I am proud of the
unified stand taken by KPFA's staff and supporters during the most critical moments of the last six months. But I'm troubled by what I've seen recently.Identity politics is rearing its ugly head. Unpaid
staff are now having meetings and social events apart from paid staff. People are attempting to reinstitute a Women's Department, a Third World Department and goodness knows what other department based on
political faction rather than radio function.
I would remind everyone that the mere presence of certain skin colors, gender identities, age groups or departments based on such affinities, does not
automatically guarantee the presence of the ideas that need a voice on our airwaves.
Remember that our greatest adversary is an African American female, and that her henchman is a woman. Remember
that a white male board member publicly exposed as a lie repeated denials that sale of the station was being discussed. Remember that the courage of one white male in nonviolently facing down four others on
July 13 ultimately led to 15,000 people of all colors, genders and ages peacefully marching to demand the return of the station to its community. Remember that the technique of splicing tape is
the same whether or not you get a paycheck. And remember the potential of identity politics to divide us when we must be united against a common foe.
As various groups on staff and in the community try to
stake out their turf in a so-called transformed KPFA, the debate over how the station should operate in the future begs the question of whether there is a future for KPFA.
We are in nothing
less than a state of war with the Berry Cabal. They ruthlessly seek the destruction of Pacifica as envisioned by its founders, the Pacifica we chose to join. To this end, they have squandered the resources
of our listener-sponsors and of the city which is our home; they have retained union-busting lawyers, put high-level political pressure on the police, and engaged in a policy of disinformation that
characterizes us
as potentially violent. This last even though it is Pacifica itself that employs psychological violence through its gaggings and firings throughout the network, and it is Pacifica that raised the specter of physical violence by bringing into our midst armed guards specializing in hostile terminations.
We may think of this as "our station," but the law recognizes the Pacifica Foundation as KPFA's owner. Pacifica can choose to dispose of us, and, in the current political climate of deregulation and
privatization, we cannot rely on the government to stop it. It is imperative that we dispose of the Berry Cabal by any and all legal and nonviolent means, before it disposes of us. To argue now over who gets
airtime is to build castles in the sand with the flood tide coming in.
Regaining the studios did not mean we've won the war or even that we're fighting it well. I don't think we are. In public discourse,
we have failed to throughly and frequently discredit Pacifica's definition of internal matters not fit for discussion on the air. We have failed to throughly and frequently discredit Berry's use of
statistics from Arbitron and Audiographics as the measure of our diversity and the basis of our continued existence. We have not done nearly enough to bring to light just what political or financial gain the
Berry Cabal stands to reap from its actions.
In other words, we have reacted, sometimes effectively, but still only reacted, to Pacifica's attacks and assertions. We must be more proactive in defining the
terms of the debate. In a war of words, whoever defines the terms wins.
