NEW YORK (June 10) -- In an unprecedented action for U.S. radio, thousands of listeners to the Pacifica Radio network joined a national boycott of Pacifica's spring fundraising drive this past month, prompting a precipitous 20 percent decline in overall financial pledges to the network, say organizers of the campaign.

The most stunning drop in contributions occurred at the network's largest station, WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City, where donations plummeted more than 50 percent. Last year, WBAI received $850,000 in pledges during its two-week spring drive. But this year, even though station management extended its drive to 20 days, listener pledges totaled no more than $400,000, according to Bernard White, the station's former program director.

"WBAI and Pacifica management have promoted the fund drives as listener referendums," said White. "The listeners have now spoken and they¹ve resoundingly rejected the policies of the present executive leadership. It¹s time now for the hardliners on the Pacifica board to resign and for the rebuilding process to begin."

White was fired last December along with several other veteran staffers in what has come to be known as the Christmas Coup. He has since become one of the organizers of the Campaign to Stop the Corporate Takeover of Pacifica (Pacifica Campaign), which was launched in February to protest a takeover of the network by what Pacifica reformers call a "corporate clique."

Campaign organizers were able to learn the astonishing results of their boycott from WBAI staffers who still work at the station but support the reform movement. Station's management, which has already admitted close to $200,000 in lost revenues -- and a $130,000 budget shortfall -- from its February fund drive, tried to keep the disastrous results of the spring fund drive secret.

Two other stations, KPFK in Los Angeles, and KPFA in Berkeley, experienced more modest drops in listener pledges -- totaling about $50,000. The boycott had little impact at the two smallest stations, WPFW in Washington and KPFT in Houston. But boycott organizers say they never targeted Washington and Houston for much public outreach.

"They are the two smallest stations in the network and they don¹t raise much more than $500,000 combined during the spring fund drive," said Juan Gonzalez, coordinator of the Pacifica Campaign. "We concentrated our efforts on WBAI because that is Pacifica's main revenue generator."

The Pacifica Campaign estimates that the spring fund drive at Pacifica¹s five stations raised some $1.8 million, down from a projected goal of approximately $2.3 million.

AT both KPFK and WBAI, management infuriated listeners and crippled their own fundraising efforts by knocking the network's most popular news show, Democracy Now!, off the air and by launching public attacks against the show's host, Amy Goodman. The pre-emptions of Democracy Now!, the first such pre-emptions in the show's five-year history, prompted thousands of listeners to flood the two stations with protest calls. So many calls came in that station lines were paralyzed at times.

In Los Angeles, station manager Mark Schubb finally relented and brought the show back on the air the last two days of fundraising. That concession saved Schubb and KPFK from a disaster similar to New York's. In those final two days, KPFK recouped many of the donations it lost at the beginning of the drive.

But at WBAI, interim station manager Utrice Leid, refused to allow Goodman to return. She and other personnel repeatedly accused Goodman of refusing to fundraise -- a lie that was unmasked by Goodman's fundraising efforts at two other Pacifica stations. The removal of Democracy Now! and flagrant attacks on Goodman are the continuation of nearly a year of harassment by network management.

The financial boycott is part of an overall movement to restore democratic decision-making, listener accountability and free speech at Pacifica. For decades the network has represented the best in radical, avant garde public radio programming in the country. But during the past few years control of the Pacifica board has been usurped by a group of individuals with corporate backgrounds who have begun steering the network away from Pacifica's historic mission. Hundreds of staff and volunteer producers have been fired for objecting to the network's rapid rightward drift and its curtailment of free speech.

During the recent fund drive at WBAI, for example, one of the main premiums offered to listeners was by Jim Mars, a neo-fascist and anti-Semitic ideologue. At the same time, and in a frantic attempt to counter widespread listener rejection, station manager Utrice Leid repeatedly talked on the air during the drive of the station being in a "race war" against white supremacists who she claimed were resisting "black leadership," presumably like hers. (Leid is a native of Trinidad.)

But Leid¹s false accusations have been exposed by the many progressive and radical black leaders and organizations that have publicly condemned the policies of both WBAI management and the Pacifica board. Among those critics have been: writer Alice Walker, activist Angela Davis, the December 12th movement, the Black Radical Congress, actor Danny Glover, death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, Roger Toussaint, president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, veteran WBAI producer Elombe Brath, and U.S. Rep. Major Owens (D-NY).

Through the boycott and through public pressure and non-violent, creative direct action directed at the individual directors of the Pacifica Foundation, the Pacifica Campaign hopes to convince those who continue to pursue the current bankrupt policies that they have to resign and allow democratic accountability.

Those policies have met with such widespread opposition that many Pacifica affiliates, disgusted with the diluted, neo-liberal bias of Pacifica's nightly news broadcast, have dropped the Pacifica Network News (PNN). They are now broadcasting in its place the daily Free Speech Radio News, which the Pacifica Campaign is helping to finance. In just one month, 33 community radio stations have begun broadcasting Free Speech Radio News, and more than two dozen of them have dropped PNN.

As for the campaign against the board of directors of Pacifica, two of the renegade members on the board, Micheal Palmer of Houston and Frank Millspaugh of New York City have resigned in recent months.

Listener groups around the country are renewing plans to increase protests against the remaining board members. On Friday, June 8, and Saturday, June 9, nationwide protests were held against board members in the five Pacifica signal areas.

In short, the movement to reclaim reform and revitalize Pacifica is growing with each passing day.

"Pacifica's corporate clique may temporarily control the network's airwaves," Gonzalez said this week. "But no one can control the hearts and minds of Pacifica's listeners. Like all regimes who rule by fear, they're hurtling toward the garbage can of history and still don't know it."