Perspectives on WBAI

The Decline & Fall of Pacifica: Part 2
Whither Pacifica?
by Paul DeRienzo

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3

The discomfort from WBAI producers in the rare event of an outsider getting a show was palpable but I ignored them and went on to found my show called Let'em Talk. The program ran until February 2002 when newly returned General Manager Valerie Van Isler told me to my face that the show was cancelled. Since then I've heard that Bernard White tells people that I left "voluntarily," that's yet another bald faced lie from White.

My experience as a volunteer programmer on WBAI for a dozen years was different then my experience as a Pacifica employee. The worlds of a WBAI employee and a volunteer, despite the smokescreen term "unpaid staff" were quite different. The interests of both groups were fundamentally opposed and each group generally holds the other in contempt. The personal relationships among the volunteers aren't much better, with backbiting, lies and thefts among alleged colleagues carried out with impunity. The more successful a show was the more it was subject to acts of petty sabotage from "misplaced" theme music tapes to stolen equipment and human excrement placed in mailboxes. The more unimportant and audience-free a show, the more bragging and self-aggrandizing the hosts usually were.

When I started working in the News Department one of the volunteers was homeless and sleeping in the news room. I offered to come in the morning and anchor the AM news, but the news room smelled so bad at 6 AM that I could not stand it and I quit. That person wasn't the only homeless person who camped out at WBAI's studios, eventually enraging the building's maintenance staff. There were other strange events as well. One day a local CBS camera crew in front of the Eighth Avenue building where WBAI had its studios. I asked why they were there and the reporter snarled that it was because of "fraud" by a WBAI staffer. It turned out that a veteran WBAI programmer had been ripping off apartment hunters by promising them a place that didn't really exist and then disappearing with their security deposit. That programmer was told to lay low for a while, but subsequently returned. There was another story of producer found passed out on air in the control room with a heroin filled needle in his arm, a weekend and nighttime drug market at the station and the late night surreptitious use of the studios to shoot porno films.

The thing that was most disturbing about WBAI and Pacifica in general was the absence of leadership and direction. At 505 Eighth Avenue the General Manager's office was on a different floor than the studios where most people visited. General Manager Valerie Van Isler was rarely if ever seen. She spent her days behind a closed, locked door that when occasionally opened was characterized by the overwhelming smell of cigarettes wafting into the common areas of the office. Sometimes the financial situation and producer infighting would get so intense that Van Isler would sneak out a back door to avoid a problem. Although she cultivated an aura of detachment, Van Isler was also capable of obsessive pettiness towards employees and volunteers who crossed her. She fired a handicapped long time Chief Engineer because he was late to an appointment with a FCC official. Van Isler would never forgive anyone who she felt embarrassed her in front of an authority figure so she not only kicked the employee out, but she vindictively denied him his unemployment insurance.

WBAI was supposed to have a development director with the job of finding alternative sources of income. It was an open secret that the Pacifica business model of sole reliance on fundraising premiums and government aid was financially strangling the Foundation. But the Development Directors complained bitterly that Van Isler would not let them do their job. One director said that Van Isler seemed to have no interest in development and barely tolerated the few folks who held the job. When the position was open she dragged her heels and refused to hire anyone for months at time. Yet Van Isler would put out blizzards of memos claiming that WBAI was chronically in debt, while never proffering a plan to get out of debt besides a new round of budget cut backs.

Although there were a lot of negative feelings at WBAI towards Van Isler, she was tolerated as long as she kept out of programming decisions, which were left to Marksman. However in 1999 Marksman died suddenly. His memorial at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine drew more than 3000 mourners and Marksman was soon elevated to the position of demigod in the WBAI pantheon. With Marksman gone a senior staffer confided that he was very worried about the future of WBAI. Others said they were outraged by the way Van Isler, White and Goodman appropriated Marksman's name and reputation for their own ends, especially since WBAI refused to pay for his funeral. Marksman lived in near poverty on the ridiculous wages offered by WBAI and his death left his family without insurance or a pension from Pacifica.

On December 23, 2000 the Valerie Van Isler era at WBAI seemed over for good. Pacifica National seemed to have finally woken up to the dangerous drift at WBAI and was about to send WBAI on a new path. It wasn't easy. Van Isler turned down a new job with Pacifica National, refused to leave and was fired. For the month of December she had been appearing at rallies by group calling itself Concerned Friends of WBAI, which popped up out of nowhere and seemed to get most of its support from the station's upper middle class suburban listeners. Van Isler was feted as a hero by these forces, most were people I had never met or heard of in all my years at WBAI and to this day I still don't know what their interest in Pacifica really is. But at these meetings Van Isler, White and their friends made it clear that if necessary they would physically occupy the premises of WBAI to prevent any change in management.

I attended some of those planning meetings that December and offered my services to what at that time I thought was a community response to the distant and threatening specter of a corporatist board. Considering Van Isler's toadying to the Pacifica line for so many years she seemed an unlikely hero for an anti-Pacifica movement but I continued to attend meetings and rallies put on by Concerned Friends. The bad taste entered my mouth after one early December 2000 meeting broke into committees, one of which was supposed to be a media committee led by Steve Rendall of media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Not only did I not attend that meeting but also I got together with other programmers, Janet Coleman, David Dozier, Bob Fass and Joanie Moossy to produce a series of satirical takeoffs on Pacifica called the Atlantica Radio Empire. We produced a series of short skits, which were played repeatedly on the air. In the midst of this Rendall, who I barely knew at all, started personally attacking me on Internet discussion boards, this was before any coup or counter-coup happened and it left me scratching my head.

