"TO: Pacifica National Board

FROM: The Democracy Now! staff

DATE: 2 October, 2001



We have heard that the Pacifica National Board is holding an
emergency meeting on Wednesday, October 3, to discuss
Democracy Now!. We have not been contacted regarding this
meeting. We would like to express our willingness to discuss the
conditions under which Democracy Now! will return to the airwaves.
To this end, we have drafted the following summary of what has
transpired between Pacifica management and the Democracy Now!
staff.

Since August 14 the staff of Democracy Now! has been suspended
without pay, after being driven out of WBAI studios by a vitriolic
campaign of public defamation and harassment, including physical
threats and assaults by the present Pacifica executive leadership.
AFTRA, the union representing the Democracy Now! staff, has
deemed WBAI an unsafe workplace. We are producing
Democracy Now!, without compensation from Pacifica, at
Downtown Community Television in Lower Manhattan. The
program continues to be carried by Pacifica station KPFA and
Pacifica affiliates around the country.



The Democracy Now! staff (and attorneys representing Amy
Goodman) have previously written directly to Pacifica Management,
to the Pacifica Board, and to its attorneys, detailing the
harassment which we have faced and urging that immediate action
be taken to stop the abuse of the Democracy Now! staff and to
rescind the unfair disciplinary actions which have been taken
against us.



Most recently, Pacifica's former National Program Director Steve
Yasko, resigned following revelations that he operated a website
which featured hyperlinks to sites containing hard-core
pornographic material demeaning to women. In fact, one of the
postings Yasko permitted on his website included a pornographic
fantasy about Amy Goodman who was imagined as "a 6 3"
muscular jock with a six pack and a heavy package that needs
attention."



The Democracy Now! staff had already filed numerous complaints
against Mr. Yasko. These included Amy Goodman's gender
harassment union grievance. Pacifica Executive Director Bessie
Wash and the Pacifica Foundation aggressively defended Steve
Yasko on he AFTRA grievances, including the harassment and
gender harassment charges. Amy was repeatedly called a "liar"
and her allegations derided as "garbage" by senior Pacifica
management and Board members. Pacifica Executive Director
Bessie Walsh not only has failed to apologize for Steve Yasko's
reprehensible conduct towards Amy and the Democracy Now!
team, she has never even communicated with us about these
events. In fact despite repeated e-mails to her, she has not
communicated with us in almost a year.



Although management has not officially notified us, we understand
that Bessie Wash replaced National Program Director Steve Yasko
with former WBAI interim Station Manager Utrice Leid. Since her
appointment as interim Station Manager at WBAI in December
2000, Utrice Leid and WBAI staff and producers under her authority
have routinely vilified the staff of Democracy Now!, threatened us
with violence, and made us the objects of racist and/or sexist
slurs. These documented attacks have occurred during on-air
broadcasts, at the station during working hours, and at staff
meetings. Pacifica Management has never addressed the attacks.



In the incident which prompted the staff of DN! to leave WBAI for its
own safety, Ms. Leid physically accosted Amy on August 10, 2001
This physical assault against a Democracy Now! staff member is
now being grieved by AFTRA. The next week day, WBAI staff used
a master key to enter our office and harass us while we were
trying to prepare the show. They shouted so loudly that the on-air
host left the studio to tell them they were disrupting his broadcast.

Pacifica management said they would investigate these incidents
and report back the results on September 10. They never
interviewed Amy or the Democracy Now! producers who witnessed
the incidents, and Pacifica never completed its investigation.
Instead, Pacifica promoted Utrice Leid to head of National
Programming.



Two days after Ms. Leid was promoted, she told a WBAI producer
to tell Democracy Now! engineer Anthony Sloan not to return to
WBAI, referring to Anthony as "that nubian warrior defending that
white maiden." On Monday, she wrote a memo to the building staff,
that he was not to enter the premises. Again, this is after she has
been named Pacifica National Program Director. This banning is
management's first official action towards Democracy Now! staff
since the "Peace Initiative" put forward by Mr. Farrell.



Incredibly, a week after the World Trade Center attacks, Ms. Leid
instructed the Arts Director to inform all programmers at WBAI that
they were not to discuss the tragedy or its aftermath on the
airwaves, that only "healing music and poetry" were to be played.
In addition, she removed the only weekly radio program on South
Asian politics in New York City from the air and banned its
producer from the airwaves. This at a time when the Asian
community is under the most serious attack. The Jewish show,
which had prepared a major World Trade Center special, refused
to play only music as the Bush Administration prepared for war.
Their program did not air.



