RESISTANCE GROWS TO “CHRISTMAS COUP D’ETAT ” AT WBAI

by Bill Weinberg

The dissenters are calling for a boycott of station fund-raising marathons, and for listeners to instead support a legal effort to unseat the Pacifica Board, which they charge is illegally constituted.

The crisis began on November 29, when 10-year veteran Station General Manager Valerie Van Isler received a letter giving her an ultimatum: to accept a job with the Pacifica National Board in Washington DC, or resign. She refused to do either, and was informed on December 5 that her last day on the job was to be December 31. She still refused to step down.

Van Isler had previously testified against the rights of unpaid staff to union representation before the National Labor Relations Board at the Pacifica Foundation’s request. But in a turn-around, she had just signed a nine-month extension of the union contract recognizing the rights of the unpaid staff to be represented by the United Electrical Workers Local 404. She also broke ranks with the Foundation’s National Board over their efforts to rein in the autonomy of Amy Goodman’s network-wide “Democracy Now!” show, which is produced at BAI and has come under criticism for its coverage of such “unpopular” issues as the Iraq sanctions and political prisoners Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

On December 22, between 10 and 11:30 PM, Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash and WBAI “Talk Back” host Utrice Leid entered the station, and changed the locks on the front door.

Hours later, at 1:15 AM on December 23, Utrice interrupted the Creative Unity Collective hip-hop culture broadcast to announce on the air that she had been appointed interim general manager. “I’m delighted to inform you that I have been named as general manager,” she said. “Everything is fine, there is no coup, just me. There is no SWAT team here...”

Later that morning, at 7:15 and 8:45 respectively, Program Director and “Wake Up Call” co-host Bernard White and his co-producer and UE shop steward Sharan Harper received hand-delivered letters at their homes by personal messenger, informing them they had been terminated—on Pacifica stationery, and signed by Bessie Wash. These terminations were illegal: the duties of Pacifica executive director do not include internal station personnel decisions under the Pacifica by-laws.

Later that day, it was announced on the air that Bernard and Sharan were barred from the premises, would be assumed to be trespassing if they showed up and dealt with accordingly, and that anyone who aided them would be subject to disciplinary measures.

In the following days, guards were brought in, who denied access to various producers who arrived at the station, and Utrice announced at internal station meetings that the following personnel were banned: “Wake-Up Call” engineer and co-producer Janice K. Bryant, and longtime volunteers Cerene Roberts, Ursula Ruedenberg and Rosalie Hoffman. Public spaces within the station are now locked as well, and ADT Securities has reportedly been contacted to install surveillance cameras.

Guards were placed in the station round-the-clock, including off-duty police, who only let in people on an approved list. The purged staffers are demanding their re-instatement, and charge the Pacifica National Board with illegally interfering in internal station matters.

On January 9, Utrice announced that the WBAI Local Advisory Board would be denied access to the station for their monthly meeting if they included a public commentary period (as mandated by station by-laws). On January 23, the LAB put this edict to the test. When Leid persisted in barring entry to the banned volunteers, nine supporters refused to move from the hallway and were arrested, including two LAB members—Miguel Maldonado and Vicente Panama Alba of the National Congress for Puerto Rican rights. They all spent that night in The Tombs.

On January 31, as a WBAI fundraising marathon was announced, “Democracy Now!” co-host Juan Gonzalez announced he was stepping down in protest of the coup and launching a national campaign to unseat the Pacifica board. He called for listeners nationwide to withhold donations to Pacifica and instead support ongoing litigation against the board.

On February 9, three days into the marathon, 20-year station veteran Mimi Rosenberg was sacked as co-producer of “Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report.”

On February 13, longtime “Wake-Up Call” news anchor Robert Knight, was informed that both he and co-host Amy Goodman—two of the station’s most popular producers—have been removed from the show.

On March 5, Ken Nash, the remaining producer of “Building Bridges” was cut off mid-broadcast by Utrice Leid—during a live telephone interview with Rep. Major Owens, in which he was discussing the station’s undemocratic direction. “Building Bridges” was cancelled, and Major Owens denounced the censorship on the floor of Congress: “Mr. Speaker, tyrants in control of totalitarian countries like China, Serbia and Iraq consider control of the airwaves an absolute necessity. They ruthlessly enforce censorship of a kind few of us in America can imagine. Las Monday, however, I had the weird and frightening experience of being gagged by a radio station manager in my own home city of New York.”

On March 9, “Wake-Up Call” Friday morning host Mario Murillo resigned after being reprimanded by management for airing a live telephone interview with the fired Amy Goodman.

On March 28, “Behind the News” co-producer Deepa Fernandes, who had protested the firings and bannings over the air, was pulled from the air on no notice.

On March 31, “Grandpa” Al Lewis, the former Green Party senatorial candidate and veteran TV star of “Munsters” fame, one of the station’s most popular personalities, was indefinitely “suspended” after a guest on his show had voiced protest over the firing of Knight and Goodman. He has not been returned to the airwaves.

