INDEPENDENT, INCREDIBLE PACIFICA:
How Do We Get There?

By Adrienne Lauby

(767 words)

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Fu / Return (The Turning Point):

"After a time of decay comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. The upper trigram K'un is characterized by devotion: thus the movement is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason the transformation of the old becomes easy . . . since these groups come together in full public knowledge and are in harmony with the time, all selfish separatist tendencies are excluded, and no mistake is made."

                                                                                                                                                the I Ching

Despite delays in the legal arena, the return of the Pacifica network to listener and staff control appears certain. The questions now become, What kind of Pacifica will we get? What will we do with it?

When we get the network back, we will get a network, as listener Janice Heiss said, whose "primary goal [has been] to increase audience share." We will get the fruit of a decade of mismanagement and changes in basic programming and structure. We will get two stations whose listeners barely remember community-based radio and whose staffs oppose to the very idea of it. We will get five staffs exhausted and emotionally at odds after divisive union struggles, purges and the routine disempowerment of unpaid staff. As KPFA programmer Weyland Southon once put it, "We don’t trust each other. And I would say that’s about it."

Pacifica will return surrounded by many groups of alienated community people who are resentful at their exclusion. Its volunteer base has been massively degraded and its affiliate stations no longer see the network as a model for cutting-edge progressive programming. At all levels Pacifica is plagued with distrust between individuals and hostility toward its structure.

Long-time activist Lynn Gerry has traced the roots and results of this change since 1991. You can read her detailed chronology at www.radio4all.org/freepacifica. She has called for a truth commission to take a detailed look at the finances, influences, structure, culture and goals of the false Pacifica, as well as Pacifica as we want it to be.

Pacifica has tens of thousands of diverse listeners, as well as two hundred or more specific individuals for whom Pacifica (or related community radio) is a significant part of their lives. If we remove the current Pacifica authority, what will happen? Will the pent up energy explode in divisive arguments? Or, will it come together synchronistically to strengthen and expand the network?

One large barrier to a graceful transition is money. Pacifica, according to Lynn Gerry, has "spent more than a million dollars on legal actions, anti-union and other consultants, armed guards and personnel of questionable usefulness." Until legal discovery, Pacifica’s accounting is unavailable but the board has justified so many actions on a need for cost cutting that activists worry about actual bankruptcy. R. Paul Martin, union steward at WBAI, reported that "By January 1999, the [WBAI deficit] was finalized at $204,000." Before the fact-finding begins for a truth commission or money is spent to establish apprenticeship programs at the four stations that have none, we will have to find out about the money.

Activist Jim Curtis is not alone in believing "public broadcasting funds from the government should be eliminated." Can we afford this principle? National Spokesperson for the Pacifica Listener’s Union Rafael Renteria, estimates that CPB funds 20% of Pacifica as he points out that listeners fund 80%. Can we afford to continue to give the government the ability to meddle? We will not be able to answer such questions until, as Alice Chan says, "we know what it costs to run the network and the financial consequences of ‘reprogramming’ the Houston and D.C. stations."

The Pacifica Listeners Union proposed by-law changes for a 27 seat national board directly elected by listeners and fifteen member listener-elected station boards who "would have the power to veto programming changes before they are enacted." Their proposal is one of several conflicting plans for restructuring power within the network.

In a blue-cover document, four WBAI people say, "Pacifica needs to strike a balance between centralization and participatory democracy." This balance is unlikely to emerge quickly. And if it is imposed abruptly, as is possible in a legal settlement, many will find the new Pacifica is as oppressive as the old. Talented, skilled people who have weathered this long struggle could easily bolt at their first disagreement with a new reign.

A time of transition is obviously necessary. Whether a year or two or even a decade, this period must give interim jobs, have an interim board and set interim policies until the Pacifica community finds agreement in at least some of its problem areas.

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