EAST COAST WAKES UPBy CdPNY
(1450 words)
_____________________
Meeting of the Minds - 200 Attend Session with National Board Members
A major milestone took place two weeks ago in New York City: two members of the Pacifica National Board, Beth Lyons and Leslie Cagan, held a meeting to solicit input from the Pacifica listening audience. With virtually no advance notice, and with almost no publicity on WBAI's airwaves, approximately 200 people met in an auditorium at the offices of DC 1707 last Tuesday, October 10th, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Several people recorded the meeting, and at least one person videotaped the proceedings.
Both Cagan and Lyons made brief presentations to the group, which listened respectfully to their views; the question & answer session followed immediately. Several themes surfaced during the evening, most important among them the consistent request: what can we do to stop the national board?
The Q&A lasted slightly more than two hours. Several listeners were quite troubled by the lack of support from the staff at WBAI. Another thread concerned whether or not people should contribute to the station. The audience seemed to support ongoing contributions to the station, referring to withholding contributions as a dangerous doubled-edged sword. One or two speakers addressed the need to fund the lawsuits now pending against the national board.
The usual group of producers showed up to represent the station: Joan Moossy; Paul DeRienzo; Janet Coleman, Robert Knight, Sally O'Brien, and one or two others (interestingly, these are largely the same producers who choose to speak truth to power, and to ignore the mythical "gag" rule). Unfortunately, none of WBAI's daytime programmers (e.g., Bernard White, Utrice Leid, Gary Null, Doug Henwood, Armand Dimele, etc.) chose to attend the meeting; their input could have been very valuable. The daytime staff at WBAI provides little support to the listeners' efforts to fight the takeover of Pacifica.
Representing management was Clayton "Fifth Column" Reilly, recently denied a permanent position on the ever-popular Wake-Up Call. Rumor has it Mr. Reilly was denied a position on the show for two reasons: for throwing a cane at an eighty-year-old woman, and for referring to another producer (who ran two minutes over into Mr. Reilly's timeslot) with a racial epithet as he reminded her of her alleged illegitimate heritage. CdP-NY is working to verify those rumors.
Cagan and Lyons presented an interesting juxtaposition, in the eyes of this observer, to the views of the audience. Both national board members obviously care a great deal about the efforts to steal the Pacifica network, but appeared not to share the audience's understanding that there's a well-defined plan to steal Pacifica from the very listeners who built it. CdP-NY is extremely encouraged by the efforts of Lyons and Cagan, and we intend to support their efforts as completely as possible.
Following the meeting, several attendees described how pleased they were at how well informed and cooperative the Q&A was, the audience respected the right of everyone to speak their minds. One notable event was the brief presentation made by Ray LeForest, of the Haiti Support Network who spoke passionately to the history of revolution in this country as he called for listeners to resist the illegitimate, and possibly illegal actions of the Pacifica Board members now under threat of three lawsuits. The audience rose to its feet, cheering and clapping in appreciation of Mr. LeForest's brief, vivid statement.
Cagan and Lyons have called their next meeting for 30 October at the offices of DC 1707; the next WBAI Local Advisory Board meeting is the next night, 31 October, at WBAI's offices.
Indymedia Convergence Conference in Vermont mixes Media and Leaves.
On October 13th and 14th, Burlington, Vermont was a melting pot of Indymedia activists and independent journalists brought together by fall foliage and Toward Freedom, an organization that publishes an online magazine dealing with international news, analysis and advocacy type journalism. The guest speakers were Amy Goodman, and Michael Parenti. I missed the Friday opening speech by Amy but word has it there was not a peep out of her about the crisis and she left before she was to speak on the Saturday panel "Getting the Story".
Members of CdP-NY (AKA the three New York plaintiffs) presented a panel titled "Future of Free Speech Radio: WBAI and Pacifica". They provided some local and national history and then presented the more recent problems that are plaguing the Pacifica network and WBAI. Those in attendance were Pacifica affiliates, listeners to Pacifica from around the country, journalists from all over the East Coast and Indymedia activists. The big concern was Amy Goodman being censored and what that could mean. The affiliates were asking what they could do and were quite troubled by the comments made by Bessie Wash at the Pacifica National board meeting in September when she expressed that it is a mere pittance - $165,000 that is the affiliate income to Pacifica. Many were shocked at the make up of the Pacifica board when I read from "The Dark Night of the Soul of Pacifica" by Gregory Wonderwheel. It is a good read which CdP-NY has distributed widely along with the Board Members’ contact information.
Many of the attendees were aware of how critical the Pacifica crisis is. The Northbay Folio was distributed, names were collected and the struggle continues.
Demonstration to Support Democracy Now! at WBAI shakes up Wall Street
On September 25th about 200 people demonstrated in front of WBAI to protest Pacifica’s censorship of Democracy Now! and to show continued support for Amy Goodman’s good work on the program. The demonstration was called by FAIR, the Media Alliance and some local entity.
It was a lively demonstration full of good speakers and concerned listeners with various degrees of knowledge. Steve Rendall of FAIR was the host. Leslie Cagan, Pacifica National Board, Charles Kernigan, National Labor Committee and Norman Siegel, New York Civil Liberties Union. All understood very well what is at stake and put to rest the silly disclaimer on the pacifica.org website that there is no danger to Amy Goodman’s job. Among the producers that spoke were Utrice Leid from "Talkback" and Paul DeRienzo. From "Let ‘em Talk". Paul started his speech with the chant "break the gag rule" when the sound system went dead for thirty seconds and a group of listeners started to chant "let ‘em talk, let ‘em talk" thinking censorship had begun right then and there. Paul said that it is important for every producer to break the gag rule. At the last minute Mitchel Cohen of the No Spray Coalition suggested to the organizers that Patty Heffley from CdP-NY should speak. She spoke of the need to inform the "listener’s bloc" because they can’t help unless they know there is a problem and as contributors they have a right to know. Amy Goodman was advised by her lawyer not to speak at the rally.
There was no management present. The WBAI local news played the demonstration live. Some producers attended, the usual suspects, the overnight producers, the same ones who have shown up at events for the last five years. Robert Knight from "Earthwatch" recorded the event and played it on his program. Hooray for staying up late.
The Amy Goodman crisis has finally sparked some concern locally. Hopefully this is just the beginning of more people getting involved. This could be the WBAI version of the "Takedown of KPFA". There does seem to be a fair amount of revisionist history or at least the notion that there was not much to complain about until last year and certainly not in NYC, "That was a West Coast problem". To others it seems that it is "the last moment left to resist". There is another meeting scheduled on October 30th by Leslie Cagan to organize all interested parties.
One concern of CdP-NY is the fact that they were not included in the organization or planning of the demonstration. To FAIR’s credit we received a call to make sure there was no conflict with any other organizing around this issue. But to not include everyone that cares is shooting oneself in the foot. Now is not the time for holding on to power but to let it flow to as many people as possible. Hopefully the exclusion was an oversight. Let us not forget that if it were not for the listeners and listeners’ groups, the stations would have been sold long ago.
On a funny note even though CdP-NY wasn’t included in the planning, a detective from the New York Police Dept. knew whom to call. They called the CdP-NY hotline. They left a message wanting information about the demonstration. Of course I knew nothing......