Last summer a dispute at Berkeley's KPFA radio station erupted into what was -- even for Berkeley -- an extraordinary level of public protest: sit-ins, teach-ins, perhaps the largest street demonstration the city had seen since the Vietnam War, and even a benefit concert by Joan Baez. This time even international media took note.

Why all the heat and interest over a dispute at a radio station? Because KPFA is part of non-profit Pacifica, the most powerful community radio network in America, and the only one devoted to an anti-establishment point of view. Pacifica is the place where commentators question the power and motives of government and Big Business alike, where none of the music is from a marketer's play list, and where a rise in unemployment is not reported as positive because it rallies the stock market.

Moreover, its stations are in prime U.S. markets -- Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C. -- and pack a lot of power. KPFA's 59,000-watt signal reaches the entire San Francisco Bay area, extending 100 miles north to Mendocino, and about 50 miles south to Santa Cruz.

In contrast, the radio licenses that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) soon plans to make available to non-profit community groups would create 100-watt stations with a maximum reach of seven miles.

In announcing the community-stations initiative recently, FCC Chair William Kennard said the action was driven by the need to open the airwaves to a diversity of voices. Mergers in the radio industry are creating McDonald's-like clones of stations across the country, with programming aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator.

Community radio was invented 50 years ago by Pacifica's founder, Lew Hill, and the network has survived a variety of challenges. During the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era, for example, Pacifica endured threats to its broadcast licenses.

Remarkably, the on-going dispute at the network stems not from a right-wing attack, but from a bitter struggle between new Pacifica management and network veterans.

Efforts by the new managers to centralize decision-making and eliminate local control led to fears that KPFA or New York City's WBAI might be sold, and that programming would be watered down to drive up audience share. This has resulted in firings, a lock-out, embarrassing on-air disputes, and the censorship of news about Pacifica itself.

And the fall-out is continuing. This week Pacifica Network News anchor Verna Avery Brown resigned in protest over the removal of the network's national news director. Brown had been the only African-American woman in the U.S. to host a national daily news program.

Liberal critics of mainstream media are alarmed, and have called for Pacifica's leaders to resign. "What is ultimately at stake in these protests," says Ben Bagdikian, Dean Emeritus at the University of Califonia, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism, "is whether the most significant broadcast outlet for independent journalism and progressive ideas in the United States will be destroyed by its own governing board."

Bagdikian argues that Pacifica plays a critical role in the democratic expression of diverse points of view. He said the network alerts the rest of the media to important stories about the dispossessed or abuses of power, at home or abroad. For example, long before the recent outbreak of war in East Timor, Pacifica was reporting on Indonesia's unlawful and oppressive occupation there, and on decades of America's often covert support for that occupation.

Pacifica was also years ahead of the mainstream media in reporting on Gulf War Syndrome. It investigated veterans' complaints that chemicals they encountered on the battlefield during the 1991 Persian Gulf War were causing their debilitating symptoms.

However, conservative David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, couldn't be more delighted with Pacifica's civil war. Calling the network "communist, with a small 'c'," he said: "Never have two sides deserved each other more, and they should stew in it."

The Enemy Within?

Pacifica certainly does follow a untraditional economic model: non-commercial, listener-supported, staffed and programmed principally by volunteers, and governed by boards of people from the local community. Having worked in commercial radio, founder Lew Hill, a radical Quaker pacifist, knew his unconventional notions were incompatible with maximizing audience size and profits. But he wanted Pacifica to be a refuge for independent thinkers and artists who would be free to broadcast the truth as they saw it.

At KPFA, that has meant airing Whoopi Goldberg before she went to Hollywood; beat poet Alan Ginsburg before his book Howl became a counter-culture classic; and black nationalist Malcolm X when no one else would broadcast his "dangerous" message.

But Hill's model of independence cracked in 1976,when Pacifica began accepting federal funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That departure appears to have set the stage for the current conflict, which insiders date to a February meeting of its Board of Directors.

At that meeting, Pacifica's executive director, Lynn Chadwick, told the board a by-law change was necessary to comply with conditions attached to its federal funding, which now makes up about 17% of Pacifica's budget. As a result, the board unanimously voted for an amendment that made it a wholly self-selecting body. Until then, local advisory boards at the member stations had a say in the selection of two-thirds of the central board.

