September 2, 2015 – by Karen Ocamb
Since 1959, KPFK, the Pacifica radio station in Los Angeles, has broadcast a wide range of liberal and hard-left-leaning programming under the rubric of multiculturalism. KPFK, for instance, airs the only LGBT-specific broadcast in the Greater L.A. area—IMRU, produced by award-winning out journalist Steve Pride.
But constant rebellion doesn’t necessarily entail respect among the programmers and community board members of the commercial-free, listener-sponsored station, so Pride created a Hate Speech Prevention policy. It took seven months to pass, but the interim policy was in effect on Aug. 15-16 when KPFK aired an unchallenged homophobic rant in which a psychiatrist compared homosexuality to bestiality, among other offensive comments.
General Manager Leslie Radford preapproved the 30-hour block of programming, “Afrikan Mental Liberation Weekend” with host Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn.
“As a bisexual person, I am deeply angered and pained by those characterizations,” Radford wrote. But, she added in a second email, “My policy as general manager has been to allow all people on our air to say whatever they want within the bounds of the law, and if I’m true to that, then I can’t censor Dr. Person-Lynn’s offensive remarks.”
Person-Lynn interviewed psychiatrist Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, noting that she’s been labeled homophobic. “No, I’m not a homophobic,” Cress Welsing said. “But have I tried to understand what these behavior patterns are about. Like I was giving a lecture on Thursday evening, and you know explaining to the audience, you know, people can be conditioned to have sex with animals. People can have a sexual response to animals. Animals can have a sexual response to people. Anybody who’s had a dog probably is aware of that,” adding that “homosexual behavior” had reached “epidemic levels” in the African-American community.
“Afrikan Mental Liberation Weekend” has aired twice before on KPFK, in 1992 and in 2003, causing an uproar in the Jewish community over Person-Lynn’s anti-Semitic remarks. The defense then as now is First Amendment. “Hate speech” is “free speech,” Radford told Pride. She suggested that Pride scrap his planned IMRU program and use his time instead to respond to the programming.
Pride refused, noting that he would be “preaching to the converted” and not reaching the same African-American audience.
Ironically, an hour of programming opened up during the block of African-American programing on Aug. 29. Pride quickly produced a show entitled “Outside the Dream” during which host Vash Boddie discussed homophobia in the black community with Omar Hasan, program coordinator for the black gay group In the Meantime Men; Gabriel Maldonado, founder and executive director of TruEvolution; and Dr. Sylvia Rhue, writer, religious scholar and producer of the award-winning documentary All God’s Children.
“I think it went well,” Pride said afterwards. “There were a few callers concerned that there might be a permanent black ‘gay’ show during the Saturday Morning block of black-centric programs, but they were nice about it.”
Radford did not reply to a request for comment.
This clash between Pride and Radford is no little kerfuffle. In fact, it appears to be only the tip of an iceberg upon which the ship of KPFK and perhaps the Pacifica network itself seems bound to crash. After years of financial mismanagement and internal political squabbles, KPFK has considerable debt and, according to comments posted by insiders on the website PacificaInExile.org, now faces charges of “union-busting” for laying off workers and cutting salaries by 50%. On Aug. 27, SAG-AFTRA took Pacifica into arbitration over KPFK’s alleged violation of their collective bargaining agreement, the site reported Aug. 31.
“KPFK is having more serious financial problems than usual. The present board majority took power a year and a half ago, and the financial problems were put on steroids,” Kim Kaufman, a former KPFK Treasurer who sits on the KPFK Local Station Board, told Frontiers. “There has been virtually no accounting staff for the last year and a half; a terminated CFO who they re-hired and who looked the other way; and no general ledger for over six months until I discovered it. The board majority, with Lydia Brazon—chair of the national board—as its leader, passed a budget last year with a $500,000 deficit in it. They just approved a budget for next year with a $1 million deficit. It’s based on fantasy revenue and poor estimation of expenses. This is the Shock Doctrine being played out at KPFK—create a financial crisis yourself and then use it to further your goals.”
One goal, Kaufman contends, is to use the financial crisis to eventually cause the breakup of the Pacifica network, the assets of which would then be “scooped up” by longtime Pacifica insider and Oakland attorney Dan Siegel.
Siegel, Kaufman alleges, “has a reason to negotiate badly on KPFK’s behalf. A month ago it was discovered that he and another Berkeley board member, Margy Wilkinson, had filed Articles of Incorporation with the Secretary of State creating a new nonprofit called KPFA Foundation, which he publicly stated was to acquire assets of Pacifica, such as broadcasting licenses, in the event of a Pacifica Foundation insolvency, dissolution or governmental intervention.”
There have been dire predictions about KPFK’s demise before—and the station has always managed to pull through, buoyed by the progressive left’s need to hear fresh stories and scrappy alternative points of view. But now once-loyal listeners are tuning into a multitude of other outlets, begging the question, what will become of the 40-year-old IMRU if KPFK sinks into oblivion?