BERKELEY -- Pacifica Foundation backed up the moving van late Wednesday and slipped surreptitiously out of Berkeley, headed for Washington, D.C., and (it hopes) friendlier environs.
While the beleaguered corporation -- parent of KPFA and four other listener-sponsored radio stations nationwide -- might have hoped to avoid protests by leaving unannounced late at night, it didn't avoid criticism.
"What a coward Pacifica is," said Barbara Lubin, Friends of KPFA member. "I got a call from a young woman who saw the truck. ... To do it at 10 p.m. is pretty bizarre, like thieves in the night."
Lynn Chadwick, Pacifica's executive director, defended the nighttime move. She said Thursday that the corporation decided it would be best not to give advance notice -- not even to radio station staff who share the building.
"We didn't want to announce it to anybody," Chadwick said. "We wanted a smooth transition."
Interpret that: no protesters blocking the entrance as there were last summer after a station manager and two popular programmers were fired for discussing Pacifica's management moves on the air.
Chadwick said she was just carrying out orders from the Pacifica board, which voted in October to relocate the national offices to Washington to be closer to the Corporation for Public Public Broadcasting, the Federal Communications Commission and other public interest groups.
She said the move would have no effect on KPFA operations.
"I don't think it's a sad day," she said. "The organization is trying to see itself as a national network and function in a strategic way. I see it as a positive move."
The Washington offices will open Jan.18. Pacifica is a California corporation and the tax consequences of such a move were not immediately known. Pacifica already is under investigation by the California Legislative Audit Committee for its actions and expenditures during a 23-day paid lockout of KPFA staff last summer.
The committee is investigating whether Pacifica violated its tax-exempt status by using $500,000 in listener donations for a high-priced public relations firm and armed security guards.
On Thursday, some listeners were incensed at the secret move, but others said good riddance. Mayor Shirley Dean said she wasn't not surprised and hoped it would not affect KPFA's independent programming.
But all agreed it was the latest odd twist in a long and uneasy marriage between KPFA and Pacifica, founded 50 years ago in Berkeley on a platform of free speech by Lewis Hill, a pacifist opposed to World War II.
Of Pacifica's five stations -- which also include KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston, WBAI in New York and WPFW in Washington, D.C. -- KPFA-Radio (94.1 FM) was the first, and its listeners are especially critical of Pacifica management.
The most recent spat started in 1995 when then-Pacifica executive director Pat Scott cut KPFA staff and programs.
Lynn Chadwick replaced Scott as executive director in 1998, and longtime Pacifica critics were cautiously heartened when Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, took over as head of the Pacifica board.
By last February, the bloom was off the rose. Pacifica had stripped each station's local advisory board members of their voting power. On March 31, Chadwick fired popular KPFA station manager Nicole Sawaya, saying she did not go along with management's plan to increase and diversify the audience. Chadwick issued a gag order against airing bad news about Pacifica.
Larry Bensky, an award-winning Pacifica journalist, was fired after he talked on air about Sawaya's ouster. Volunteer folk music host Robbie Osman went next.
Loyal KPFA listeners protested in the streets, but the final straw came on July 13 when Flashpoints! newsman Dennis Bernstein aired a news conference critical of Pacifica and was ordered from the station by a Pacifica manager.
Instead, Bernstein broadcast the verbal tussle. Minutes later the station was yanked off the air. When the night was over, 53 protesters had been arrested.
The staff was locked out with pay for three weeks. Their struggle became national news.
Aileen Alfandary, co-director of KPFA's news department, said staff morale is at an all-time low. She can't believe the change from just a year ago.
"People have mixed feelings about it," she said. "My feeling is good riddance. I work for a pacifist organization, but I have murderous feelings."
Sherry Gendelman, a local KPFA advisory board member, called Pacifica's leaving "a terrible blow."
"Pacifica is putting itself inside the Beltway; no protests there," she said.
Gendelman and others will form a welcome wagon to greet Pacifica when it opens for business in Washington. She said she hopes Pacifica's clandestine move will inspire Pacifica listeners to "up their efforts" on behalf of community radio.
"Pacifica has created such acrimony, distrust and hard feelings in the community," she said. "It sickens me that it has sunk to this level. "It just indicates Pacifica intends to abandon the principals on which it was founded."