Promoting Community-Access Free Speech for Central California

THE COMMUNITY RADIO COALITION: ORIGINS AND PURPOSE In 1972 two towns in California voted for George McGovern. One was Berkeley, the other was Fresno. Ronald Reagan, the governor of this great state, was calling the Fresno Bee a "socialist" rag that had carried "on the most uninterrupted, the hardest and the most dishonest campaign against me and my administration of any publication outside the Daily Worker." Around the same time, the Fresno Free College Foundation was incorporated to defend Fresno State faculty fired for their expression of dissenting views about the war in Vietnam. The Foundation purchased a radio frequency with a listening capacity from Modesto to Visalia, the Sierra to the Coast Range, and began broadcasting the KPFA signal from Berkeley as KFCF. Thousands of valley listeners have tuned in ever since, many believing that KPFA/KFCF was their "lifeline" to dissenting political analysis, original thought, and music not to be found on top 40 radio. Valley subscribers who donated to KPFA had their money diverted to KFCF for the budget of our station. KPFA, Berkeley, was founded by pacifist Louis Hill after the Second World War. Hill's original vision was to locate the station in Richmond because of its working class population, but when Richmond was ruled out, he turned to Berkeley, a bucolic, suburban college town of no apparent political persuasion. There, he tried to create a station to air diverse views on public affairs. The Pacifica non-profit corporation was formed as KPFA's governing institution. KPFA was the first public radio station in America, and has remained the flagship station for the Pacifica Corporation, which has, over the years, acquired four other stations in New York, Houston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Tensions between Pacifica and its stations have existed from early on, but they've been particularly strife-ridden between KPFA and Pacifica. KPFA staffers tend to be argumentative, questioning, anti-authoritarian, and fractious among themselves. For Pacifica, controlling the goings-on at KPFA was like trying to organize cats. Gradually, Pacifica began to use foolishly heavy handed methods to quell dissent at KPFA, including summary firings, security guards, and, as of mid-July of last year, shutting down the station altogether except for canned tapes of nondescript music and old speeches from the 60s and 70s, when things were not so complex as they have become since. The KFCF board was meeting on July 13, 1999 when they heard Dennis Bernstein, a KPFA reporter, yanked off the air at KPFA. Within minutes, KFCF Executive Director Vic Bedoian called KPFA staffers, got first hand accounts of the hysteria there, and relayed events to valley listeners, who were stunned to realize their "lifeline" to KPFA had just been cut. The board members, together that night to discuss their collective reaction to the KPFA crisis, suddenly realized they were at the helm of the only station in California that was able to freely describe the Pacifica takeover of KPFA. While much of this information has been available on the internet, only valley listeners have had free, unrestricted access to information about the continuing battle between Pacifica and the staffers and listeners of KPFA. At a KFCF/Fresno Free College Foundation community meeting on July 21, 1999, more than 300 people came from Northfork, Madera, Visalia, Porterville, Oakhurst, Mariposa, Merced and Visalia, as well as Fresno, to demand the return of KPFA and to support the emergence of a strong, independent local KFCF that was willing to do what no other California public radio station would do, continue the tradition of genuinely independent radio broadcasting. 75 people volunteered to help, and almost $3000 was collected. People lined up to speak. A Mexican organizer spoke in translated Spanish about the need for hispanic programming. Representatives came from the West Fresno African American community to advocate for "black programming that's not just music!" The mood in the room was a charged mix of lament for our collective loss of KPFA and hopeful enthusiasm for the possibilities of community-based broadcasting in the Central Valley. In all, almost 50 people spoke for two minutes each about the groups they represent, their willingness to help, their desire to create a new voice of diversity, enterprise, planned development, pesticide control, alternative schools, neighborhood organization, fewer prisons, violence prevention, and monitoring of police brutality. There was a collective excitement, the community was meeting its members for the first time. Throughout its 25 year history, the FFCF board has experienced tension between those who wanted to have increased local access and programming, and those who wanted to retain exclusive control and essentially rebroadcast KPFA. The underlying contest was between an open, inclusive process, or control by the few who have now been running the station for more than 20 years. The shut-down of KPFA, while short-lived, precipitated a crisis at KFCF that continues to this day. In the three years before the KPFA shut-down, the FFCF board developed a plan to democratize station decision-making, increase local programming, purchase a building, involve volunteers, and move the station out of a board member's house and into a publically accessible space. While there was friction on the board over the particulars of these various decisions, the board consensus was that community access to a community resource was both desirable and inevitable. In late 1999, those who had run