Making It Real Compared to What

The politics of the day. The music of the day.
They seem to go hand in hand.

How do they get combined? What is the listener hoping to hear on a community radio station? If the personal is political isn't the musical also personal and therefore political?

The answers are obvious on one level. We feel both politics and music in our souls and in our bones. They are both very real.

But real compared to what?

The KYRS Collective has met six times to date. The discussion and tenor initially tended heavily towards the purely political but has now moved to deal with the purely musical and on to the place where politics and music merge. With issues in the air like what music gets played when and how often and who decides and who loads automation and other important matters, it seems appropriate that deference be given to those requesting that the KYRS Collective conscientiously and collectively address these questions and others as they surface.

NEXT KYRS COLLECTIVE MEETING:
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 @ 6 PM Community Building, 35 W. Main Street, Spokane

http://www.popmatters.com/features/030328-iraq-neal.shtml

(excerpt)

Most classic soul listeners are very familiar with Edwin Starr's chart-topping song "War," which always gets referenced in potted histories of the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," with its passionate, layered, and sophisticated pleas for peace, environmental justice and spiritually is generally regarded as one the most important protest recordings ever released. But very few of the folks who currently have Gaye, Starr, and a host of others on the nostalgia mix-tape, have even a fleeting clue of who Eugene McDaniels is.

And so: Eugene McDaniels had a solid, if not spectacular, recording career in the 1960s, singing pop ditties for the Liberty label. Disenchanted by the state of race relations in the late 1960s, most notably the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., McDaniels took a brief sojourn from the States. During this period, he wrote "Compared to What." The song was initially recorded and released by a young soul vocalist by the name of Roberta Flack: her version appeared as the opening track
on her debut recording, First Take (1969).

A second version of the song was recorded later that year by pianist Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris for their album, Swiss Movement, recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The McCann and Harris version became an international hit, selling over a million copies.

Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris for 1969 album,
Swiss Movement, recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Part 1

Part 2

At a time when black folks, American youth, and anti-war protesters were literally taking it to the streets, "Compared to What" was a scathing critique of social realities in the United States, taking aim at the clergy, "poor dumb rednecks," "tired old ladies," and the Vietnam War. McDaniels' lyrics were clear: even to raise questions about the war in Vietnam was considered an act of treason. McDaniels' observation, of course, resonates powerfully in the post-9/11 world, where folks like Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Noam Chomsky have openly questioned the legitimacy of U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The success of the McCann and Harris recording of "Compared to What" began a new chapter in McDaniels' career, as he was signed to the Atlantic Recording label. But this "second" stage was short-lived. McDaniels recorded two discs for the label, the second of which, Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse (1971), goes down in pop lore as one of the most blatantly political musical tomes ever recorded and released commercially by a major label. Headless Heroes contains critiques of blue-eyed soul ("Jagger the Dagger"); examines the phenomenon of "shopping while black" ("Supermarket Blues") years before "racial profiling" entered into the national lexicon; and checks the futility of race hatred ("Headless Heroes").

"The Parasite," on the same album, is McDaniels' most stinging critique, of the root of American Imperialism and its relationship to the genocide of America's native populations. On the track, McDaniels describes some of the early settlers as "ex-hoodlums" and "jailbirds" who used "forked tongues" in their drive to pollute the water and defile the air. Referencing the U.S. ideology of "Manifest Destiny," McDaniels sang that as "agents of God, they did damned well what they pleased."

