Open Letter from a Listener to Robbie Osman about the KPFA Board Elections

Dear Robbie,

I have been in touch with you before, I am a devoted fan of your program, which moves me to tears and grins more often than any other show. I like your taste, your style, your politics (external) and your presentation. Thus I write to you in sadness reacting to the column you wrote about the current LSB elections.

The thing that makes me saddest is your use of the word democracy, in contraposing those who support democracy and those who supposedly oppose it. The reason this saddens me is that it strikes me as deliberately dishonest, which was something that I did not expect from you.

We are of the same generation, and "fought in the same wars." My particular vantage point, and after getting my preparatory education in high school (civil rights and antiwar agitation in some rural settings), a trip through the south in 1963, and then, my ultimate stroke of fortune, arriving at Cal as a 17 year old freshman in 1964, getting elected to the Executive Committee of the Free Speech Movement and getting arrested, I "graduated" to working full time in the peace movement, from 1965-1972.

I learned a lot about democracy, organizations, and specifically coalitions of the left, which KPFA is one of. What I learned was this. Democracy is an easy word to throw around, and a complex and precious commodity that has to be well understood and not used as a stick to beat people with. I saw meetings where some organizations represented had many (in some cases thousands) of members given one vote, and a group representing four people given an equal one vote. I have seen organizations that seemed to have no substance or activities demand their voting rights, and organizations that seemed to be made up of members of the same disciplined political group showing up to claim a voice under a smorgasbord of names. At the Convention for New Politics in 1968 I saw the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party handed two votes, and the same allocated to dozens of organizations that seemed to have nothing but members of the Socialist Worker's Party given two votes each.

I have also seen meetings of coalitions, where each constituent group given a vote each, only to have a large crowd of people we had never seen before come to a meeting, demand that "the people" be given votes, sometimes under the slogan of "the people who do the work should vote!!" Sometimes this group would come through the door in one column, led by people who I knew to be members of one or another sect. By "empowering" the "people" or "those who do the work" what would happen would be, inevitably, that those who actually represented organizations who wanted to participate in and support some mass action would realize that they had been effectively disempowered, and they would often not be seen again.

Another thing is evident. I am a KPFA listener, and have been since 1964 except when I was living in Chicago or NYC. Since I moved up to Eugene 11 years ago, one of my happiest days was when I figured out (OK, I'm a techno-geezer) how to listen to KPFA on my computer. I want to tell you, my tastes are very broad. Many, many kinds of music (well, OK, there are only two kinds, the good stuff and the other stuff) fill me with joy, and I also enjoy many of the talk type shows, from Carolyn Casey to Guns and Butter to the science and health stuff to the political. Particularly the latter. I even used to listen to Charles Amerkhanian (sp?) and the "weird music program" that once triggered the repeater station in the Russian River to shut down since the machine interpreted the "music" as being static. I've listened to Over the Edge, Beedleumbum, Avoctja, The Woman Dread, Hard Knock, Bach and Bossa Nova, and on and on. I have also listened to Flashpoints. Dennis does very good radio. Sometimes. He often has great guests, and even if his personality gets in the way sometimes, he often does a good job of getting important stuff across. But when I hear someone using the KPFA airwaves to attack the station management and other programmers on the air, I think it is time to reach for a 2x4. You want to know what drives people away from the station? The nasty, dishonest and really cowardly use of OUR airwaves to fight for power at the station. As much fun as listening to your mom and dad screaming at each other.

And screaming at each other has become a big thing at KPFA. It has always been true, as I'm sure you know better than I, that if you assemble any three KPFA people (listeners, volunteers, paid staff, whatever) you get four factions, at least two of them having principled differences about something. But never before the last few years has it seemed that any one group was making a concerted effort to take over the station, to turn it from a coalition to a monopoly of one faction. I have never heard consistent pushing of one or another organization (International "We Have All The" ANSWER in particular) over the airwaves. I have never heard denunciations of the station over the air. "Apartheid Radio?" Really? And of course those so attacked would not use the airwaves to fight back, because they have no intention of having a hand grenade fight in their own house. But some people don't seem to care.

I have read descriptions and transcripts of some of the meetings of the LSB (and for that matter, Pacifica's Board). I remember one technique that showed up over and over in the Anti-war movement back in the day. A group, with a firm intention of taking over a coalition and tapping it for its mailing and financial support lists, and turning it into a platform for one party and a recruiting pool for same, comes into a coalition with several front groups and itself. It then proceeds to turn the meetings into hell on earth, every meeting features personal denunciations, charging people with racism, being pawns of the Democratic Party, being responsible for the suppression of the anarchists of Catalonia or some such relevant question. Those who came to the meeting to try to fight the war and who are not there under discipline or who have weak stomachs think, "I really want to go to another of THESE meetings? I have a four star headache and I feel like throwing up." This goes on, and escalates, until enough people leave that the sect can pack a meeting and remove all the officers, replacing them with their own people. Hurrah, hurrah, another triumph for democracy, right?

You know better than this Robbie, and you know where this is going. Democracy is not the same as letting a small group of crazies who have nothing better to do run people out of a meeting. Some of the folks you are supporting want to have Amy Goodman investigated by Pacifica for covering up Bush's complicity in 9/11. Now I happen to think that elements in the government had a great deal to do with the assassinations of the 1960s, and in 9/11. But I would rather not hear about it 24/7. Now and then is fine. There are other things to talk about.

As to Aileen and her news style, while Stewart and Colbert, who I love, are wonderful, and Maddow is OK (I think her smirk makes her far less effective, not at pleasing the converted, but in converting those we might want to reach), a clear editorial position is perfectly appropriate for them. They are offering opinion, and are clear that that is what it is. A news broadcast that tells you rather than shows you, that tells you what your opinion should be rather than sharing information and showing you the respect to let you draw your own conclusions, is a newscast that is very pleasing. To the converted. It doesn't change anyone's mind. It is far too often the case that some of our most dedicated people think that the listeners, and especially the potential listeners, come to the radio with the skulls empty. All you have to do is open the top, and pour in your ideas, because of course these people can't have any of their own. All it does... well, you know. You hear someone trying to sell you something, you stop listening.

I'm sorry to have to write this to you, I will remain a dedicated fan of yours, and of KPFA's. But please, don't think you are championing democracy. You aren't.

Jack