Pussy Riot: Feminist or Foe

A couple weeks ago, I did a radio piece on the trial of three members of the Russian feminist punk band “Pussy Riot.”  For anyone who spent the last month on the Curiosity or somewhere, Pussy Riot is an anarcha-feminist punk rock collective which stages public performance art pieces in Moscow’s public spaces.  In February they took their anti-government message to Christ the Savior Cathedral, to protest the fact that Patriarch Kyrill had endorsed Vladimir Putin’s bid for a third presidential term, swapping places with Dmitri Medvedev.

For their 50 seconds of free speech, they were sentenced last Friday to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”

Pussy Riot’s lyrics don’t all translate very well to English, or maybe it’s my lack of understanding of Russian politics that keeps me from grasping all the nuances.  The piece that got them in all that trouble goes in part:

“Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners crawl to bow
The phantom of liberty is in heaven
Gay-pride sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend His Holiness
Women must give birth and love

…

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist
…
Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, better believe in God instead
The belt of the Virgin can’t replace mass-meetings
Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!”

I decided I didn’t need to understand everything about their messaging to support their freedom struggle.  First, because no one should be imprisoned for artistic expression, and second, because any group that is calling for the Virgin Mary to become a feminist (although in truth, she probably was) seems like my kind of bunch.  And third, because whatever I don’t understand, I do understand that they are protesting the church’s efforts to force women to “give birth and love” and in the age of Todd Aikin and legitimate rape and Bob McDonnell’s forced vaginal ultrasound, that seems like a good thing to be doing.

Yes, I was amused by Fox News’s outraged coverage of the miscarriage of justice.  Fox apparently supports feminists who attack the government and the church, as long as they’re in Russia – which Fox apparently hasn’t noticed is not Communist any more.  (In fact, Putin narrowly beat out the challenger from the Communist Party, which is gaining popularity again.)

But if I wasted energy worrying about the hypocrisy of Fox News, I would not have much left for such important tasks as blogging.

Then yesterday, friends on Facebook were sharing a piece from RadFem hub, called “Pussy Riot: Whose Freedom, Whose Riot?” 

“You can measure the degree of feminism of an action by how men react to it, and if men collectively cheer and celebrate it, then you can be pretty sure there’s something wrong about it, or that it doesn’t somehow support our liberation from men…. What was it that men liked so much about Pussy Riot?

Well, under closer inspection I discovered that the high level of coverage was related to – though indirectly – promoting men’s right to women’s sexual subordination and the pornification of our movement. The arrested women actually form part (and are victims of) a mixed anarchist group called “Voina” (meaning “war”) … who regularly engage the women in extreme and degrading women-hating pornography as part of their public “political stunts”.

The author goes on to describe in detail some of the “extreme and degrading woman-hating pornography” created by Voina.  I found it disturbing, and had no desire to go look at it for myself to see if she was misrepresenting or exaggerating it.  And in fact, I was disturbed by some of the signage at the Free Pussy Riot rally I went to, such as the sign saying, “Putin Don’t Like Pussy So He Can Suck My Cock.”  I don’t know the guys who were holding that sign, but offhand, it seemed anti-gay as well as unnecessarily using sexual imagery to express hostility.

Still I’m also troubled by the assumption that “if men collectively cheer and celebrate” something that claims to be feminist, it can’t be real.  Some members of Pussy Riot were members of Voina, but that doesn’t mean necessarily that they still are, or that they have not evolved in their thinking about feminism, or that all of the members condone everything Voina put out.  We don’t know – or at least, I don’t – why Pussy Riot left Voina and formed their own all-women’s group.  What I do know is that they seem to be serious young women.  Here are a few excerpts from their closing statements http://nplusonemag.com/pussy-riot-closing-statements:

Katya Samutsevich:

Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetic? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, the state-controlled corporations, or his menacing police system, or his obedient judicial system. It may be that the harsh, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; that otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this.

Maria Alyokhina:

Our schooling, which is where the personality begins to form in a social context, effectively ignores any particularities of the individual. There is no “individual approach,” no study of culture, of philosophy, of basic knowledge about civic society. Officially, these subjects do exist, but they are still taught according to the Soviet model. And as a result, we see the marginalization of contemporary art in the public consciousness, a lack of motivation for philosophical thought, and gender stereotyping. The concept of the human being as a citizen gets swept away into a distant corner.

Today’s educational institutions teach people, from childhood, to live as automatons. Not to pose the crucial questions consistent with their age. They inculcate cruelty and intolerance of nonconformity. Beginning in childhood, we forget our freedom. 

Nadya Tolokonnikova:

A human being is a creature that is always in error, never perfect. She quests for wisdom, but cannot possess it; this is why philosophy was born. This is why the philosopher is the one who loves wisdom and yearns for it, but does not possess it. This is what ultimately calls a human being to action, to think and live in a certain way. It was our search for truth that led us to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. I think that Christianity, as I understood it while studying the Old and especially the New Testament, supports the search for truth and a constant overcoming of oneself, the overcoming of what you were earlier. It was not in vain that when Christ was among the prostitutes, he said that those who falter should be helped.

