June 18, 1997
Cracks in the armor
Pacifica board takes flak from local chapters.
MEMBERS OF Pacifica station boards blasted the network -- the
only listener-sponsored progressive radio network in the country -- at
a June 14 national board meeting in Oakland. Nan Rubin of New York's WBAI
and Lauren Ayers of Berkeley's KPFA charged that
the national board planned sweeping changes that would radically centralize
the organization's governance structure, taking power from local stations
and vesting it in the national board.
Pacifica executive director Pat Scott arrived for a closed-door session
of the board's weekend-long meeting at the Oakland Marriott in her new,
cherry-red BMW roadster Saturday morning. Later that day Scott announced
that the nonprofit network would be $100,000 in debt if next year's budget
weren't revised.
In February, local boardmembers were surprised to learn that the national
board planned sweeping governance changes
without any opportunity for public comment. Instead of a national board
selected by directors of local station boards, the new policies allow the
national board to directly select 10 of its 15 members. That's a dramatic
reduction in local control for an organization that has been accused of
anti-democratic tendencies by critics both inside and outside the organization.
Those critics were vocal at this national board meeting -- the first
to be held in the Bay Area since 1995.
Protesters outside the meeting and speakers at Sunday's public comment
period called for democratic elections at the local and national levels.
Only then, they said, will the network fulfill its mission as the voice
of the voiceless.
"As it stands, the people who run Pacifica have nothing but contempt
for democratic ideals," Curt Gray, of Take Back KPFA, said. National
board members had scheduled many of the weekend's sessions to be held behind
closed doors, although the Federal Communications Act requires that they
be open to the public. After pressure from critics, the board opened most,
though not all, of the meetings.
Scott and her supporters have always characterized their opponents as
a fringe element focused on blocking changes Scott needs to make for the
network to survive.
"These people are fucking crazy," Scott remarked loudly on
Saturday.
But her dismissive tone seemed increasingly untenable in light of the
politicking at last weekend's meeting. To be sure, many of the dissidents
are older and distinctly outside the yuppified culture that now dominates
alternative media. Many are former employees and unpaid programmers; most
are former listener-sponsors whose donations paid for the expansion of
Pacifica's national staff and, much to their chagrin, the union-busting
techniques that provoked a labor war at WBAI in New York.
In addition to a strong union presence, local advisory board chairs
from KPFA, WBAI, and KPFK in Los Angeles had their say, and not all of
it was flattering.
Local boards at KPFK, WPFW in Washington, D.C., and KPFA
all opposed the governance changes passed in February and ratified
last weekend, and board members from the stations have spoken out publicly
against the centralization.
David Adelson, a member of the KPFK board who voiced his concerns in
the June issue of the left-of-center monthly Z Magazine,
told the Bay Guardian he has serious concerns about the loss of local control.
"Where is the accountability in this process?" he asked. "The
question is really 'Where is the listener in all this, and how does the
listener have a say?' Pacifica, which bills itself as a progressive organization,
should at the very least institute some basic form of democracy so we can
be sure there is some responsiveness to our needs."
Pacifica's brass, however, says the time for complaints has passed.
Roberta Brooks, secretary of the board, told the Bay Guardian that, contrary
to the public's and local board's understanding, the changes in boardmember
selection had been approved at February's board meeting, before they had
ever been announced to the public or to local boards. A March memo
from Brooks announced the new policies; at that time she told the Bay Guardian
that the full board, made up of representatives from local and national
boards, would approve them at its June meeting. But by last weekend she
had changed her tune, claiming that the changes didn't require the full
board's approval.
"It's a little late," she said.
Does the opposition of three of its five station boards to a major governance
change bother the network's leadership?
"People who really want constructive change will agree with [the
centralization]," national board chair Jack O'Dell told the Bay Guardian.
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