I’m a progressive Haitian community and labor activist with long involvement in the struggle to reclaim Pacifica from usurpers of various types. I served on WBAI/Pacifica local and national boards for many years. I’m running with Justice & Unity (www.justiceunity.org) to help bring WBAI back on track.
laforestray@yahoo.com * (212) 591-2111
I’m proudly running for the Local Station Board with the WBAI Justice and Unity Campaign (www.justiceunity.org), a progressive coalition whose candidates have a proven record of activism in the communities that define Pacifica’s mission. We are acutely aware of WBAI’s importance as an educating and organizing tool, particularly in this time of imperialist wars, economic depression, and Obama-inspired political confusion.
I’ve been a fighter for social justice practically all my life. I was born in Haiti, and at age 13 joined an underground organization against the “Papa Doc” Duvalier dictatorship. In 1968, I was forced to flee to the U.S.
I’ve been part of the leadership of the most progressive Haitian organizations in Haiti and the Diaspora, such as the Haitian Coalition for Justice and Haiti Support Network. I co-founded the Haitian/Dominican Action Group, have been active in immigration rights coalitions, and have long supported liberation struggles from Cuba to Southern Africa. I served on the National Coordinating Committee for Mumia Abu-Jamal. I’m a longtime labor organizer, currently a Staff Organizer with AFSCME District Council 1707.
Even before the 2000 “Christmas Coup” at WBAI, I was involved with the struggle to reclaim Pacifica from mainstream usurpers. Since last year, I’ve opposed the policies of newly imposed station management that – with strong LSB-majority support – has fired and banned staff without due process, hired without job postings, abrogated union rights for unpaid staff, gagged dissent, and cut back local-issues programming. WBAI’s financial crisis was used to justify the “shakeup” – yet this year’s budget was submitted four months late and the auditor has found hemorrhaging listener revenue and “atrocious” financial controls.
I served on the WBAI Local Advisory Board from 2000 to 2004 and the interim Pacifica National Board from 2001 to 2004. I served on the elected LSB from 2004 to 2009 (my term limit) and on the PNB from 2004 to 2007. Until its abolition by the PNB, I chaired Pacifica’s coordinating body for local station committees that were supposed to monitor inclusion of underrepresented groups. As chair, I’d worked with colleagues to obtain anti-racism training for the PNB and all five stations, and to make Informativo Pacifica and other Spanish-language programs a reality.
If again elected, I’ll work with other open board members to reverse the station’s disastrous current policies and realize these (and other) Justice and Unity initiatives:
– A capital campaign to acquire a permanent home for WBAI
– Hiring of a Development Director for off-air fundraising
– A ban on private funding that unduly influences LSB elections
Most important, we’ll continue struggling to reclaim the station as a beacon of progressive activism and community struggles.
I ask that you vote for all the Justice and Unity candidates in this order:
1. Bernard White
2. Suzanne Adely
3. John Brinkley
4. Father Lawrence Lucas
5. Ray Laforest
6. Wellington Echegaray
7. Sharonne Salaam
8. Linda Bergnes
9. Myriam Decime
10. Carlos Canales
11. Sarah Klepner
12. Henry Hagins
13. Eugene Hamond
laforestray@yahoo.com * (212) 591-2111
1. Why do you want to be on the Local Station Board (LSB)?
With the right-wing, reactionary agenda of wars around the world, attacks on hard-fought civil liberties at home, and the political confusion surrounding the actions of the Obama administration, WBAI and Pacifica are more important than ever. I was active on the WBAI Local Station Board (and the Local Advisory Board before that) and on the Pacifica National Board for many years. As a member of the WBAI Justice and Unity Campaign (www.justiceunity.org), I want to use my experience to help ensure that the station returns to fully serving the communities struggling for survival and a voice in their own future. I want to continue to fight for a station that is more democratic, accountable, and financially sound, and provides mission-based programming that is relevant to the needs of those communities.
2. How do you envision the LSB working with Pacifica Foundation, WBAI staff, and listener members?
The Local Station Board is the crucial junction between those entities. It should vigorously articulate the needs of the various local communities in its signal area to local management and to the Pacifica Foundation. It should also strive for local autonomy and the preservation of the specific character that defines the reality of our listening area. In my time on the Pacifica National Board, I consistently opposed excessive centralization of power by that board or by the Pacifica National Office at the expense of the local stations.
The challenge is to accomplish this while striving for the most organic integration of those needs with the foundation’s national agenda. This is a difficult balancing act that requires constant vigilance.
3. How could the station better serve the community? Please define community.?
Relations with the community – defined as the panoply of individuals and institutions that listen to and interact with our station and otherwise rely on it as a source of news, information, and analysis, and as a nexus for discussions and resolution of issues facing it – should be based on mutual respect and the true understanding that meeting that community’s needs is at the very core of what defines us as an alternative, progressive media outlet – a sine qua non condition for WBAI’s success.
Therefore, what is heard on our airwaves should be the reflection of a well-thought-out and extensive dialogue with the public within a format that allows for community input from conception to implementation.
4. Describe some actions you would take to increase the influence of the station in underrepresented communities and to increase the diversity of the listening audience.
