 |
|
One CdPNY member's thoughts on what needs to happen next. 11-24-01 |
[ replies may be sent to . They will be posted below the article ] What is to be done if Pacifica is serious As a longtime pain in the ass of the producers here in NYC to get them to break the gag rule or to tell the listeners ANYTHING or to face the truth that silence and avoidance would backfire, I will continue to speak my mind. Below is one story to give the picture of what is ahead and why no one is perfect and we listeners have to push our favorite hosts to do the right thing. Several times over the years since 1996 we would give staffers information about the struggle. We protested outside events where amy, Samori, Bernard, Valerie Van Isler and others would speak. Every program got a flier in thier mail box for the teach-ins which were held annually. Few cared and some even hindered the word getting out. Meanwhile recordbreaking fundraisers were held, something almost everyone was proud of, except me because taxation without representation (or even information) turns my stomach. At a War Resistors League demo in Washington Square park around the Balkan war in April of 1999, I asked Amy to say something about Pacifica. If I remember correctly she had just refused an award by some press org. because of their politics. Anyhow, the Pacifica by laws had just changed for the worse and I asked Amy to speak to the crowd to tell them what was going on. She said to me "The people don't want to hear that, they are tired and want to go home." It was about 4:30PM. After that I quit asking anything of her for a long time. I was indeed saddened that once again the people that deserve the information were not informed. The takedown of KPFA in 1999 went unmentioned by the daytime programmers except for the local news or a call in or a little mention here or there. There was no gag rule after Samori died that spring and the takedown of KPFA was considered news. Still silence. Amy Goodman's total silence up until October of 2000 leads me to believe that she has been saving up all her energy to save Pacifica now. Amy's calling for the return the fired and the banned will not save Pacifica. The return of the fired and the banned will not save Pacifica. The Fired and banned say they are the answer. They are not. This is not a club where you try and get your people back in the door. Saving the network and free speech are more important in my opinion - that means all five stations need help all together and need to work together. The answer is very simple to me. The gag rule cannot exist. For starters, Amy should return to the airwaves. She should broadcast off site for safety until the management changes. She should have a report each and every day about Pacifica, free speech, the mission, our rights and how access to Pacifica is so necessary to have this DIALOGUE. It is one of the most interesting topics at this time, isn't it? There are numerous notable and local people who have much to say on the subject and I am certain would be glad to help return Pacifica to its mission, Chomsky, Zinn, McChesney, Scooter, The CdP in Berkeley, what is up with the elections there, etc. There can be updates and commentary and What You Can Do to move the network along. The topic is endless and again interesting. This could jump start the network and the listeners to focus on what has been missing and will hopefully send the Anti mission people packing. It could counteract what will surely be coming over the airwaves while those people and programs breathe their last breath. There should be built in immediately evaluation of programs and programming every few years and training and such. Kellia Ramares in her commentary (pasted below) says a lot of where the participation and excitement could be multiplied by the other media institutions that have cropped up. Then we could have more Democracy Now!'s. Meanwhile the management mght need to be replaced by people perhaps from community radio elsewhere that understand the mission of Pacifica. They could start evaluating the shows for their adherence to the mission and to community needs. Some fired and banned might come back at ALL five stations, some might not. Most programmers were silent throughout the network during the purges at KPFT, KPFK, KPFA and most egregiously during the takedown in 1999 of KPFA. To imagine at this late date that some fired and banned in NYC don't want Amy back on the air until she brings them along and the other 4 stations be damned, says that some of these people are still operating in their own self interest and not in the interest of the network or the listeners (the who?). That is not the leadership for me. It is time that everyone start looking on how to save Pacifica instead of their and their friends' asses. Let us know what your plans are so we know where to start protesting and what to put on the signs.
Patty
-----------------
go check out the thread on the goodlight message board at:
-----------------
From: Mitch Ritter
I am so glad to have been sent a link to this discussion. Patty Heffley makes some needed points, and the objections by folks below are either well taken or at least carefully considered (we can disagree in Progressive Circles without bringing on charges of Class Traitor and Fascist I hope, even if that has never been any Pacifica station's strong suit for quite a number of years now). Here is my feedback within Patty's text: [*comments by Mitch.]
