What Pacifica is for

What Pacifica is For:
Direct Relationships with Conscientious Movement Leaders

The Purpose of Pacifica Radio Page 1

Current Production Practices in Community Radio Page 6

The Purpose of Pacifica:

Founded in 1948, KPFA was the first community radio station in the United States and so far as we know, the world. KPFA's founder, Lewis Hill envisioned the potential of independently broadcast radio as a method for advancing pacifism. He wrote the seminal essay, "The Theory of Listener Sponsored Radio" to introduce the concept. In it, he first describes how commercial broadcasting prevents human communication:

Let me instance the announcer, not only to seize the simplest case, but because he will serve as the gross symbol for the writer, the musician, and all who try to make a living in the program end of radio. You will recall without difficulty, I hope, this fellow's nightly solicitude toward your internal organs. In his baritone way he makes a claim on your attention and faith which few of your closest friends would venture. I know of no better explanation of this man's relation to you, to his utterances, his job, and his industry, than one of the time honored audition tests given to applicants for announcing jobs at certain of the networks. The test consists of three or four paragraphs minutely constructed to avoid conveying any meaning. The words are familiar, and every sentence is grammatically sound but the text is gibberish. The applicant is required to read this text in different voices, as though it meant different things: with solemnity and heavy sincerity, with lighthearted humor, and of course with "punch." If his judges award him the job and turn him loose on you, he has succeeded on account of an extraordinary skill in simulating emotions, intentions, and beliefs which he does not possess. In fact, the test was especially designed to assure that nothing in the announcer's mind except the sound of his voice--no comprehension, no value, no choice, and above all no sense of responsibility-- could possible enter into what he said or what he sounded like. This is the criterion of his job. [i]

In stark contrast to this gibberish, Lou Hill was a master of the kind of radio communication he sought to promote: communication between human beings. The following excerpt from a 1951 commentary about the Korean War will serve as our example. Hill, like many pacifists were concerned that the Korean War would become an instance for US nuclear aggression:

Therefore the most vital as well as the most interesting thing in contemplating the war is the absolute task it imposes on each of us to find out what he believes in--in the sense that he would give his life to defend it. The really interesting thing about the Korean war is that it symbolizes, with its characteristic mixture of courage and falsehood, belief and cynicism, the basic and immediately urgent problem confronting us--to decide what is really important to us, and what is really important for mankind; to decide what must be preserved, for ourselves as we face the demand for our sacrifice; and for other men who either face the same demand or constitute the threat.

I am not willing to die for my right to live behind a green lawn in a suburban house. My standard of living, my American standard of living has many comforts for me, but I am not willing to make an altar of them for the sacrifice of my life. No, if it is a question of being willing to perish for these things the puny materialism on which they rest emerges at once. My deepest sympathy is rather that I retain, as long as I can, the situation which admits of direct communication between myself and others; for clearly, while I can still communicate with other men there remains at least a chance that we may not only live together but make out of our differences and likenesses a better integrated and more productive life. As long as I can communicate I can create. As long as I can communicate I am free. And conversely, as long as I receive and accept the communication of others I am able to grow. But if this fundamental condition is eliminated, I am not free, I cannot grow, and I cannot create. It is my freedom, the chance that I may grow, the chance that I may create, for which I would lay down my life if it were required.[ii]

The history of Pacifica demonstrates that Hill's vision had many successes. Perhaps no more singular case exists than the events surrounding Bill Mandel's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in San Francisco in 1960. Mr. Mandel had been a regular commentator on KPFA and "in the 1950s, Mandel probably represented the only different Sovietologist broadcasting in the United States... By 1959 a subscriber survey revealed that Mandel was by far the most popular commentator at the station"[iii] Mandel had developed his skills to communicate about the Soviet Union including the role of the International Communist Party, with relevance and accuracy. Consequently his reports and comments were followed closely by the peace movement as well as by civil libertarians.

By 1960, the House un-American Activities Committee had made several blunders and its inquisitorial authority was probably on the wane. It unwittingly invited its biggest humiliation when it subpoenaed Bill Mandel on Friday, May 13th. The following quotes are from a documentary titled, Black Friday, produced and aired over KPFA using actualities from the hearings.

Introduction: On Friday, May 13th, 1960, KPFA staff members recorded the hearings conducted by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, inside San Francisco's City Hall, and the riot which took place that day outside the hearing room. Tapes were rushed back to the station and ... broadcast that same day....”

