.KPFA Elections Mark Station’s Latest Turmoil

As radio station counts the votes for the Local Station Board, charges fly.

Liberals have largely bid farewell to the paranoid style of American
politics, letting the Glenn Becks of the world indulge in fantasies
about Barack Obama’s nationality while they get on with the business of
governing the country. But at least there’s always KPFA. Did you know,
for example, that Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman may or may not
be taking CIA cash in return for suppressing the truth about 9/11? Or
that the station is being hijacked by a cabal of union thugs and
Democratic Party hacks? Or that it’s being hijacked by 9/11 Truthers
and Scientologists? Or that sister station WBAI was allowed to fall
into the hands of a mysterious group of black nationalist thugs?

You can learn about this and more if you follow the latest round of
elections to the radio station’s governing body, where listener
activists, station producers, and lefty politicos are throwing
increasingly acerbic charges at one another. Over the weekend, Pacifica
officials spent days counting ballots in yet another nasty election. As
of this writing, it’s not clear who came out on top, but who won is not
be as important as how the campaigns are conducted, and whether
democracy at KPFA is really possible.

Like so many KPFA problems over the years, this is Mary Frances
Berry’s fault. In 1999, when the then-chair of the Pacifica radio
network locked down the station and provoked weeks of arrests and
protests, the station’s supporters were appalled at how easily she was
able to abuse executive power. So when Berry and her cronies were
driven out, the staff and listener activists tried to institutionalize
as many checks on such power as possible. Their solution? Democracy,
everywhere you look.

Under the new arrangement, KPFA is governed by a Local Station Board
consisting of 25 people responsible for overseeing staff and
management. Some seats are reserved for staff, while others are open to
anyone who can get 15 members to sign a petition. Elections are held
two out of every three years, for some reason. Each candidate is
guaranteed a slot on a three-hour candidate’s forum, broadcast over the
airwaves, along with the chance to write a 500-word campaign statement.
The elections are conducted according to a complex version of
instant-runoff voting that few people understand or care to master.

The end result, according to reporter and board member Brian
Edwards-Tiekert, is a governance structure that amplifies the angriest
voices, distracts from running the station, and depresses everyone with
trivial fights. For example, this campaign season, says
Edwards-Tiekert, “Fifteen hours of airtime were dedicated to candidate
forums for the local board. We spent more time covering KPFA’s election
than Afghanistan’s and Iraq’s elections combined.”

Edwards-Tiekert is supporting Concerned Listeners, a slate of labor
and Democratic party activists that generally support letting the
professional staff make most programming and reporting decisions. But
more importantly, he thinks the structure will have to be radically
remade, or the radio network will be forever paralyzed by an
unproductive hyperdemocracy.

“Most people would never go to the trouble and headache of dealing
with our governance and election system, unless they were really,
really pissed off about something,” he says. “And so we have a strange
politics of resentment constantly at work. I think there needs to be a
serious redraft of the bylaws.”

But according to Henry Norr, the former San Francisco
Chronicle
technology columnist and progressive activist, the
problem is that there isn’t enough democracy. In 2006, Norr was alarmed
when the Concerned Listener slate flooded the membership with mailers
promoting itself. To Norr, this represented the introduction of money
and politicking into grassroots democratic media. This year, he ran for
a board seat with the opposing slate, Independents for Community Radio,
to give station volunteers a voice and maintain as much transparency in
governance as possible.

“The Concerned Listeners portray themselves as holding back the
cranks and kooks,” says Norr. The real question, he claims, is “Are we
going to be like other nonprofits, or are we going to be more
democratic.”

Norr’s not alone; in fact, he enjoys the support of none other than
Grace Aaron and Joe Wanzala, the interim executive director and the
vice-chair of the parent Pacifica board, respectively. Aaron argues
that if you’re going to claim that reserving airtime for KPFA elections
means less time for international politics, you might as well say the
same thing about the music slots. As for Edwards-Tiekert’s complaint
about the process, she says that democracy is sloppy, and that’s the
price you pay for something as special as KPFA. “We’re an experiment in
democratic media,” says Aaron. “What a thought! Most media is
controlled by big corporations. We’re controlled by our members.”

But to Edwards-Tiekert, Aaron and Wanzala represent the sort of
fringe personalities that KPFA’s hyperdemocracy allows to flourish.
Aaron, for example, is a Scientologist, and Wanzala is sympathetic to
the 9/11 Truth movement. That such people have managed to exercise
control over the network drives him crazy.

“With that threshold of 15 signatures on a petition, you get exactly
what you’d expect,” he says. “You get 9/11 Truthers, you get fringe
sectarian groups, and you get people who want to trade in their elected
position for a job.”

Aaron bristles when told that Edwards-Tiekert mentioned her
affiliation with Scientology. “I don’t think religious discrimination
has any place at Pacifica,” she says. “I never mix my personal beliefs
with my political work. I have a right to my own personal beliefs
whatever they are.”

As for Wanzala, he claims that he is merely “agnostic” when it comes
to 9/11. “I just don’t think it’s been investigated sufficiently.”

And so it goes yet again at KPFA. Edwards-Tiekert is calling for an
end to this system once and for all.

Aaron has her own solution; she pointedly notes that a movement is
starting to recall Edwards-Tiekert from the KPFA board. Round whatever
is just about to start.

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