EDITORIAL OPINION
Gary Evans 
December 19, 1999

 

This issue of the NB4 KPFA Folio is being sent out January 15^th - the day of Martin Luther King's birth. The Civil Rights movement was powerfully and lovingly advanced by Dr. King. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission is currently chaired by Mary Francis Berry. Dr. Berry also chairs the Pacifica Foundation where her words have championed fair play and diversity, but her actions have had the opposite effect. Who is this woman, or rather, what forces appear to dominate her behavior?

As played repeatedly over KPFA during the lockout, the words of Mary Berry state that her overriding purpose is to seek increased racial, age, and ethnic diversity throughout Pacifica. Yet it is on Dr. Berry's watch, and under her direct instruction, that we witness a powerful attack on Pacifica’s rich, multiracial, multiethnic, and diverse community -- the attack of its life.

Bay Area residents will recall the sounds of Pacifica's Houston station, KPFT, when its signal was forced though KPFA's transmitter as it was held captive by an armed national security force six months ago. As this community well knows, what was heard over 94.1 was not the voice of diversity.

What could possibly motivate a past civil rights advocate and current commission head to so high-handedly decide what voice a community radio station should provide to its community? There is convincing evidence that a plan to sell one or more stations was drawn by National Board members (under Dr. Berry’s direction). The revenue generated would then be used to purchase new stations where people of color would supposedly be better served. How does this plan reconcile the pain inflicted on KPFA’s multiethnic/multiracial community (and those of Los Angeles, Houston, New York, and Washington D.C.)? It doesn’t.

I consider it a given that many of Dr. Berry’s motives are high minded -- that she seeks to do well. All of us in our complexity, however, display both loving and destructive behaviors over time. In attempting to understand the forces that dominate Dr. Berry’s reasoning, the results of her labors seem the most reasonable objective measure. These are the facts: 1) Dr. Berry and her representatives have never held a public forum, nor have they allowed for ongoing dialog with this community about Pacifica’s vision and future; 2) Racial and ethnic programming and employee diversity has decreased throughout the Pacifica network on her watch; 3) Using the excuse that physical force was required to protect people and property for a three week period, but not before or since, an armed security force occupied KPFA this past summer (when over $500,000 of subscriber money was squandered); 4) Open reporting of newsworthy events has been and remains suppressed with people either fired or removed from microphones for speaking freely and within customary bounds of radio reportage; 5) Bylaw changes were introduced that have removed all community input into the governance structure of the National Board; 6) Mary Berry and her colleagues have constructed a 5-year plan to increase listenership by pitching to the mainstream (a technique expected to increase subscribership and to invite government/corporate monetary support, in exchange for a dumbing down of Pacifica’s voice.

What forces appear to have created the fruits of Mary Berry’s labors? First, what forces or realms are before us in this world? In can be argued that there are two fundamental qualities of existence: the realm of the physical as represented by things and objects that can be purchased, and the realm of the spirit, that which is without physical structure and yet which exists. Some people appear to balance these qualities while some adhere more to one or the other. In my view, Dr. Berry and those working with her are insufficiently aware of the spiritual reality that binds this community.

Lao Tsu, Chinese Philosopher and Poet (200-600 BC), had this to say (poetic interpretation):

        Thirty spokes make up the wheel that forms upon a hole,
        but without that which none can feel, how could the carriage roll?

        Four walls are joined through which a hall is born, 
        but it is the space between the walls that make the hall a home.

        Clay is fashioned into shape to form a vessel bowl, 
        but it is the empty space between its walls that makes the vessel whole.

        And so from vessel, wall and wheel this truth we may deduce,
        to what existence renders real, its opposite gives use.

Dr. Berry and her colleagues visualize this community as a component of the physical world -- the world of things and the economic value of those things. Authority is given to monetary gain over the intangible but real spiritual value of KPFA and of the Pacifica concept. In the process, we, along with Mary Berry and her colleagues, are injured.

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