Photo essays: Foto album #1 - iPNB meeting - Foto album #2 - iPNB people - Foto album #3 - WBAI studios reception - Foto album #4 - Cathedral of St. John the Divine - Foto album #5 - About town
NYC iPNB mtg. travelogue - Houston Radio Report homepage
I got a little bit of a late start in Manhattan for the weekend iPNB meeting. Once checked in to the Hotel Pennsylvania in midtown on Friday evening, I grabbed a subway up to 116th St. and then walked over to the Synod House at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It was great being back in NYC, the land of my birth. I hadn't been up around Columbia University for 20 years or more, so it was wonderful to walk around that neighborhood seeing all the students getting ready to party on a Friday night.
Once I arrived at the Synod House, there was only another half hour left for the meeting that night. Public comments were being expressed and I stepped up to the dais to ask Leslie Cagan to be added to the public speakers list. She said it was a maybe. I listened to some of the speakers and there was great criticism from the floor about the racial discrimination of the Draft B bylaws, and a lot of support for that criticism. At that point I knew that I was in the right place. While this was going on, I walked around the room introducing myself to people from Pacifica. Both Teresa Allen and Duane Bradley were surprised to see me there. Carol Spooner was noticeably absent.
Immediately after the meeting I tried to find out what events might be happening for that evening. Nothing official or even relatively collective seemed to planned, so most people would be winging it. A little interruption during my fact finding was when Ursula Rudenburg and Pete Korakis came up to me to yell. I guess since they had both made presentations to the iPNB that night, they were a little bit territorial. There would be one yelling session at me each day of the meeting from some segment of the NY loons.
The place started clearing out and I was bent on helping Michael "slasher" Pimental with his lodging arrangements, who hadn't arrived yet, so I recruited George Barnstone to come back to the hotel with me. We walked over to the 110th St. subway heading downtown along with a Mr. Crenshaw from WBAI, a woman named Rachel from WBAI whose uncle is Ira Glasser, and a young woman visitor from WPFW who was staying out in Brooklyn during the meeting. Those other three all got off at 96th street for another line.
Once back at the Hotel Pennsylvania, we found that slasher had missed a connecting flight between LA and NYC, somewhere around Phoenix, so he wouldn't be in until very late. George Barnstone wanted to go out and I was hungry, so we headed off downtown. We took a subway to the Christopher St. station and stopped to admire the ceramic mosaics adorning the walls there. I had wanted George to see the one illustrating the Stonewall riots, but we didn't see it. We started a bit of a walk around the Village, taking in many of my old haunts from the 1970s: Bleeker St., MacDougal, etc. George was having a great time people watching. When we got to Washington Square Park, we found it was closed. Unbelievable! I was looking forward to the all-night party there. So, instead we took in an outdoor tour of many of the NYU buildings, and George tried to sneak past the guard at the NYU law school dorms. We stopped for some streetside pizza, looked at the baubles for sale from street vendors, took some photos with the firemen and sat on some park benches - cheap thrills!
Around 1am we were back at the hotel, in the lobby, waiting for slasher to arrive. He showed up wearing all black, including his cowboy hat, armed with luggage, an electric guitar and a small portable electric amp. He was very hungry, so we took him down the block to Sbarro for a calzone. After a little chow, I had slasher and George stand in the middle of 34th St. for a photo. Then I told them to turn around to see what was in the background. Slasher asked: "Is that the Eiffel Tower?" Up in NY they call it the Empire State Building, where WBAI has it's radio antennae. Slasher got his room and I stayed with George.
In the morning on Saturday, I had breakfast at Lindy's in the hotel with George, slasher and the newest iPNB member, Acie Byrd. We all rode together in a cab to the Synod house, since it was getting late. Acie was up in the front seat chatting with the driver about Pacifica politics, while I was pointing out landmarks along the way. George was trying to contact Charles Smith to see if he was coming to the meeting. (He never did show up.) The first order of business on Saturday morning was an emergency closed executive session. Leslie Cagan kicked slasher and I out by name. Slasher stashed his guitar and amp behind the sound board, then the both of us walked down the block to the huge cathedral. I was busy taking photos and slasher wanted to have a look at the organ. There was a steady buildup outside the cathedral of Tibetans in traditional garb, who had come to hear the Dalai Lama speak there later in the afternoon. (The local papers were calling him the Jolly Lama.)