Shortly after the release of Headless Heroes, the label "dropped" McDaniels. Apparently, he tweaked some folks at the White House with a not so thinly veiled shot at the Nixon administration ("Rewriting the standards of what's good and fair / Promote law and order / Let justice go to hell"). As myth has it, then Vice President Spiro Agnew gave a quick holla to Armet and Neshui Ertegun, the founders of Atlantic. In a recent article in the Kansas City Star, McDaniels reflects that the duo "fired me on the spot and killed the record." McDaniels disappeared as a recording artist, though he continued to write songs..... (end excerpt)

Music, Art, Politics and Free Speech

A Bush no le va a gustar

"Do we have to conclude that it is the duty of every writer to "keep out of politics"? Certainly not!... I only suggest that we should draw a sharper distinction than we do at present between our political and our literary loyalties, and should recognize that a willingness to do certain distasteful but necessary things does not carry with it any obligation to swallow the beliefs that usually go with them. When a writer engages in politics he should do so as a citizen, as a human being, but not as a writer. I do not think that he has a right, merely on the score of his sensibilities, to shirk the ordinary work of politics. Just as much as anyone else, he should be prepared to deliver lectures in draughty halls, to chalk pavements, to canvass voters, to distribute leaflets, even to fight in civil wars if it seems necessary. But whatever else he does in the service of his party, he should never write for it. He should make it clear that his writing is a thing apart. And he should be able to act co-operatively while, if he chooses, completely rejecting the official ideology. He should never turn back from a train of thought because it may lead to a heresy, and he should not mind very much if his unorthodoxy is smelt out… But does all this mean that a writer... should refrain from writing about politics? Once again, certainly not! There is no reason he should not write in the most crudely political way, if he wishes to. Only he should do so as an individual, an outsider, at the most an unwelcome guerrilla on the flank of a regular army.... Sometimes, if a writer is honest, his writings and his political activities may actually contradict one another. There are occasions when that is plainly undesirable: but then the remedy is not to falsify one's impulses, but to remain silent."
—George Orwell


"There is no such thing as Art for Art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics."
—Mao Tse-tung

US Special Forces, No US Special Forces and booking guests on KYRS

In light of recent events at KYRS, I thought this was worth considering...

I am posting this blog entry by Nathan Moore, news facilitator of WORT 89.9 FM Madison, Wisconsin. The KYRS version of Moore's posting would be "US Special Forces, No US Special Forces and booking guests on KYRS".

The original post by Moore can be found at http://wortnews.blogspot.com/

Nazis, No Nazis, and booking guests on WORT

As a lot of you likely know, a group of "National Socialists", aka Nazis, has announced plans to hold a rally in Madison this coming Saturday. Several weeks ago, local activists formed a group cleverly called "No Nazis in Madison". The group has been organizing a counter-rally, as well as trying to use this as a catalyst to bring attention to issues of institutional racism beyond the knee-jerk response to the rally.

So, WORT is covering some of these activities. I received an email from the host and new producer of the Friday 8:00 Buzz earlier today. I've edited it for relevance to this issue and ease of reading, and have pasted it below. I've also pasted my response below that.

-----Original Message-----

From: Tonya Brito

Jonathan,

I've been following up on finding someone from No Nazis in Madison to interview re the demonstration/counter rally to the upcoming Nazi rally that they are organizing. The announcement sent out by the No Nazi in Madison group did not have a contact person listed and instead directed me to a couple of websites, including a members-only Yahoo group. I completed the online registration form in order to join the yahoo group so that I could communicate with them, sent an interview request and now have a contact person to talk to.

I have also received an e-mail from a neo-nazi with the National Socialist Movement who is requesting an interview. See below. I suspect that this person was lurking in the Yahoo group set up by No Nazis in Wisconsin.

I thought I'd write a brief "no thank you" response but wanted to check with you first to find out if anything more ought to be said/done.

Tonya


-----Nathan's Reply Message-----

I'm generally not in favor of bring neo-nazis or any kind of nazis on to the air. Producers and hosts at WORT do enjoy a remarkable amount of autonomy, so I can't say that you "aren't allowed" to bring any nazis on the air, but I do discourage it.

