>From: "Lyn Gerry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 20:04:26 -0400
>Subject: {FP} Letter to Pacifica National Board from Democracy Now!
>
>TO: Pacifica National Board
>FROM: The Democracy Now! staff
>DATE: 2 October, 2001
>
>We have heard that the Pacifica National Board is holding an
>emergency meeting on Wednesday, October 3, to discuss
>Democracy Now!. We have not been contacted regarding this
>meeting. We would like to express our willingness to discuss the
>conditions under which Democracy Now! will return to the airwaves.
>To this end, we have drafted the following summary of what has
>transpired between Pacifica management and the Democracy Now!
>staff.
>
> *******
>
>Since August 14 the staff of Democracy Now! has been suspended
> without pay, after being driven out of WBAI studios by a vitriolic
>campaign of public defamation and harassment, including physical
>threats and assaults by the present Pacifica executive leadership.
>AFTRA, the union representing the Democracy Now! staff, has
>deemed WBAI an unsafe workplace. We are producing
>Democracy Now!, without compensation from Pacifica, at
>Downtown Community Television in Lower Manhattan. The
>program continues to be carried by Pacifica station KPFA and
>Pacifica affiliates around the country.
>
>The Democracy Now! staff (and attorneys representing Amy
>Goodman) have previously written directly to Pacifica Management,
>to the Pacifica Board, and to its attorneys, detailing the
>harassment which we have faced and urging that immediate action
>be taken to stop the abuse of the Democracy Now! staff and to
>rescind the unfair disciplinary actions which have been taken
>against us.
>
>Most recently, Pacifica's former National Program Director Steve
>Yasko, resigned following revelations that he operated a website
>which featured hyperlinks to sites containing hard-core
>pornographic material demeaning to women. In fact, one of the
>postings Yasko permitted on his website included a pornographic
>fantasy about Amy Goodman who was imagined as "a 6 3"
>muscular jock with a six pack and a heavy package that needs
>attention."
>
>The Democracy Now! staff had already filed numerous complaints
>against Mr. Yasko. These included Amy Goodman's gender
>harassment union grievance. Pacifica Executive Director Bessie
>Wash and the Pacifica Foundation aggressively defended Steve
>Yasko on he AFTRA grievances, including the harassment and
>gender harassment charges. Amy was repeatedly called a "liar"
>and her allegations derided as "garbage" by senior Pacifica
>management and Board members. Pacifica Executive Director
>Bessie Walsh not only has failed to apologize for Steve Yasko's
>reprehensible conduct towards Amy and the Democracy Now!
>team, she has never even communicated with us about these
>events. In fact despite repeated e-mails to her, she has not
>communicated with us in almost a year.
>
>Although management has not officially notified us, we understand
>that Bessie Wash replaced National Program Director Steve Yasko
>with former WBAI interim Station Manager Utrice Leid. Since her
>appointment as interim Station Manager at WBAI in December
>2000, Utrice Leid and WBAI staff and producers under her authority
>have routinely vilified the staff of Democracy Now!, threatened us
>with violence, and made us the objects of racist and/or sexist
>slurs. These documented attacks have occurred during on-air
>broadcasts, at the station during working hours, and at staff
>meetings. Pacifica Management has never addressed the attacks.
>
>In the incident which prompted the staff of DN! to leave WBAI for its
>own safety, Ms. Leid physically accosted Amy on August 10, 2001
>This physical assault against a Democracy Now! staff member is
>now being grieved by AFTRA. The next week day, WBAI staff used
>a master key to enter our office and harass us while we were
>trying to prepare the show. They shouted so loudly that the on-air
>host left the studio to tell them they were disrupting his broadcast.
>
>
>Pacifica management said they would investigate these incidents
>and report back the results on September 10. They never
>interviewed Amy or the Democracy Now! producers who witnessed
>the incidents, and Pacifica never completed its investigation.
>Instead, Pacifica promoted Utrice Leid to head of National
>Programming.
>
>Two days after Ms. Leid was promoted, she told a WBAI producer
>to tell Democracy Now! engineer Anthony Sloan not to return to
>WBAI, referring to Anthony as "that nubian warrior defending that
>white maiden." On Monday, she wrote a memo to the building staff,
>that he was not to enter the premises. Again, this is after she has
>been named Pacifica National Program Director. This banning is
>management's first official action towards Democracy Now! staff
>since the "Peace Initiative" put forward by Mr. Farrell.
>
>Incredibly, a week after the World Trade Center attacks, Ms. Leid
>instructed the Arts Director to inform all programmers at WBAI that
> they were not to discuss the tragedy or its aftermath on the
>airwaves, that only "healing music and poetry" were to be played.
>In addition, she removed the only weekly radio program on South
>Asian politics in New York City from the air and banned its
>producer from the airwaves. This at a time when the Asian
>community is under the most serious attack. The Jewish show,
>which had prepared a major World Trade Center special, refused
>to play only music as the Bush Administration prepared for war.