Pussy Riot is not perfect.  Like many young women, they are grappling with the contradictions of the sexual revolution in a climate of antifeminist backlash.  But isn’t it more useful for feminists to challenge them than to condemn them as unworthy of our support?  Katya, Nadya and Masha may have, unfortunately, two years to think about the actions they’ve taken and what they want to do when they get out.  Maybe some of the radical feminists who are critiquing them want to take out paper and pen and write them letters, gently posing some questions about their performance style.

(I’m not actually sure how to write to them, but on their facebook page it says to send letters to pussriotsolidarity@gmail.com.  I’m trying to find out if there’s a snail mail address for them.)

A guy named Anatoly Karlin has provided some very interesting analysis of the case and its subtleties on Al Jazeera.

Love the Struggle

I have had no time to blog this week.  And I am a little in a funk.  But today I am in the middle of a really boring job at work, so I turned on Living Room with Kris Welch at noon on KPFA, and say what you want about Kris, she is a true feminist, and she sometimes has really great feminist guests on her show.  So she has this woman on, named Merle Hoffman.  Never heard of her, which probably says more about me than about her.  But she is awesome.  She is the founder of Choices Women’s Medical Center, editor in chief of On the Issues magazine and the author of a new book, Intimate Wars:  The Life and Times of the Woman who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Boardroom .  Now right off the bat, that title makes my hair stand on end.  I don’t know whether she chose the title; I’ve heard that non-celebrity authors don’t usually get to pick their own titles.  If she did, that’s a big problem, because no one woman brought abortion from the back alley to the board room.  Her bio says she is President and CEO of Choices, and I don’t tend to love Presidents or CEOs.  If I knew Ms. Hoffman, I might not think so highly of her.

Boy, there are a lot of great photos
of Flo to choose from.
This one courtesy Racialicious

But she just said something that I find so profound in this moment, when I’m having a lot of frustration because I feel like I keep spinning wheels and not getting very far.  She was quoting Flo Kennedy, who was apparently a friend of hers (which makes me think I might like her after all), and she said Kennedy told her, “You have to learn to love the struggle.”  And she said people ask her how she keeps going, when she never wins, and she said, “I love the struggle.”  Wow, that is just the most profound thing I have heard in ages.  I used to love the struggle.  I used to feel excited about the political work I was doing, whether it was a confrontational direct action or a five-hour meeting.  Now I tend to approach it all with a feeling of dread, of worrying that it’s not going to come off, or that it’s going to go horribly wrong, that I’ll let people down or let myself down, that no one wants to work with me, or I don’t want to work with them, that I’m trying to do things I’m not suited for or don’t have time to do things as well as I am capable of doing them.  I have petty resentments, and hate myself for them.

In the end I’m nearly always glad I did whatever it was, whether it came off or not, because ultimately I know what I’m doing is right.  I mean, the other day I interviewed a woman I met in Bahrain, Zainab al Khawaja, who was recently in prison for a week after an action.  She was lucky to be released after a week; she could be doing a life sentence for no more than that, like her father, Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, who is currently on the 21st day of a hunger strike.  I didn’t ask Zainab if she felt like it was worth it to go to jail for a week just for sitting down near Pearl Roundabout.  I know some of her friends were not that happy about it, felt like she could be more useful outside.  But I’m pretty sure she feels like whatever happens will be okay, as long as it’s for the struggle, because I think she loves the struggle.

A guy in my writing group, who is not political at all, just made a snide comment about one of my blogs, saying that it only reinforced his sense of the futility of going somewhere for a week and getting deported.  It’s funny because I don’t have that feeling about the experience at all.  It’s not like I think I made this huge difference by doing it, but clearly I made more than if I hadn’t, because now not only I but everyone I know is thinking about Bahrain, which we were not doing a month ago.  So if I never do another thing about Bahrain (which is certainly not my plan) I will still think it was worth it.  And I also loved it and was not asking myself questions about whether what I was doing was right.  I just did what came along and knew it would work out for the best.  But here, I have so many choices that it’s easy to look at other people and think they seem so much more confident about their paths than I feel.

This is the first day of International Women’s Day month, and the commitment I'm making is to do whatever will help me regain that love for the struggle.

Here's a little thing I did last week that I did not want to do, but ended up feeling really good about.

Yvette & Me

A fellow producer on Women’s Magazine whom I’d known through feminist and queer activism for over 25 years died last Sunday.  We were not close, but we had gotten a bit closer over the course of her struggle with lung cancer, which had metastasized to her brain.

Yvette posted this photo on the Individual Initiatives
for Nuclear Disarmament website

It so happened that she died the morning of an event which had been planned in her honor, to raise money for supplements and ayurvedic therapies not covered by her insurance.  It morphed into a lovely memorial, and I usually don’t like memorials.  Singers chose songs that meant something special to Yvette, or that they thought articulated something about her.  Poets had written things specially for her (one particularly nice one about the monster backpack she always carried).

Memorials always make me think about my own life, and whether I’m doing what I want to do in the world and living the way I want.  Especially when the person was relatively close to my age (I’m 52, Yvette was 63), it’s a wake-up call that I might not have as much time as I think to become the person I want to be.

