At the end of October 2000, I was taken off the air as the host of Thresholds, a show that I had created along with Bill Simon and John McNamara, for participating in the first demonstration to protest the treatment of Amy Goodman by the Pacifica management. The decision was made by Edmundo Resendez, then program manager at KPFT, and I was informed of his decision the day after the demonstration. On that day, Edmundo had the police move the 60-70 protestors off the parking lot in front of the station onto the sidewalk, and was talking to a police officer when I arrived with another contingent of demonstrators who had been marching through the Montrose area.

When I approached Edmundo and asked him what was going on with Amy Goodman, he became very emotional and angry. He made it clear that there was an "us" and a "them" here, and that I had violated his trust and had stepped over the line and become "one of them". He subsequently flipped the bird at the demonstrators who were chanting for him to leave me alone. Edmundo made it clear at the time and subsequently that he felt that he was taking a risk to have put my show on the air six months earlier.

The demonstrators present that day included nearly all the leadership of the progressive community in Houston, people who had long supported the station with their participation and their money, and who saw it as their voice. That Edmundo would see them as the "opposition", and feel that he was taking a risk to put a progressive show on the air, made it clear how large the rift had grown between the progressive community and the management of the station.

When he calmed down, Edmundo had to agree that, at worst, I had betrayed his friendship by not asking him before the demonstration for management's side of the altercation with Amy. I apologized for that, and he offered to put me back on the air shortly, but then left for another job three weeks later. Garland Ganter, the station manager at the time, also said he had nothing against putting me back on the air, but that he wanted to wait till after the first of the year, when he expected to hire a news director.

That never happened, and when I approached him in early February 2001 about getting the show back on the air (the time slot had been filled with tapes up until that time), he told me that Mary Ramirez had just that day been appointed program director, and that she was going to replace my show and the hour that preceded it (a progressive show from New York with Michio Kaku as the host) with a two-hour music show. They did hold out the possibility that another time slot would be found for my show, and I submitted a couple of tapes and a description of the show to Mary.

I never heard back from Mary; despite repeated phone calls and e-mails, and an assurance from Garland that she would contact me. When confronted about the lack of response at a public meeting held in April, Garland told me afterwards that there was still the possibility of the show being put back on the air. Finally, several months ago, after a vitriolic LAB meeting in which my show, or the lack thereof, became an issue, Garland told me it would not be put back on the air, that it "was like Wally (James)'s show" (Progressive Forum), and the station "already had enough of that sort of programming."

I want to thank all of you who called Garland in the days and weeks after the show was taken off the air, asking that it be reinstated. It was not for lack of support in the community, or the expression of that support, that it wasn't reinstated.

What can we learn from this? First and foremost, progressive shows can draw large and wide audiences, and raise sufficient money to operate the station with. The argument that we have too limited a listenership for progressive ideas, and that fiscal soundness can only be assured by dulling the progressive edge and replacing the progressive shows with music and bland news, is simply bogus. I was taken off the air three days after the fund drive in the fall of 2000, during which the show raised about $1200/hr, for both hours we pitched. That was three times the goal we were set of $400/hr. The show had been on for only six months, and this was only the second time we had pitched. Wally's show raised a similar amount in his hours in that fund drive (the last before a network-wide listener boycott was called). This is more than most of the rest of the shows on the air raised. The music show that replace mine and Michio Kaku's raised $1000 in the two hours it was pitched in a subsequent fund drive.

We also had a large audience. A few weeks before the fund drive, Edmundo showed me the Arbitron ratings, according to which both my show and Wally's had an estimated 6000-7500 listeners, and Michio Kaku had approximately 10,000 which he regarded as quite good.

As some evidence of the breadth of the audience, we had one caller contribute $250 and ask to be identified on the air as "a Republican from Bill Archer country", and a conservative black man who called in regularly to argue with what we were saying.

Secondly, the model of a progressive radio show tied directly into activism in the Houston community is viable. Garland was wrong about the nature of Thresholds. It was a call-in show with a local focus, and was designed to complement, not mimic, Wally's show, which primarily focuses on interviews with national progressive voices. We were supporting the efforts of the "Housnitch group" whose aims were to expose corruption, waste and incompetence downtown. Brenda Flores, the spokesperson for that group, was a regular contributor and we were the first to make the lack of staffing in the fire department a public issue (later to be the central focus of the 2001 Mayoral race).

We did many shows on air pollution, including our last one, in which we publicized the efforts of people in town to make EPA standard testing of the air quality available to community groups so that they could have evidence against the polluters that would stand up in court. The woman who was funding this effort called in and pledged $500 to the station.

Finally, people want to hear about new possibilities for the future. Thresholds was about giving air time to people involved in new initiatives in the society, campaigns that held the promise of creating a future in which love, service and cooperation replace fear, greed and competition as the bases of our culture. In fostering that, the show was not always successful. We spent a lot of our time being critical of existing society, but I think it was the focus on consciously creating a future consistent with progressive values that made the show so successful in a short period of time.

In any case, it is my sense that we should see the Pacifica Network as a means by which divergent and often contentious voices of an emerging culture (and a barely recognized alternative economic system) can find each other and knit together a world that works for everyone. I think this can be accomplished without losing the undisputed gains in audience size and financial stability made by KPFT in the last years.

New progressive programs with a variety of themes can be added slowly, and retained, if they do reach an audience. Short pieces of commentary and analysis of five minutes or so duration, could be interspersed between the music programming. A greater emphasis could be made on music that actually has a progressive content, including greater inclusion of local artists. Temporary changes in the schedule could be made in times of crisis, such as the present.

We need to keep in mind, whatever changes are made, that the primary function of Pacifica is to be midwife to the birth of a new society. A goal codified in its original mission, which was formulated at a time when the crisis in the society was not quite as clear as it is today.


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