Political activist draws crowds at summer fair Event raises funds for WERU-FM

UNION – A more than 50-year tradition of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted won’t go down quietly as long as Amy Goodman has a microphone.

Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio’s syndicated “Democracy Now!” program, was the keynote speaker Sunday at WERU-FM’s annual fund-raising effort, the Full Circle Summer Fair. WERU – at 89.9 along the coast and at 102.9 in Bangor – carries Goodman’s show at 5 p.m. weekdays.

Goodman broadcasts her program from the studios of WBAI-FM in New York, a member of the five-station network that makes up the nonprofit Pacifica Foundation. Goodman has ties to Maine, though; she attended College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor in the early 1980s.

Speaking between musical sets by two bands, Goodman drew a larger crowd than both groups. Almost everyone rose to applaud her as she was introduced, and many sought her autograph after she spoke.

Goodman is at the center of a controversy at Pacifica, which began about 10 years ago. Essentially, it is a standoff between those who believe the organization should remain a defiant, radical voice among what they see as a chorus of “establishment” media and the organization’s board of directors, which has tried to rein in its radio hosts, Goodman said.

The conflict has gone to extremes, with Pacifica station studios at times being chained, locks on doors changed overnight, staff summarily fired by letter, shows interrupted while on the air when sensitive topics were raised, and 10,000 people taking to the street in support of the effort by Goodman and others to remain unfettered.

Pacifica was founded in the late 1940s by journalist Lew Hill. The need for independent, listener-supported community radio as a forum for dissenting views was critical, Hill concluded.

As supporting evidence for this need, Goodman said, The New York Times had a reporter who covered the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima who was simultaneously on the Pentagon payroll. The reporter wrote that there was no “bomb sickness” after the attack, while an independent journalist reported to the contrary.

The Times reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, Goodman said.

Pacifica’s role today is equally critical, given that mainstream news agencies are often owned by corporations in businesses other than truth telling, she said. During the Gulf War, she said, it was hard to take seriously the reporting by NBC, which was owned by General Electric, and CBS, owned by Westinghouse, when those companies manufactured many of the parts in U.S. weapons used in the conflict.

“We’ve got to challenge the corporations that have nothing to tell, and everything to sell,” Goodman said.

Pacifica has a legacy of providing a forum for political dissenters, she said. The Ku Klux Klan twice blew up the transmitter of the Houston, Texas, Pacifica station, Goodman said, because the group was threatened by the station’s reporting, which “necessarily breaks down the barriers of ignorance and hate.”

The New York Pacifica station has aired such important exchanges as a debate between writer James Baldwin and black activist Malcolm X.

But this tradition is threatened, Goodman said, as the role of local advisory boards in choosing members of the national board was eliminated, and as station managers were let go and replaced without explanation.

As recently as December, Goodman said, she was called at about midnight and told that station management had changed the locks at the New York studios.

“One after another, producers were banned from the station,” she said, and warned in letters that they would be considered trespassers and arrested if they tried to enter the studios. She described this period as “when the coup began at WBAI radio.”

The backgrounds of some of the new board members overseeing Pacifica betray their motives, she suggested.

One is an attorney with a national law firm specializing in helping businesses remain union-free. Another works for the National Association of Home Builders, a developers’ lobbying group in Washington that supports deregulation.

“We usually expect to find that in the ‘corporate’ media,” she said of the influence of such business interests.

A news director was forced out, Goodman said, after he reported on the air about a move among network affiliates to have a “day without Pacifica,” in protest of the firings.

After her remarks, Goodman elaborated on some of the issues for which she is fighting. She believes station management wants to broaden the appeal of programming by forcing it to the mainstream and avoiding confrontational journalism, which Goodman and her colleagues use. She said shows such as “Democracy Now!” generate the largest number of listeners for stations that carry Pacifica programs, so the push to the mainstream makes no sense.

Goodman said she considers herself both an activist and a journalist and believes there is a need for someone with this dual role.

At the Republican National Convention, she said, she confronted former President George Bush to ask him how he responded to the fact that Iraqis see him as a war criminal. Though Pacifica management later expressed consternation that she would ask such a question, she said Bush readily answered it.

Mainstream news reporters would not ask such questions, Goodman said, but it is critical that someone like her does so.

WERU general manager Matt Murphy said the station has notified Pacifica it will not automatically renew its contract for “Democracy Now!” Instead, WERU will wait until the fall and decide whether Pacifica is supporting Goodman as an unfettered journalist.

After Goodman spoke, an announcement was made about a protest planned for noon today at Renys Plaza in Belfast. Participants will gather to demonstrate against credit card lender MBNA, which has offices across the road from the shopping center.

MBNA is targeted because a Pacifica board member whose term is up, but who refuses to step down, works for a consulting firm used by MBNA.