Yvette and I were extremely different.  I’m shy and self-conscious; she was a champion “networker” (my friend Chaya said the first time she heard that word used was in connection with Yvette).  She didn’t work for money much, preferring to live off the grid.  She housesat – if fact she housesat for me the first couple times I went to Palestine.  She ate at the events she went to, or at the food pantries where she volunteered; where she got the little bits of money she spent on food from the Discount Grocer, laundry and the occasional play or movie she couldn’t get comped to, I never knew.  She went to every political or cultural event she could cram into a week, often volunteering in exchange for getting in free.  She volunteered at the Arab Film Festival, the South Asian Film Festival, the Queer Women of Color Film Festival, the Queer Arts Festival, dozens of other festivals I never heard of.  She cared especially about Palestine solidarity, Africa (she spent the nineties traveling through much of Africa, living in ten different countries), and disabled women’s issues.  She went to parties and lectures and discussion groups.  We used to joke that she was like Zelig, turning up everywhere you went.  She would always sit in the very front and as soon as the event was over, if she liked it, she would be introducing herself to the speakers or performers, getting their numbers, recruiting them for events she was working on.

It was a talent I both envied and found irritating.  A lot of my friends felt she never gave them the time of day because they weren’t important enough.  I felt that way myself at times.  Yet on a deeper level, I think all that networking left her lonely.  Everyone called her friend – in the last five years, just about everyone I ever told, “I work on Women’s Magazine on KPFA,” would answer “Oh, I’m friends with Yvette.”  She had a steady stream of women – mostly women, the occasional man – visiting her in the hospital and then the nursing home.  Yet when she checked herself into the hospital the first time, thinking she was having a stroke, and got the dreadful news about her diagnosis, I’m pretty sure she was all alone.  It was we at Women’s Magazine, who didn’t know where she’d grown up or how many siblings she had, who rallied around to raise money for her treatment and living expenses, and set up a website for people to help with rides and meals.  And when we said we wanted to do that, she was truly surprised.  On some level, I think she had no idea how much people cared for her.

The last time I saw Yvette, we were talking about the benefit that was coming up.  She wasn’t even sure if she was going to be able to make it but she was very worried that the food wouldn’t be consistent with her all-organic, whole grain no salt or processed sugar diet.  She wanted me to make sure there was plenty of food and that she’d be able to eat it.  (As it turned out, the organizers decided not to have food at all.  I kept thinking that Yvette’s spirit was deeply disappointed in me.)

The biggest difference between Yvette and me, I think, is that I believe she loved every minute of her life.  I like my life but I’m always angst-ridden about what I have to do and whether I’m focusing on the right things, whether I’m doing enough and whether I have the skills to do what’s really valuable.  I have to fight with myself to get myself to focus on writing and radio, and sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it, who even reads or hears this stuff?  I worry that people judge me for spending eight hours a day at a stupid job that doesn’t contribute anything useful to the world, but maybe it’s that I judge myself for making that choice, so I can have material security and health insurance.  Even the activities I’m the most excited about I often approach with some level of dread.  I have recurring fantasies about disappearing from my life, just finding somewhere to hide out for a while.

I never got the sense from Yvette that she had any such doubts, or that she ever got up thinking, “I wish I didn’t have so much to do today.”  I might be wrong, but my impression is that until she got too sick to make it to the events she wanted to go to, she looked forward to every day.  And that, I think, was her true gift.

Six Ways to Avoid News Fatigue

People who have known me for a long time will attest to the fact that before I had a car, I never listened to the radio. In fact, I hated radios; I don’t know why, but there was something about the disembodied voice that really annoyed me. But once I started driving, I started occasionally listening to KPFA, because it was easier than fidgeting with tapes with one hand on the steering wheel. Then came 9-11, and in my hunger for news and analysis of the changing political world in this country, I got hooked on Democracy Now! That first foray into public radio led me to This American Life, Against the Grain, As It Happens, and the occasional dip into Fresh Air. Somewhere along the line, I discovered the Sunday folk music shows on KPFA (Across the Great Divide is the best), followed by the Saturday afternoon lineup on KALW (Folk Music and Beyond, Thistle and Shamrock, A Patchwork Quilt, Bluegrass Signal), Michael Feldman’s What Do You Know and KPFA’s Voices of the Middle East and North Africa. Suffice it to say, I’m now a dedicated, if not consistent, radio listener.

A few years ago I started doing radio as well. So now when I listen it’s not only for the information they’re giving; it’s also to get ideas for stories (usually by noticing what gender angles or women’s voices are left out of the other shows), and to learn to do it better from people who have more experience and professional training.

But somewhere along the line, I stopped enjoying it so much. Of course, I still sometimes hear things that inspire, enliven, uplift or enlighten me, but more often, I turn it off feeling more despondent than I did when I turned it on.

What changed, the radio or me?



photo by 4rilla

 Probably some of both. When something is new, it’s exciting. I hadn’t known you could get all this information just by plugging in a little radio! How cool is that? It made me part of a community with my friends, who had been dedicated KPFA and KALW listeners for years. Learning to do radio has been one of the great privileges of my last few years, and since people kept criticizing my shows without giving any helpful advice, it was liberating to realize I had a classroom right on my desk at work. Now that I’ve been listening for a number of years, I realize I’m hearing the same people a lot, and I usually know what they are going to say.

