I have been a member of the Local Station Board of WBAI for the past year and I’ve learned much about the operations and the current state of affairs of the Pacifica Foundation. Pacifica owns five radio stations in California, New York, Texas and Washington, DC. These stations broadcast a fundamentally alternative and leftwing political message to a small aging audience of folks who dream of a revival of the 1960s-era civil rights and anti-war movements. But it's really being run by small faction that holds most of the networks programmers, staffers and what’s worse its listeners in contempt.

After an expensive legal battle throughout 2001 the new managers of Pacifica came to power under a court-brokered settlement. In the minds of one faction it was a simple victory and now the network belongs to them. However, that faction couldn’t have undone the last Board of Directors without the help of a self-styled “listeners” movement made up of friends of certain long-time programmers. Once in power, the new managers took the attitude towards their former allies of “thanks for your help,” but now its back to business as usual.

The result was acrimonious and prolonged debate over a new set of bylaws that would reconcile the competing groups. The new bylaws were like the old joke about how a camel is really a horse designed by a committee. They tried to cover every base to cement airtight control over Pacifica. But many loopholes were actually left open.

In a sense I took advantage of the first loophole when I ran as a listener delegate to WBAI’s LSB. My right to run for LSB was challenged because I worked at the time for Gary Null, a former WBAI programmer. They said I should be a staff candidate and not a listener candidate. The elections officials sided with me because as one said “its not against the rules for a candidate to be well known and popular.” So I was allowed to run and I won 4th place out of about 74 candidates from which 18 LSB members were elected.

For the uninitiated, Pacifica allows its station boards to elect separate slates of candidates. One slate is selected from listener members and the other from staff and volunteers. More than 3000 of WBAI’s 20,000 paid members voted in the last election for the “listener” slate. The staff slate is selected from among WBAI’s 30 or so paid staffers and about 100 unpaid volunteers who are also considered staffers.

After the bylaws were passed and the first elections held in late 2003 the first boards were informed that the network was facing an even worse than usual economic downturn. The downturn was easily traced to New York station WBAI, the financial cashcow turned boat anchor around the neck of the Pacifica Foundation. The cause of the downturn and the fight over how to deal with it is the issue underlying the current conflict.

Despite the propaganda there really wasn’t much of a victory when the old board was kicked out in 2001. The hated former Pacifica managers weren’t really forced out -- they were bought out. While the exact amount of the buyouts are secret, copies of the Pacifica budget for the past few years found on their website are pretty clear. Pacifica is still paying it off. Former managers got settlements to the tune of maybe a million dollars with several hundred thousand dollars yet to be paid. These buyouts were a major set back to the plans of the new managers of Pacifica to remake the Foundation in their own political image. The story lies in the sworn testimony of former interim Pacifica Board chair Leslie Cagan during depositions in one of several lawsuits filed against Pacifica by former managers.

Cagan had refused to answer a question posed by a lawyer for former Los Angeles Pacifica station KPFK General Manager Mark Schubb to Cagan. The question was based on public statements Cagan had made as a Pacifica National Board member in 2001. She claimed that a new Pacifica should hire managers based on political credentials and not on expertise as radio professionals. Schubb’s lawyer asked Cagan, since she was proposing a political litmus test for retaining mangers, if she was a “communist.” Pacifica lawyers objected to the question but the judge sided with Schubb and ordered Cagan to answer. Suddenly Pacifica asked Schubb and all the other managers suing the Foundation to settle and the question was never answered. That silence cost Pacifica a vast amount of money.

WBAI is the New York City Pacifica station that’s become synonymous with under achievement, but managed through questionable business practices to become Pacifica’s cashcow. That role ended in 2002 when the current group of managers took control and now WBAI is the sick child of Pacifica. LSB member Steve Brown and others describe the desperate slide of WBAI to insolvency in detail. There’s also a lot of information on file at the Pacifica website in public presentations by Pacifica CFO Lonnie Hicks. The bottomline are large impending staff layoffs despite the continued presence of highly paid “consultants,” who are not represented by WBAI’s union but are friends of management.

Studies have been done that show that more and more time is being taken up with fundraising pitches as the amount generated declines. WBAI now spends more than three full months every year begging for money. It’s a tedious process made worse by the total lack of programming vision of the current managers. The Program Director only hires his friends and gives airtime to individuals and groups that are slavishly loyal to him. If underlings stray from absolute obedience they can find themselves on the curb. Recently the mangers violated their own rules to get rid of Gary Null after nearly three decades. The managers are currently engaged in ousting long-time programmer Robert Knight and they have forced other free thinkers like Mike Feder and myself out into the street. The Program Director then openly replaces the banned and fired programmers with his friends and associates.

I was instrumental in organizing the AFTRA local at WBAI and I was the first AFTRA shopsteward. Before that time there was an attempt to put volunteers and paid staff in the same union. Pacifica opposed that and the NLRB ruled they wouldn’t recognize a union with volunteers as members. There was a huge controversy and outcry against my organizing. Amy Goodman, a supporter of the Program Director and an AFTRA member herself, was the only staffer to vote against joining AFTRA.

After the current clique came to power they signed an agreement with a group claiming it represented volunteers called the Unpaid Staff Organizing Committee or USOC. The vast majority of WBAI volunteers are not involved in USOC and the group seems to be a creation of management. USOC has repeatedly supported a pro-management position and actually wants controlling say in evaluating and hiring WBAI managers, a legally questionable course of action. Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

When the second round of elections occurred at the end of 2004 the LSB had been locked in a bitter internal struggle between pro-management and pro-listener groups. The management group had the advantage of fanatical organizers and built in voters associated with the Workers World Party, a controversial new-left group involved in organizing anti-war rallies. Workers World’s method of organization is marxist-leninist, centralist and unforgiving of internal dissent. But even with these tactical advantages the managers can’t win a majority on the LSB in the listener’s part of the election, so they focused on the staff election.

Certain programmers loyal to management and sharing the Worker’s World ideology have created what they call “collectives.” A collective is a nebulous grouping around an onair personality that is not recognized in Pacifica bylaws. A number of shows with only one or two hosts claim a “collective” of 15 or more members, each one allowed to vote. Programmers like Gary Null were not invited to form a collective although he has many loyal volunteers who help produce his program. Why the apparent double standard? There was also a question about the lists used by WBAI to send ballots to volunteers eligible to vote. The volunteer lists haven’t been audited as required and Pacifica election officals have refused to vouch for the lists despite having certified the elections. A lawsuit to challenge the election because of these problems is rumored to be in the works.

2005 begins with the LSB under the control of an alliance of management supporters, grey bearded new left veterans, and a disturbing group of apparently unbalanced people attracted by the unending chaos at WBAI LSB meetings. A parallel situation is occuring within the station as many programmers and employees report an ongoing hostile workplace environment. As a new group beholden to the current managers takes the helm there are growing incidents of violence directed at folks considered disloyal or not sufficiently loyal to the powers that be.

In a speech to a full house at a community center in Harlem across the street from the mosque where Malcolm X began his radical career former WBAI manager Utrice Leid gave a talk. Leid said that WBAI had come under the control of a self-aggrandizing group of white liberal opportunists and sell-outs from the African-American community whose actions at WBAI are setting back the civil rights movement. My experience over the past year at WBAI has supported Leid’s contention. It’s time for people with less selfish aims to take the reigns at Pacifica and WBAI. Already long-time members are fleeing the network and the upcoming fundraiser is a make-it-or-break-it moment. If the station can’t average about $50,000-a-day in listener contributions then CFO Hicks says layoffs are inevitable further dragging Pacifica into a downward spiral of irrelevance.