The situation came to blows on June 4, when a group called Listeners Outraged, Upset and Determined to Restore A Progressive Pacifica (LOUD RAPP) actually tried to gain access to WBAI’s studios, and succeeded in getting their chanting picked up by an on-air mike. Lied-appointed morning news anchor Paul DeRienzo got into a physical altercation with a reporter from the Independent Media Center covering the protest. Both DeRienzo and IMC reporter Kevin Prichard were slightly hurt, and Prichard is considering pressing charges.

On July 25, Robert Knight arrived at the studio for his midnight “Earthwatch” show to find a memo informing him it had been cancelled—citing his alleged accidental destruction of equipment. He was also indefinitely suspended from the WBAI News, effectively barring him from the station entirely.

On August, 7, “Health Action” co-hosts Bob Lederer and Kathy Davis (both prominent in the listeners’ movement) arrived at the studio to find a memo informing them that they had been removed from the show, leaving it in the hands of their erstwhile third co-host (who acquiesced with management). Kathy Davis was told she could continue to host her other show, “Heart of Mind,” only if she refrained from programming “with the intent to inspire listeners to go against the will of current management” and showed “enthusiastic participation in our fundraising events.” Lederer, who had no other show, was banned from the station.

That the listeners who support non-commercial radio have a right to a voice at their station was the radical founding doctrine of the Pacifica network, which was launched by World War II pacifists and conscientious objectors. But the Pacifica National Board is today a virtual who’s who of corporate America, and is moving to homogenize the five member stations in New York, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Houston and Washington DC. Since voting to centralize all power in its own hands in February 1999, the Pacifica board has been a self-perpetuating entity, denying the member stations any voice on appointments.

At the top of the list is Pacifica Treasurer Michael Palmer, a Houston real estate developer who invests in maquiladora factories in northern Mexico. In a leaked 1999 e-mail to then-Pacifica chair Mary Francis Berry, he urged the sale of WBAI to private interests. Palmer resigned in May 2001 in response to listener pressure across the network.

Remaining on the board are:

*John Murdock, a corporate attorney whose globe-spanning New York firm, Epstein, Becker & Green, specializes in “maintaining a union-free workplace.”

* Bertram Lee, Sr., a DC entrepreneur and business partner of the late US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who has served as a Reebok corporate board member and co-owner of the Denver Nuggets basketball team. He specializes in media buy-outs, with DC’s WKYS-FM and Boston’s CBS TV affiliate among his recent conquests.

*Ken Ford, a lobbyist for the pro-deregulation National Alliance of Homebuilders

Proposed new additions to the board include Luis Wilmot, who heads the AT&T-backed pro-deregulation Texas Partnership for Competition, and Francisco Ricciolo, a Citibank VP. Pacifica recently backed down from Ricciolo’s appointment in the face of growing protest form listeners.

There are three lawsuits currently pending against the Pacifica Foundation for violation of its own charter: one by a group of listeners, one by dissident members of the National Board, and one by members of the Pacifica stations’ Local Advisory Boards.

The Foundation was also recently audited by the state legislature in California, where it is incorporated. In 1999, the Foundation relocated to Washington DC in the face of ongoing protests at its old Berkeley offices over the crisis at the local member station there, KPFA. For several weeks in the summer of 1999, all staff were locked out and the station occupied by a private armed security force when Pacifica similarly removed longtime KPFA Station Manager Nicole Sawaya. The California Joint Legislative Audit Committee report found that Pacifica may have violated the rules of its tax exemption by locking out KPFA staff in breach of their contract with the Communication Workers of America.

The work of purging the Pacifica network is largely completed. The Houston station, KPFT, which was once intensely multilingual (reflecting the city’s diverse population) and had actually been bombed by the Ku Klux Klan twice in the 1970s for its outspoken defense of minority rights, underwent “reprogramming” in the early 1990s and now plays almost entirely country & western music. The DC station, WPFW, plays almost entirely “conservatory jazz.” KPFK in Los Angeles still maintains some political programming, but within closely circumscribed limits. Only KPFA in Berkeley and WBAI in New York remain undomesticated.

Another rewrite of the Pacifica by-laws—drafted by John Murdock—now seek to empower a small five-member “executive board” within the twelve-member Pacifica board to sell off member stations. These proposed by-law changes were tabled when over 200 listener activists descended on the Pacifica board’s annual meeting in Houston, March 2-4, 2001.

An alliance of WBAI staff and subscribers has mobilized to defend WBAI’s autonomy. The alliance, Concerned Friends of WBAI, has held several well-attended protests outside the station’s Wall Street offices, and won much mainstream media coverage. Most recently, on April 28, listeners and dissident staff marched over the Brooklyn Bridge to rally outside WBAI, over 1,000 strong.

The organization launched by Juan Gonzalez, The Pacifica Campaign, is openly competing with the station for listeners’ donations. Both groups are demanding recision of the terminations, lifting of the bannings and establishment of a democratic governance structure for both the station and the Foundation.

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Concerned Friends of WBAI
POB 21711
Brooklyn, NY 11202-1711
(718) 707-7189
http://www.savewbai.tao.ca

The Pacifica Campaign
51 MacDougal St., #80
NY, NY 10012
(646) 230-9586
http://www.pacificacampaign.org

WBAI
120 Wall Street
NY, NY 10005 (212) 209-2800
http://www.wbai.org