>Their program did not air.
>
>Pacifica has never taken action on any of the documented
>incidents involving Ms. Leid or other WBAI staff and producers
>under her control. Instead, Ms. Leid has been elevated to the No.
>2 slot in the network. In that role, Ms. Leid has full authority over
>Democracy Now!, including authority over all budgetary and
>programming issues. Ms. Leid's promotion can only be seen as an
>endorsement of her conduct by Pacifica Management and by
>extension the entire network.
>
>Leid has cast her attacks on all perceived opponents of the current
>management of Pacifica, including Democracy Now! staffers, as a
>battle against "white supremacy" despite the fact that many of
>these opponents, most of those fired by the current management,
>and a current staff member of Democracy Now!, are people of
>color.
>
>Further, she has unambiguously incited listeners to violence
>against Pacifica dissidents. One of her typical on-air comments
>(made during a recent fundraising drive) was broadcast as part of
>National Public Radio's Morning Edition report on the crisis at
>Pacifica (June 21, 2001): "We're talking here today about the
>European psychological warfare against Africans. And that's what
>the whole thing is about" adding that "I need you stalwart soldiers
>out there . . . This is a call to arms. I told you it's a war."
>
>Under Ms. Leid's supervision, the Democracy Now! engineer was
>threatened with having his legs broken, Democracy Now! producers
>have been harangued and insulted, and Amy Goodman has been
>personally targeted by a public campaign of defamation. On-air
>and off-air, for many months now, she has been called a bitch, a
>liar, and a "Svengali" who has, on her own, orchestrated the entire
>Pacifica crisis. Ms. Leid has gone so far as to accuse her of
>"defecating" and "vomiting" on the air. When WBAI producer
>Clayton Riley accused the news anchor Robert Knight of "kissing
>the ass of that white bitch," Ms. Leid called Knight into her office
>and in her presence, Riley went further, physically accosting him.
>Knight and Goodman were fired from their morning show slots
>within days. Leid rewarded Riley by doubling the length of his
>program. Rule of thumb: ban those who express support for
>Democracy Now; reward those who attack us.
>
>Ms. Leid has claimed that Amy Goodman fabricated accounts of
>the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor, which she was
>witnessed and at which she was beaten. This baseless and
>bizarre accusation prompted an outraged letter to Pacifica by
>Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jose Ramos Horta in support of Amy.
>
>
>Ms. Leid's attacks constitute just one part of a year long campaign
>of harassment tolerated and tacitly encouraged by Pacifica
>Executive Director Bessie Wash. The attacks on Democracy Now!
>began in earnest last Fall when Steve Yasko, then Pacifica's new
>National Program Director, threatened Amy with termination if she
>did not follow new work rules including prohibitions on public
>speaking on non-work time, an outrageous restriction of her right
>to free speech.
>
>Immediately after Yasko's hiring, the attacks on Amy and the staff
>of Democracy Now! by other Pacifica employees escalated. When
>Ms. Wash named Utrice Leid WBAI General Manager, Ms. Leid
>fired Amy from her 8 year position as co-host of the local WBAI
>morning show Wake Up Call. Leid engaged in and tolerated vitriolic
>attacks on Amy over WBAI's airwaves, tolerated physical threats
>against Democracy Now! staff members, intermittently refused to
>broadcast Democracy Now!, and forced the show into inferior
>studio space inappropriate for the production of a national
>program, causing serious technical problems.
>
>During his tenure neither Mr. Yasko nor Bessie Wash ever
>substantively addressed even one of our documented concerns and
>complaints. AFTRA soon filed a series of grievances on behalf of
>Amy Goodman. These grievances remain unresolved and are now
>heading for arbitration. Like so many others at WBAI, Amy has
>also filed grievances through United Electrical Local 404 union
>charging a hostile work environment and challenging her summary
>dismissal from WBAI's award-winning morning news show, "Wake-
>Up Call."
>
>These grievances also remain unresolved and are also going to
>arbitration.
>
>In addition, Amy has filed an Unfair Labor Practice complaint with
>the National Labor Relations Board charging retaliation by Pacifica
>management for exercising her trade union rights.
>
>Amy has also retained private counsel to help her find ways in
>which she can further protect her career and professional
>reputation, as well as provide for her own physical safety. The
>campaign of defamation has extended to the highest officials at
>Pacifica. Pacifica Board member, Epstein, Becker and Green
>attorney John Murdock, has gone on the record calling Amy
>Goodman s claims "garbage" and saying that, "she should take
>her show and go somewhere else." In Alameda Superior Court,
>Pacifica's attorneys claimed that Amy was sponsoring an illegal
>boycott against Pacifica, a charge that was not only untrue and
>defamatory, but which was apparently designed to harm Amy's
>relationship with Pacifica Board members and employees, and to
>malign her professionally. These same attorneys also filed court
>papers falsely accusing Amy of "extortion" and "economic
>coercion." Despite these wholesale attacks by the present
>Pacifica leadership and some Pacifica employees, the "Democracy
>Now!" staff has continued to produce an outstanding editorial
>product which is widely acknowledged as the most popular and
>successful offering on the Pacifica national schedule.