Though my personal news ethic hasn't been adopted as any kind of offical policy by the station, I think the best news & public affairs production for a community station should at its heart help rebuild and maintain a community's sense of itself, empowering listeners to engage in community activism. That includes fostering deliberation and understanding, as well as explaining systems and processes in depth. None of those things are benefitted by having nazis on the air. Nazis are anti-community, as they push to exclude large segments of our community and encourage people to destroy community. They do not contribute to fostering deliberation or understanding, given their zealotry and unyielding racial hatred. Our goal of serving the community is not met by understanding the motives of a race warrior. They also do not help us explain systems in any depth. Their explanation of most social problems is that it's the fault of blacks, Jews, gays, etc. That's the opposite of meaningful explanation.

We have no requirement - nor should we - to strive for "objectivity" in the traditional sense of the word. As if objectivity were even attainable in our socially created and defined world, we at WORT wouldn't necessarily want to seek it anyway, given our mission to air the voices of the underrepresented, challenge listeners, and promote communication, education, & understanding -- in a word, to build community through democratically run media. Building community necessarily positions us outside the realm of "objective" journalism, and requires us to make value judgments about which information and which sides of a story are more in line with our goals - while also remaining open-minded about the possibility of many paths to community-building and many visions of what a vibrant, flourishing, democratic community could look like.

Anyway, this has gotten very heady, especially so early in your tenure as Jonathan's producer. ; )

As an aside, WORT did put nazis on the air way back in 1977 or '78 - before I was even born. It went horribly. WORT was a very new station at the time, and the Madison left came out by the hundreds to protest the station for its then-news director's decision to invite the nazis on the air. The protestors blocked the unwelcome guests from getting into the station. I don't know what the hosts actually aired, but it wasn't the nazis. There's an article about it in our 25th anniversary book that long-time activist and WORT volunteer Allen Ruff wrote. He summed up the feeling of the protestors in a way that is still very relevant today - that is, that WORT airwaves are a valuable (and rare!) community resource, and that the nazis have no business on these airwaves.

Hope this helps! Sorry so long...

~Nathan

Objections to setting censorship standards

While not opposed to a discussion of “etiquette” at the next collective meeting, I adamantly object to making any decisions on etiquette and censorship without an extensive, rigorous conversation and debate over a significant period of time and with broad participation on the matter. Because I am going to exceed the space limit in these comments, I am posting them as a Word attachment below (see bottom of this page).

Despite my frequent abrasiveness, let me start out by saying that I have the highest respect for Angela who is an extremely hard working and dedicated activist-scholar who is only just beginning to make what promises to be a huge mark on the world.

That said, I would be very concerned to see a brief conversation about etiquette take place and then have us “decide” what the “etiquette” for this site will be. Censorship--be it “justifiable” censorship or blatant authoritarian censorship--is censorship none-the-less. There is currently a major global debate and fight over censorship in which censorship and restrictions on free speech in the name of “etiquette” are a central element.

We as programmers already operate in an environment in which we are restrained by the seven words that the U.S. federal government has ruled off limits. Discussion of these FCC “obscenity” guidelines has provoked impassioned discussion among programmers as well as staff of KYRS. Everyone knows Janet Jackson’s nipple when they see it, but obscenity? (I was going to use the “t” word but--self-censoring to protect the innocent and the etiquette-conscious—chose to use “nipple” instead).

Our country is in a time of government espionage against citizens while private companies maintain massive data bases and record our web searches and web correspondence. People are afraid to speak up or stand out. A member of this station told me a couple years ago that she was afraid to participate in a protest march because she was concerned that she might find herself face down in an unknown place on a cold concrete floor subject to torture. What we need to be encouraging is more participation, more open speech, more controversial speech, and more provocative speech.

I must object to any attempt to quickly and easily reach a “decision” on standards to be applied to our Collective Wiki. While I believe that it is perhaps a good and important discussion to have on an ongoing basis, I believe that should be one of the last decisions we would take.

