Cerene Roberts – Candidate statement and questionnaire answers

Radio, when it inspires and encourages resolve, is revolutionary!

It was at WBAI I learned of/from Jan Carew and Nawal El Saadawi, and fell hard in love to/with the artistry of Nina Simone, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Fela Anipulato Kuti.

At first, I was a “fringe listener,” tuning to WBAI some pre-Wake Up Call mornings for Jo Willard and others;, Marjorie Moore, a McCourt, Playthell, and Samori for the drive home; and the Irish guys (Radio Free Eirann) during Saturday’s lunch break. I started attending community forums and the crafts fair. Then Samori drafted me to assist on production of a strip called “Talkback!” and I’ve been around since.

I’ve been here about 20 years. Usually in the background and very occasionally on-air, I have produced for Wake Up Call, The GBE, Haiti: The Struggle Continues, Under the Learning Tree, and City in Exile, among others. I’ve served as receptionist, Tally/Phone Room Coordinator, and Administrative Assistant; volunteered in Premiums and Finance; written and edited for the Folio and website; coordinated International Working Women’s Day; and repeatedly been elected to search committees, the Program Council, the Local Station Board, and as Unpaid Staff steward. I know the station operations, management, and governance structure, and have served on several local and national WBAI/Pacifica committees. I know how crucial listener involvement is. We, as listeners, must prevent the dismemberment of Pacifica Radio.

At its finest, WBAI stands as the nexus of commonalities among those being gentrified out of post-Hurricane-Ike Galveston, Texas, and Oakland, or priced out of Washington, DC, Brooklyn’s Bushwick, and downtown L.A., and between those who flee from West Africa to the Middle East or Europe and those who journey from/through Mexico to deserts in the southwest U.S.

It is for WBAI/Pacifica to provide space for the analyses that link our struggles, so that together we learn and plot new routes. No other network is sufficiently free of corporate influence to do it. We must stop maintaining office/studio space that is pricier than necessary, and utilize digital and internet technologies to expand our reach.

With principled, progressive-minded people in decision-making roles, I know we can bring the needed change to fruition.

I have been locked out of the station (without notice or process) since the Sept. 2009 LSB meeting when, before my arrival, my producer colleague Kamau Khalfani protested board member Seth Goldberg’s assault on listener Michael Vincent Crea. I have now reduced my station role to the point that I do not meet the bylaws voting definition of staff. But because my commitment to WBAI is undiminished, I am honored to run with Justice & Unity as a listener.

Please vote for me and the other Justice & Unity candidates (who have been endorsed by Dr. Joy DeGruy (Leary) and Rita Marksman, among others) in this order:

1. Father Luis Barrios
2. Cerene Roberts
3. William Heerwagen
4. Sharonne Salaam
5. Russell Dale
6. Carlos Canales
7. Diana Crowder
8. Shahid Comrade
9. Ebon Charles
10. Eugene Hamond

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Answers to Candidate Questionnaire

1.    In what ways is your station moving in a positive direction, that you would want to continue or perhaps improve?

Although problematically introduced without any process, displacing the diverse and grassroots national and international “Free Speech Radio News,” and although I am not without criticisms of the program itself, the “Occupy Wall Street Show” (currently heard weekdays at 6:30pm) presents an opportunity for discussion of issues that some parts of the WBAI community have always had as our lived experience but which many US citizens are only now discovering.

2.    In what ways is your station moving in a negative direction, that you would want to stop or change? What changes would you work for?

The commercialization of our air in the form of marketing physically consumable products and the relentless repetition of “star” programs in ever-longer fund drives make the station unlistenable for large periods of time.

Administratively, we have a manager without media experience or the ability to make cogent presentations. He recently claimed to have been around for 2 years, but in fact, at least 3 years ago in Fall 2009 he was a paid consultant – secretly and illegally, as no job had been posted – and as interim manager since June 2010, until an illegally constituted committee of his friends recommended him for the permanent position in December 2010.

Other staff try to reinvent themselves or act as though station history began with their arrival. Some new listeners may buy this, but others, around for years, have noticed and been turned off by the dissembling.

I would work to help make our fund drives exciting programming with more quality premiums, and for due process in hiring and programming.

3.    What key experience, connections, skills or traits would you bring to the Local Station Board to advance the station’s mission?

I began radio production at the invitation of Samori Marksman and have worked on live, arts, and public-affairs programs. I was repeatedly elected by staff as a Steward of the Unpaid Staff union, and to the Program Council and local board. I also served on several local and national Pacifica committees.

I have worked in virtually all departments and created many tools that facilitated communication among staff and between staff and listeners.

As Tally Room Coordinator, trainer, and volunteer, I’ve spent thousands of hours with phone volunteers and callers. (BAI-ers are a strange bunch, but wonderfully so!)

Wisdom is not bound to titles and within our listenership is the solution to every problem the station faces. Therefore, I’ve always argued for generous public comment at board meetings, open participation in board committees and at Program Council meetings, and for local board and town hall meetings around the geographic area rather than only the places favored by some board members.

4.    What ideas do you have for helping the station and the Pacifica Foundation meet the financial challenges currently being faced?

Determine which network costs should be shared and which covered by national fundraising; pass a policy that no station’s listeners should pay legal costs for bad decisions made by national executives or actions taken by the Pacifica National Board (PNB) against advice of legal counsel.

The PNB chair was hastily installed as interim Executive Director (ED) when the previous ED left; both this job and that of the departing Chief Financial Officer must be filled by competent, principled people ASAP.

Locally, management must end the morale-killing practice of arbitrary “discipline” of dissenters and quiet hiring of friends and relatives.

WBAI must temporarily move to more affordable quarters now, and begin a serious search for permanent quarters.

We need to expand and diversify our reach using technology to renew and establish connections with a greater range of potential listeners. We need to get out into the streets and concert halls, and once again, school auditoriums/lecture halls.