KPFA/Pacifica: Lords & Ladies vs. the Peasants

The Legacy of the '90s at KPFA

at KPFA/Pacifica

Lords & Ladies vs. the Peasants


by Daniel Borgström
Sept 16, 2024

Longtime KPFA listeners remember 1999 as the year of the Hijacking, the Lockout, and the massive response. Ten thousand people marched through the streets of Berkeley chanting "Take back KPFA!" and "Save Pacifica!" The battle was waged in the station's studio, on the streets, and even in the courts. The good guys won, and the hijackers were thrown out. But acolytes of that regime remained, and their proteges are today very much back in control -- the gatekeeper clique at KPFA.

Sadly, the KPFA scenario is often repeated in the affairs of humankind. I missed the French Revolution, but I imagine it went much like the one at KPFA. The Bastille was stormed in a day, but the fight wasn't over. (Still isn't, in fact.) It often seems to follow a pattern: There's a dramatic moment, a historic victory, but then after everything finally seems to be on the road to eternal happiness, come months and years of intense strife. Issues get complicated, seemingly arcane, and it gets vicious. Why the ongoing conflict? people ask, wondering why the former dear comrades can't just be nice to each other and get along. They're all progressives, aren't they? (Or are they?)

The 1999 uprising at KPFA began, very much like the French Revolution, with a split among the power elite. Like Louis XVI of France, the headstrong monarch of KPFA/Pacifica quarreled with her courtiers, threw them out of the palace, locked the gate, and called in mercenary troops -- rent-a-cops. The station's disenfranchised nobility, losing their wits and acting out of sheer desperation, allied themselves with dissidents, appealed to the rabble, and called for mass demonstrations. The response was huge, and to the astonishment of everyone, the rebels emerged victorious. The intolerable monarch went into exile, leaving the kingdom to the triumphant radio-heads -- a motley assemblage of commoners, peasants and riffraff, together with nobility and bureaucrats from the old regime. Everyone pledged eternal loyalty to the ideals of the revolution, the Pacifica Mission Statement.

At first there was wild jubilation, dancing in the streets, and a huge amount of good feeling. All the worthy people were dear sisters and brothers, in a splendid state of living happily ever after. The bluebloods and bureaucrats from the old regime joined in the celebrations together with their low-class brethren, graciously tolerating the situation, putting a good face on it, and biding their time. The problem was that the ungracious mob now expected to have a say in the running of the show. So the lords and ladies were then faced with the daunting task of getting this horde of loud, smelly, cantankerous, meddlesome peasants to leave the castle, go back to tilling the lands, and give up their preposterous notions of involving themselves in governance of the station.

Major differences and animosities began to surface during the drafting of Pacifica's new constitution, known as "The Bylaws." Courtiers and bureaucrats from the old regime tried to bend the new document to their liking, intending to preserve whatever they could of their former status and privileges; and they did win major concessions. Nevertheless, the dissidents stuck to a vision they'd been nurturing for many long years during the decade preceding 1999. The traditional motto of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" was updated to include "democracy, transparency, accountability."

The outcome, beginning in the early 2000s, was a radically new system of radio governance, a "listener democracy." Listeners who donated $25 or more to the station became voters, choosing their representatives to sit on boards overseeing the KPFA station and the Pacifica radio network. In radio governance, this was a revolutionary concept; however the Lords & Ladies found it absolutely revolting.

There was a time (the good old days) when peasants knew their place. One can sympathize with the plight and anguish of the once proud KPFA aristocrats, courtiers, and bureaucrats, who were to find themselves sitting shoulder to shoulder with unwashed peasants who were elected to the new Local Station Board (the LSB).

KPFA's first board election was held in the winter of 2003-2004, and as spring became summer, the reaction against the new Pacifica Bylaws began. An opening shot was a letter from a patrician lady who declared, "I do think the bylaws are a disaster." Her ladyship, a show host at KPFA, was an enlightened aristocrat, one of capitalism's discontents who loved the downtrodden peasants and hated their oppressors. It was just that she didn't want to see peasants trooping into her castle, intruding on her domain, and stepping on her privileges with their muddy feet.

The newly elected board members took their seats on the newly formed LSB; and the division between the patricians and lower orders soon became apparent. A leaked email of September 1st 2005 revealed that a lord had called his group to a "general strategy session" .and among the topics on his agenda: "how do we make our enemies own the problems that are to come?"

"You consider us your 'enemies'?" fellow board members asked the author of the email. His reply was evasive.

Among other strategic topics listed in that Sept 1st email was the "Roy issue." That referred to a disagreement between the bluebloods and station's general manager (GM) over the scheduling of a popular show, DN! Such a disagreement might seem rather insignificant, but it suggested that the manager was not a yes-man, inclined to do the do the bluebloods' bidding. So grounds had to be found for his dismissal.

They charged the manager with sexual molestation, a charge which did not hold up under investigation. Although the manager was cleared of charges, the accusations created an unpleasant, or even toxic atmosphere. Eventually, in Jan 2006, the mgr. was fired, but for undisclosed reasons. That became a landmark victory for the lords and ladies, and every general manager since then, from 2006 to the present (2024) has been more or less in their pocket.