My opposition is based on my experiences as some one who was assaulted holding a sign at Mission and Hamilton protesting the war on 5/4/04, as some one who has had his character impugned for voting for Ralph Nader twice and having a homemade Nader 2008 sticker on my car since the day after the 2004 election, as someone who was verbally assaulted by war protesters at the last Iraq rally for carrying a sign which said “Support the Troops, No Way—Uniform Code of Military Justice, Nuremberg Principles, Geneva Conventions”, as someone who while handing out leaflets in front of the brass plaque with the Bill of Rights in front of the Federal Building and across the street from the Spokesman-Review was handed by the Federal Property Manager a reference to the Code of Federal Regulations and told that I had to fill out a petition to hand out information in front of the Federal Building. When I spoke at an EWU rally against the war in Iraq last summer it was suggested I impugned the character of the students and faculty of EWU by repeatedly stating in my speech, “It is a quiet, very quiet day in Cheney, Washington”, implying that we have the carefree leisure to go about our business peacefully day after day while war, famine, destruction, and repression take place all around the rest of the world.

If someone comes to this site and attempts to participate in the conversations on the Wiki stating that people have a right to go into a supermarket and carve racist statements on mangos in the hopes that a person of non-white descent buys them, I think we would all have questions about whether or not that type of comment was relevant, necessary or useful. If a person comes here flinging seemingly gratuitous expletives with no evident purpose and if that person can explain the purpose, I think we would engage them in trying to understand what they meant, felt and why prior to even considering banning, censorship, etc. For one thing, I have yet to meet the puritan among KYRS staffers and programmers.

Having been banned from various blogs and web groups, I again protest the idea of lightly setting etiquette/censorship standards. One of the sites I was banned from was the Spokesman Review’s “News is a Conversation: Readers Discuss Our News Coverage”

( http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/conversation/ ) where I “refused to stay on topic” as ordered by S-R staffers who police the site. That site is now virtually dead as pointed out by long-time S-R blogger Phil Bergen in his 3/8/07 post there entitled “News is NOT a Conversation”. One of my sins there was to refer to the state law regarding oversized political signs on yards in the midst of an exchange among bloggers about covenants restricting hanging laundry in yards. Bad, off-topic blogger. BANNED. Actually I think my banning had more to do with my critiques of the paper itself and my harsh criticism of the Spokane Police Department.

It is like the situation at the three ACLU sponsored events on Police Accountability earlier this year. Both the moderator and the police chief attempted to control the event by defining as off limits questions on open cases, questions preceded by comments, comments without questions, and anything they felt strayed from what they considered “the point”. On the third of the three nights I finally openly challenged the moderator, at which point a more “democratic”, free speech loving member of the League of Women’s Voters took over the moderation and allowed a freer participation by the audience. I am sure the first moderator was just acting out of her sense of etiquette, decorum, and the appropriate limits of speech in a nominally public forum.

Yes, they call it democracy, but it ain’t. Will the KYRS Collective Wiki go the same way? I say no. But then all the examples listed above would suggest I am wrong.

I would like to make a further point about language and censorship. We live in the second whitest city in the U.S. per capita for all cities its size or larger. KYRS, unfortunately and despite its best (best? really?) efforts, largely still reflects that reality. The audience for the Spokane Symphony, a KYRS programmers meeting, they essentially all look the same. If we are going to censure, who are the censors going to be? What biases will they bring to their censorship? Whose standard of “Etiquette” will be applied? Which side of town will it reflect? Who, really, among us wants to or should censure another?

I would like to conclude with a pet issue of mine. Anger. Where is the anger and outrage at what is going on in the world? Answer: it is all over the world except here. People are fighting and dying all over the world. People are engaging in marches and rallies fueled by righteous indignation accompanied by raised voices and raised fists all over the world, except here. Anger is a motivating force for action, be it the action provoking anger of Martin Luther King Jr, the action provoking anger of Jesus in the temple, the action provoking anger of the FMLN, FSLN, FARC, Viet Cong, Black Panthers, NOW, etc, or the action provoking anger of Daniel Ellsberg, Angela Davis, Bill Moyer, you continue the list. However, we—the people of the U.S—have been largely neutralized as a force capable of frightening, much less challenging the powers-that-be in this country. Why? In part because we have been emotionally decapitated.

