KPFK is Pacifica Radio’s (the long-lived progressive radio network that started public radio in the United States in 1946), Los Angeles station. Currently going through a very difficult financial period and a controversial management transition, the station has become a flash point recently on questions of privilege, race and gender and has introduced some interesting questions about la causa of black and brown liberation. About a month ago, the station was inundated with angry emails about a Voces De Libertad/Insurgencia Feminina broadcast, two programs aired in an evening spanish-language program series. The host of the programs, Rodrigo Argueta, has been an advocate for more spanish-language programming, but is also an active participant in the station’s governance structure, serving as a staff representative multiple times on Pacifica’s national board and allying himself with a new majority faction that includes the largely white Save KPFA’ers in Northern California, who have not been advocates for similar brown and black liberation programming in their own home turf of Berkeley/Northern California.

Argueta’s guest that evening was the leader of an LA Aztlan dance troupe. Midway through the program, call-ins to the program were taken and female callers brought up the dance troupe leader’s history of sexual molestation of women and girls, at least one claiming to be a direct victim of the individual on the program. LA-based artist Joel Garcia was one listener who wrote in and here is what he said:

15 April

I am extremely disappointed that Insurgencia Femenina (mind you a space for women) was used as a platform by Rodrigo Argueta to not only slander the names of long standing community organizers and at the same time minimize and berate a survivor of child molestation who called in to confirm she was molested by the man they spent two hours (Voces de Libertad/ & Insurgencia Femenina) defending. What kind of sensationalist unbiased slanderous programming is being allowed to be programmed at KPFK. We demand the immediate removal of Rodrigo Argueta from further programming. All this during Sexual Assault Awareness Month – what a damn shame. -joel

A month later, a similar incident occurred when Ian Johnston, a former white board member who was permanently banned from station premises and events in 2009 following multiple incidents of wielding handcuffs and trying to make “citizen’s arrests” of station staff and board members, returned to the station with the apparent blessing of the new white manager Leslie Radford, who replaced the station’s african-american manager Zuberi Fields. Radford and Johnston served together on the station’s board for many years.

Johnston’s presence, in addition to being verboten per station policy, was threatening and upsetting to staff members who he had previously targeted and physically touched without permission, most prominently the station’s IT director Jonathan Alexander, an employee for over 8 years, a Sag-AFTRA member and an african-american. Alexander said so, in no uncertain terms, on May 21st, in an email he did not intend to make public, but sent to his supervisors and union representative.

From: Jonathan Alexander
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2015 10:29 PM
Subject: ATTENTION: Ian Johnston is in the building trespassing

If you have forgotten or don’t know, this man tried to place me under citizens arrest in the lobby. Ian Johnston was banned from all Pacifica activities and functions permanently. I believe that we should call the police. He is trespassing and was banned from the radio station after assaulting me and attending the following board meeting with handcuffs in an attempt to arrest me and others. Leslie Radford obstructed the board from seeing the video of his assault which I still possess. This demonstrates that he is unstable and a possible liability to the station. His presence at the station creates a hostile environment for me personally, and possibly others. This situation must be addressed immediately by management. I have in the past suspected him of tampering with computers. Trespassing in the middle of the night when few people are there to observe his actions is a dangerous threat to the security of the station.

And yet, just this morning, another “radical” former board member Doug Barnett jumps in to tell the story “his way“. 

“The frame shows Ian holding Jonathan’s wrist and saying ”citizens arrest”. Since Ian’s white and tall & his mother is a lawyer, and Jonathan is a young black man, the comment was a poor choice, but not aggressive beyond a hurt foot and hurt feelings.  Both Jonathan and Ian (both members of the KPFK Board Of Directors) hung out for hours after their comic display”.

Barnett’s email is clearly false, given Alexander’s own words, but apart from the who’s zooming who aspect (several witnesses confirmed that Alexander left the station after the incident), and what the video will eventually reveal, the twin incidents give rise to some real questions about privilege and who gets to speak and to be heard in progressive institutions that embrace the narrative of black and brown liberation and social revolution.

When radicals embrace an ends-justify-the-means approach that necessitates eradicating the voices of people of color from their own dialogue, especially when people are talking about their own lived experiences of sexual molestation or a conflict that got physical, exactly who is being liberated and by whom? What kind of liberation are you experiencing when you are kept from telling your own story?

When two men, one with the power of the microphone and another in a prominent social position, shut down a rape survivor, they are exerting the privilege of maleness and official status to keep out a point of view from someone less powerful, and more painfully, using verbal abuse to punish the less powerful young woman for having the temerity to speak up in their playing field.

When a former board member, protecting the job of a new white manager, conspires to intimidate and then to disparage an african-american employee by declaring white aggressive behavior as “a poor choice”, they are asserting the superiority of their narrative because they are the ones who know what is right and wrong and as we know, young black men are often prone to “hurt feelings”.  It was all a “comic display” in good fun and they know because they are the expert on everything.

Here’s the problem. All of these people assert they are radicals and invading KPFK to liberate the black and brown people from oppression and bring on the revolution for racial justice. If only they could get some of the black and brown people to shut up while they do it.

This ardent embrace of la causa falls on to the rocks when it stoops to eradicating the voices of people of color whose lives and experiences inconveniently interrupt whatever narrative is on display. Suppression, ridicule, and verbal and physical abuse are destructive to and in all communities,  as is the random assertion of privilege to claim the power to tell the official story.  If this is the path to the revolution, then the justice in “racial justice” will be left out and we’ll simply be substituting the haves and have nots with a different set of faces.

It’s a radio station that we’re talking about, and what is to be lost and won is jobs and programming slots, not lives. But it matters how we go about living and working in progressive communities. Mastering the bullying techniques of oppressors of all walks and stripes is not the path to freedom.

The “new” KPFK looks to be dead on arrival.