Former Pacifica president Peter Franck, a communications lawyer, contests the claim that continued federal funding required the by-law change. He says some board members were deceived into approving the new by-law. Furthermore, Sherry Gendelman, an attorney and chair of KPFA's local advisory board, says that then-KPFA station manager Nicole Sawaya gave the Board a choice, in the form of a plan to function without federal funds. They say that Dr. Mary Frances Berry, who chairs the board of the Pacifica Foundation (owner of the network), repeatedly interrupted Sawaya's presentation with hostile, critical comments.

The following month, Pacifica declined to renew Sawaya's contract. Gendelman and others say Sawaya's performance had been excellent, that she had raised morale, recruited minorities and young people, and improved programming. Audience size was growing steadily, and fund-raising drives were attracting new donors at an impressive rate.

A consensus quickly emerged in the KPFA community that the bylaw change and the firing of Sawaya meant nothing less than an attempt to take the station from its staff and listeners. The enemy was within.

Berry, who chairs the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, did not respond to numerous requests for an interview.

Censorship at Pacifica?

Protests erupted in the wake of Sawaya's firing, as did news coverage of them. But at Pacifica, the bastion of free-speech, KPFA News co-director Aileen Alfandary received her first order ever to censor a story: the story of the protests and Sawaya's firing.

When Larry Bensky, an award-winning, 30-year veteran of KPFA disregarded the order by discussing the dispute on the air, he was fired. The protests escalated.

Then, veteran KPFA music programmer Robbie Osmann talked about the situation on his show. He too was fired. Several weeks later, Dennis Bernstein, a nationally renowned investigative journalist, used his drive-time show to broadcast material from a public press conference concerning Pacifica. After the show, then-acting station manager Garland Ganter took armed security guards into the broadcast booth to evict Bernstein from the station. Listeners heard Bernstein imploring the guards not to shoot him just before his microphone was cut off.

Bernstein and the remaining KPFA staffers were arrested for trespass and locked-out "on paid leave." Programming was piped in from outside KPFA.

After several weeks, KPFA's staff was allowed to return. However, in statements quoted by the Associated Press and others, Dr. Berry made it clear that she would seize the station again if the staff failed to perform according to her specifications for audience growth and diversity.

Berry also denied that KPFA or any other Pacifica station was for sale. However, other board members acknowledged that they had discussed the possibility as a solution to continuing financial problems at the network.

Towards the Mainstream?

Despite the turmoil, KPFA's distinctive programming mix remains largely intact today. At the national level, Pacifica still produces its Democracy Now! news magazine and its national news shows, which is evidence of its continued commitment to uncompromising, cutting-edge programming, according to Chadwick, the executive director.

But the staff casualties continue, and advocates for Pacifica fear for the future. Dan Coughlin, Pacifica's highly-regarded, veteran national news director was reassigned last October after he devoted 30 seconds of the nightly news show to a protest boycott by Pacifica affiliates. Unhappy with his replacement, Avery Brown has just made good on her threat to resign.

Disaffected supporters of Pacifica point to the situation at the network's Houston station, KPFT, as proof of what they fear is going to happen if concerns over ratings and audience size govern programming. KPFT used to feature a local news show, several non-English language programs, East Indian music, and a talk show on gay lifestyles. Today, programming is only in English, the local news show is gone, music offerings are more conventional, and most locally-produced public affairs programs have been replaced by shows from National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Channel. KPFT also accepts some corporate funding.

These changes were made well before the current controversy, in an apparent response to changes at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which itself was under fire by Congressional Republicans in the mid-90's. Under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, the CPB was nearly abolished, and responded to this near-death experience by conditioning grants on relatively demanding criteria for audience size and other market criteria.

KPFT Station Manager Garland Ganter, who used to work for the San Francisco station, says the new programming format has roughly doubled audience size and increased contributions substantially. But Lee Loe, co-editor of Houston Peace News, responds that KPFT is now so conventional that it is virtually unrecognizable as a Pacifica station.

No Roadmap for the Future

The future for Pacifica and KPFA remain unclear in the absence of directives or explanations from Dr. Berry. Possibilities include the sale of KPFA, whose value could be as high as $75 million due to its high wattage and location in the middle of the radio dial. Such an action could be beneficial if Pacifica purchased a less valuable Bay Area station and used the money it netted to endow the new one.

But Van Jones, Director of San Francisco's Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, believes Pacifica is heading for the mainstream. And that, he says, would cut-off perhaps the single most important source of information for progressives, the oppressed and people of color in the United States. He contends that "everyone who has a beef with the U.S. media needs to make (the preservation of Pacifica) the centerpiece" of their work.