables a cabal to impose any regime they want, staffed with its own acolytes. It’s not that the current crew is necessarily ruling by decree, but that the governance structure, put in place after the 1999 crisis, enables such practices. Indeed the logic actually encourages it. Coups ’R US.

To give readers an idea how far-fetched Pacifica governance has become, consider that in 2007 there were over a hundred meetings of the National Board. That may seem profligate enough; now it has bloated to the point that there's a meeting of Pacifica governance every night of the week (just go to http://kpftx.org/pacalendar/index.php to check out the calendar for this month).

The cost of this creature – a surreal camel-albatross hybrid worthy of any medieval bestiary - has mounted to several million dollars since the new democratic governance was installed six years ago. No one is able to compute the real figure. Pacifica’s bureaucracy would make Max Weber wince - more nation-state than radio network. Formally, the full Pacifica National Board is composed of ‘directors’ and ‘delegates’, having a minimum of 122 and a maximum of, er, 123 members (see Pacifica Bylaws, Article 5, Section 1, C). There are 12 subcommittees, comprised of the Elections Committee, the Coordinating Committee, the Technology Committee, the Audit Committee, the Personnel Committee, the Finance Committee, the Programming Committee, the Archives Task Force, the Affiliates Task Force, the Committee of Inclusion, the Committee to Investigate Racism and Sexism, and finally the Governance Committee. This last embodies the Foundation’s totemic mascot, an ouroboros – the snake that eats its own tail.

So we find ourselves today with a pyramid scheme which is mirrored at the local board level and where the mission has become…governance. Governance, in other words, as an end in itself. Pacifica has become its own tin-pot nation-state, though you might say that a more apt analogy is the justly reviled board of the modern corporation (to be sure, in petit bourgeois pantomime drag), since their hands are busily dismantling the firewall between governance and programming. The church-state separation expected in the rest of the media apparently does not apply to free speech radio Pacifica. Just take a look at the electioneering, which is dominated by people campaigning on promises about the programming they will bring to the air once elected, rather than the proper business of a board.

The current election unfortunately carries us beyond the parody as described in my October 6th article. Listeners suffering from election fatigue may have missed the latest developments. In addition to the usual fare – cronyism, attack ads, corruption, self-dealing, ad hominem abuse instead of debate on the truly pressing issues facing oppositional media in the US – the inept management has served up ballots based on an electoral roll two years out of date, thereby disfranchising 30 per cent of Pacifica’s new members and allowing thousands of ex-members to vote illegally.

The founders of Pacifica, as syndicalists and antinomians, had a strong aversion to bourgeois form and representation, with its periodic ratification of our masters by ballot. They would be appalled at Pacifica’s governance apparatus, though the rank incompetence of its bureaucracy they would no doubt dismiss with a shrug. What else to expect? The current elections at the network make Afghanistan look pristine. Actually the two are connected: military humanism abroad gets you Karzais, (neo)liberal electoralism at home gets you Condons. And let’s be clear – there’s nothing antiquarian about the democracy on offer in the parliament of Kabul or the control rooms of Pacifica. It is probably the face of the future.

Many have written asking what they can do here and now. My alarm call does seem to have breached the dam of silence, but clearly that is not enough. The shambles of the ongoing election is not likely to stop Aaron and Co from destroying what was left of the old Pacifica. Finding some Moses to replace Aaron is hardly the point. It is the structure itself that is rotten. In fact, it guarantees a repeat of the current disaster, and sooner rather than later.

Certainly, let’s start by scrapping the noxious bylaws that incubated this monster. But the only hope lies in a thoroughgoing renovation of Pacifica. The ship is going down. It will take a movement to wipe the slate clean, to get a new board and a structure congruent with the mission of Pacifica - governance, in other words, that aids and abets rather than imperils the network’s very existence.

Here’s my suggestion, addressed not only to all those who wrote to me in their deep concern about what is happening now, but to the Pacifica community as a whole (I sympathize with the sneers that will greet that phrase) including those who have long since turned off or stopped subscribing but still care about the state of the media in this country. It would take only 700 Pacifica subscribers – that is, one percent of the membership - to sign a petition formally demanding to start the process of tossing the offending bylaws into the dustbin of history. My mailbag suggests that there may be such a movement waiting to be born, and one moreover that is prepared to go beyond the narrow but necessary task of rescuing Pacifica from the new barbarians.

Those interested in supporting and joining in such an endeavor, please write to salvagepacifica@gmail.com up and running and we can begin the job of rebuilding an independent radio network dedicated to radical dialogue and the audio arts.

Berkeley,

October 26, 2009

Iain A. Boal is a historan of the commons, associated with Retort, and co-author of Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (Verso). He can be reached at boal@sonic.net.

