Our New York City library defenders defenders are aware of how the NYC libraries system is being slowly dismantled as core assets, major libraries are being sold off and shrunk, library by library: Donnell, the Second biggest Library in Brooklyn, the only NYC Science Library, the emptying of millions of books from the stacks from the 42nd Street Central Reference Library, the shrinkage and book elimination at the biggest circulating library Mid-Manhttan, etc.
Here are what we wrote:
There is a lot of what is going on with respect to this attempted takeover of WBAI that will feel familiar to New Yorkers who have paid close attention to the privatizing sell-off of libraries and the transformation of libraries and their traditions into less democratic reformulations that are less threatening to the consumer model based power structures of our society.
There is, for instance, the deceptive descriptions that a corporate press is far too ready to repeat. For instance, without talking to anyone else, the New York Times unsekptically quoted John Vernile the Interim Executive Director who acted by stealth to close WBAI as he offered reassurance that WBAI was not going away, that "Pacifica was determined not to sell that prime piece of radio real estate," and that "Pacifica, he said, wants to `rebuild' WBAI at some point, although he did not offer a clear target date." "Rebuild WBAI"?: That sounds like the assurance that NYC libraries were being sold to build new and better "libraries of the future" or "libraries of the 21st Century." . . But you "build" from the ground up, not the top down, which is what WBAI has been doing. Also, this rhetoric is contrary to the known internal dialogues of the people associated with Mr. Vernile: Selling WBAI is exactly what they are talking about and advocating.
There is also the strategy of working secretly in advance attempting to take people by surprise, to make things a "done deal" or "fait acompli" by the time the curtain is raised on what's planned.
Going along with this with New York Libraries and with Pacifica's handling of WBAI is the funny bookkeeping that manufactures a "crisis" to justify proposals to finance in self-cannibalizing sales of core and valuable public properties. Naomi Klein has written about the various tactics of "crisis capitalism" and this variation is one of them.
We New Yorkers also know that when the privatizers want a public asset disposed of, a favorite tactic of the privatizers is to use every ruse to have that asset become, along the way, as shabby, unattractive, and hopefully as alienating as possible. That can be involve something as grotesque as not cleaning or fixing the bathrooms of libraries, and we have also seen in a remarkable pattern of unvarying repetition, that with every library that comes up as a next target for sale (except for the brand new SIBL, Science, Industry and Business Library), the air conditioning mysteriously breaks and becomes unfixable. If NYU wants to build on what was dedicated as public park space it is supposed to maintain, that park space fills with trash, etc. (It is too much to summarize right now, but part of the challenges WBAI has faced in recent years involve financial arrangements, that were not beneficial that the Pacfica national office as decision make saddled it with.)
WBAI has been doing a remarkable job of relying on volunteers to successfully operate on a shoe string. Pacifica does not, as advertised, have a debt crisis, but it does have a cash flow challenge engendered in part by what the internet seeming offers for free (but its not). Cash flow challenges are frequently dealt with by investing to generate new revenue. In any budget there are what is known as "expenditure driven revenues." Arguably Pacifica has been quite stingy recently in allocating resources. WBAI in the largest, perhaps most influential metropolitan media market does its 24/7 programming with just 7 FTE (Full Time Equivalent) employees. The much smaller Pacifica station in Berkeley never reduced staff to cut costs when others did and has, an FTE staff that is several multiples of that number.
A WBAI listener who recently died very recently, just months ago, contributed over $700,000. With the investment of a small fraction of that money, not much more than $40,000, WBAI could be activating use of the High Definition capabilities of its new far less expensive, but far better HD antenna. In short order WBAI could be broadcasting three times as much content 24/7 over the three HD terrestrial radio channels made possible (mirrored by internet streams of those channels). It probably wouldn't triple income for WBAI, but it would substantially increase it without comparable increases in expense, and it would hugely boost WBAI's media profile in NYC. Pacifica directed and sequestered these funds elsewhere.
In the world of the New York City library sell-offs, the background plans associated with the library sell-offs involve long lists of multiple libraries to be turned into real estate deals, but, in classic divide-and-conquer fashion, the public only hears about one or two of these libraries being for sale at a time. In the case of Pacifica, if WBAI is marshaled to the fore to be the subject of a self-cannibalizing sale, there is nothing to prevent other Pacifica stations to be moved against in subsequent stealth attacks for future self-cannibalizing sales.