Pacifica has never taken action on any of the documented
incidents involving Ms. Leid or other WBAI staff and producers
under her control. Instead, Ms. Leid has been elevated to the No.
2 slot in the network. In that role, Ms. Leid has full authority over
Democracy Now!, including authority over all budgetary and
programming issues. Ms. Leid's promotion can only be seen as an
endorsement of her conduct by Pacifica Management and by
extension the entire network.



Leid has cast her attacks on all perceived opponents of the current
management of Pacifica, including Democracy Now! staffers, as a
battle against "white supremacy" despite the fact that many of
these opponents, most of those fired by the current management,
and a current staff member of Democracy Now!, are people of
color.



Further, she has unambiguously incited listeners to violence
against Pacifica dissidents. One of her typical on-air comments
(made during a recent fundraising drive) was broadcast as part of
National Public Radio's Morning Edition report on the crisis at
Pacifica (June 21, 2001): "We're talking here today about the
European psychological warfare against Africans. And that's what
the whole thing is about" adding that "I need you stalwart soldiers
out there . . . This is a call to arms. I told you it's a war."



Under Ms. Leid's supervision, the Democracy Now! engineer was
threatened with having his legs broken, Democracy Now! producers
have been harangued and insulted, and Amy Goodman has been
personally targeted by a public campaign of defamation. On-air
and off-air, for many months now, she has been called a bitch, a
liar, and a "Svengali" who has, on her own, orchestrated the entire
Pacifica crisis. Ms. Leid has gone so far as to accuse her of
"defecating" and "vomiting" on the air. When WBAI producer
Clayton Riley accused the news anchor Robert Knight of "kissing
the ass of that white bitch," Ms. Leid called Knight into her office
and in her presence, Riley went further, physically accosting him.
Knight and Goodman were fired from their morning show slots
within days. Leid rewarded Riley by doubling the length of his
program. Rule of thumb: ban those who express support for
Democracy Now; reward those who attack us.



Ms. Leid has claimed that Amy Goodman fabricated accounts of
the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in East Timor, which she was
witnessed and at which she was beaten. This baseless and
bizarre accusation prompted an outraged letter to Pacifica by
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jose Ramos Horta in support of Amy.

Ms. Leid's attacks constitute just one part of a year long campaign
of harassment tolerated and tacitly encouraged by Pacifica
Executive Director Bessie Wash. The attacks on Democracy Now!
began in earnest last Fall when Steve Yasko, then Pacifica's new
National Program Director, threatened Amy with termination if she
did not follow new work rules including prohibitions on public
speaking on non-work time, an outrageous restriction of her right
to free speech.



Immediately after Yasko's hiring, the attacks on Amy and the staff
of Democracy Now! by other Pacifica employees escalated. When
Ms. Wash named Utrice Leid WBAI General Manager, Ms. Leid
fired Amy from her 8 year position as co-host of the local WBAI
morning show Wake Up Call. Leid engaged in and tolerated vitriolic
attacks on Amy over WBAI's airwaves, tolerated physical threats
against Democracy Now! staff members, intermittently refused to
broadcast Democracy Now!, and forced the show into inferior
studio space inappropriate for the production of a national
program, causing serious technical problems.



During his tenure neither Mr. Yasko nor Bessie Wash ever
substantively addressed even one of our documented concerns and
complaints. AFTRA soon filed a series of grievances on behalf of
Amy Goodman. These grievances remain unresolved and are now
heading for arbitration. Like so many others at WBAI, Amy has
also filed grievances through United Electrical Local 404 union
charging a hostile work environment and challenging her summary
dismissal from WBAI's award-winning morning news show, "Wake-
Up Call."



These grievances also remain unresolved and are also going to
arbitration.



In addition, Amy has filed an Unfair Labor Practice complaint with
the National Labor Relations Board charging retaliation by Pacifica
management for exercising her trade union rights.



Amy has also retained private counsel to help her find ways in
which she can further protect her career and professional
reputation, as well as provide for her own physical safety. The
campaign of defamation has extended to the highest officials at
Pacifica. Pacifica Board member, Epstein, Becker and Green
attorney John Murdock, has gone on the record calling Amy
Goodman s claims "garbage" and saying that, "she should take
her show and go somewhere else." In Alameda Superior Court,
Pacifica's attorneys claimed that Amy was sponsoring an illegal
boycott against Pacifica, a charge that was not only untrue and
defamatory, but which was apparently designed to harm Amy's
relationship with Pacifica Board members and employees, and to
malign her professionally. These same attorneys also filed court
papers falsely accusing Amy of "extortion" and "economic
coercion." Despite these wholesale attacks by the present
Pacifica leadership and some Pacifica employees, the "Democracy
Now!" staff has continued to produce an outstanding editorial
product which is widely acknowledged as the most popular and
successful offering on the Pacifica national schedule.