>
>Democracy Now! has exceeded every measurable objective for the
>program, from audience building and fund raising to journalistic
>accolades and publicity. The program, originally started in 1996 as
>an election year special, proved so successful that it soon formed
>an integral part of the Pacifica programming line up. By 1998,
>under the direction of Julie Drizin, the Pacifica national
>programming line-up consisted of five daily programs Larry Bensky
>s "Living Room," "The Jerry Brown Show," "Pacifica Network
>News," "Democracy Now!," and "Voices of Pacifica."
>
>In fact, the record established by Amy Goodman and the
>Democracy Now! team has been unparalleled in the history of
>Pacifica. Democracy Now! won the 1998 George Polk Award for
>the radio documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria s
>Military Dictatorship." Amy Goodman has also won numerous
>awards for the radio documentary she co-produced with journalist
>Allan Nairn, "MASSACRE: The Story of East Timor," including the
>Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, the Alfred I.
>DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, the Armstrong Award, the
>Radio/Television News Directors Award, as well as awards from
>AP, UPI, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Goodman
>and Nairn were both present during the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre
>in East Timor in which Indonesian soldiers gunned down more
>than 250 Timorese. Amy Goodman has also reported from Israel
>and the Occupied territories, Cuba, Mexico, Haiti and last year
>became the first journalist ever to interview Lori Berenson in her
>Peruvian jail. Goodman also broadcast the first US radio interview
>with imprisoned East Timor rebel leader Xanana Gusmao and
>conducted an exclusive half hour interview with President Clinton
>on Election Day.
>
>Prior to the beginning of the Democracy Now! crisis last year, the
>program raised more than one million dollars in pledges through on-
>air fund raising and generating enormous positive publicity for
>Pacifica. Democracy Now! also pioneered multi-platform
>broadcasting, resulting in the most dramatic increase in audience
>in Pacifica Radio history. Through a unique multi-media
>collaboration involving non-profit community radio, the internet and
>satellite and cable television, Democracy Now! expanded its
>potential audience to twenty five million households nationwide
>during the 2000 Democratic and Republican conventions. It
>generated scores of positive articles in The New York Times,
>Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and other publications and
>media outlets from Fox to NPR at a time when the coverage of
>Pacifica was negative to nil.
>
>While Democracy Now! has continued its editorial excellence,
>Pacifica National Programming has otherwise been gutted. Polk
>award winner Larry Bensky and the Living Room team were fired
>following the removal of KPFA General Manager Nicole Sawaya
>and the change in Pacifica's governance structure in early 1999.
>News Director Dan Coughlin was ousted in November 1999 for
>covering the Pacifica crisis and esteemed Pacifica Network News
>(PNN) anchor Verna Avery-Brown, the only African-American news
>anchor in public broadcasting, resigned in protest over this
>censorship. More than 40 stringers launched a strike protesting the
>ousting of Avery-Brown and Coughlin and the on-going censorship
>by Pacifica. The striking reporters currently produce a half-hour
>daily news program, Free Speech Radio News (FSRN), which airs
>on 49 stations nationwide.
>
>Pacifica Management's actions have made the network a laughing
>stock and a pariah in the journalistic community, seriously
>undermining a reputation that has taken decades to build.
>
>Pacifica's affiliates, the backbone of our nationwide "network,"
>have been up in arms since the KPFA crisis, the subsequent
>collapse in Pacifica's national programming, and the removal of the
>Ku service from KPFA to WPFW.
>
>The affiliates have complained repeatedly about poor service and
>questioned the integrity of Pacifica's programming given the on-
>going censorship and staff firings. Indeed, we understand the
>Pacifica Network News (PNN) now airs on less than 20 stations
>as compared to 63 affiliates less than two years ago. Democracy
>Now!'s affiliates, which number some 25, have made it clear that
>they will abandon the network and PNN if Democracy Now! is
>discontinued. Yesterday we received a letter from fifteen affiliates
>saying they are cancelling their contracts if Democracy Now! is
>cancelled.
>
>Disgust, fury and outrage don't begin to describe our response to
>what Pacifica management is doing to our beloved network. But we
>have no time for those emotions. Even as we mourn the 6000
>people who have died just down the street from our studio, the US
>is beating the drums of war, insuring more loss of innocent lives.
>We will continue to broadcast to the growing number of community
>stations that are running our daily two-hour War and Peace Report.
>
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Amy Goodman
>Host, Democracy Now!
>
>Kris Abrams
>Producer, Democracy Now!
>
>Brad Simpson
>Producer, Democracy Now!
>
>Anthony Sloan
>Engineer, Democracy Now!
>
>
>
>
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