<snip>
[Patty wrote]
*"We listeners" is way too passive a term. Most of us are listener-activists, and that identity of being active should be insisted upon (I've always respected the rightwingers who instead of getting stoned went door to door during the awful 80's and actually did politics from the grassroots, even though I opposed their programs and visions of society. I could never get progressive friends to give up their distractions and do the grunt work of activism like a well-motivated church-led program, although the Christic Institute and the Unitarians did in fact inspire some progressive activity to oppose the 'moral majority' movement). Just look at how the rightwingers actually convinced mainstream America that the mass media was a liberal conspiracy! Where were the campuses full of idealistic youth to organize even stronger movements using the easy illustration of mass media=corporate agenda! Nope, at KPFA and WBAI we were all content to preach to the converted in the smuggest sort of More Radical Than Thou hierarchical way. We could've been inviting mainstream America to debate on Pacifica stations, but instead we said, since corporate media won't invite our saints Chomsky, Cockburns, Davis, Parenti, McChesney onto NIGHTLINE then we are not going to bother giving anyone with mainstream views any access to a Pacifica mike, or if we did, we used the corporate media tactic of choosing an especially ignorant specimen set up as a straw man for the radical hero to pummel. So we never got discussion, just radical rhetoric. We never persuaded anyone who wasn't already persuaded, usually by shallow cultural icons rather than by thinking through complex problems.* Several times over the years since 1996 we would give staffers information about the struggle. We protested outside events where Amy, Samori, Bernard, Valerie Van Isler and others would speak. Every program got a flier in thier mail box for the teach-ins which were held annually. Few cared and some even hindered the word getting out. Meanwhile recordbreaking fundraisers were held, something almost everyone was proud of, except me because taxation without representation (or even information) turns my stomach. *This frustration I witnessed firsthand when I spent time in NY at some of these fundraisers in swank Manhattan bistros, with Amy on a stage with the other "Stars" of the alternative universe. And when during the Q&A someone would raise questions about what was going on with the purges at Pacifica, Amy conveniently would announce she didn't know enough to speak about that. Never worked very hard to learn, but worked like the devil to avoid Patty, Sean, Frank, and other listener-activists who were bringing the info most respectfully to her that they spent their own funds gathering and copying and duplicating via multi-media samples. This mirrored my own experience back in northern California working with Take Back KPFA and the incredible listener-activists like Gilardin, Bergstresser, Blankfort, Radke, Gray, Torres who could not get an on-air producer like Bensky, Osman, (although I think Dennis Bernstein did show some on-air solidarity with the first wave of purged programmers, I now forget)to show any solidarity with fellow broadcasters who represented the INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY of KPFA and Pacifica when they were unceremoniously shown the door. 40 years as founding broadcasters of the world's first listener-sponsored mass media outlet, yet the likes of Elwood and Mandell were booted from the air with nary a peep from their co-workers! The weekly evening labor show produced and hosted by Steve Zeltzer got taken off the air for strip programming of music during the after-day job hours, and Osman would on Sunday play Si Kahn labor songs and encourage miners in Ukraine and West Virginia to strike, while remaining mum on the purges of his KPFA airmates! I took info on this to Robbie and Utah Phillips and Si Kahn at the Freight & Salvage and they still did not say a word about the 5 year plan that led to the purges or the purges until their own airtime was threatened! That memory will haunt me. Then David Bacon is brought on for a few minutes segment on the Morning Show and takes the gig! Pure scab action without insisting Zeltzer and his Labor Show be returned, in fact Bacon went on to replace Zeltzer as the Labor beat reporter, now moved on up to the NPR station in San Fran KQED as their This Week In California talking head! I asked what kind of progressive community accepts a "Star System"? Then, I saw it happen at the magazine COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY which used to be COVERT ACTION INTELLIGENCE BULLETIN where the owners locked out the whole editorial staff in a labor dispute, and because Dennis Bernstein and other KPFA "Stars" used to pump up their journalistic credentials with occasional articles in the magazine they said nothing over the air at KPFA to support their FIRED & BANNED comrades and in fact continued to hush up that fiasco and support the owners of CAQ! I did interviews with those owners when I admired their work on that magazine and their sideproject of media analysis called LOOT (LIES OF OUR TIMES) but I stopped supporting them after they locked out their staff over a labor and wage issue, and could not believe KPFA would not even discuss what was going on their! As if a gag rule existed to protect the Stars and Owners of all progressive media outlets! Same logic that has kept anyone from KPFA asking why the alternative weekly in the Bay Area the Bay Guardian can't be a union newspaper when they dominate the market and make a bundle, but keep turning over staff because the owner feels he is the only 'progressive' game in town.