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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Stupid management tricks at a Berkeley public radio station make people care about free speech there -- even if they don't listen to it anymore.
Jul 17, 1999 | It was Bastille Day, Berkeley style. On Wednesday, anniversary of the bourgeoisie's storming of the famous Paris jail, Berkeley's progressive bourgeoisie, all ages and races but heaviest on the middle-aged and white, stormed the headquarters of the Pacifica Radio flagship station KPFA. They were protesting the management decisions of Pacifica's national president, U.S. Civil Rights Commission head Mary Frances Berry, and executive director Lynn Chadwick.
Management's response was about as ill-considered and provocative as "Let them eat cake."
Now, angry protests outside KPFA are in their fourth day, more than 60 people have been arrested, new demonstrations are planned for the weekend and a lawsuit filed Friday in Alameda County upped the stakes in what has devolved into a naked power struggle for control of the Pacifica airwaves.
The ham-handed maneuvers of management -- which include firing popular staff members for discussing the controversy on the air (and dragging one of them out, screaming, mid-broadcast); the stationing of armed guards outside the station; and wanton, baseless race-baiting -- have gotten people who never listen to the left-wing Berkeley station convinced there's a political battle worth joining, here in the birthplace of the 1960s Free Speech Movement.
And while Berry and Chadwick continue to dig in their heels, there is growing evidence that the Pacifica national board, once united in support of the leadership, is beginning to fracture. Though none would speak on the record, several board members expressed strong disapproval of the decision to lock out KPFA workers, and suggested management changes may be needed. And in Alameda County Friday, local Pacifica affiliates filed a lawsuit claiming that recent moves by the Pacifica board to centralize power at the expense of the affiliates were illegal.
At the heart of the controversy is Berry, a nationally-known civil rights leader, who critics charge has ruled with an iron fist since assuming the presidency of the Pacifica National Board in 1997. Under Berry, Pacifica has continued its recent trend of centralizing power in Washington, taking it away from the local satellite stations and even entertaining ideas of selling the New York and Berkeley stations, with an estimated market value of $200 million.
The latest round of wrangling at KPFA began in April, when station manager Nicole Sawaya was fired for refusing to implement national Pacifica policies. Members of the national board say Berry and the executive committee have made clandestine decisions regarding personnel changes and the network's assets without getting the support of the entire board.
Several members of the national board, for instance, were appalled by the decision to place armed guards at the KPFA station in Berkeley. The move was defended as a response to the firing of a rifle-shot into the national headquarters in Berkeley earlier this year.
The guards ignited the most recent controversy Tuesday night, when programmer Dennis Bernstein, whose show was aptly named "Flashpoints," was literally dragged off the air for violating a gag rule against discussing internal strife during his program. He was playing a tape of a press conference Berry had held earlier in the day.
