Berkeley-What happens when members of KPFA’s local board attempt to obstruct the same local progressive political victories that the station lauds on air? Ahmad Anderson, a Save KPFA-UIR affiliated member of the board from 2015-2020 ran for a city council seat in the nearby city of Richmond, running against the city’s former mayor and co-founder of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, Gayle McLaughlin. Anderson’s primary funders, according to campaign finance records included the Richmond Police Officers Association, the California Apartment Association (the landlord lobbyists), a real estate dark money PAC, several local developers including Mariner Square, Eastshore Properties, Richmond Development LLC, the city’s waste management vendor and a shipping company Levin Richmond Terminal Corp that is currently suing the City to overturn an ordinance preventing the shipping of coal and petroleum via the Port of Richmond. As if that isn’t enough, Richmond’s mayor Tom Butt released a newsletter highlighting his hand-picked slate of three “pro-business” and “pro-police” candidates, including Anderson, who will stop “radical social policies”. Butt is not subtle; he implores his readers to:
Please help keep the Richmond Progressive Alliance from taking over Richmond.
On-air, KPFA has highlighted the Richmond Progressive Alliance and their inspiring movement to recapture the hardscrabble city from the corporate interests that have long dominated it, including petroleum giant Chevron. KPFA has devoted hour-long feature programs, lecture events and has fundraised for the station with labor activist Steve Early’s book about the Richmond Progressive Alliance: Refinery Town; Big Oil, Big Money and the Retaking of an American City.
The board faction that endorsed Anderson for a seat on KPFA’s board, which currently goes by the names Save KPFA and United for Independent Radio and maintains a majority on the national board, made other choices in their public roles. Our Revolution Contra Costa, which Save KPFA member Mark Van Landuyt has long been affiliated with, endorsed Anderson’s opponent, as did the Berkeley-based Wellstone Democratic Club, which has long had tight ties with the Save KPFA faction. KPFA’s AM program Upfront even had McLaughlin as a panelist for the November 2020 election coverage on-air. But behind the scenes, a KPFA board member was seeking to defeat her and her radical social policies.
Anderson has since resigned from the KPFA local board. He had to, as Pacifica’s bylaws require the resignation of board members when they seek elected office, as the financial favors and endorsements that candidates seek can be problematic for a local news outlet to engage in. But Anderson just did so this month, after his campaign concluded with a loss, staying on the board improperly since at least June of 2020 with the obvious complicity of the Our Revolution and Wellstone-affiliated members of the KPFA board in the Save KPFA-UIR faction.
But bylaws aside, the real point that this situation illustrates is one of political coherence. What does KPFA-FM stand for? Progressive politics as a marketing niche is one thing. The station makes its money from appeals for donations from progressives, highlighting a long series of books and films and speakers about leftism, radicalism and social justice. The dominant board slate, Save KPFA, features a “progressive” banner on it website, and its politically connected members would never publicly endorse Anderson’s run to keep RPA from “taking over” in their progressive circles. Yet outside the limelight, they embrace his pro-business pro-police positions, going so far as to retain Anderson as a consultant for a newly formed station manager evaluation committee in September 2020.
Can a progressive political outlet survive touting public progressivism and private corporatism? Contradictions of the kind illustrated by Anderson’s presence on the KPFA board throughout his anti- progressive political campaign undermine KPFA’s public face and compromise the values it purports to represent.
Do KPFA’s listeners really want to vote onto the board and be represented by, people who seek to stop “radical social policies?”. How did this happen? And what changes are we going to make to keep the Save KPFA/UIR board faction from tricking KPFA members into voting against our best interests in the future?
Food for thought.
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Started in 1946 by conscientious objector Lew Hill, Pacifica’s storied history includes impounded program tapes for a 1954 on-air discussion of marijuana, broadcasting the Seymour Hersh revelations of the My Lai massacre, bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, going to jail rather than turning over the Patty Hearst tapes to the FBI, and Supreme Court cases including the 1984 decision that noncommercial broadcasters have the constitutional right to editorialize, and the Seven Dirty Words ruling following George Carlin’s incendiary performances on WBAI. Pacifica Foundation operates noncommercial radio stations in New York, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and syndicates content to over 180 affiliates. It invented listener-sponsored radio.