The New York City library sales involve the template of consolidating shrinkages; a central library with smaller, perhaps fewer satellite libraries and in total, there is less aggregate library space than before. When WBAI was taken off the air, its website was replaced with a page unveiling a new brand, look or concept of Pacifica: "Pacifica Across America."
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| The Web Page that replaced WBAI when it was taken off the air and its web pages and archives removed from the internet |
One other thing that New York City library defenders are very familiar with when it comes to the book-eliminating reformulations libraries is the way that the changes being made are pushing those seeking information toward the digital and into the internet, which is far less private and far more subject to control and outside influence.
In resisting the court's Temporary Restraining Order ordering that WBAI be restored to the air, Counsel representing Mr. Vernile along with whoever acted with him to take the station off the air were eager to argue that decision of the issue should be removed to federal court and determined as an FCC (Federal Communications Commission). The Chair of the FCC is Ajit Pai, a corporate media conglomerate lobbyist who is using his chair position at the FCC to eliminate net neutrality, which then allows for the content control privatizing initiatives of the corporate conglomerates to prevail much more easily. . . .
. . . Additionally, it has been reported that“leaked documents show the White House is planning an executive order that would put Ajit Pai in charge of policing free speech online and allow government censorship of the Internet.”
That would go a long way to ensure that the content of any centrally based Pacifica Across America internet operation would be tame and nonthreatening to those in power.
When outside interests want to move in to take over and privatize, they don't always think in terms of acquiring the public assets in question: Taking control of the board that owns the public assets equates to the same thing. In New York, one of the first two libraries for sale "as one of the most valuable" was the Pacific Branch, Carnegie designed and donated libraries in Brooklyn immediately next to Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly project (both of those targeted libraries were next to Fores City Ratner property). Real estate interests had targeted the Pacific Branch library for direct acquisition in the mid-1970s. Back then, when the community fought to fend off the attack, the Brooklyn Public Library's public spirited board fought with the community to defeat the sell off. When plans again surfaced in early 2013 to sell the Pacific Library, the BPL's board had been populated by real estate interests and the BPL was took the side of the real estate community in arguing for and promoting the sell off of the Branch.
If the Pacifica network radio stations are subject to consolidating privatizing sell offs and replaced something more central that swings further toward the corporate mainstream in the flavor of its politics, its is not just the terrestrial stations and their current local voices that would be lost. The Pacifica archives, a vast amount of content representing a tremendously important record of an alternative view of history, would also be under control of of that entity. That content, to which WBAI, with its sister stations, has been a significant contributor is a money maker for Pacifica. New York City library defenders are familiar with the consolidating elimination of access to books that is means information availability is ever more subject to the decisions of a corporately minded group in control.
If it seems that, with a takeover of the Pacifica's board, Pacifica could become the enemy of its own public assets, it should be remembered that intent and potential of setting up Pacifica as a network was the opposite. The intent, and the way it has worked in the past was that the network of Pacifica stations would have the extra strength of being cross-supporting. So, for instance, as one small example, the New York Times reported in 1972 that when "Houston was blown off the air twice during its first months of broadcasting when its transmitter was bombed, allegedly by a right wing group. Then WBAI held several successful fund raising marathons for the crippled station, and Manhattan listeners pledged some $5,000 for the Houston affiliate."
In fact, over the years, WBAI has done much to support and keep the other Pacifica stations afloat and solvent.
Cross-supporting, the stations can be an insurance policy for each other to ensure that they are all kept alive. That interrelationship works in another beneficial way too: Each station with its own independent voice is an insurance policy for free speech. Lest something outrageous go unremarked upon at one station, other stations can point that out.
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It is noted in the resolution that one of the first and most important things WBAI listener members can do right is to make vote in the interfered with ongoing Local Station Board election. This is important especially to help ensure that a quorum is reached in that election (only about 200 more listener votes are needed for that purpose); it's not just important who you vote for. Voting, no matter what, is the most important thing. We will post more about the election.
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