the station for years, and who resisted the move for openness, called for a meeting of the Foundation members and for a new election of the board. They kept their electoral strategy to themselves, and informed none of the other board members of their intent to run an alternate slate, and to gather proxy votes so they could take control of the station. At an election held in November of 1999, they did exactly that, putting four of their supporters on the board, and removing several of the previous members. Doug Noll, who had been the President of the board for several years, resigned on the spot. The election was entirely legal, but the use of proxies to swing the election outcome shocked the other members of the board, the people present for the election, and the many people who had believed in the changes the board had been working so hard to make. This new majority, made up of Rychard Withers, Rand Stover, Alex Vavoulis, Deborah Speer, Robert Munce, and Bruce Kennedy has since been in constant conflict with the now minority board members, Dixie Salazar, Kent Stratford, Catherine Campbell and Sari Dworkin. In reaction to the previous direction of the board, the new majority has reversed all efforts to make the station accessible. They no longer talk about bringing in volunteers. Committees formed by the previous board to review program proposals have disappeared, and one of their members is now the self-appointed program director. They have increased local programming, but have never created a policy for doing so. They see no need for a community advisory board. They resist all efforts to discuss their conflicts of interest, in spite of their roles as programmers, engineers, and possessors of the station and its equipment. This board majority treats our community radio station as their private property. In response to the November election, several people, including the four minority board members (Dixie Salazar, Kent Stratford, Catherine Campbell and Sari Dworkin), formed the Community Radio Coalition. At the first few meetings, a total of about 40 people came, many of them people who had spoken at the community meeting, or who had participated in prior board meetings, and had supported the democratic objectives of the previous board. Many were people shocked by the tactics used at the November election. A recall election was held in mid-2000, and more than 700 people voted. The Community Radio Coalition failed to unseat the entire board so new elections could be held. We lost the election by 24 votes. Crucial to the board majority win was the support of several KPFA staffers, who wrote a letter repeating a lie used against us throughout the election, that we were eager to terminate KFCF's relationship with KPFA. Understandably, many of the original signers, and many more of our friends at KPFA, now regret the intrusion of KPFA staff into a democratic election in the Central Valley. The Goals of the Community Radio Coalition. The Fresno Free College Foundation owns a broadcast signal that stretches from Merced to Bakersfield, the high Sierra to the coast range. It is the only significant progressive political and cultural information source in the entire Valley. Unlike KPFA, KFCF is independently owned and operated, not beholden to Pacifica or anyone else. Such a resource should seek maximum involvement from the community it serves, and provide maximum service to that community. To that end, we promote the democratic election of the board members by the subscribers and a board free of conflicts of interest. While community radio inevitably generates argument and debate between various and interests over programming, we believe the best way to resolve these inevitable, healthy disputes is through open, democratic processes. This means the board is elected by the entire membership; board meetings are open to the public and are broadcast live; there are regular community meetings and a community advisory board. The board would create program policy and criteria based on community input. Our more practical objectives are to house the station in a building which would contain a large meeting room, and space for other community groups. We will create an internship program for people who want to learn broadcasting, and we will make maximum use of the many, many people who have volunteered to assist us, including a broad base of people with radio technical skills to build a new station, and keep it running. The ways in which these projects will be funded would be decided in open forum by the board, but some ideas are to augment our KPFA income with community fund-raisers and grant proposals. CRC will always reject corporate and government financing to maintain our independent voice.  The Community Radio Coalition believes that Valley listeners are a wellspring of talent, intellect and insight. Valley arts, politics, society, cultures and peoples are subjects worthy of exploration on the air, for all to hear. Community-based programming will inform Valley residents of our grass-roots political efforts, the rich array of cultures of our area, and the events that can bring us together. Through inclusion of diverse people as volunteers, apprentices, office helpers, engineers, technicians, and programmers, we will give voice to the people of the Valley. The next board election is in November of 2002. From now until then, we will be working to push the current board in the direction of inclusiveness and diversity, and when the time comes, to elect a board that will fulfill the great potential of a progressive radio station in the Valley.

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