Anger has become defined as a dangerous emotion, a vulgar emotion, a violent emotion, a criminal emotion, an irrational emotion, an emotion to be isolated, censored, quarantined, denigrated, shunned, feared, compartmentalized and excluded. Yet without our anger we are incapable of understanding the world. If we repress and compartmentalize our anger, we have to shut our eyes to what causes that anger. If we shut our eyes to what causes that anger, we can not give voice to those whose voice has been stolen by death, torture, imprisonment, media blackout, and dehumanization. Expressions of anger, almost by their very nature will be impolite and violate standards of etiquette. I implore us not to engage in mutual emotional decapitation and instead to allow impassioned speech and writing.

I hope I have raised enough issues and questions to make my point that even if we chose to address and discuss etiquette and censorship that we do not under any circumstances make quick, unexamined decisions.

I would also object to any decisions being made by a very small group of programmers even if they are the ones at the meeting or the only ones regularly participating in the meetings. (Just by way of example, only 6 programmers out of several dozens have participated in any way on this KYRS Collective Wiki and we are already discussing censorship). This last concern relates to my strongly held opinions about whether or not quantity of participation in something gives one more voice and vote than someone who—for whatever reasons—has a lesser quantity of participation in the same thing. The investment of time is a significant contribution (just as money is in election campaigns) but should it buy greater voice, vote and influence in a democratic organization or process?

(As a closing thought, I am also a moderator of the KYRS Programmers Collective Wiki. I do not believe that means I am any more than an equal of every other member of the Wiki and would not presume to censure anyone on my own judgment or even applying on my own a standard arrived at by the collective, if at all.)

U.S. Government Spying and Infiltration

The following article by Spokesman-Review reporter Jim Camden is very important. The only question I have is about the verb tense in the first sentence of the article, which might more accurately read "Federal agents HAVE kept track" of antiwar demonstrators "since at least 2002". There is nothing in the article to suggest and certainly there is no reason to believe that the spying and inflitration activities by US government 'informants' and 'analysts' and 'spies' would have come to an end. And anyone with any knowledge of the U.S government and the history of activism in Spokane knows that the FBI spying goes back well before 2002, many years before.

Given that the Spokane FBI Office at 316 W. Boone (the Rock Point Towers) with its large roof top communication and intelligence gathering apparatus is just one mile north of the Community Building in which both PJALS and KYRS are located, it probably does not matter to the FBI agents located there that the KYRS signal "is not very strong", as an unnamed "analyst" reported in the documents obtained from the FBI by the ACLU.

One can only hope that the FBI's 'monitoring' activities provide them with much enlightenment and informative analysis from the likes of Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now, not to mention local KYRS programmers from shows such as On the Clock, Zombie Nation, Eat the Press, Does that Answer Your Question, About Our Town, and Los Caminos de la Vida.

May you sleep well, J. Edgar, knowing that your FBI boys and other law enforcement units (such as the Spokane Police Department and the Joint Terrorism Task Force) are hard at work violating the Constitution in Spokane, Washington.

Same as it ever was....

http://itwillbethundering.resist.ca/warrior_publications/fbicointelpro.html
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/cointelpro-methods.html
http://www.colorado.edu/EthnicStudies/ethnicstudiesjournal/Snapshot%20of%20COINTELPRO.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/FBI/COINTELPRO_Untold_Story.html
COINTELPRO--THE UNTOLD STORY
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Spokesman Review

FBI kept eye on peace activists--Feds may have used informant in PJALS

Jim Camden
Staff writer
May 25, 2007

Federal agents kept track of antiwar demonstrations by the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane at least since 2002, at one point apparently getting information from a "spy" in the group as it planned a protest at a nearby military base.

The FBI gleaned information from the group's Web site, including that PJALS mentioned the launch of a new public radio station, and had other material dealing with a protest in the local office of then-U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Rusty Nelson, leader of the peace group and a longtime protest organizer, said he thought the surveillance was an effort to "quell dissent" and discourage participation in the political process. But there was one positive aspect, he said: "At least somebody's looking at our Web site."

