I hope the decision by the Pacifica Radio Network to hire Nicole Sawaya as its Executive Director signals its return to its purpose. I view that purpose as being a radio network that creates, and maintains, a strong venue for progressive ideas and culture.

The Pacifica Wars of the late 1990s were successful in ousting a very troubling governing board, the majority of whom did not have the best interests of the radio network or the Pacifica Mission at heart. The years following the end of the legal battles resulted in internal struggle about the best way to protect the network from a takeover and how to manage the organization democratically. Pushed to the back burner was making great radio, keeping up with technology, growing the audience for progressive ideas, reaching untapped, or underserved communities, and securing Pacifica's financial present and future.

Nicole Sawaya is a radio visionary. She is a savvy administrator. Most importantly she is a person of great experience and talent for radio, for the Internet, the blogosphere and most forms of "new" media. I urge the progressive community to give Pacifica, and Ms. Sawaya, as much support as it needs to rebuild itself into a vibrant and essential progressive media network.

matthew wrote:

"But Sawaya can't do this alone. She will need an environment of good will—a substantial core of people who want her to succeed and will come to her defense. At Pacifica, that does not happen by accident."

the pacifica board voted unanimously for nicole. in the four years i've served on that board, i've never seen the body so unified nor excited. part of that unity comes from a long winter, if you will...a process required before spring growth can occur. actually, the process was not unlike what matthew wrote some time ago about post-dictator stress disorder, or something like it (i can't find that anywhere matthew, perhaps you can repost it).

there is an interesting property to the bylaws that were created as a result of the settlement of the 4 legal actions brought against the prior administration for illegally changing their bylaws to make themselves self-selecting (they did not simply "agree to bless the democratization process" - they were made to do so through a combination of legal action and the activism and organizing of the Pacifica Campaign and others). those bylaws create a remarkable set of checks on the power of anyone to change anything. that is, the bylaws were crafted by two groups of people each of whom wanted a powerful brake on the ability of any transient or narrow majority to act decisively. the sector of the interim board comprising prior members of the board's majority wanted to insure that the "facts on the ground" they had created through an abuse of power - i.e. the transformation of much of pacifica along the lines of the Healthy Station Project formula, a process which i typically refer to as the structural adjustment of pacifica - could not be easily reversed by those who had "won" the fight. and many of those who had prevailed in a struggle to remove the prior board and create a system of listener- and staff-elected governance wanted to be sure that no governance body could ever abuse authority again.

as a result, a set of formal negative levers were added to the informal negative levers that already existed throughout pacifica. by negative levers, i mean the ability to stop someone from doing something. negative leverage is broadly distributed at pacifica. it takes very few people to stop something from happening. positive leverage - the ability to make something new happen - is very limited. this goes even for the station managers who, though they wield more direct authority and are able to hire people, fire them, and approve or disapprove changes to program schedule and to dictate how money is spent, still face many layers of formal and informal resistance if they do things that are unpopular.

the result of all this negative leverage is that within pacifica, attaining a position of nominal authority, or winning a slim majority on one or more of the governance bodies, actually does not confer the ability to make significant changes.

this can be exceedingly frustrating for anyone trying to do something that they and others might consider eminently reasonable, even necessary. i myself have been tremendously frustrated by this at times. but it does have an interesting effect. since the various boards and committees are formed via proportional representation, it makes it very difficult for any faction to gain a substantial majority (though it does happen sometimes). but it is not difficult for a narrow minority to make it impossible for a narrow majority to act, and even if such a majority can, for example, pass a motion mandating something it wants, if the mandate is not carried out, it is next to impossible to enforce it. so the upshot of all this is that with rare exceptions the only actions of the board(s) that change anything or have any impact are those that garner broad support across factional lines.  it is only when there is significant unity that any attempt to ignore a mandate can be counted on to result in a decisive response.

this fact turns out to require that the boards, if they want to function meaningfully, must actually engage in a process similar to that implied by the mission statement. that is, people who **fundamentally** and profoundly disagree - about ethics, strategy, tactics, goals - must be able to see it in their interest to work together. those who fail to accept that simply get their time wasted, nearly endlessly.  even if they prevail in a narrow sense, in a larger sense the waste of time and the grief created make the payoff little more than fool's gold.

so the board's unanimous vote for nicole sawaya is a significant thing. i do not believe it would have happened several years ago. as matthew wrote in his Post-Dictator Stress Syndrome post some years ago (sorry if i've forgotten the exact term you used), it takes sometimes years for people to see the need to respect and work with those with whom they disagree.  

it's my hope that ms. sawaya will be very attentive to this dynamic of willing cooperation among those who differ, and will cultivate its further growth by listening deeply to the hopes and aspirations that the representatives of various stakeholders and factions express, and using her considerable skills to achieve a synthesis of these. from what i understand of her past history at kpfa and elsewhere, she has this capacity.

as lauryn hill sang (Everything is Everything):

After winter, must come spring
Change, it comes eventually

 keep hope alive...

-dave adelson

What happened to --and in -- Pacifica is a judgment, not so much on Lew Hill and his vision, as on the wisdom of the human race. Things just got too complicated. Contemporary American politics is a lot more fun to shout about: even half-wits can tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys. But perhaps -- just perhaps -- history may this time repeat itself as mature drama.

John Whiting

www.whitings-writings.com