But I also think that progressive community radio has been influenced by changes in the mainstream media more than we realize. Five or ten years ago, shows like Against the Grain, Democracy Now! and the KPFA Sunday Show used to interview a lot more activists than they do now. They’ve become more expert dependent, and the way you become an expert is generally by publishing a book or a New York Times op-ed or getting a Ph.D., and while you are doing those things, you’re probably not out organizing a social movement. As someone who’s trying to do both, I can tell you it’s nearly impossible.

In the first three days of last week, I probably heard or saw twelve hours of coverage of the debt ceiling deal, if you count Comedy Central. I heard eight economists, five reporters, three Congresspeople, the former Labor Secretary and the current press secretary (no partridges). I heard Dean Baker twice and Rick Wolff three times on two different shows. Not surprisingly, they said the same thing each time. Ultimately, none of them had anything to say I didn’t already know. It’s not that they don’t know things I don’t – they know a lot. But they all said the same things they’ve been saying for months because they’re being asked the same questions: why does Obama always give in to the Tea Party? (he doesn’t have enough experience standing up to bullies). What’s this going to mean for us? (bad bad bad). What would he have done if he were FDR or LBJ? (Tax the rich, create jobs, lay down the law to Congress.) Meanwhile the mainstream pundits kept repeating the mantra “You have to cut Social Security and Medicare,” without a peep from the likes of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

No one said anything about what those of us who want to see a different strategy can or should do to bring it about. Democracy Now! interviewed Terry O’Neill of the National Organization for Women, who spearheaded a campaign to get Congress to protect the needs of women, but they didn’t interview her until after the deal had been approved in Congress. I interviewed her the week before, when at least people could sign the online petition, but I don’t have the listenership that DN! has. I don’t say that it would have made a difference if another few thousand people had signed a petition, but at least it would have given people some way to participate.

Along about Thursday, a phrase flashed into my mind. News Fatigue. I’m not sure where I first heard of it, but I sure know I’ve got it. At a party the other night, I mentioned this to a number of friends and acquaintances, and nearly everyone said, “Oh, yes, I don’t listen to any of those shows any more.” A couple people mentioned things they’re listening to instead. Then Sunday evening, I happened to catch part of New America Now: Voices from the New Majority (Fridays at noon and Sundays at 3 pm on KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco). They were talking about redistricting, and the part that I heard went into depth about how prisons are used to give disproportionate influence to some very small districts. It was fascinating. I’d never heard that, it made total sense and it explained some things I had never understood. I was so interested, I sat in my car for fifteen minutes after I got where I was going.

So here are six shows I’m going to listen to instead of the daily news-oriented shows, and if you have News Fatigue, you might want to try them too:

1.  Fresh Air (KALW 9-10 am, repeated 6-7 pm; KQED 1-2 pm or 7-8 pm; podcast available): Terry Gross asks great questions and has interesting people on. It’s usually upbeat without being fluffy. Her guest on Monday was Charles C. Mann, author of 1493, which documents how Columbus changed the world by introducing Europe and the Americas to each other’s crops, animals and diseases. She's more progressive on most issues than you might think.

2. Your Call (KALW 10-11 am, repeated at 8-9 pm; available for download): Maybe it’s because it’s a call-in show, but they almost always have a more grassroots angle on whatever issues they’re covering. They bring in a lot of local folks you hardly ever hear elsewhere. (One week, their Friday media roundtable even included a guy from Socialist Worker!) A recent show I heard was “How Are Magazines Surviving” with editors and publishers of Bitch, Utne Reader and The Sun.

3. Are We Alone? Really cool science show on KALW (Tuesdays at 1:00 pm), also available for podcast or download. The last show, “Written in Code” explores “ENCORE Genes – what are they good for? Absolutely… something. But not everything. Your “genius” genes need to be turned on – and your environment determines that. Find out how to unleash your inner-Einstein, and what scientists learned from studying the famous physicist’s brain.”

4. This American Life (KALW Sundays 1:00 pm, KQED Saturday noon and 10:00 pm or by podcast): With rare exceptions, it’s interesting, funny and unexpected. The last one I heard (I podcast it, but I often forget to download the podcasts and they’re only available for two weeks) was called “When Patents Attack!” and was about patent trolls. Don’t know what that is? You want to find out!

5. Making Contact (Friday 1:30 pm on KPFA, or on the website): Unfortunately it’s only half an hour a week but they sometimes have extras on their website (they even put a piece of mine up once, though I can’t find it now). Last week’s show was called “Remixing Revolution: Art, Music and Politics”, excerpting a panel discussion called “The God’s Must Be Crazy: Reviving the Black Supernatural Experience.” Before that they had a two-parter on the Wisconsin workers’ revolt. Irresistible.

6. Rock en Rebeliòn (Sundays 5:00 pm on KPFA; check website for archives): I love this show ’cause I get to practice my Spanish by listening to people who often are not native speakers so they speak slowly. Plus it’s bilingue, so if I get lost, I can generally catch up when they drift into English, and the beats are great.