Doug Honig of the ACLU's Seattle office, which obtained and then released the reports, said the FBI was wasting its time and taxpayers' money watching PJALS, which has a long history of peaceful protests.

"The FBI shouldn't have files on people who conduct peaceful protests," Honig said. But spokesmen for the FBI offices in Seattle and Washington, D.C., said the agency was not watching the group. It was likely watching individuals in the group, based on information it may have received that may or may not have proved true.

"No group is going to be of interest to us, except maybe al-Qaida," said Fred Gutt, a special agent in the Seattle office.

"We don't investigate groups," insisted Rich Kolko, a special agent in the bureau's Washington, D.C., office. "We investigate criminal activity."

Because the law allows the agency to remove certain information from records, including most names, it may not be possible to determine who was being watched, he said.

Neither Gutt nor Kolko was familiar with the specific records released to the ACLU. But Kolko said if the bureau receives a tip about criminal activity by someone in the group, it would be required to investigate, and even if the information was baseless, to keep a record of its investigation. "We don't purge records. If we write something down, we keep it," Kolko said. Among the records the agency keeps involving PJALS are:

•Notice from an unnamed "analyst" that the group had put a notice on its Web site that KYRS, or Thin Air Community Radio "is up and running at the Community Building, although the reception is not very strong."

•Several documents – including a copy of a newsletter called Peace News – deal with an April 2002 demonstration in Nethercutt's district office in the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Spokane. Eight protesters were arrested when they refused to leave after Nethercutt wouldn't speak with them. The congressman met them about a month later, and charges against all but one protester were dismissed.

•Repeated references to a former PJALS member who left the group to commit acts of civil disobedience that he suspected the organization would not tolerate. Michael Poulin, whose name is excised from the reports, loosened bolts in about 20 high-voltage transmission towers in the Northwest, which he said was a way to point out how vulnerable the towers were to terrorists. He was arrested while attempting to turn himself in, pleaded guilty to two federal counts of tampering with federal property and was sentenced to 27 months in prison in November 2003.

Poulin returned to Spokane after serving his sentence and has rejoined PJALS, Nelson said. He's a featured speaker in its current lecture series on "Empire."

•Two references to a March 2003 protest at the gate of Fairchild Air Force Base. The early-morning protest briefly blocked the entrance to the base and resulted in 10 arrests.

Nelson said the group suspected that PJALS had an infiltrator in the days leading up to the protest, because one new member who had been involved in the planning and shouted slogans at the beginning of the event disappeared when the other demonstrators moved into the street. State patrolmen, military police and the county's SWAT team were on hand that morning when the protesters arrived, he added.

"It was the greatest array of law enforcement we ever saw," Nelson recalled. "All of them, and we were 10 – well 11 if you count the infiltrator."

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=191488

Reflecting on the fact that history can help guide us in our path to the future, the histories of other community radio stations are of relevance to those of us involved in new experiments in community broadcasting. KPFA's experience is both long and critical to understanding the multitude of issues raised for communities and programmers on these stations.

KPFA--Media Democracy but Not Without Eternal Vigilance

Wake-Up Call at KPFA

(from a goddess perspective)

By Laura J. Weinstock

KPFA, one of this nation's last remaining free speech radio stations, has been under attack since February 1999. After being shut down for almost a month by its own Board of Directors at the Pacifica Foundation, KPFA is back on the air. But, Pacifica still retains the ability to control, even destroy, the station. The future of KPFA is far from certain. When looking for answers, let's not reinvent the wheel. Instead, let us learn from our ancestors who worshipped the Goddess and lived for millennia without hierarchy and violence.