The reflexive jump to delegating "conspiracy" to the realm of automatic judgment, casting insulting epitaphs like "paranoia"; shows a great deal of intellectual cowardice and conformity.

Conspiracies are the way governments, institutions and criminals operate. If you somehow imagine any different, you need to stay out of public commentary because it shows incredible naivety. The single most procuited crime in any city, county, state or federal jurisdiction is conspiracy.

What makes you think this is a subject of paranoia?

I call it courage to speak forbidden truth.

How do you reconcile that statement with your love of the snitch buttons, of hiding comments here, shit for brains freeloader?

And what were you saying about paranoia?





http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2009/09/74852_comment.php#75046

Repot Buttons

by answers to psychopathy Sunday, Oct. 25, 2009 at 11:56 AM

"At LA IMC there is a little item we call the 'snitch' link to flag lying psychopaths like Yada at the end of each post.

It allows the readership to flag and yes, remove the human garbage that seems to attempt to sandbag any discussion of the criminal zionist state.

Like this zionazi submission about their paranoia and raging hypocrisy. "

What the bloody fuck if your problem? KPFK is *over*. Deal with it already.

Is it true that Rice is a freeloader?

There has been a letter written by the just-prior iED Grace Aaron to this author of the primary article above disclaiming some of the statements he mad so grandiosely. Since it is always easy to accuse and make any claims, would it not be just as interesting to also read what 'the other side' has to say too ?

Can there be more than one version of whatever Truth one CHOOSES to utilize for whatever reasons of one's own? Let's try to be fair and equal opportunized here.

To be OPEN minded instead of taking extremist factionary positions of hate and vengeance and in competition trying to "kill off" those who someone doesnt like or want in any position of relevance ?

Here is what can be found via Google, no less.

[another version, another voice, another side of this heated political playing world of Pacifica ]

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Reply to Mr. Iain Boal Regarding His October 6th Article in CounterPunch Entitled

"From Farce to Tragedy, The New Crisis at Pacifica"

October 12, 2009

Dear Mr. Boal,

I would like to request a formal retraction of your article in CounterPunch entitled "From Farce to Tragedy, The New Crisis at Pacifica"

http://www.counterpunch.org/boal10062009.html

as it contains libelous statements about me, personally, and distortions, half-truths and false information about Pacifica.

In paragraph 1 of your article you reference a motion that was made by Chris Condon, a KPFK Local Station Board member, in a Pacifica National Governance Committee meeting, of which he is also a member. It passed that committee by a 5-4 vote. It has not yet been considered by the Pacifica National Board. I have copied that motion below my signature in this email and hope that you will include it in a retraction so that CounterPunch readers can make their own judgement about its merits.

In paragraph 2 of your article you state that: "Condon’s campaign for reelection to the KPFK Local Station Board in Los Angeles is endorsed by the current interim Executive Director of Pacifica and chair of the Pacifica National Board, Grace Aaron." This is false. I have not endorsed any candidate at any station in this election.

In paragraph 2 you also say: "Despite being thrown out of the Church of Scientology, Aaron still publicly identifies herself as “a follower of the teachings of L Ron Hubbard”." To set the record straight, I don't consider myself a follower of anyone or any one religion, ideology, group or subject. I consider myself an independent thinker. I pick and choose what I find valuable from a wide variety of sources.

Are you aware that CounterPunch Editor, Alexander Cockburn, defended Scientology on a number of issues in articles in the Nation magazine as well as other publications?

Later on in your article you state: "the last election cost upward of 0,000, including the inevitable attendant lawsuits." This is a gross exageration. The election cost less than half that amount, including lawsuits.

You further state: "Since Aaron’s cabal has come to power, the financial situation has markedly deteriorated. Spending on salaries and consultants at the Pacifica National Office has jumped by 40 per cent," This statement is also partly incorrect and partly misleading. The absence of a paid Executive Director for about 6 months from October 2008 to February 2009 did, indeed, mean less was spent on salaries at the National Office level, but this lack of senior management exacerbated an already dire financial situation. Fund drives were failing, membership and listenership declining and virtually nothing was being done to resolve a host of legal suits mainly related to human resources.

Should current management be faulted for hiring a very qualified interim HR Director to investigate and handle complaints? Knowing that hundreds of thousands have been paid out by Pacifica to settle such cases? Should we continue to allow stations to operate in the red without senior management in order to save money at the National Office? Don't forget, when I assumed the role of interim ED on Feb. 2, 2009, and Ms. LaVarn Williams became the interim CFO, our NY station WBAI was .2 million in debt to the National Office, was spending over ,000 per month more than it was bringing in in income and was 4 months in arrears on its office rent and 2 months in arrears on its rent to the Tower that houses its transmitter. In fact, that rent owed came to almost 0,000.