What are your suggestions to break out of news fatigue? What shows or other experiences do you love? (If you’re getting this by email, don’t email me your ideas! but go to the blog and post them as comments so other people can see them too.)

Twice Censored: Underreported Women's and Gender Issues of 2010

I was trying to think of what to do for last Monday's Women's Magazine, the first show of the New Year, when I ran across the Project Censored List of Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009-2010. Guess how many of those 25 stories related to a women's or gender issue?

You guessed it: NOT ONE.

Does that mean women's issues get lots of attention? I don't think so. But it does point to the masculinist bias of even the progressive media and media watchdogs.

So I built the show around a dozen or so women's or gender issues that I feel were short-shrifted last year.

Check out my list, and let me know what you would have put on yours.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party Comes to KPFA

I hate to say it, but what is going on at KPFA is a lefty version of the Tea Party. People are using the rhetoric of freedom, fairness, workers’ rights and diversity to subvert democracy, diversity and a lot of community programming. And they are determined to destroy probably the most valuable resource the left in this country has. (They're also, in general, good progressive people. I want to say that out front. I am friendly with some of them. But I believe they are good progressive people with a very bad vision for community radio.)

They’re extremely well organized, they are extremely unified, and they have been able to get their talking points broadcasting non-stop on the airwaves. And the people who know the truth and oppose what they are trying to do are either being timid or complacent, keeping their heads down, not organizing, talking in platitudes, wanting to compromise.

And when it is done we are likely to have lost both Pacifica and KPFA.

It’s about workers’ rights.

It is about workers’ rights, but not the right to organize or have a fair contract. It’s about the right of certain workers, who run the union, some of whom are or were managers, to decide who and what goes on the air, without meddling by ignorant community members.

The “union busting” offense that Pacifica committed was laying off people at the bottom of the seniority ladder, rather than people who raise less money in on-air fund drives. This offense is specifically required by the contract and rearticulated by the union negotiators when the contract was renewed last spring. (Tracy Rosenberg, who participated in the meeting where the two possible sets of layoffs were discussed, outlines the choice in an open letter. [I have some issues with Tracy, who has used her positions as both a KPFA rep to the Pacifica Finance Committee and Executive Director of Media Alliance, to wage political struggles against KPFA board members she has conflicts with. Even so, I found the evidence she presents pretty convincing.])

(Note: Pacifica's ED showed terrible lack of strategic sense in the way that the layoffs were done. I disagree with taking the Morning Show off the air before replacement hosts were lined up. If it's true that she has refused to talk with the union leadership, I condemn that, and I strongly disapprove of hiring Folger & Levin, a union-busting law firm, to defend against a lawsuit rather than trying to work with the union. But that doesn't change what I know to be true.)

It’s about democracy.

It is about democracy. The people who are vocally demanding their jobs back and their allies on the local station board don’t believe in it, at least not for KPFA. They insist that board elections are a waste of money. They have openly said that the only role for the elected community leadership is to raise money so that paid staff can make all the decisions about programming. They disparage unpaid staff – many of whom have been at the station much longer than most of them – and paid programmers they feel are not up to their lofty (white) standards of professionalism. (Larry Bensky famously referred to all of us as “clowns” on Michael Krasny’s Forum two weeks ago.) They disbanded the Program Council, the mechanism for community input into the programming grid, and de-recognized the Unpaid Staff Organization, which was established when unpaid staff were kicked out of the union.

Brian Edwards-Tiekert, the principal spokesperson of this “Save KPFA” movement and one of the laid off hosts, was quoted in a recent article as saying, “Fifteen hours of airtime were dedicated to candidate forums for the local board. We spent more time covering KPFA’s election than Afghanistan’s and Iraq's elections combined.” Fifteen hours a year doesn’t sound like too much democracy to me. If that’s more time than we spent on the Iraq and Afghan elections, that might say something about our coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan, but it doesn’t say anything about the value or lack thereof of KPFA elections.

It’s about diversity.

The union is on the warpath because the hosts of the Morning Show were laid off. The person who has been most vocal, and whose job is the reason that there can be no peace (Brian Edwards-Tiekert again), is a white man. He and the people who support him have used the fact that a number of people of color chose to accept severance packages to make it seem that they are standing up for diversity at the station. In fact, at least some of those people of color left because those same people made them feel unwelcome. That’s not conjecture – one of them told me that personally. He said the show he helped to start, Hard Knock Radio, probably the single most unique show on KPFA, is devalued because they can’t raise much money through on-air promotions. They could raise a lot of money through concerts, but KPFA management (not Pacifica) would never agree to front money for security, venues and fliers for concerts, though they frequently put on speaking events, often taking a loss in order to get a recording they can use for premiums during fund drives. When the “Save KPFA” team goes on and on about how the Morning Show raises more money than anyone else, that’s in part a dig at Hard Knock.

