Works In Progress - August 2003

KAOS matters- to me, to our community, to the world. That's why I'm suing KAOS in Federal Court, as well as The Evergreen State College (my Alma Mater), and assorted administrators that I have known. This likely makes no sense at all to the casual reader, so in order to really explain I'll have to go back 19 years to the beginning of my history with KAOS, Evergreen's "Community Radio Station".

I had just arrived in Olympia that morning, fresh on the heels of helping found KXCI in Tucson, another independent, grassroots station. Michael Huntsberger, the new Station Manager, greeted me warmly and took me on the tour of the humble KAOS studios. Next thing I knew, I was a News Director, doing a nightly newscast for my community. Over the next six years, as long as I lived in Olympia, I worked at KAOS, and I enjoyed every minute.

Michael clearly loved his job, and ALL of the staff and volunteers had a sense of camaraderie and passion for their work that you could truly feel. To me, those were the golden days of KAOS. When I returned to KAOS in 1998, after eight years in San Francisco, I assumed that everything must be basically the same. I had no idea how wrong I was.

It wasn't until the following summer that the illusion melted. Friends at KPFA in Berkeley, flagship of the Pacifica "network", had been telling me about their problems with management for years. Now Lynn Chadwick, Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation, had taken over KPFA with armed guards, and had locked out the paid staff. Generic canned music brought in from an undisclosed location in Texas substituted for KPFA's usual fare of thoughtful, and radical, words and music. Independent media activists from coast to coast were outraged at this escalation of the "professionalization" of Pacifica, and they said so.

Meanwhile, back at KAOS, another story was being told. Michael Huntsberger, whom I always liked and respected, who was on air for a special two-hour broadcast, was spinning a very different tale. In his presentation of reality, both sides were equally tainted, so "our" community radio station would NOT be getting involved. I knew very little about what was really going on, but I knew that Michael's story sounded strange to me. After a lot of research, and conversation with leaders of the indy-media movement, I figured some things out.

Firstly, the mainstreaming of the Pacifica family had been going on since at least 1992. Leaders of the "network", in cahoots with corporate and government figures, were taking Pacifica toward the mythical middle-of-the-road under the guise of "professionalizing" the sound, so that, they claimed, they could attract MORE listeners to their still groovy message! Principled staff that understood the truth beneath the rhetoric and opposed the changes were being canned one by one, and the rest were being controlled by fear and favoritism.

Lynn Chadwick, the leader of the purges, had been responsible for "professionalizing" community stations around the country for almost a decade before that. As head of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB), she had used something called the Healthy Station Project (financed by the Federal Government), to lead financially troubled stations in a similar direction. This program usually directed community stations to improve their stations in a remodeling plan that featured the replacement of volunteers with professionals in a highly formatted, centrally-controlled, and de-radicalized version of grassroots community radio that was no longer worthy of its name.

Not only that, but it turned out that this same Healthy Station Project had actually been welcomed to KAOS in 1991, had made its usual recommendations, and had been championed by management before meeting massive resistance from progressives in the KAOS family, only to be revived by management a second time the next year! Michael, and his associate Juli Kelen, were actually quite close to Lynn Chadwick, in terms of theory and practice, as well as personally. These little facts were not fully disclosed in all of the authoritative spin about why KAOS would avoid taking sides in the "entirely tragic" Pacifica conflict.

So, as a matter of principle I brought the other side of the story to the people on my show, Roots in Rhythm. On eight different weeks I brought eight different guests from the Independent Media Movement, who all told a different story than that being presented by KAOS management. It all ended up with me first getting written-up for minor log errors, continuing to organize for progressive media, and finally being jammed up by the top three managers, who all told me I had covered Pacifica enough, that I had to "stop covering Pacifica".

And so I did- since no one seemed to have my back, I succumbed to the censorship and stopped covering Pacifica. Our campaigns to protect Democracy Now! through participation in the national "Day without Pacifica" symbolic boycott, had met strong resistance from the whole KAOS management team, despite strong community support. In their version of reality, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was just an egotist unworthy of support, and her station- WBAI in New York, was NOT undergoing a coup, never-mind the armed guards, mass firings and lock-outs.

