Violence; Pacifica's Big Lie: an Open Letter to Bessie Wash

March 26, 2001

Ms. Wash,

The illegaly seated Pacifica National Board, in its efforts to fulfill its Strategic Five Year Plan to mainstream Pacifica's programming, has reached a new low in its "big lie" tactics aimed at painting the movement to free Pacifica as "violent."

Your interruption today of Democracy Now! to commit libel against a member of the Pacifica Listeners Union local in Houston is an outrage reminiscent of the interrruption of a live interview with Congressman Major Owens by Utrice Leid, Interm General Manager of Pacifica's WBAI in New York City, in the interests of Pacifica's version of the "truth".

Concretely, what occured at KPFT was this. Members of the Pacifica Listeners Union and the Houston Committee for People's Radio were leafleting outside the station, passing flyers from the Pacifica Campaign to other listeners attending a promotional event in the backyard of the KPFT studios at 419 Lovett Blvd.

Molly O'Brian is a KPFT employee and wife of KPFT General Manager Garland Ganter, who oversaw the armed takeover of Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley in 1999 and whose orders to arrest KPFA journalists and other staff and listeners there are a matter of public record.

In the Houston events, O'Bryan approached a leafletter, a woman of slight stature, assaulted her and snatched away the leaflets she was distributing. Pacifica Listeners Union member Edwin Johnston followed O'Bryan, justly demanding that the leaflets be returned.

O'Bryan then screamed, literally, "RAPE!" Suddenly, as if on cue, Ganter and another KPFT employee appeared, and, according to witnesses, assaulted Mr. Johnston.

For those of us who are familiar with the workings of the Houston Police Department, with its widespread reputation for racist repression and murder, and its history of repression of political dissent, it comes as no surprise that it was Mr. Johnston, and not Mr. Ganter or his wife who was arrested at the scene.

The actual events have all the earmarks of a staged provocation, designed by Pacifica to give it an opportunity to help create the image of a "violent" opposition.

Ms. O'Brian and Mr. Ganter should be aware that filing false charges is both a criminal and civil offense, and you should be aware of the penalties for libel. You may rest assured that we are aware of them.

The events at KPFT remind many of us of other opportunistic falsehoods spread by the Pacifica hierarchy regarding our movement.

Prior to one Pacifica National Board meeting in Houston, a fire was set to the garage apartment behind the studios of KPFT. Mr. Ganter created the impression in an interview with the Houston Chronicle that this was the work of free Pacifica activists.

Later, the truth came out. Ganter had confronted a homeless youth who'd been squatting in the garage apartment, and had driven him from the premises. This young man was later arrested and charged with arson.

Ganter could not but have been aware that the young man was a suspect in the case, but rather than expose his own antipathy for homeless youth and tell the truth about the fire's probable cause, Ganter, in line with Pacifica's public relations policy, endeavored to lay the blame at the doorstep of free Pacifica activists.

Pacifica has endeavored to use the police in other circumstances to attack and discredit the free Pacifica movement.

Former Pacifica National Board Chair Mary Frances Berry, who is also a Presidential appointee as Chair of the US Civil Rights Commission, in a self and system exposing maneuver, used her connections to the US Justice Department to apply pressure to the Berkeley Police Department to be more aggressive -- read that brutal -- with the thousands strong movement in the streets of Berkeley in protest of the Ganter-led takeover of KPFA.

Pacifica also turned the names of thousands of Pacifica listeners over to the police. Their "crime"? Writing letters of protest to the Pacifica hierarchy. Pacifica asserted, however, that they were all suspects in an attempted "murder". One night, before the movement to free Pacifica had taken off in Berkeley, someone had fired a shot through a window at the Pacifica offices at midnight, when, of course, no one was there.

This Pacifica construed as "attempted murder" in its public relations blitz, and used this thin pretense to violate the civil rights of thousand of its listeners.

As part of its ongoing campaign to distance others from the movement to liberate Pacifica from its grasp, the Pacifica hierarchy has repeatedly claimed that it has received threats of violence from its listeners. Not a single document or recording has been produced, however, to substantiate these charges.

The arrest of Edwin Johnston is a part of this larger pattern, and is an expression of Pacifica's growing desperation in the face of a movement that has every chance of defeating the current Pacifica regime in the streets, in the courts, and in the hearts and minds of progressive people everywhere.

Your interruption of a national broadcast to libel Mr. Johnston in a case that is, in any event, a petty, ticketable offense, would be laughable were it not part of a larger pattern of lies, secrets and the abuse of power in the name of crushing dissent.

Rafael Renteria
National Spokesperson
Pacifica Listeners Union