A year and a half ago, the clique that runs the union and the station proposed eliminating Women’s Magazine to make room for a weekly “greatest hits” version of Letters to Washington. They did eliminate an hour of Music of the World for the daily version of Letters. In September, the station managers, who were part of that clique, proposed eliminating Hard Knock Radio and Flashpoints. If that had happened, they would not be picketing or screaming about injustice, despite the fact that the programmers on those shows have much more seniority than the Morning Show staff who were laid off.

The producers of Poor News Network, which airs on the Morning Show once a month, recently wrote in an open letter, “Throughout our tenure on KPFA we have consistently faced internal harassment and a varying amount of disrespect from paid staff on the show, saying we were airing ‘too much Spanish’ and/or our people didn’t speak correctly, even to the point that when we were supposed to produce a second show per month, which Andrea Lewis fought with for, it was vetoed in the end for not being ‘professional enough’.”

It’s about local control.

It is. The people who are protesting and picketing at KPFA feel they would be better off independent of Pacifica and the other four stations. They don’t care if people in Houston and DC lose their Pacifica stations, they don’t care if Free Speech Radio News or even Democracy Now can continue broadcasting, as long as they get to keep the money they raise locally. (FSRN and Democracy Now are funded by Pacifica, out of the money they get from the five member stations and the affiliates. People in the know have said that Democracy Now might be able to survive on syndication fees alone, but FSRN never could. It is a source of news that is not heard anywhere else, and a source of income and training for local journalists all over the Global South.)

If KPFA cannot pay its bills and Pacifica cannot raise the money to bail it out, the entire network goes into bankruptcy. This part is rumor, but I am pretty confident of it: that is what the ruling clique hopes will happen. They are amassing a war chest to buy the station by encouraging people to withhold money from Pacifica and put it in a separate fund instead, as was done in 1999. This idea did not spring up only after the layoffs – many people believe the $375,000 check that was supposedly misplaced by the previous General Manager was intended for this purpose.

But there is no guarantee, and in fact it is unlikely, that that is the way a Pacifica bankruptcy would end up. It would be up to a bankruptcy judge who would not be bound by Pacifica’s mission statement or any other concerns. The chair of Pacifica’s board recently wrote, “The outcome of bankruptcy hearings will not be five progressive stations running their own affairs, but more likely two commercial stations and three new Christian radio channels.”

Of course, they may hope to force Pacifica to sell KPFA to them under threat that otherwise, they will take the whole network down. If they succeed, they will not only be free of the “albatross” of Pacifica’s expense (though they will have to assume a lot of expenses that are now paid by Pacifica including insurance, licensing fees and auditors). They will also be free of those pesky bylaws and the democracy they foist on us. They will be able to do away with the local station board and the Program Council and get all us scruffy unprofessional “clowns” off their airwaves.

In the recent board election, the top vote-getter was Mal Bernstein, of the “Save KPFA” slate. In an on air candidate forum, he stated that the “core shows” on KPFA are the Morning Show, Against the Grain, Letters to Washington, Sunday and the evening News. Notice anything about those shows? Notice what that “core” does not include? If he and his allies win this fight, we can assume that what we will hear is more time devoted to shows like those, and less time to shows like Hard Knock, Voices of the Middle East, La Raza Chronicles, APEX and Full Circle.

A friend recently asked me, “Who is organizing for the real left/people of color at KPFA?” The sad answer is, I fear, no one.

No doubt, the KPFA Tea Party (or should I call them the Tiekert Party?) will dismiss me as exactly the type of conspiracy theorist/snake oil huckster they are trying to banish from our airwaves. You may choose to believe them, but keep this in mind: the other Tea Party also denies that its rise has anything to do with racism.

Where do queers go when we die? (For Andrea)

The other night I attended the memorial event for Andrea Lewis, renowned journalist at KPFA, New American Media and the Progressive Magazine. It was an evening chock full of inspiring performances, wonderful music, decent poetry (you know me and poetry) and heart-felt testimonials before a standing-room-only crowd of hundreds at the lovely First Unitarian Church in Oakland. The SF Symphony Chorus, of which Andrea was a long-time member, showed up en masse – that must have been 70 people right there, Poet Laureate Al Young performed some pretty good spoken word, and Krissy Keefer and Dance Brigade finished up (batted clean-up, as Andrea would say) with some amazing drumming that could have gone on a lot longer. And running throughout, the rich melodic tones of Andrea's voice, mostly from the radio.

Though I didn't know Andrea well, it was an emotional and satisfying evening for me. I interacted with her at KPFA just enough to admire her profoundly. I was interviewed by her once, on International Women's Day years ago; it was short and not memorable for either of us, though even then, I was impressed by her seamless transitions and easy manner in the studio. In retrospect, knowing what I do about the difficulty of doing live radio, I am more impressed because she made it look so effortless when it really is not.

Last night, in going through piles and piles of papers from the last few years in search of a paper I needed to travel to Canada (we won't go into that now, but suffice it to say that when Andrea's brother talked about her pack-rat-itis, I made a note to myself to try to throw some stuff away before I die), I ran across a handout from a class about interviewing. It said, "An interview is not a conversation, though it may sound like one after you've edited it." I always try to make my interviews sound like conversations, but they rarely do, even after editing. I've learned to use notes instead of a full script, but it's still too obvious when I'm asking a prepared question, and even my candid responses too often sound like speeches.

