WBAI:
THE COUP ON WALL ST.
#492 Column Written 1/29/2001
Information is
the raw material for new ideas; if you get misinformation, you get some pretty
fu---d-up ideas. -- Eldridge Cleaver, former Minister of Information, Black
Panther Party With late-night lock changes, and a phalanx of security guards
prowling the halls, the coup of WBAI- FM, the flagship station of the Pacifica
Network, has begun.
Popular veterans of the listener-supported station, like program manager
Bernard White and WBAI union shop steward Sharon Harper, (both producers
of the morning "Wake Up Call" show) received letters of termination at their
homes several hours before their shifts were to begin. WBAI general manager,
Valerie Van Isler, who, like White, was a 20-year vet of the station, was
similarly fired by Pacifica, ostensibly for failing to accept a position
at network headquarters in Washington, D.C.
While these firings were attempts to remove, and thereby install, management
personnel, it was also an opening salvo in a pitched battle designed to silence
radical dissent, and open the airwaves to the corporatization of WBAI.
If you want WBAI to become a nice, sweet, safe alternative, like NPR, then
do nothing. It will happen. If, however, you want to continue to hear about
the struggles of the peoples of the world for liberty, for life, for dignity,
as in East Timor; or of the noble life and death struggle of the zapatistas
in the mountains of Mexico; or of cases like the slaughter of African immigrant
Amadou Diallo; or of the continuing human rights violations occurring every
day in the nation's burgeoning prison-industrial complex, then you must fight
for it, as you would fight for your very life, or anything dear to you.
The great Frederick Douglass perhaps put it best when he said, "Without struggle
there is no progress." If the various communities of New York and northern
New Jersey don't struggle for their vision of WBAI-FM, it will be gone. It's
as simple as that.
What's happening at 'BAI was attempted a year ago at KPFA-FM in San Francisco.
The people of the Bay Area rallied in unprecedented strength-over 10,000
folks at one protest-and backed the Pacifica board down. Listeners to 'BAI
must do no less!
In theory at least, the airwaves belong to the people. For the last 40 years,
the staff and local management of WBAI have tried to make that theory in
America a reality.
If you are thrilled by the no-holds-barred radio reporting of "Democracy
Now's" Amy Goodman, who is constantly threatened and harassed by the Pacifica
board for her radical reporting, then fight for her.
For in fighting for her, you fight for the finest traditions of WBAI, and
against the corporationists who want to turn a national resource into just
another commodity.
To keep it raw; to keep it real, you've got to fight for it.