Narrator: “The story of a token picket line outside City Hall and a group of students seeking admittance on Thursday to a picket line of a thousand and an estimated crowd of four thousand people by Saturday is a story in itself...."[iv]

The tone and purpose of the hearings is ably demonstrated by this exchange:

"Committee Member Congressman Ahrens: Were you actually sentenced under the Smith Act as a hard-core conspirator of the [Communist] Party itself?

Barbara Hartle: Yes.

Ahrens: You have, have you not, broke--irrevocably, finally from this conspiratorial force?

H: That I certainly have.

A: You have found the way back to God and patriotism is that correct?

(Laughter from audience.)" [v]

“On Thursday the hearings had attracted only a few dozen protesters. On Friday, hundreds of students were waiting to witness the proceedings. To the students' dismay, by 1:00p.m. the police began admitting only those who had been invited to attend--members of conservative groups approved by William A. Wheeler, HUAC's veteran West Coast investigator. Angry that they had been denied access to the proceedings, the anti-HUAC protesters staged a sit-down strike in front of the hearing room.” [vi]

"Narrator: the recording which follows was made inside the chamber as the committee took its noon break Friday....

Dale Minor (KPFA reporter) a full scale riot seems to be underway outside the [hearing room] doors.

Excited man: (Shouting in distance.) Do you know what they're doin? They're beat'n 'em up and turn'n the hoses on 'em. (The crowd noise changes to dismay and boos.)

Erwin Goldsmith: (Recording Engineer) Boy, what a mess out there. What a disgusting place.

Dale Minor: (And here, having just come through the thing is--Erwin Goldsmith, Erwin, come here and tell us something about what's happening outside. You just walked through it, so, what's going on?

Erwin: Well, the police are spraying--with water hoses and the whole City Hall looks like a big pigsty, right now. They're sweeping them, literally sweeping them, down the stairs.

Voices in background: They ought to turn the hoses on them! -- How are things going here?--They had to use violence.

Goldsmith:The students are sitting. They are being sprayed by water hoses at point-blank range, and they are just sitting there, singing, "We shall not be moved."

Man: I saw about six policemen beat a student to the ground, and the guy looked like he weighed about 120 pounds...."[vii]

"Narrator: Despite dramatic and frequent interruption, however, hour after hour of interrogation took place ... and witness after witness invoked the rights afforded by the Constitution of the United States. [viii]

When Mr. Mandel was called this was his prepared statement:

"I have committed no crime--under the laws of this country, and am not engaged in subversion. Consequently, I refuse to testify on the grounds that as a radio and TV public affairs broadcaster active in those capacities today, the subpoena issued to me interferes with the rights of my stations to schedule informational programs on their merits, and is thus a direct violation of the First amendment guarantee of freedom of speech, and of the people's right to hear.[ix] Further, as a scholar with a twenty-year record of research and public writing and lecturing in my chosen field, the study of the Soviet Union, a field admitted by all to be one in which this country is in vital need of knowledge, I refuse to testify on the grounds that the subpoena is a violation of freedom of inquiry[x]--which can only be expressed through the free speech and free press guarantee in the first Amendment--to the academic community as to all others. Lastly, I certainly shall not answer questions representing allegations against me made by persons not present and not identified, whom I cannot confront and whom my lawyer cannot cross-examine as to their truthfulness. To rest my case solely on the first amendment would, as thirty-six cases now in the courts show, condemn me to years of court action at enormous cost. It would cost me my home and impoverish my family for a very long time to come, which is of course what this committee desires. Therefore I refuse to testify under my right not to be a witness against myself, a right originated to protect the innocent. The guilty can be convicted by the testimony of others if there is any real evidence to present.

Ahrens: do you honestly apprehend, sir, that if you told this committee truthfully while you're under oath whether or not you are now this instant, or ever have been, a member of the Communist party, you would be supplying information which might be used against you in a criminal proceeding?

In Mandel's autobiography he reports that here he departed from his prepared comments:

"Although drafted to be quiet and dignified, with an eye to my radio and TV work and preservation of my livelihood, [my remarks] took on the passion of indignation as news came to the hearing room of the events right outside..." [xi]

The audio archives reveal Mr. Mandel replying with these off the cuff remarks:

Mandel: Honorable beaters of children and sadists, uniformed and in plain clothes, distinguished Dixiecrat wearing the clothing of a gentleman, eminent Republican who opposes an accommodation with the one country with whom we must live at peace in order for us all and our children to survive... My boy of fifteen left this room a few minute ago in sound health and not jailed, solely because I asked him to be in here to learn something about the procedures of the United States government and one of its committees. Had he been outside, where the son of a friend of mine had his head split by these goons operating under your orders, my boy today might have paid the penalty of permanent injury or a police record for desiring to come here to hear how this committee operates. If you think that I am going to cooperate with this collection of (pause) Judases, of men who sit there in violation of the United States Constitution--if you think I'll cooperate with you in any way, you are insane.[xii]

