RESOLUTION ON PACIFICA RADIO

WHEREAS, Pacifica Radio's flagship station, KPFA, was established 50 years ago as the nation's first listener- sponsored radio station and as an alternative to the corporate media. and

WHEREAS, beginning in the 1960s when it reported on the historic civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements up to the early 1990s, Pacifica was the "voice of the voiceless," not only providing air-time to activists from labor and women and men from every ongoing struggle for justice at home and abroad, but also assisting as an organizing force in those struggles, but

WHEREAS, since 1992, when Pacifica approved a "Strategy for National Programming,"  which attempted to "professionalize" its stations programming by replacing on-air, unpaid, community activists, with paid, "professional" broadcasters, and

WHEREAS, that "Strategy for National Programming,"  provides for decreasing dependence on listener- sponsorship by soliciting large grants from the same corporate foundations that fund National Public Radio, such as the Pew Charitable Trust, and

WHEREAS,  under this "strategy,"  Pacifica has placed a emphasis on "national programming" over community- based programming, and now has unprecedented power over each station's daily programming schedule, and   WHEREAS, to accomplish this, Pacifica began a mass purge of radical on-air programmers, particularly people of color, and from labor, in August, 1995, beginning with KPFA , despite substantial listener resistance,  and

WHEREAS, Pacifica employed a notorious anti-labor firm, the American Consulting Group, to break the unions at KPFA and its sister stations, WBAI (NY) and KPFK (Los Angeles),  and

WHEREAS,  Pacifica, since 1995, has made continuous efforts to eliminate staff representation on the local advisory boards of its member stations, which are presently self-selected, and has ignored demands that advisory boards be elected by the listener/sponsors, and

WHEREAS,  Pacifica's outgoing Executive Director, Pat Scott,  initiated a collaboration with Robert Coonrod, CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,   and former head of Voice of America and TV/Radio Marti,  supporting elimination of staff representation from the advisory boards, and

WHEREAS,  on the weekend of February 26-28, the Pacifica Governing Board, meeting in Berkeley, will be voting on new by-laws, approving  the elimination of staff representation, and

WHEREAS, that will strip the board of any accountability to either its member stations or it listener/sponsors,  and threaten any  remaining vestiges of Pacifica as a genuine alternative to the corporate media, therefore.

BE IT RESOLVED, that this Labor Party chapter opposes the proposed changes in the Pacifica By-Laws, and further,

BE IT RESOLVED, that we call upon the Pacifica Governing Board to introduce new by-laws that will provide for direct election to the local advisory boards and for the representatives on the Pacifica Governing Board itself, by Pacifica's listener- sponsors, as is the practice at community public radio stations across the country.