KPFA was founded fifty years ago by pacifists who wished to promote diverse cultural expression and to increase understanding between nations and peoples. According to Joan Marler, a volunteer programmer for 15 years at KPFA, it was created to be a "free speech station, not dominated by censorship or interests that would limit the free flow of ideas." To protect this original vision, KPFA has maintained an independent funding base. It does not accept government or corporate money and is funded by listener contributions.

The founders wanted to create a true democratic structure, asserts Marler, and KPFA is the "mother station of the world in this experiment with free speech and democracy." KPFA has been "crucial in circulating the most innovative ideas and in creating an informed population. It has been responsive to the local community. It has cut through the lies and effects of censorship so endemic to other media. Without free media you cannot have democracy." What happened? How did KPFA come to be shut down? There have been other attempts to shut down the station - during the McCarthy era for example. But the greatest threat posed so far has been the most recent attempt by Pacifica, an entity that, according to Marler, was "started as a handmaiden to serve KPFA and other affiliates and now is sucking up their resources like a cancer."

In a nutshell, the crisis began in February 1999, when Pacifica changed its internal structure, eliminating representation from the local stations. Shortly after, Pacifica fired KPFA's popular general manager, Nicole Sawaya. A gag rule was instated, forbidding programmers to discuss internal affairs on the air. Veteran staffers Larry Bensky and Robbie Osman were fired for violating this order. Another producer, Dennis Bernstein, was yanked from the studio, mid-broadcast. A lock-out began. Pacifica hired armed guards to keep staffers out; peaceful protesters were arrested. The station was shut down for 21 days. Information was leaked that Mary Frances Berry, chairwoman of the board, had seriously considered selling KPFA, located in the commercial airwaves, for millions of dollars.Thousands of protesters took to the streets. Widespread and intensive organizing, civil disobedience, fundraising, public outcry, even the intervention of certain politicians sent the message to Pacifica, that KPFA was a vital and loved resource which would not be easily relinquished. KPFA returned to the air, as did Bensky, Osman and Bernstein. The gag order was eliminated.
(Spokane's own Marianne Torres of the TAKE BACK KPFA coordinating committee at Berkeley arraignment of 52 arrested 7/13/1999)

Is there cause for celebration, now that KPFA is back and running? Not according to Mary Moore, long-time activist and founder of the Sonoma County Free Press. Moore, who has appeared on various KPFA shows throughout the years and is well-acquainted with several of the programmers, told me that the return to the air of KPFA "creates the dangerous perception that all is resolved when it is not." She told me that problems didn't suddenly arise out of a vacuum this February. At least as far back as 1992, there was "tension between the paid and unpaid staff" with the latter willing to take more risks against management. In 1995, this tension came to a head when Pacifica "purged" many of the people who had been more outspoken.

Coinciding with the firings was a mandate from Pacifica to diversify the station. But, diversify how? In a letter to Berry written in May 1999 and signed by 13 African American programmers, the writers affirmed that "KPFA staff remains one of the most diverse in public radio." "KPFA has maintained its commitment to diversity," stated Robin Birdfeather, a KPFA volunteer with roots in the Feminist Radio Network of the early 1970's. Since 1985, through the station's Apprenticeship Program, women and people of color have been taught radio production and engineering in an effort to remedy past discrimination and under-representation in media.

Did Pacifica want a more diverse listener base? "Yes," Moore agreed, "the listeners are mostly white and middle class; when you rely on listener donations, you are less likely to have working class supporters. But, she stated that Pacifica is not interested in diversity. "They played the race card as an excuse to keep control. And they did it in a horrible, mean-spirited way. The return of KPFA is not a victory. Pacifica allowed the station back for six months because of the public outcry, but there is no local advisory board and KPFA has no control. The takeover can happen again."