Democracy Now! has exceeded every measurable objective for the
program, from audience building and fund raising to journalistic
accolades and publicity. The program, originally started in 1996 as
an election year special, proved so successful that it soon formed
an integral part of the Pacifica programming line up. By 1998,
under the direction of Julie Drizin, the Pacifica national
programming line-up consisted of five daily programs Larry Bensky
s "Living Room," "The Jerry Brown Show," "Pacifica Network
News," "Democracy Now!," and "Voices of Pacifica."



In fact, the record established by Amy Goodman and the
Democracy Now! team has been unparalleled in the history of
Pacifica. Democracy Now! won the 1998 George Polk Award for
the radio documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria s
Military Dictatorship." Amy Goodman has also won numerous
awards for the radio documentary she co-produced with journalist
Allan Nairn, "MASSACRE: The Story of East Timor," including the
Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, the Alfred I.
DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, the Armstrong Award, the
Radio/Television News Directors Award, as well as awards from
AP, UPI, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Goodman
and Nairn were both present during the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre
in East Timor in which Indonesian soldiers gunned down more
than 250 Timorese. Amy Goodman has also reported from Israel
and the Occupied territories, Cuba, Mexico, Haiti and last year
became the first journalist ever to interview Lori Berenson in her
Peruvian jail. Goodman also broadcast the first US radio interview
with imprisoned East Timor rebel leader Xanana Gusmao and
conducted an exclusive half hour interview with President Clinton
on Election Day.



Prior to the beginning of the Democracy Now! crisis last year, the
program raised more than one million dollars in pledges through on-
air fund raising and generating enormous positive publicity for
Pacifica. Democracy Now! also pioneered multi-platform
broadcasting, resulting in the most dramatic increase in audience
in Pacifica Radio history. Through a unique multi-media
collaboration involving non-profit community radio, the internet and
satellite and cable television, Democracy Now! expanded its
potential audience to twenty five million households nationwide
during the 2000 Democratic and Republican conventions. It
generated scores of positive articles in The New York Times,
Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and other publications and
media outlets from Fox to NPR at a time when the coverage of
Pacifica was negative to nil.



While Democracy Now! has continued its editorial excellence,
Pacifica National Programming has otherwise been gutted. Polk
award winner Larry Bensky and the Living Room team were fired
following the removal of KPFA General Manager Nicole Sawaya
and the change in Pacifica's governance structure in early 1999.
News Director Dan Coughlin was ousted in November 1999 for
covering the Pacifica crisis and esteemed Pacifica Network News
(PNN) anchor Verna Avery-Brown, the only African-American news
anchor in public broadcasting, resigned in protest over this
censorship. More than 40 stringers launched a strike protesting the
ousting of Avery-Brown and Coughlin and the on-going censorship
by Pacifica. The striking reporters currently produce a half-hour
daily news program, Free Speech Radio News (FSRN), which airs
on 49 stations nationwide.



Pacifica Management's actions have made the network a laughing
stock and a pariah in the journalistic community, seriously
undermining a reputation that has taken decades to build.



Pacifica's affiliates, the backbone of our nationwide "network,"
have been up in arms since the KPFA crisis, the subsequent
collapse in Pacifica's national programming, and the removal of the
Ku service from KPFA to WPFW.



The affiliates have complained repeatedly about poor service and
questioned the integrity of Pacifica's programming given the on-
going censorship and staff firings. Indeed, we understand the
Pacifica Network News (PNN) now airs on less than 20 stations
as compared to 63 affiliates less than two years ago. Democracy
Now!'s affiliates, which number some 25, have made it clear that
they will abandon the network and PNN if Democracy Now! is
discontinued. Yesterday we received a letter from fifteen affiliates
saying they are cancelling their contracts if Democracy Now! is
cancelled.



Disgust, fury and outrage don't begin to describe our response to
what Pacifica management is doing to our beloved network. But we
have no time for those emotions. Even as we mourn the 6000
people who have died just down the street from our studio, the US
is beating the drums of war, insuring more loss of innocent lives.
We will continue to broadcast to the growing number of community
stations that are running our daily two-hour War and Peace Report.

Sincerely,

Amy Goodman

Host, Democracy Now!

Kris Abrams

Producer, Democracy Now!

Brad Simpson

Producer, Democracy Now!

Anthony Sloan

Engineer, Democracy Now!

See our web site! go to: http://cdan.org/nyc
"