KPFA article in SF Bay View weekly

Applaud democracy at KPFA

Long live radical free-speech radio!
Editorial by Willie Ratcliff


Where there's smoke there's fire, the old saying goes. Well, it ain't necessarily so.

KPFA 94.1 FM is my favorite radio station - it's the only major station in the country, along with its sister stations in the Pacifica network, with the guts to speak truth to power. And you know how badly we need that kind of courage right now. And you can imagine how badly some people would like to shut KPFA up - or dumb it down.

Lately, KPFA has been making history - again. KPFA made history when it was founded in 1949 as the first listener-sponsored station anywhere ever. No commercials, no corporate sponsorship. Just countless thousands of listeners who love KPFA so much they donate as much as $1 million or more in a single quarterly fund drive.

Now KPFA and its sister stations are the first listener-governed stations anywhere ever. KPFA is now a democracy, governed by a board elected by the listeners. I've been a proud member of that board for four years, beginning with KPFA's second elected advisory board and now on the governing board.

Listerners' hunger for radio democracy grew out of the 21-day lockout in 1999 that saw thousands camped in the street outside the station after KPFA's more radical programmers were ousted in a coup. After fighting for years to regain control, listeners spent more years hammering out a governing structure.

The KPFA governing board's first major move, after a long search, was to choose as general manager Roy Campanella II, the son of the man who, along with Jackie Robinson, integrated major league baseball. When he started work last winter, he soon learned that some of the staff didn't take kindly to being managed by a man accountable to the people, to the listeners, and a Black man at that. A couple of years earlier, they had run off another Black manager after he'd been on the job less than a year.

A lot of smoke ensued - complaints, investigations, meetings, meetings, meetings. Unhappy staff hung "No confidence" signs, some with a racist caricature of Roy, all over the walls. To me, they were declaring "no confidence" not only in Roy, but in the board and democracy.

One of the unhappy staff revealed a fear of "radical" radio when he wrote in an email that the board's "protection of Roy has a lot to do with the protection of Dennis (i.e., Dennis Bernstein of Flashpoints) and the strengthening of the more radical faction of kpfa's entrenched powers. without Roy in power, Dennis is toast."

Flashpoints, airing Monday-Friday at 5 p.m., covers Haiti nearly every day, fearlessly giving voice to some of the bravest Black freedom fighters in the world. That's my kind of radio, and, like Roy, I want KPFA to start giving voice to our own young Black freedom fighters from occupied hoods like Hunters Point and East Oakland too. That's radical free-speech radio, and I'm proud to be part of it.

"Roy is listening to people outside as well as within the staff. We feel the community needs to be engaged in expanding and reforming the station because of the way all kinds of diversity and progressive ideas are under attack in the corporate media and in the government dominated environment," said my fellow board member Joe Wanzala in commentary published Friday by the Berkeley Daily Planet. I agree.

And so does a large majority of the board. The unhappy staff wanted Roy fired. Somebody must have thought they'd get their way, because pieces of toast were left that morning in Flashpoints' mailboxes.

But, after long and thorough deliberations finding no grounds for termination, the board voted 15-5 on Sunday, Aug. 14, not to fire him. Instead, the board will work with Roy and the staff - both the unhappy and happier factions - and to bring in new, younger voices to strengthen and vastly extend the reach of KPFA, of radical radio.

The Daily Planet commentary, written by Berkeley physician, activist and pollster Dr. Mark Sapir, concludes by sounding an alarm that rings true to me: "The mutiny threatens station function. And the dissidents believe they can and must run the station by locking out substantial elements of the left movement on the board and in the Bay Area, while building their own support base. With one sidedness in air coverage, most listeners are baffled."
"Certainly this station cannot operate without a high quality and diverse staff. Nor can it expand into broader ethnic and working class communities without integrating the sometimes raw critiques of its most dedicated listeners. Balancing the concerns of the regular staff with those of the politically active community and the need to resist the growing attacks on democracy in the U.S. is a huge challenge. Assuring changes in KPFA's internal culture and creating a culture of openness, dialogue and conflict resolution would seem a prerequisite to other needed changes. But the going is very slow, as the concerted and personal attacks on Campanella seem to indicate."

So there's still a lot of smoke at KPFA but no fire - and no firing of the general manager - but plenty of work to do to make KPFA more radical, more powerful and more popular than the major media.

Here's where you come in. All it takes to become a voting listener member of KPFA is a contribution of $25 a year or $2.08 per month. Make your pledge by phone at (510) 848-6767, mail it to KPFA, 1929 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley CA 94704, or pay securely online at http://www.kpfa.org.

Don't just applaud democracy at KPFA. Make KPFA YOUR radio station.


Email Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff at publisher [at] sfbayview.com.
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