Letters to San Francisco Bay Guardian
in response to KPFA General Manager Marci Lockwood's letter to the editor
on July 10, 1996, in which she accuses ex-staff member Gilardin of "violent
behavior" at a Pacifica Board meeting:
first, from an eyewitness:
Editor:
For those who are trying to sort out the ongoing dispute between the management of Pacifica/KPFA radio and its critics, reading KPFA general manager Marci Lockwood's letter [7/10/96] won't help. In it she exhibits the reckless dishonesty that has characterized her pronouncements and that of her boss, Pacifica Radio Executive Director Pat Scott, regarding the foundation's critics since Pacifica embarked on its Strategy for National Programming three years ago.
For raising embarrassing questions about the new "strategy" before the Pacifica board, former KPFA development director and programmer Maria Gilardin earned the enmity of Pacifica's ruling elite.
It was this and not any "violent behavior" on Gilardin's part at the Pacifica board meeting in LA in 1993, as Lockwood asserts in her letter, which led to her being banned from Pacifica stations.
Having been there, I can attest that what Lockwood labels as "violent behavior" was Maria's response to board chair Jack O'Dell's sudden adjournment of the meeting during the public-comment period. O'Dell had promised her and several others, including myself, that we could make personal statements to the board at the end of the public-comment session.
Each of us had previously read brief statements: Maria officially represented the KPFA staff and I was speaking for the Save KPFA listeners' group, a predecessor to Take Back KPFA. O'Dell assured us that we could speak again after everyone who wished to speak could be heard.
We were stunned when he abruptly adjourned the meeting without fulfilling his promise. While I called on him to keep his word, Maria said that the doors to the auditorium should be kept closed so that the board would have to listen to what we had to say. No one paid any attention to her plea; the doors to the auditorium were opened and most of the board members strolled out into the West Hollywood sunshine.
Maria stood by the side of the double doors, a stack of papers in her arm, imploring the board members to stay. That sequence of events, she was later informed by mail, constituted an act of violence and for that she was banned from setting foot in any Pacifica station.
It is not just a matter of our word against theirs. A dissident KPFA staffer videotaped the meeting and recorded the event. This clip, which has been shown at La Pea, not only affirms what I have described but captures Lockwood herself, walking by the camera, with a wide, self-satisfied grin.
Postscript: the 1993 board meeting was held during a KPFA fund drive. Just prior to the meeting, Maria produced two programs which brought in $2,000 for the station. The subject of the second program was "democracy," an unwelcome concept in the corridors of KPFA and Pacifica Radio these days.
JEFFREY BLANKFORT
Member, coordinating committee Take Back KPFA
A word from the banned
KPFA general manager Marci Lockwood's reference to the events that led to me being banned from Pacifica following the foundation's board meeting in Los Angeles in June 1993 was predictably self-serving. What she describes as my "violent behavior" was nothing more than my vocal objection (in which I was joined by others) at not being allowed to make personal statements before the board after having been promised by the chair that I and others would be permitted to do so.
What caused Pacifica's executive committee to act against me was my outspoken opposition to a secret Strategy for National Programming, which the board had approved five months earlier. The basic goal of this "strategy" was to move KPFA and other Pacifica stations away from their legacy of providing community-based radio and toward a nationally centered format with the programming essentially determined by the Pacifica national office.
I went to L.A. hoping to receive answers to questions I had submitted to the board in Berkeley in February 1993. As a former development director of KPFA, I had worked under the premise that "in any communications system, the manner in which you fund that system will undoubtedly determine what is produced."
Consequently, I was disturbed by a report on funding proposals that was appended to the national strategy guidelines. It indicated that grant applications had already been submitted to several of the same corporate foundations that fund National Public Radio, such as the Pew Charitable Trust. Why, I wanted to find out, had Pacifica abandoned its 40-year ban on seeking funds from corporate foundations?
I was also curious to hear Pacifica's justification for raising all of its managerial salaries while simultaneously threatening to cut staff at KPFA (Flashpoints) at a time when Pacifica showed the highest listener support in its history (triggered by the outpouring of contributions during the Gulf War).
Neither I nor anyone outside the Pacifica board may ever know the answers to these and other questions concerning Pacifica's operations, since at present the board holds all but a token amount of its meeting time in executive session and restricts its minutes to members' eyes only.
MARIA GILARDIN
San Francisco96_07
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