Andrea prepared superbly for her interviews – insofar as I did know her, it was because I do most of my work at KPFA on weekends, and when I was there on Saturday nights, Andrea was almost always there late into the evening getting ready for her Sunday show. But she always managed to make it sound completely spontaneous. I just listened to a bunch of her old shows, for a tribute that aired on Women's Magazine last week (pretty good, if I do say so myself – hear it at http://kpfawomensmag.blogspot.com). I was struck by how quickly she could create a rapport with her guests. Even if there were times when she didn't do all the research herself, but was handed a pile of papers by her producers – after all, that's what producers are for – but you could never tell. She would say, "I was looking at your website and I noticed …" or "The thing that really grabbed me when I was reading your book," and you believed it 100%. She would always find something to bond over, even if she was less than inspired by them. If she met someone for the first time at 7:35 and interviewed them from 7:40 to 7:45, it was five minutes of intimacy, and that intimacy was irresistible to the listeners. That's why at her memorial, when people tried to engage the crowd by saying, "Raise your hand if Andrea had a nickname for you," "How many of you got one of those 30-minute phone messages from Andrea?" only a few scattered hands went up. Hundreds of folks came out not because they knew her personally, but because they felt like they knew her, and more, because she had enriched their world.

When I started volunteering at KPFA, one of the things I hoped for was to get to know Andrea. I can't say that happened. We would say hi in the kitchen or downstairs, exchange a few words about our shows. Once she admired the Thai food I had brought for the women who were working on our show, and I invited her to join us. She declined, to all of our disappointment. I had two substantive interactions with her. The first was when Lisa and I were trading a DVD of "The L Word." Andrea asked what we were doing with it. Both of us were working on documentaries, and we were both basically using the TV series about high-fashion, mostly rich and white, lesbians in LA to illustrate everything that's wrong with the mainstream gay movement. Andrea defended the show. She had been at some of the shootings, I think, in LA, and had gone to a party to watch the last episode, and she said it moved her to tears. As a Black progressive lesbian from Detroit, she certainly didn't feel like those women represented her, but she just liked that they were out there, on mainstream television, being dykes and having sex. She was inclined, I think, to focus on the positive in popular culture and not expect it to be more than it was.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I was working with some younger lesbians of color who have started producing with us. They were saying that there are not lesbians of color on the radio, which is certainly true in general, and I thought, "Oh, I should make sure they meet Andrea so they know at least they're not the only ones here." I was on my way downstairs, and she was in her office with Mickey, debriefing the show they had just finished and the door was slightly open. I was nervous about interrupting, but I stopped in and asked if she could come by on her way out. She said she was not feeling well, but she would try. When I came back upstairs, she was in our office chatting with Christine and Kiki and Olga about the Richmond homecoming rape, which Kiki has been organizing around. When she left she told them to let her know if they had any extra material that might be good for her show, or if she could help them in any way, and thanked me for making the connection.

If you asked me about Andrea, the first words out of my mouth would be African American Lesbian Feminist. So imagine my surprise when in three hours of people talking about her on Tuesday night, neither the "L Word" nor the "F Word" were spoken. There were a couple oblique allusions to her being lesbian – Larry Samuels said she referred to him as "her weird straight guy friend," and a number of people mentioned that she always called out "racism, sexism and homophobia" (always listed in that order). In the two tributes that aired on the two shows she worked on, The Morning Show and Sunday Sedition, the word "lesbian" was barely mentioned, and only Krissy Keefer spoke about how important the women's movement was to her.

It's pretty amazing because Andrea was not someone to whom feminism or lesbianism were unimportant. There are women at KPFA who are feminists, and probably even lesbians, who don't necessarily consider those core parts of their identities, but Andrea wasn't one of them. She got her start in Bay Area journalism working for a Plexus, a feminist newspaper. Krissy Keefer mentioned in her tribute that Andrea called her a good friend, though they never socialized, and Krissy said she thought that was because they were connected through the women's movement.

In a short interview Lisa did with Andrea about feminism, which aired as part of our tribute, she talked about how she came to feminism as a young teenager, admiring people like Gloria Steinem, and appreciating the songwriting talents of Carole King. When her father denied that a woman could have written all the songs on an album, and told Andrea she shouldn't waste money on college, Andrea says "I just knew he was crazy." She also talked about believing that lesbianism and feminism were "part of the same package, not separate." When I was looking for pieces for our show to illustrate this commitment to women's and queer issues, I didn't find a single show that didn't have something that would have been appropriate. No matter what she was talking about, she always brought those lenses to it.

So I left the memorial asking, "Why is the first thing out of my mouth about this woman I barely knew the last thing out of the mouths of the people who knew her well?" I wasn't alone. As I made my way out of the church, I heard other women talking about how weird it was. This is not the first time I've had this experience relating to KPFA. When Mike Alcalay, a gay activist and doctor who reported on AIDS issues, died a couple years ago, his brother was interviewed on Democracy Now! And did not say that he was gay. In Mike's case, it was even stranger, because he had been married (to a woman) and had twin sons, which was mentioned in the obits. At that time, I wrote in my blog, "When I die, don't let anyone talk about me and not say 'lesbian.'" And some of you were nice enough to make that promise.

