Pacifica Campaign News Update

Subject: Pacifica Campaign News Update
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 00:02:45 -0500
From: Juan Gonzalez <pacificacampaign@yahoo.com>
To: Juan Gonzalez <pacificacampaign@yahoo.com>

For Immediate Release
March 19, 2001
E-mail: pacificacampaign@yahoo.com

Dear Friends:

It is now nearly seven weeks since the launch of the Pacifica Campaign. We
are making significant progress in our effort to cut off funds to the
authoritarian clique that has hijacked control of the Pacifica network and
to pressure members of the clique to resign.

In the next few days, we will be mailing out more than 60,000 copies of a
brochure on the Pacifica crisis and we will reach another 60,000 people
through a special e-mail letter. A good number of these 120,000 are regular
listeners to Pacifica, but many are just progressive activists or labor
union leaders who are not aware about events at the network. This represents
our first major outreach to the public and our first attempt to raise funds
to continue the campaign. We will keep you posted about the response.

This past weekend we cooperated with two local listener groups in New York
City -- the Brooklyn Greens and the Community for Progressive Radio in
picketing outside the Brooklyn homes of Pacifica Board member Andrea Cisco
and WBAI interim station manager Utrice Leid. Not only did we make clear to
all their neighbors what kind of policies these two have been pursuing, but
several neighbors who already were aware of the WBAI crisis agreed to
display some of our placards in their windows. All the protesters were
disciplined and courteous, and no one engaged in the kind of illegal, sexist
or racist harassment that Pacifica management has repeatedly -- and falsely
-- accused our campaign of performing.

This weekend, I and/or other Pacifica Campaign organizers will be speaking
in Los Angeles and the Bay Area and meeting with groups and individuals who
are trying to save Pacifica. We urge those of you who live nearby to attend
some of those meetings. The times and places will be posted on our web page.
(http://www.pacificacampaign.org)

Meanwhile, the Pacifica Board and its station managers continue to
demonstrate their authoritarian and anti-Free Speech proclivities, and at
the same time they are showing how the pressure is affecting them:

1) On March 5th, WBAI interim station manager Utrice Leid --still smarting
from her reception in Houston -- barged onto the air during a broadcast of
the station's labor show, "Building Bridges" and halted a telephone
interview between host Ken Nash and U.S. Rep. Major Owens, as the Brooklyn
congressman was criticizing Pacifica policies. Leid ordered Nash out of the
studio and has reportedly placed him on the growing list of veteran
producers banned from WBAI. She cut off the phone call with Owens and
insisted that only the "truth" could be broadcast on her station. That
prompted Owens to deliver a speech on the floor of congress a few days later
where he made a stinging criticism of Leid's actions and the overall
situation at Pacifica. That a Pacifica manager had the nerve to censor a
U.S. congressman only indicates the Pacifica crisis has reached a new low.

2) After Leid's actions, several veteran producers openly defied the Gag
Order imposed by her on any discussions of the Pacifica crisis. On March
9th, Mario Murillo, producer of the Friday morning Wake-Up Call and the
nationally syndicated program Our Americas, announced his resignation from
the show on the air. Murillo said he was refusing to submit to orders from
management that he exclude Amy Goodman, his longtime co-host on Wake Up
Call, from the studio. In subsequent days, several other producers,
including award-winning programmer Dred Scott Keyes, spoke out about the
WBAI crisis.

3) After weeks of refusing to allow Amy Goodman to assume her usual role as
co-host of WBAI's Wake Up Call morning show, Leid finally made official her
decision that Goodman had been fired from the show. Amy is now employed only
by the Pacifica national programming to work on Democracy Now! Leid's action
comes after Amy filed a written complaint that she had been subjected to
sexist harassment by Clayton Riley, whom Leid had appointed as a temporary
host on Wake Up Call.

4) Earlier this month I reported on Pacificašs new PR rep Fred Winters. If
you remember, he was handing out a lie-filled fact sheet at the Houston
Pacifica National Board meeting that denounced Pacifica protesters as
racist, sexist and violent. The fact sheet also contained lies about Amy
Goodman and Democracy Now!, which Winters was subsequently forced to change
in front of a Houston reporter after Amy challenged his allegations. Išve
been reliably informed that his PR firm has now been fired by Pacifica!!!
This is yet another sign that the corporate clique running Pacifica is in
disarray.

5) In Los Angeles, station manager Mark Schubb has been working doggedly to
sabotage this weekend's scheduled public teach-in on the Pacifica crisis
that will be held on Friday, 7:30 pm, at the First Baptist Church, 760 S.
Westmoreland (1 blk east of Vermont, 2 blks south of Wilshire Blvd). I will
be speaking at the event along with Amy Goodman, Bernard White, and
Dominique Di Prima.

Schubb and his allies put in calls to the National Association of Hispanic
Journalists, the Southern California ACLU as well as La Opinion to convince
all of these groups to sever any connection to the teach-in. Why is Schubb
and Pacifica so afraid of a public debate and discussion on Pacifica?

6) Last week, I participated in a 40-minute debate with Pacifica board
member John Murdock on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! Murdock, unlike other
Pacifica officials, was at least willing to publicly defend his policies,
but in doing so he repeatedly evaded or lied about the facts.

Murdock repeatedly called for open dialogue between those seeking to reform
Pacifica and his group on the board. Yet he refused to condemn the fact that
the very interview we were participating in was knocked off the air at WPFW
in Washington, D.C., the station in which he was being interviewed. He also
refused to condemn the fact that Leid at WBAI had knocked Congressman Major
Owens off the air the previous week. What kind of open dialogue is that?

He attempted to portray the movement against Pacifica as the activities of a
few isolated individuals who want to impose their views on the board. In
doing so, he simply ignored the thousands of listeners around the country
who have been fighting to save Pacifica and the rest of community radio from
his clique and from being judged by commercial radio yardsticks like
Arbitron ratings.

Murdock called for dialogue yet refused to address the scores of firings at
the five Pacifica stations against all dissenters. He refused to deal with
the that fact that listeners, four of the station's five advisory boards and
several of the board's own directors have sued the corporate clique of which
he is a part for a variety of illegal acts, including the changing by-laws,
holding secret meetings, hiding Pacifica's books, and excluding the public
from its deliberations. And Murdock neglected to say that his call for
dialogue is a new-found approach of the board, which in the past had sought
to exclude the public as much as possible from its deliberations.

In Houston, station manager Garland Ganter went on the air immediately after
the debate to clarify my "misrepresentations". Ganter was apparently not
satisfied that his own board member, Murdock, had done a good enough job.
His rebuttal only served to infuriate some loyal listeners to KPFT who then
e-mailed their support to our campaign.

What to make of all of this?

Quite simply, our movement is growing and winning. It is isolating the
anti-democratic group at Pacifica with each day that passes. As the board
and management feel the heat rising, they have begun to lose control, to
further repress their own staff, to fall out among themselves. Our message
remains clear: Resign now so that a board democratically accountable to
listeners, community and staff can rescue the network from the mess they've
created. Until then, we will continue the boycott of funds and the campaign
of pressure on the individual board members.

In solidarity,

Juan Gonzalez

(D)
**********************************************
Mailing Address:
The Pacifica Campaign
51 MacDougal St., #80
NY, NY  10012
Tel: (646) 230-9588

www.pacificacampaign.org
pacificacampaign@yahoo.com