When we got back to the Synod House, they were still in executive session, so we chatted outside with the early attendees, including Duane Bradley, Errol Maitland, Muntu Matsimela, Jim Bennett, and Ron Pinchback. Once the meeting started, it was mostly presentations, which to me weren't terribly exciting, so I spent much of the time roaming and having coffee and cigarettes. Outside I met Leslie Radford for the first time and we hit it off well. Then Rafael Renteria showed up after a while with a terrible knot in his shoulder so I gave him a bit of a massage hoping to relax him. I had a nice time meeting an FSRN reporter from DC, Tom Gomez, and Rafael and I were entranced by one of the hosts of WBAI's "First Nation" program. The guy went on about the true meaning of words in language, like that "America" has a Latin base of "Love of Riches" -- "Ame=Love, Rica=Rich". He was emphatic about the diseased minds of the Freemasons who set up this system and still run it.
Lunch was nearly upon us so I asked Steffie Brooks, who used to live in that neighborhood, where we could go for cheep eats. She recommended a burrito place (best in NYC) and a Cuban place. I also spent some time talking with Miguel Maldonado outside, whom I bought a cup of coffee. Back downstairs at the meeting, slasher and I noticed Teresa Allen carrying a catering tray full of food into the room, so slasher asked her if we could have some. Teresa was all "This is for the iPNB." and stuff, but no sooner had she put down the trays when everybody and anybody began to feed on them. Leslie Radford offered me a stuffed veggie wrap, which I ate, and also a crab salad sandwich that she had initially thought was tuna. I declined that one. Meanwhile the local population of Tibetans lined up outside the building was growing at a phenomenal rate.
More presentations after lunch, but finally some action after that in regards to elections. Two or three iPNB votes there (the first of the weekend) clearly established the new leadership of the iPNB under the direction of Ray LaForest -- in other words, Carol Spooner was totally shut out once again. But the most significant thing about the Saturday meeting was that Leslie Cagan allowed absolutely no time at all for public comments. (I had been rehearsing mine for some days in anticipation.)
After Saturday's meeting, George took the iPNB shuttle bus to WBAI for an evening reception, so slasher and I took the subway back to the hotel to freshen up before heading down to Wall St. ourselves. Slasher purchased the discount $10 subway pass good for 6 fares. The party at WBAI was most excellent (it competed with one organized by Miguel in Alphabet City.) In the front room was a setup of wine, cheese and crackers, then in another room there was a staggering array of chafing dishes with delicious foods from many different cultures. I had a tasty salad, some type of Indian fried jobbies, Chicken Marsala over rice and who knows what else. Then in another room was dessert, with cakes, cookies, fruit and hot coffee. This is the kind of NYC class that I have been missing in Houston these many decades! And it was almost perfect, save for the short incident when Rafael, Leslie Radford, Lee Kronick and I tried to make our way out of the dessert room. Roger Manning used that occasion to stop his musical performance and to attack us by name. What a welcome, eh? I chatted with lots of people, including a guy from the Long Island Friends of WBAI who took me over to a window to show me a nice view of the East River with the ferries rolling by and Brooklyn off in the distance. He lives in a village in Nassau County just north of one I had once lived in, so it was a chance for me to reminisce a bit. George and I bought some t-shirts from that event at WBAI, then we found slasher and all took the subway back up to the hotel. At the subway, slasher was displeased to find out that he no longer possessed his subway fare card.