Friends suggested Rendall was miffed because we had put out those satirical PSA's without his approval on the so-called media committee, but why was he angry specifically with me and not the others who participated far more than I did in their production? Considering that a few months before Rendall had thanked me after a speech I made in support of Amy Goodman at a FAIR sponsored protest. At the time I was no longer working for Pacifica, and hadn't for years, my show was on once a week, late at night and I never thought of myself as particularly influential in these matters. Why Rendall chose to target me so early in the game is still a mystery. Unless I had been targeted by Concerned Friends (with whom FAIR was closely allied) before these events and without my knowledge.

In early 1999 I had approached the WBAI union and asked them to represent me in my claim that Van Isler should have recognized my leave of absence and rehired me several months before after a stint as a magazine editor. The union dragged their feet so I went to the offices of the National Labor Relations Board and filed my own grievance independently. When Van Isler received notice she became enraged and threatened to remove me from my late night show. I put out word to that effect on the Internet and she was flooded with calls and emails supporting me, culminating in a spontaneous on air confrontation with a listener while Van Isler was conducting a live report. I kept the show but I noticed a great deal of tension developing with Robert Knight who hosted the program before mine. He had a long time close personal relationship with Van Isler. I decided to let my complaint drop in the interest of harmony at the station and I informed Van Isler of that fact.

As the first weeks of 2001 unfolded I stayed fairly distant from all the commotion. Utrice Leid had been a union shop steward and she had represented me in my earlier conflict with Van Isler, also I liked her show and thought she was one of the few people at WBAI with a real intellect and ethical principles. I knew she believed in professional standards and real journalism and despite the way she gained power her leadership would be good for WBAI. The way she got her job was the central controversy that sparked WBAI's conflict and reflected the incestuous squabbles that bedeviled the station. Leid had originally been chosen for the job of Program Director to replace Marksman after a long search by a committee of volunteers and staffers mandated by the union contract. Bernard White had applied for the job, but he didn't make the final cut of candidates before Leid was recommended. The final decision lay with Van Isler, who despite her own looming removal by Pacifica, decided to hire White for the job over the committee's objections. This provided Van Isler with White's support and extensive political power base in her own fight with Pacifica.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Van Isler and White, Pacifica had approached News Director Jose Santiago with the offer of being interim General Manager after the removal of Van Isler. At a staff meeting shortly before Van Isler's removal Santiago announced he was taking the job and Robert Knight nearly jumped out of his seat in a rage against Santiago. Any opposition to Van Isler would be seen as disloyalty to the cabal who felt personally entitled to run WBAI. Santiago, who had elderly parents to care for deeded need the grief so he removed his name. Utrice Leid quietly attended the staff meeting an observed the shenanigans, soon afterwards she was approached by Pacifica to take the interim GM job and after getting an agreement from Pacifica to respect WBAI's independence she agreed.

Early 2001 was a story right out of the Twilight Zone at WBAI and Pacifica radio. A variety of hosts paraded through the old Wake Up Call slot, which was freed up by White's removal. Sine Amy Goodman was still officially a Wake Up Call host she appeared each day to argue with the host and generally disrupt the program in support of White and Van Isler. I heard this on air, but generally kept out of it, the bickering made WBAI unlistenable and I joined the exodus to other radio stations in the morning. I kept doing my late night show and I stayed away from these events. During this period I would get almost daily calls, sometimes for an hour or more at a time, from Janet Coleman, a former author, actress and self-described comedian. She claimed to be a friend and would pick my brain about my opinions concerning Pacifica and WBAI. She joined my co-host and I to do a night of special programming to help the January 2001 fundraiser. Robert Knight initially agreed, but the night of the show he told his audience not to contribute.

My initial view of the WBAI fight was that it was between factions in New York's African-American community and I attempted to stay out, while encouraging grass roots participation. However, my unforgivable sin was to state in response to a question that we should "give Utrice a chance." Given the tremendous programming and financial disruption caused by the civil war that ensued my suggestion might have spared Pacifica a lot of grief. I realized where I stood with Robert Knight when he walked in on my show without permission and demanded to know if I thought Pacifica was trying to get rid of Amy Goodman. I replied to him that there was no evidence that Pacifica wanted to get rid of Democracy Now, which he really couldn't refute with concrete facts. He kept confusing the issue of determining local programming with national programming issues and implying a conspiracy to target Amy Goodman. An alleged ant-Amy Goodman conspiracy that every Pacifica official I've spoke with has adamantly denied.

Meanwhile, Knight was reporting headlines on the WBAI morning news, as an employee of the News Department subordinate to Jose Santiago. Goodman who received a full time salary from Pacifica for producing Democracy Now was also paid through the WBAI News Department for her work as co-host of Democracy Now. It had always irked Santiago that up to one third of his budget was being used to pay staffers who did not report to him and did not help produce the station's award winning WBAI Evening News. Leid had hired the brilliant, but mercurial Clayton Rile to replace White and Goodman had been going out of her way to provoke him on a daily basis. The morning show became a madhouse as charges, counter-charges, insults and curses were traded on air as the show went into a fatal tailspin. Eventually after the hosts came to calling each other "bitch" and "nigger" on air Leid stepped in and removed them all. Goodman was outright fired, but she kept her Democracy Now job which was paid separately from WBAI's budget, Knight kept his job, but was rotated to the Evening News and Riley returned to his Saturday morning music show.

A few days later I got a call from Jose Santiago asking me if I wanted to come on board as reporter for a new morning show to be hosted by veteran WBAI producer Santiago Nieves. Nieves and I had done some programming in the past and we worked well together so I agreed and began what would be a new and fateful relationship with WBAI.

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