According to the Bylaws, the LSB has considerable power in its job of overseeing the station. It plays a role in selecting the General Manager, and is required to do a yearly job performance evaluation of the manager. In practice, the bluebloods on the board have been able to avoid such obligations and render the board ineffectual. In 2020 it was discovered that property taxes hadn't been paid on the station's studio building for over 6 years, and the Alameda County tax office was about to seize the property and auction it off. That upset some listeners who urged board members to hold the station's manager accountable. However, the lordly faction, which held a board majority, came to the manager's defense, and passed a motion (11-20-2020) reading:

"The KPFA Local Station Board finds that due to numerous false and/or misleading accusations made about the KPFA General Manager, it is not possible for the KPFA Local Station Board to conduct a fair and unbiassed evaluation of the KPFA General Manager at this time." (And in their motion they misspelled "unbiased.")

At first glance, this might appear to be a worker-run collective, a socialist ideal. Sadly however, that is not the reality at KPFA. The bluebloods who became the gatekeepers of the station are a relatively small clique of holdovers from the hijacker regime of the 1990s which was linked to the Clinton Administration. They and their acolytes, though few in number, are well connected to entities outside the station. Most of the unpaid staff, who in fact produce most of the programming, are excluded from the ruling clique, as are some of the paid programmers. They're part of the peasantry.

Their faction which represents them on the LSB has used several names over the years; currently they call themselves the "Protectors," and they openly state that they protect the staff and management -- which they do. (That is, they protect members of their in-group and mgrs. who align themselves with the lords and ladies.) And they boast that the station is doing great.

In reality, the station is surviving -- but not doing great. Listener subscribership has fallen to about half of what it was a decade ago. This problem is not unique to KPFA -- public radio stations almost everywhere are losing listeners. Young people turn to podcasts, and other online sources of information. KPFA must do more to adapt to technological change and new ways (some now not-so-new) of accessing media. KPFA's archives must be searchable; otherwise they're like a library with no catalog. Multimedia is no longer the future; it's here. More programming must include video -- those are a few of the things that reformers are urging. However, the bluebloods have been slow to make such innovations; perhaps that's the nature of a status quo group.

Meanwhile, the whole purpose of having a radio station is its programming. Since 1949 KPFA has stood up to Joe McCarthy and HUAC, opposed the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and promoted progressive causes. Today many excellent programs at the station are still reporting on a wide variety of events including the genocide in Gaza. Nevertheless, not everything on KPFA is progressive. For over a year the station has been giving nine hours a week to Ian Masters, a show host who has lambasted Venezuela and Cuba, and attacked Mumia Abu-Jamal. Masters calls Mumia's supporters "gullible."

In attempting to describe the situation at KPFA, I've been using the analogy of Lords, Ladies and Peasants; though some observers with a somewhat less medieval mindset might prefer to call it "class struggle." Call it what you may, the station is run by a power elite who lord it over the rest. And though this is a leftwing radical radio station where almost everybody would consider themselves "Progressives," I would suggest calling them "establishment progressives." The operative word here is "establishment."

At the root of the problem is a legacy of the hijacker regime of the 1990s that never got resolved. The picture is not encouraging, but I don't think it's impossible either. I'm just saying that we have a long and hard battle ahead of us.


DANIEL BORGSTRÖM


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Right now the station is having an election for the LSB. Although I call it a struggle between the Lords and Ladies vs. the Peasants, it could also be called a struggle between the status quo folks and the reformers. The reformers, known as "RESCUE PACIFICA are presenting these eight excellent candidates, or as I might call them: uncommon commoners.

Rabab Abdulhadi - Professor at San Francisco State; Palestinian scholar / activist

Donna Carter - Retired nurse and California Nurses Association contract negotiator

Stan Woods - Oscar Grant committee member; former ILWU Local 6 board member

Virginia Browning - Former radio reporter / producer / program host

Felipe Messina - Modesto Cop Watch member; IBEW member; clean-air campaigner

Pathma Venasithamby - Jewish Voice for Peace member

Phoebe Thomas (Sorgen) - Social Justice Committee of Berkeley Unitarian-Universalists

Michai Freeman - Disability-rights organizer; former Berkeley City Council candidate

These Rescue Pacifica candidates are endorsed by past and present KPFA staff members, including Andres Soto, Peter Phillips, Joy Moore, Ann Garrison, Frank Sterling, and Anthony Fest, as well as many peace and justice advocates. Please read more at rescuepacifica.net



Your "STV" ballot allows you to vote for multiple candidates; please vote for all eight Rescue-Pacifica candidates. Thanks for your support!



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KPFA 94.1 FM is one of five stations of the Pacifica radio network which are located in major cities across the country. The other stations are WBAI 99.5 in New York, WPFW 89.3 in Washington DC, KPFT 90.1 in Houston, and KPFK 90.7 in Los Angeles. There are also about 160 affiliate stations.



Vote for Rescue Pacifica

rescuepacifica.net

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This is an updated and expanded version of an article I wrote years ago.
Daniel