Pacifica Calls for a Pacifica Listeners Strike
by Rafael Renteria Past News Director & past Program Director at KPFT January 25, 2000
Today, Pacifica Reporters Against Censorship announced their readiness to strike, demanding an end to censorship throughout the network. Meanwhile, activists with Pacifica’s affiliate stations are hard at work in an effort to organize a strike against Pacifica National News, and grassroots activists in the fight to free Pacifica are calling for a listener strike, or boycott, and the notion is spreading at electronic speeds in the listener movement.
The combined potential of these actions and the mood of the people who are increasingly determined to win the battle for a free Pacifica can’t be ignored. Now is the time to lay our course for the coming year.
Last year, our struggle established one incontrovertible fact: The key to victory, the key to defeating the Pacifica National Board, lies in united, radical, direct action by Pacifica staff and listeners together.
When the KPFA staff dared to rebel, dared to openly and consistently expose Pacifica’s abuses over the airwaves, they won the support of many thousands of people. When the showdown came and Pacifica moved to shut down KPFA, hundreds of listeners seized the KPFA building itself in a thrilling and potent act of defiance in the face of Pacifica’s armed guards and Berkeley police. Thousands filled the streets, disrupting business as usual, forcing Pacifica to relent, to reopen the doors of the Berkeley station.
Faced with a difficult decision, the staff made a misstep. They reentered the station. The result? KPFA staff had the station - but Pacifica still had the power, and was giving none of it up. The Board has proved utterly intransigent.
First, they toyed with mediation and the KPFA Steering Committee negotiators in complete bad faith. Pacifica used the mediation process to dangle carrots, to keep hope alive that change could come through talking with them. They later allowed a single, token representative of the Berkeley community to be seated on the Board - then immediately passed a renewed "Gag Rule" which was almost instantly used to crush dissent at Pacifica National News in Washington D.C. As if to drive the point home, at a recent National Board meeting, one Board member ripped in two a set of demands presented to him by a listener. And now, Pacifica has fled to DC, moving its HQ from Berkeley, precisely to insulate itself from listener demands.
The verdict is in. Pacifica intends to carry out its Strategic Five-Year Plan to mainstream Pacifica programming no matter what the cost. No efforts at mediation, splitting the National Board, appealing to the Democratic Party, or playing by Pacifica’s rules in any arena whatsoever will change that.
Listeners are increasingly fed up and searching for alternatives. One call for a listener boycott by KPFA listener Randy Schutt has been getting a lot of attention. Schutt, who is a long time facilitator of workshops on nonviolent direct action says, "... the power elite only have power because many other people consent to their actions... The KPFA staff is actively consenting to the orders/ directions of the Pacifica Board and all the rest of us are passively consenting. We need to stop doing this. The most obvious way we are consenting is by collecting money from the listeners and passing it on to Pacifica... WE CAN STOP DOING THIS. This will greatly undercut the power of the Pacifica board... It is time for them to have to respond to our actions instead of us always trying to respond to their actions...precipitating a crisis is to our advantage. Cutting off support (money) from Pacifica is to our advantage. Continuing the way we have for the last 8 months is NOT."
Are these arguments realistic? I think so. Certainly they are more realistic than waiting idly while Pacifica lays plans to break the back of the resistance at KPFA, more realistic than negotiating from a position of weakness and certainly more realistic than waiting for the Democrats to intervene on the listener’s behalf. No other strategy has been able to subject Pacifica to listener influence or control.
The Declaration of the Pacifica Listeners Union puts it this way. "There is only one group of people in our movement who cannot be threatened or bribed, only one group that is not subject to the pressures the Pacifica National Board can exert- and that group is the listeners."
"The power of the listeners - expressed through their sponsorship and their ability to strike through withholding or redirecting their contributions - is inescapable. Try as it may to isolate itself, the Pacifica National Board is subject to that power."
Although Pacifica bows at every opportunity to the dictates of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides 20 % of its funds, the other 80% of its operating expenses come from us, the listeners. We hold the purse strings, a fact the powers that be must dread.
Waiting to act can only retard the possibilities that a listener strike can reach its full potential in a timely way. Strikes spread slowly, and their first and most important impact is political. The economic impact comes later. We should define or own terms and set realistic goals for a strike over a protracted period.
A single national escrow account should be created, with monies earmarked from each station- an account that would use its own funds to defend itself from attack, that would pay the salaries of KPFA and WBAI staffers when the strike has spread. We should grasp that Pacifica belongs to its listeners first, to its staffs second, and to the bore-o-crats not at all. It is our right as listeners to take the lead and to exercise the powers we hold.
Together with the Pacifica Reporters and the Affiliates, we are in a position to strike a powerful blow. This is a moment we should all seize together.
As a beginning place, our strike should be grounded in one fundamental demand - the removal or resignation of the entire Pacifica National Board and its replacement by an interim board elected directly by the listeners.
Let’s start there, and work out the rest. The possibilities of winning sweeping and fundamental structural changes in Pacifica are right before us.
To contact the Pacific Listeners Union: phone: 323/960-7655 email: listenersunion@hotmail.com website: http://www.pacificalistenersunion.org/ mail: PLU 3609 Rosewood Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90066 ________________________Rafael Renteria is a former program director and news director at Pacifica station KPFT in Houston. He is the National Spokesperson and a founding member of the Pacifica Listeners Union.
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