"That brought an interruption of the hearing by an ovation both within the hearing room and from the students listening outside the building via loudspeakers--[xiii]

Although the hearings continued, Mandel was not further questioned. The next day, Saturday, four thousand protesters arrived. That was to be the last day the Committee held hearings against Communists. When it attempted a revival in 1966 its targets were protesters against the war in Vietnam an endeavor which led to the committee's dissolution.

For KPFA's part,

"Minor rushed back to Berkeley, where he, Knight Thompson, and a production crew edited the footage into a documentary that they sent to WBAI and KPFK. They broadcast it, endlessly, on KPFA while ecstatic listeners called in. They wanted to hear the Mandel speech. They wanted to hear the students. ‘Everything else just went by the boards,’ one KPFA staffer recalled. ‘We just played those goddamn tapes over and over and over again until we made sure everybody in the Bay Area knew them by heart." [xiv]

The committee and the reactionary movement it focused destroyed much of the organizational and creative leadership of the country. Its ethos supported state’s committees in California, Illinois, New York and elsewhere. It had initially convened in 1938 to dismantle the Federal Theater Project and continued almost annual persecutions seeking to remove Hollywood and Broadway screenwriters, directors, actors and investors. It pursued and defeated otherwise courageous union leaders in the national offices of the AFL-CIO and in major cities around the country. The California State committee attacked church leadership. (35,000 priests, pastors and rabbis signed loyalty oaths. Eleven Unitarian Humanists and one Congregationalist minister refused. These twelve forced the state committee's loss before a Federal Supreme Court in a test of the freedom of religion in 1958.) The committee mistakenly overreached by attacking the leadership of the Army claiming it allowed infiltrators into its ranks.

With its wide influence over the activities of numerous people and organizations during it’s twenty three years of persecution what was it that gave San Francisco the strength to force the Committee to withdraw? Hundreds of brilliant and eminent people had challenged the committee's constitutionality from Bertolt Brecht to Albert Einstein. Can there be any doubt that Bill Mandel's relationship to his listening, activist audience based in ‘comprehension, value, choice and above all a sense of responsibility,’ the exact qualities Lou Hill had established the station to foster, were an essential element in defeating the House Committee's persecution. [xv][xvi]

Current Production Practices in community radio:

Forty five years after this victory community radio like every other aspect of modern life, has dramatically transformed. There are more than three hundred community radio stations in the US. KPFA has 200, mostly volunteer, staff members. Pacifica includes five stations whose broadcast areas cover one quarter of the homes in the United States.

These material successes unfortunately do not translate into an equally luminous political effect. The stations were almost destroyed in a leadership battle settled in court only three years ago but still choking much of the power the network could otherwise exert. Over 45 of the 50 hours per week when more than 50,000 people regularly listen to KPFA are hosted by only nine people who work forty hours a week inside the station. They have little time to participate in movement organizing. There is no college level institution supporting their job specific learning or growth. They show great skill responding to crisis but have little time to reflect or develop their analysis or their community connections. They have no support for meeting with their colleagues.

All of this pressure encourages use of the most common broadcast format, the interview. The simplest format to produce, the interview makes the host an intermediary between the author/expert and the audience rather than establishing a direct relationship of responsibility between the programmer and the audience. The format fosters hosts with personality not commentators with responsibility. There are very few commentators on KPFA.

Well researched radio programs documenting issues relevant to the peace and justice movement are also rare.[xvii] Such programs require many hours of research time from people who are in touch with the community needs in these movements. There are very few places where the necessary support for this type of radio production can occur. The right mix of community activism, research interests and radio production facilities available to community groups is almost non-existent outside of New College in the entire country. Many of the other related institutions such as Public Radio International, Youth Radio, the Center for Native Public Radio are heavily dependant on foundation or Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding and their programming shows it.

For these reasons I feel it is critical that New College understand its potential relationship to the community radio movement. New College is in an almost unique position to create highly valuable content through supporting communities of interest production collectives. Valuable not only because of the wide desire from stations to have such programming, but because by producing it the college can provide an array of activists the opportunity to research, articulate their arguments and grow from the experience of dialog with their communities into the kind of leaders which express a direct sense of responsibility for peace and justice.