* At a War Resistors League demo in Washington Square park around the Balkan war in April of 1999, I asked Amy to say something about Pacifica. If I remember correctly she had just refused an award by some press org. because of their politics. Anyhow, the Pacifica by laws had just changed for the worse and I asked Amy to speak to the crowd to tell them what was going on. She said to me "The people don't want to hear that, they are tired and want to go home." It was about 4:30PM. After that I quit asking anything of her for a long time. I was indeed saddened that once again the people that deserve the information were not informed. *I saw Patty take a hit from a respondent below for not getting the word out on the air. Let me just say that for listener-activists who were not invited to share their info on the programs of those who were NYF&B (Not Yet Fired & Banned), and Amy, Bernard, Al Lewis come to mind at WBAI since Patty provided much info to them and they said not word one when the producer and host of Radio Bandung got canned for discussing not just Pacifica, but in fact broadening the discussion to discuss non-profit org structures in general, and Joung Yoon Lym was way ahead of the scandal at the NEW SCHOOL by discussing it on her last show before she was Fired & Banned by progressive "Star" Samori Marksman. So, Patty and her SOS (Save Our Station) pioneers picketed on the streets in the rain and sun handing out info on what was going on at WBAI and at other Pacifica sister stations. Why would anyone rag on her for doing what other listeners failed to do, namely actively seek out info? Unless those other listeners are now ashamed for not having been listener-activists back then.*
<snip>
*Again, harking back to the respondent below who takes Patty to task for making this point about the hijacked movement's switch to emphasizing the F&B (who really are only the last group of Fired and Banned, the ones who were rewarded with longer airtime for playing the company game), this post-big money fundraiser emphasis is simply the Hollywood Star System with so-called progressives plugged in for the usual emptyheaded distraction merchants. Amy is the pseudo-prog movement Jennifer Lopez. Could alternative journalism or pop music survive if either had to get 2 jobs each, pumping cappuccino and folding jeans at the Gap, just to pay the rent and be able to afford to write the occasional piece for a community paper or sing on a community station? Most of us need to work multiple jobs to pay for our vocations, whether it be journalism or the arts, and that is what secures our own independence! Amy and Bernard and the other Stars didn't speak out about the Star System when they were still in the Galaxy. Why should their shows be guaranteed if others could do better? How do others get a chance? Because of the clinging to airtime Pacifica's senior public affairs broadcasters have never become mentors to a younger generation that then brought new blood to the airwaves, but rather connived at every turn to thwart other younger progressive journalists who were seen as rivals or threats to their status in this alternative community. Good thing too, or instead of reaching a national audience with her books, Laurie Garrett would still be the Michio Kaku or Gary Null of Pacifica's airwaves, reassuring the radicals that they alone possess the special rigorous analysis and received wisdom to be considered truly progressive!*
<snip>
That is not the leadership for me. *nor for me.*
*comments above from me, Mitch.
----------------- Some replies from the newPacifica email group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewPacifica:
From: John Sheridan
Date: Sat Nov 24, 2001 2:08 am
Subject: Re: [NewPacifica] What is to be done if Pacifica is serious
Thank you, Patty. Thanks for being a conscience when many others are out
to feather their own nest. The rewriting of history is rampant and
cynical. The return of the banned and fired is important, but as you note,
and I guess this is still news to some of us WE ARE A NETWORK, AND WE HAVE
TO THINK AS A NETWORK THAT POTENTIALLY REACHES OVER 20% OF THE AMERICAN
PUBLIC.
I appreciate your being a pain in the ass, and you are respected out here
in KPFA land, if not in some other places. Please remain so. You
represent a lot of grassroots empowerment which a lot of people have only
contempt for. But they will lose. Your vision will win, as difficult as
it is to accommodate the wishes of the many for the insider voices of the
few. It continues to be an extremely difficult, painful battle. I hope
you hang in there. Remove the gag rules, democratize the LABs (that must
be a pill for some to swallow!), and don't treat the listeners or the
listener-subscribers as cashcow racists to be milked at regular
intervals. Keep fighting for a much less top-down Pacifica.
-- John
-----------------
From: David Combs
Date: Sat Nov 24, 2001 3:03 am
Subject: Re: [NewPacifica] What is to be done if Pacifica is serious
Some questions:
who made this "agreement" (down in dc)>
----
what would *we* gain from it?
what would *we* lose from it?
----
what would *they* gain from it?
what would *they* lose from it?
----
is it not true that what's good for them is bad for us?
(given that they want to stay in control -- and that looks
pretty likely, given how hard they are fighting!)
(wonder what's "in it" for them? Hmmmm. Any ideas?)
----
Does the expression "as easy as taking candy from a baby"
relate at all to the fight against the pnb?
Seems to me that if *they* suggest some "compromise" --
or actually *anything* -- then we are real FOOLS if
we even *consider* agreeing to it -- if we don't simply
REJECT it, regardless of what it says.
These guys are just too damn smart, too damn experienced
in screwing people in negotiations.
I'm actually horrified that we're (well, at least the
plaintiffs) even considering this thing from the dc-weekend.
Seems to me that the only people who can defeat us is ourselves,
and we're rushing headlong into losing pacifica forever.
Does no one recall that when the pnb decided to make itself
"self selecting", that some of "OUR" pnb-members VOTED
FOR IT!!!!!
David
-----------------
From: siddharta5@y...
Date: Sat Nov 24, 2001 11:46 am
Subject: Re: What is to be done if Pacifica is serious
My comments below:
--- In NewPacifica@y..., Patty |
top of page | home |