The battle for indie radio

Thu, 20 Jun 2002 20:00:00 +0000

It was a familiar sight to listeners of Pacifica, the independent, radical-minded radio network: An e-mail from a DJ, warning that Pacifica's central powers were planning sweeping changes for his radio station. "WPFW's existence as D.C.'s last bastion of cultural programming is being seriously threatened in the immediate future," the message claimed. A "vocal minority" of hijackers, "none of whom were elected," intended to remake WPFW as "an all-talk station." If listeners didn't want that to happen, they should make their feelings known at a teach-in the following week.

For the past seven years, Pacifica has seen purges and protests, a management bent on radically revamping its five stations and a growing body of dissenters opposed to its plans. (For the record, I was one of those dissenters, writing periodically about the gentrification process afoot at the network.) In a nutshell, Pacifica was trying to slicken and tone down its eclectic, largely left-wing programming mix and to move power from local stations to the national office, from volunteers to paid professionals. The warning about WPFW, written by "Latin Flavor" host Jim Byers, resembled countless earlier e-mails by outraged programmers and listeners. Except this time, the alleged hijackers were the dissidents.

War on protesters

Mon, 14 Aug 2000 08:00:00 +0000

The Democratic Convention may be taking the national stage this week, but those of us who live in Los Angeles have been hearing nervous hiccups about it for months. The local authorities, citing fears of riots, have tried, unsuccessfully, to confine the demonstrations to a tiny, distant protest zone. They have apparently been spying on the protesters' headquarters. And if things get ugly, there's been talk of bringing in the National Guard.

Smashed storefronts and flying rocks are bad things. But while the cops and Democrats warn of riots, a lot of us have started wondering if we shouldn't be even more afraid of repression -- especially in light of what some are saying happened at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia.

Marc Brandl of Washington attended those protests as an observer, not a marcher. In fact, he hoped to engage the marchers in debate. A devotee of free markets, Brandl had little sympathy with the causes represented in the Philadelphia streets. (I'm not wild for all of them myself.) There was a lot of vandalism on Tuesday of that week, he notes, almost all of it aimed at government property, and some demonstrators attacked some cops as well. That Tuesday was also the day most of the arrests were made.

Salon.com > Jesse Walker

The battle for indie radio

War on protesters