Although it might not be immediately achievable in the present dire financial situation of WBAI, one key element is the rehiring of an Outreach Coordinator, combined with the revival of the Membership, Outreach, and Fundraising Committee (allowed to lapse under the current LSB majority) and a greatly increased level of activities by this committee, with the goal of rapidly enlarging the membership and participation in the station.
Membership, Outreach, and Fundraising Committee members can contribute to more effective outreach within their own communities and others, making contact with the organizations and groupings that are essential to project their own needs.
In coordination with these actions, a revitalized Committee of Inclusion would take on the important task of identifying the various communities within our listening area, and with the Membership, Outreach, and Fundraising Committee, locate the vital, active organizations, groupings, and leaders that will help clarify the various communities’ needs, and be active in advising on programming needs and other aspects of station life.
5. What sources of funding, other than listener donations, do you feel WBAI should solicit? Do you have any ideas with respect to improving the current funding mechanisms?
An important step would be the hiring of a Development Coordinator, whose job would be to seek funds such as grants and to develop a comprehensive program involving our major donors. In addition, such a coordinator could ask some of our more well-known supporters to reach out to other high-profile individuals and invite them to participate in special fundraising events.
Listeners should also be organized to set up ongoing activities in their communities and in other venues to raise needed funds.
And of course, increasing listenership and membership in the station is essential for providing a sustained source of revenue.
6. Please state briefly the skills, experience, educational background, work history, organizational affiliations, areas of community service, areas of interest and expertise that you would bring to the Pacifica network as a member of the Local Station Board.
In the last eighteen years, I have been involved in most aspects of labor organizing, including bringing new members into unions and serving those members, as well as political action. Among other skills, this work calls for and develops the ability to relate directly with workers, attentively listen to their points of view, and effectively present union membership as an empowering alternative to their usual isolation.
I also negotiate and enforce contracts, lead meetings, and help stimulate the development of leadership among the rank and file.
For more than thirty years, I have participated in organizing, first in the Haitian community and later in the peace and solidarity movements. I was a founding member of the first national immigrants’ rights organization in the United States.
At present, I am a member of the Steering Committee of the International Support Haiti Network (ISHN), formerly known as Haiti Support Network (HSN), which is engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the very survival of the Haitian people in the wake of the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010.
7. On which Local Station Board committees are you interested in actively serving? If you are a current Local Station Board member, on which committees do you currently serve??
Based on my previous experience chairing the Committee of Inclusion and the tremendous importance of this committee for a healthy future for the station, I would again like to serve on this committee. Also, my community and labor contacts and predilection for these activities draws me to work with the Outreach Task Force, which I hope will be developed into a full Membership, Outreach, and Fundraising Committee of the Local Station Board with a full program of activities, as it was when Justice & Unity was in the majority.
8. If you are currently on the Board and wish to be re-elected please describe your 3 year experience on the LSB. What did you accomplish? What were the obstacles you faced? Do you envision any change in the next three years if you are re-elected?
Even though I am not currently on the Board, I served for 6 years and only stepped down last year at the end of my term limit. I believe that my experience is relevant to the present reality at the station and Pacifica.
By January 2009 the Pacifica National Board had been taken over by a new majority, created partially by some Pacifica factions’ access to large resources to gain unmatched access to voters during Pacifica elections. The rules allowing this ability to “buy” elections, in the mold of one of the worst aspects of capitalist society, allowed these individuals to install Grace Aaron from Los Angeles as the network’s interim executive director.
Having helped win a majority on the National Board, in May 2009 the current WBAI LSB majority backed a coup by Ms. Aaron that destroyed the station’s autonomy. Using the urgency of the station’s dismal financial situation as an excuse, they helped bring in management that initiated a purge and programming changes that reduced the local issues content on the air. Program Director Bernard White, having served WBAI for some 29 years, was fired and banned from the station, without due process or mandated evaluation, and General Manager Anthony Riddle was removed from his position and transferred to the National Office. Both were replaced by imports from Pacifica’s California stations. The new management refused to recognize the binding contract of the Unpaid Staff Organizing Committee – and refused to even communicate with the union.
What amounted to an on-air gag rule was imposed network-wide and enforced selectively only against critics: At WBAI, nine producers have been fired, banned, removed from programs, or driven out, all without due process.
Five hours per week of “Wakeup Call,” the station’s flagship community program, were slashed and largely replaced by imported programs focusing exclusively on national and international issues.
Pacifica’s Spanish-language progressive news program, Informativo Pacifica, was moved to a less favorable time in L.A., cancelled in Houston, and until Justice and Unity protested, disappeared for three weeks at WBAI.
The Interim General Manager imposed in 2009 with LSB majority support, despite her easy access to ample financial information while doubling as Pacifica’s Interim CFO, did not produce a budget for WBAI until four months after it was due.
The new majority, whose claim to fame was its self-proclaimed specialty in financial oversight, applauded the imposed management it had helped install as they presided over a large drop in listener support, a drop in the rate at which listeners fulfill pledges, and the failure to collect nine months worth of installment payments pledged by listeners (costing the station tens of thousands).
These and other shortcomings, too numerous to mention here, are some of the “improvements” we surely can do without and that we have to strive to change, both in the regressive vision and the reactionary impulse that gave birth to their actions.
For this election, we have a chance to make that difference, learn from past mistakes, and put the station and Pacifica on a progressive, mission-based footing.
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