Birdfeather, who is currently involved with media affinity groups which watch the media portrayal of KPFA, concurs that the situation is not resolved. "Pacifica is ruthless, evil, power-mongering. They will do anything they want." Marler agrees that the station is still in crisis and that Berry is "spin-doctoring, telling lies, manipulating, to further undermine KPFA. Pacifica is from a corporate governmental culture, not from our culture. They have no idea what the value of listener sponsored radio is for people and for our times. They don't know and they don't care. The people who were supposed to safeguard free speech want to control and close it off; they refer to KPFA as a 'unit.'" She sees the return as a limited victory. To her, the loss of KPFA represents the "loss of the extent to which we have free speech and democracy. But even in its present state, there is depth, richness, preciousness."

It was while working as a KPFA programmer that Marler met and began to work with foremost archeologist Marija Gimbutas, renowned for her discovery of the existence of pre-patriarchal, Goddess-worshipping peoples. From the seventh to the third millennium B.C.E. and through 1450 B.C.E. in Crete, the people inhabiting what she refers to as "Old Europe" were peaceful, matrifocal,matrilineal and egalitarian. In her book, Civilization of The Goddess, Gimbutas states that they had "a rich and sophisticated artistic expression and a complex symbolic system formulated around the worship of the Goddess... as well as a balance of powers between the sexes. " These Goddess-oriented civilizations began to decline when they were invaded by alien peoples, the Indo-Europeans, who were warlike, hierarchical and patriarchal.

Gimbutas believed that our awareness of this prehistory might "affect our vision of the past as well as our sense of potential for the present and future. We must refocus our collective memory. The necessity for this has never been greater as we discover that the path of 'progress' is extinguishing the very conditions for life on earth."

During my conversation with Marler, I saw certain parallels between the KPFA crisis and the fate of Goddess-worshipping peoples. KPFA (like the Old Europeans) began with the clear intention of being cooperative and nonhierarchical. Women have played an important range of roles at KPFA. Birdfeather believes that the women have a "deep sense of community and communication with each other." According to Marler, there has been an attempt to have a balance between female and male contributions at least since the Second Wave of feminism. She mentioned that KPFA was the only place where she could have openly explored the discoveries of Gimbutas.

In contrast, the Pacifica Foundation is clearly operating in a hierarchical, topdown, patriarchal, warlike mode, motivated by greed and the desire to control. Interestingly enough, no one I spoke to seems to know what went wrong. How did this entity come to have the power to destroy KPFA? In a similar vein, no one really understands why exactly there were warlike invaders at a time when people practiced peaceful worship of the Goddess. We presume that the peaceful people fell easily because, unaware of war, they had no weapons and experience with defending themselves. But what caused the Indo-Europeans to become patriarchal and warlike? We can only guess.

Nevertheless, there is much we can learn from our ancestors. Gimbutas's work is so threatening that many people want to bury it. Yet many of us believe that it was our ignorance of the Goddess and those who had a good quality of life worshipping her, that has led us to our current, destructive era.

Knowledge of the Goddess has been suppressed for millennia. It is crucial that we examine these patterns of dismissal and cover-up so we can begin to transform ourselves and our world. Beginning with the crisis at KPFA.

What lessons have been learned? Marler stressed the continued need for solidarity. "All of the programmers remained in solidarity, refused to be censored and didn't break to the powers that be." The latest crisis has resulted in a tremendous awakening of activism. Birdfeather stated that veterans of the Free Speech Movement and an explosion of other activists have all come out of the woodwork. People have been organizing within the local community and with the 65 other affiliates of Pacifica. Media affinity groups report on KPFA and work toward freeing all of the U.S. media.

Perhaps the most important lesson is awareness and prevention. When someone acts in an objectionable manner, respond quickly. Moore's newspaper has critiqued Pacifica since 1992. She wonders why the revolt is happening so late. I echo this sentiment. Unlike the Old Europeans, the creators of KPFA and their successors were not strangers to a world of greed and evil. It would have been far simpler to control Pacifica if KPFA had reacted immediately to any signs of danger and disrespect. Like the 1995 firings of outspoken staff. Instead, signs were ignored and Pacifica got stronger.

Fortunately, people are awakened now. KPFA is alive and kicking because of the thousands who took to the streets. I hope it is not too late.