Pacifica-WBAI election to determine political path

While most eyes are focused on the national midterm elections, a local election to the board of New York’s premier progressive radio station may have a greater impact on New York’s political activity than most of the region’s Senate and House races.

WBAI, the local Pacifica station, has mailed out ballots for an election that will end Nov. 15 to seat nine listener delegates to three-year terms on the 24-member Local Station Board. The outcome of the election will help determine whether WBAI takes a direction of active anti-racism and anti-war broadcasting, or retreats. Three staff delegates are chosen separately.

WBAI broadcasts both political discussion and cultural shows representing a broad spectrum of New York ethnic and other communities, especially those most oppressed. The station is the only broadcast medium that provides an opening for anti-imperialist analyses of important world events on a regular basis.

The station reaches out 50 miles from Manhattan. Its broadcast range potentially reaches 20 million people. It also reaches almost the entire progressive community of political activists, including 1960s leftists and immigrant taxi drivers who always have their radio dials on 99.5 FM. The station is thus vital to publicizing meetings and protests.

Since the station is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars on the private market, wealthy entrepreneurs in radio see it as a beckoning pot of gold.

At the end of the year 2000, a business-oriented group seized WBAI in a virtual coup, displacing most of the progressive shows and moving WBAI toward sale for privatization. Once this was reversed by listener and legal action, the struggle over the station’s future moved to the listener boards and the elections.

In this year’s election, as in the 2004 balloting, two groupings have each gathered 10 to 11 of the 24 candidates campaigning for the nine listener seats. Each group again has a similar political thrust. Reading the listener candidate statements in the brochure WBAI mailed out to its members, it’s easy to judge each slate’s political direction.

Justice and Unity

In the candidates’ promotional literature, those from the Justice and Unity slate emphasize their commitment to political activism and to representing the diverse working-class communities in the New York region, especially communities of color. The other, the Alliance for Community Elections, essentially the group formerly known as “List-Prog,” emphasizes its members’ business, administrative and fund-raising experience.

Ray Laforest, an incumbent board member, is a labor and Haitian community organizer and a member of Pacifica’s national board. He is running on the Justice and Unity slate. Laforest told Workers World that “the core members of our slate represent a progressive vision and have extensive contacts with communities in the city that are struggling against political reaction.

“These are dangerous times,” Laforest continued. “We are living under a government whose priority is to oppose any gains made by working people and communities of color in the past 30 years. This makes Pacifica and WBAI more relevant than ever. It is WBAI’s role to educate people about their political surroundings, to discuss strategies for survival and for the struggle of working people, and to be a contact point between the different struggles.”

Imani Henry, an organizer for the International Action Center and program coordinator for TransJustice, is running for the first time. Henry said his fellow Justice and Unity candidates are all “bona fide activists. Through their connections in the various communities, including the lesbian/gay/bi/trans struggles and all the anti-racist struggles, they will build listenership and membership in the station.”

While the ACE people claim their business and promotional experience is needed for fundraising. Laforest points out that there are different paths to financial stability. “It is more important to expand the involvement of listeners in the station. Some of the ACE people have obstructed this effort. But doing outreach and bringing in new people also puts the station on a sound financial basis.”

How to vote

All of the approximately 18,000 WBAI members are eligible to vote. Due to a complicated voting process aimed at guaranteeing proportional representation and some representation for minority opinions, the order in which members make their selections makes a difference.

The Justice and Unity slate asks members to vote for the slate’s “multiracial, anti-racist, majority-women election slate of listeners,” listed below with a small part of their activities, and to mark their ballots in the following order: (1) Father Lawrence Lucas, Black liberation theologian; (2) Nia Bediako, chair, Local Board Programming Committee; (3). Berta Silva, labor organizer with 1199/SEIU; (4) Ray Laforest; (5) Marianela Tricoche, Bolivarian Circle.

Also, (6) Bernadette Ellorin, regional coordinator, BAYAN USA—progressive Filipino alliance; (7) Samia Halaby, member of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right of Return Coalition; (8) Sam Spady, president, NAACP/New Rochelle branch; (9) Imani Henry (10) Tibby Brooks, organizer, New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition.

The Justice and Unity release also suggests not marking the ballot for any other candidates.

For more information on the Justice and Unity slate and its program, see www.justiceunity.org, and for the descriptions of all the candidates and an explanation of voting details, see www.wbai.org/elections.