Thus it continued, with me effectively silenced, till the summer of 2000, when an innocuous little announcement graced my inbox one Friday morning. Signed by Michael, it stated that the results of a new study were in, that KAOS was in a crisis- due to lack of listeners and poor programming. All volunteers were summoned to a mandatory meeting where the results of the study would be discussed. When I called that day to request my copy of the report, I found out that it was no longer "public", that I could not take a copy, as had previously been announced.

I discussed this matter with a friend who is a paralegal. He told me that not only was the previous censorship unconstitutional, but that KAOS could not legally hold these other papers as private, due to the Washington Public Records Act and the Federal Freedom of Information Act!

With his guidance, I did a formal record request, and quickly gained access to the report and to the questionnaires, focus group rosters, and other documents supporting this supposedly "scientific" study. Reading the papers, I was truly horrified. What I found was a highly biased and decidedly unscientific study clearly designed to lead to an all-too familiar conclusion: that KAOS needed to "professionalize" its sound, by getting rid of volunteers and "special interest" programming for people of color, queers etc., instead replacing them with canned NPR shows and other, blander fare.

I therefore decided to discuss these issues with the public on my show. I told Michael of my plans, and invited him to come participate in the show. He wouldn't confirm his presence on my show over the weekend, but he was definitely waiting for me that Monday morning before my show. He insisted that I come into his office for an abusive verbal assault, and then chased me down the hall into the broadcast studio, looming over me in a most threatening manner.

When I turned on the mike for my own protection, Michael suddenly pulled the plug on the station, a not only "unprofessional", but indeed illegal, maneuver. However, I found out that I was the one who was banned and fired for the incident- Michael resigned suddenly after a bunch of irate community-members came to the next staff meeting.

When I told Michael that I protested his banning me from the air on KAOS, he was quick to send me to HIS boss, Tom Mercado. Tom gave me less than 30 seconds on the phone, upholding the firing without putting anything on paper. My appeal to his superior, Phyllis Lane, was equally bogus.

My next appeal, to VP Art Costantino, only appeared more serious- it was not. I began to realize that this was all a game, that despite citing the relevant laws and court rulings, there was no justice. President Les Purce not only refused to see me, he also prepped the Board of Trustees to a possible complaint by me by sending them a defamatory letter associating me with violent, black-clad anarchists who break police-car windows with sledge hammers. Knowing from my secret sources that just a memo existed, I requested it from Les Purce's office, which officially told me that it did not exist!

So, for three years I have sent repeated appeals and warnings, from high to low, not once, but many times, and they have fallen on seemingly deaf ears. If Evergreen and KAOS now find themselves being sued in Federal Court, one might say they brought it on themselves.

I applaud the good work done by Michael, Juli, and all the members of the KAOS-family, people that I have known and respected for many years, but something is obviously quite wrong here. When a long-time member of that same family speaks the truth at great personal risk, casting them out is not the solution.

We can do better, not just in terms of labor rights and administrative process, but also in terms of progressive media. Michael and others did important work in expanding our signal area. Now we need to bring Democracy Now! and other progressive material to our new listeners at Ft. Lewis, on the Rez, and in various rural communities. In so doing, and by greating and sustaining a structure whereby the community has a real place at the table- to know about important decisions, and participate in a meaningful and measurable way, we can best honor the work of all those who have contributed to what is truly OUR community radio.

In closing, let me say that just as nations wracked by war find that lasting Peace can be achieved only through a reckoning with the crimes of the past, with due acknowledgement of wrong-doing by the guilty and a redress of grievances, so is it with our own "radio wars". If the Federal Court must function as our Truth and Reconciliation Commission, then that is the choice of those in power. I can only thank God and the Progressive Movement that I finally got meaningful legal representation and the possibility of Justice, because KAOS does indeed matter- to me, to our community, and to our world.

For a Free and Independent Media.