When we got back to the hotel, there was a phone message from my old high school best friend, who lives in midtown. I asked him to stop by and take us out for a while. While George and I were waiting for my friend to show in the elevator lobby of the 11th floor, Marion Barry comes by on his way out. "Where's the party?", I asked. "Up in Harlem!", Barry replied. He almost got on the elevator when he stopped and asked, "Is that you George? I though it was just a couple of white guys." We chatted with Marion a bit and then my friend walked out of an elevator. I said "Pete, I'd like to introduce you to Marion Barry." (I just love doing that sort of thing.) Marion went off to Harlem, and Pete suggested we stay local and sit down at an Irish pub to chat. We wound up going to O'Reilly's just a couple of blocks away. At the bar, I tried to steer the conversation away from the minutiae of Pacifica politics for my friend's sake, so slasher brought up various World Trade Center bombing conspiracies. He didn't realize it at first, but my friend was an actual witness to the bombings on Sept. 11th and he related some of his experiences surrounding that, including some rather strange personal coincidences that left him alive that fateful day. George was kinda tired so he left a bit early, and slasher was getting more wired by the minute, so much so that he just up and left at one point without saying where he was going, never to be seen again that night. I left my old friend about 2:30am and went back up to the room to find George snoring.
Sunday morning got up bright and early again (with the help of the ever-ready cafe in the hotel) George was waiting on line to check out of the hotel along with Rob Robinson. I suggested that we all share a cab up to the meeting. Then Acie Byrd came by, so I suggested that those three iPNB members share the cab and that slasher and I would take the subway. Rob responded: "Yes, sir!" Slasher and I got off at 103rd St. and found Susan Lee of WBAI coming out of the next car, so we walked along together. She asked me who I was, and when I told her, she said: "Oh, so you are Edwin Johnston! You seem like such a sweet guy in person." At the beginning of the meeting there were more boring presentations, so I went across the street for more coffee and picked up a copy of the Village Voice to read. No more Tibetans lining up around the block, that day they would all be in Central Park to hear the Dalai Lama again. (Duane Bradley was just itchin' to go himself.) I had another conversation with Miguel and a curious young student from Montclair who just happened by. We talked about the politics of coffee.
A little later on I was standing outside on the north side of the building chatting with Greg Gieselman in Houston over the cell phone, when I could hear Miguel Maldonado shouting downstairs from the windows of the meeting room. Then I saw slasher outside and handed the phone over to him so I could take some photos. The whole scene at that time revolved around a planned disruption of the meeting by people from around the country who were supporting affirmative action in election results and similar policies. Miguel was responding to the disruption with a disruption of his own, specifically feeling unjustly shunned from his position as the WBAI LAB chair. Then Leslie Cagan decided to let them present their demands over the microphones, and also gave Miguel some time for his spiel. I stood with the group of affirmative action disrupters, as person by person went up to the mic to read part of the collective statement. It was the most heated part of the whole weekend. I got a photo of a confrontation between Mimi Rosenberg and Patty Heffley. Then Patty came up to me and demanded that I not take any more photos of her during this (public) meeting. Since I was silent in response to her demand, she criticized that. I could have pointed out the irony of her asking me this, when she is so forthright about recording other people's activities at Pacifica meetings, but .... Anyway, Marion Barry turned the disrupter's demands into a motion and it was all being voted up as I left the meeting a half hour before it was scheduled to end.
I caught the subway back to the hotel for my bag, then took the Long Island Railroad out to visit my brother Sunday night. On Monday all the surviving members of my nuclear family got together at my mom's place in Brooklyn. On Tuesday I navigated my way back to Houston, via various taxis, trains, busses, planes and vans.
I enjoyed my NYC trip immensely. It go me back in contact with my roots, showed me a truly diverse city compared to the plantation town that I currently live in and felt a sense of camaraderie around Pacifica that I haven't felt for quite a while. In what many on these lists would have expected as the great Draft B bylaws adoption celebration weekend, there was barely a word uttered concerning the matter, save a shout-out from the audience by a Ms. Hauptman from KPFA, who attempted to canonize Carol Spooner. No, this wasn't Carol Spooner's weekend at all, it was something else entirely, and from my point of view, a welcome change of direction.