Report on Tuesday, March 18, 2003 WBAI LAB Meeting

It was a convention of the entire WBAI Unity Caucus tonight at 120 Wall St. as the Local Advisory Board met to discuss their differences on diversity. For the most part there was only one real difference, everybody on the LAB vs. LAB chair Miguel Maldonado. Forgive me if I leave anyone out, but here is my list of who attended: the meeting began at 7 PM about half an hour late. Mimi Rosenberg was a late arrival, and chair Maldonado arrived almost a full half-hour later. Some of those already there were LAB members’ Rashida Ismaili Abu-Bakr, Anthony Mackall and paid-staff representative Erroll Maitland. Interim Pacifica National Board member Janice K. Bryant was present during the first few minutes of the meeting. As the meeting progressed staffer Bob Lederer showed up, followed by recording engineer Dred Scott Keyes and Wake Up Call host Robert Knight. In total about 25 people jammed the small conference room at WBAI.

The discussion immediately took off focusing on the issue of "diversity" and the need to convince the iPNB to adopt an affirmative action plan based on quotas that Pacifica’s California lawyers claim violates California and federal law. The meeting had barely begun when the first dispute broke out between Rashida and listener gadfly Patty Heffley who along with other volunteers makes sure that every meeting having anything to do with the Pacifica Foundation is recorded and posted on the net. Rashida says she’s uncomfortable with being recorded because she says Internet postings purported to originate from the recordings of her statements are often inaccurate, and she can’t review the originals. The idea of the LAB recording its own meetings was proposed and met with quiet derision before it was shelved.

The next item of discussion was about the recording of the iPNB meeting in Los Angeles earlier this month. It seems that some have raised the specter of a Nixonian," Rose Mary Woods" gap in the unofficial recording of the LA meeting provided by Houston’s Pacifica station KPFT. Patty Heffley made an indignant statement at this point about how hard working volunteers recorded the meeting at their own expense and inadvertent gaps on the CDs are unavoidable. The issue revolved around statements by iPNB members in LA concerning the makeup of a "diversity" committee that’s supposed to revisit the highly divisive quota issue. From my vantagepoint it seemed that powerful LAB members were determined to keep chair Maldonado off the new committee. Although the quota issue is supposedly dead members of WBAIs Unity Caucus are making a last desperate play to get the iPNB to overturn their earlier decision against the plan. Anthony Mackall led the charge against Maldonado directly accusing him of "not knowing who he is," and reminding the room of centuries of Black people’s suffering in America. He was followed by Maitland who continued the attack on Maldonado, who by this time was holding his head in his hand in resignation as the wrath of the LAB members rose against him. Rashida was particularly harsh in her critique of Maldonado, speaking of her schooling in Africa and what she learned of the depth of victimization of all Black people no matter if they have only one drop of African blood.

Maldonado who as a Lower East Side resident hails from a culture that values extreme diversity, interracial marriage, religious tolerance and political radicalism could be seen noticeably cringing at the narrow cultural nationalism and outright racist ignorance that confronted him. He meekly recounted that his own father was Black in response to being race baited and argued that all policy should be "color blind." But the attacks continued reaching their lowest point as Erroll Maitland invoked what he said were the words of WBAIs beloved and deceased former Program Director Samori Marksman. The idea of the truly color blind Marksman judging a person by anything but merit is laughable, it was marksman who created Democracy Now for not African-American woman Amy Goodman.

At this point I got to speak to the LAB members. Maldonado handed the floor over and I began by asking it wasn’t true that all people on the earth are descended from Africans. Maitland interrupted saying, "that’s an incredibly racist statement." But I looked at him and asked if it wasn’t true that a WBAI programmer had recently stated on air that the word Jew originated from the word jewelry. Adding that it was the producers right to be stupid on the air, but the lack of response to the incident by WBAI management was disturbing. Maitland was silent from that point on. By this time both Mimi Rosenberg and Anthony Mackall had left the room together, avoiding most of my brief statement. I pointed out that with war breaking-out it would be a mistake to preempt regular programming for national shows that have no intention of giving back the airtime they seize. I mentioned similar incidents at Berkeley’s KPFA after 9/11 when Dennis Bernstein squatted airtime for months. Reiterating that this course of action would be a big mistake I left the meeting. At the door I glanced back to catch Mimi Rosenberg who had returned to hear my last few words, dressed in a silken, faded green blouse and slacks, glaring at me with undisguised hostility.