WBAI has since seen a tremendous resurgence in fund drive performance, is now able to pay its bills, is current on its rent and will be able to pay its Central Services fees to the National Office after its Fall fund drive for the first time in over a year. KPFK (Los Angeles) and KPFT (Houston) are holding their own in a very tough economic climate and are paying their Central Services. KPFA (Berkeley) failed to make budgeted cuts that had been scheduled for fall 2008, months before my and Ms. William's tenures, and they are consequently faced with a 2009 budget shortfall. WPFW (Washington, D.C.) is recovering from senior management neglect which allowed that station to decline over a 2 year period.

WPFW now is in the hands of very competent, new management and should also perform much better in its fall fund drive.

Fall fund drives at KPFK and KPFA have not only met their budgeted goals, but KPFK's drive came in ,728 over its goal and, in fact, raised ,212,728, which is the highest amount ever raised in a KPFK fund drive.

I will not comment at this time on how we raise money in our fund drives except to say that it is easy to take pot shots without deep analysis. I have not pushed certain types of premiums on any station nor suggested any. We have, however, utilized the successful, tried and true fund drive techniques at one station, including sharing staff support between stations, to improve fund drive performance.

Criticism of any one premium in a drive should be specifically made so that the exact premium can be investigated.

The statement that "she is reported to fulminate against “pro-Palestinian, pro-immigrant” public affairs programming on the network" is untrue. I have a long track record as a peace activist on those issues and I consider this an unfounded smear on my reputation.

I have been a board member of the Los Angeles Branch of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, agree with that organization's strong and wise stand about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have helped put on symposia highly critical of the treatment of Palestinians for WILPF

http://losangeles.wilpf.org/documents/WILPF_Bulletin_10.06.pdf,

http://losangeles.wilpf.org/documents/WILPFBulletin05.07.pdf,

http://losangeles.wilpf.org/documents/WILPF_Bulletin_02.07.pdf,

http://losangeles.wilpf.org/documents/WILPFBulletin12.06.pdf. I have also produced cable TV programs on the subject that can be viewed at

www.SocialUplift.org. See especially the video Israel & Palestine: An Insider's Perspective that can be viewed there or at

http://www.lajewsforpeace.org/Essays.html.

I have also worked on this subject as the Board Chair of Peace Action of Southern California in the mid-80s and early '90s and agree with Peace Action's public statements about that conflict. I also participated in efforts to bring peace to that region with such groups as the American Friends Service Committee, Pax Christi, New Jewish Agenda, the Muslim Public Affairs Center, Women in Black

http://www.afsc.org/ht/d/EventDetails/i/52516/pid/16705,

and other activist groups. To repeat, this is an unfair slur on my past activities and character. A couple of years ago as a member of a local Amnesty International Group I strongly supported the publication of Israeli human rights abuses by Amnesty.

I do agree with you, Mr. Boals, when you say "Pacifica is worth fighting for." There is little else I agree with in your article. Your efforts to identify me with past personalities and events in Pacifica that are not similar to the present situation as a way to denigrate me by guilt through association is unfair.

I have a deep and abiding love for Pacifica that grew out of my young adult years listening to WBAI as a Vietnam War protester. And yet you try to portray me as ignorant of Pacifica's past by identifying me with someone else.

Your journalism regarding Pacifica is very flawed. You have only to peruse our website at www.Pacifica.org to see clear evidence that our listenership and finances had been declining for at least 4-5 years, well before I was even on the Pacifica National Board, let alone in my present position. Our current National Board, senior management team and radio station staffs should be highly commended for having the courage and tenacity to turn this network around. I request that you examine the facts more closely and write a retraction of your article.

In Peace,

Grace Aaron

Chair of the Pacifica National Board

Interim Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation"

- - - - - -



Plus a bit of New News included....

Arlene Engelhardt is the new PNB Director now

Will this person be as maligned, attacked, hated and competed with to bring that Director Down Down Down too or is this a preferred person now ? What does it to take to be accepted just long enough to accomplish some necessary work, make some practical decisions, and take much time from one's good life to dedicate to this forever tottering Pacifica

empire ?

dont tell me. I know. Anyone who has power is first smiled at and quickly thrown back to the mad dogs to be eaten up alive for being imperfect, the wrong color or gender or having a different point of view and a more convenient ally pushed into the position instead.

Is this what Pacifica does repeatedly and most often

[hopefully not all ways] ????

May Pacifica and KPFK survive the hate filled world that currently cant tolerate anyone for longer than a quick moment. Scary world created by fear and greed.

And this is not even the USA govt, but a non-profit corporation here !

[and obviously this writer too is actually afraid of revealing their birth name for fear of retaliation, exclusion, exile, hate mail and harrassment from those who disagree with whatever they write, reveal, think, or want. How bad has it become when most posters on Indymedia are usinig such strange made-up names in order to protect themselves from others who will act-out maybe if the writer is actually known ? another scary world here too]