I think there are several reasons this keeps happening. One is that, even in 2009 and even in progressive circles, straight people still have trouble saying the words "gay" and "lesbian." I believe they still feel like it's saying something negative. No one thought that saying Andrea was Black or African American or a woman was diminishing her, but I think they felt like alluding to her as a lesbian feminist would make some people not like her, or make her less important than focusing on her love of the arts and sports, her golfing, her singing, and her journalistic brilliance. There's still a belief, in left journalism as well as in the mainstream, that a "lesbian" journalist or a "feminist" journalist is a "niche" journalist, not as "universal" as a straight woman who doesn't identify with those angry, man-hating feminists. Which makes me think of Harvey Fierstein's comment in "The Celluloid Closet," that when people say, "Your work isn't gay, it's universal," his (private) response is "Up yours."

The other piece of this straightwashing phenomenon is that Andrea wasn't married or domestic partnered. If she had a lover or six, no one seems to know about it. If she had had a wife or girlfriend, that person would have been central to her memorial and on air tributes. But when single people die, in our coupleist, nuclear-family-oriented society, it's our families of origin that tend to be centered and most of our families of origin, in Andrea's and my generation certainly (she was 52, two years older than me), even if they are very accepting, are not that comfortable with our sexual orientation. It's like we revert to being kids, and kids are not seen as having sexual orientation.

I had hoped this would be the year when I would conquer my awe of Andrea and find a way to make her a friend. Maybe that's why her death has touched me deeply, maybe it's because I've been around so many others who are grieving deeply for her, or maybe it's the public Andrea I'm grieving: the publicly unapologetic fat lesbian feminist African American woman who incidentally sang and played golf.

Go in peace, cherished sister.

Where's the Market for Feminism?

Now that the death sentence of our women’s radio show has been temporarily reprieved, we have been thinking and talking a lot about what we want to do with it. Especially, we’re talking about what we can do and want to do to boost our listenership, since management’s main objection to the show is that, as they put it, “no one listens to it.”

Of course, one question that springs to mind is how do they know who is listening and who isn’t? The answer seems to be primarily from hits on the website, and that in itself might skew the results. According to a 2005 study by the Pew Research Center, men are faster to adopt new internet technologies, though women in most age groups spend more time online. In the 2005 study, women made up only 22% of those who downloaded podcasts, which was a very new technology at that time. Women seem to have made up a lot of ground over the last few years, and at least one study has women making up a majority of online listeners to public radio, but if the people I know are any indication – and they are at least a reasonable indicator of who might be interested in the issues that I cover – women are less likely to be in jobs that enable them to listen to the radio all day online. Geeks (otherwise known as IT professionals), for instance, are certainly listening to more internet radio during the day than schoolteachers or social workers. At my job eight of nine staff in IT are men, and the woman is the trainer. I decided that making a generalization based on nine people in one office might be considered a little unscientific, even for me, so I went online to see if my impressions were accurate. The National Center for Women in Information Technology reported that as of March 2008, women accounted for only 27 percent of the U.S. IT workforce, while making up over half of all professionals. In fact, according to the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) Taskforce on Workforce and Education's 2003 study, the gender gap in computer professions is widening, while other gaps are shrinking. “In 1984, 35.8% of all computer science degrees were awarded to women, but only 28.4% in 1996. Looking earlier in the pipeline, the College Board reports that only 17% of those taking the Advanced Placement test for Computer Science were female.” (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/1564501)

By contrast, 98% of kindergarden and preschool teachers, 79% of elementary and middle school teachers, and 83% of social workers are women.

Okay, so those are some interesting facts to mull over, and in fact maybe do some programming about, assuming we have a program. But in the long run, they are neither here nor there, because if people aren’t going to listen to us, even I have to admit that maybe we shouldn’t be on the air. After all, we’re not doing all this work just to amuse ourselves. If no one wants to hear what we have to say, no matter how brilliant it is, we might as well save ourselves the trouble and do something else.

So I go back to the question, why aren’t people listening to us? And more importantly, what are they listening to? I decided that maybe I should listen to some popular shows to get ideas. So I thought, okay, what are feminist radio or television shows that are popular? And that was when I had the epiphany – there are none! And moreover, there have NEVER been any! Is that possible?

I mean, there are shows that have feminist hosts, including Oprah, Rosie O’Donnell, Rachel Maddow and Ellen DeGeneres. I would guess that even Amy Goodman and Terry Gross consider themselves feminists, though they sure don’t show it in their interviews, more than 70% of which are with men (more on that another time – the Democracy Now! survey 2008 is on the way, along with my survey of the last year and a quarter of The Nation). There are shows like “The View,” that pit conservative women against liberal ones. But there are no shows that focus on women’s issues, even loosely defined, unless you include the cat-fight, nails and hairstyles shows or the pop culture, gossipy ones. Oprah probably does more segments on serious issues of concern to women than anyone, but she also takes care to keep it non-threatening to the guys, and don’t get me started on her obsession with dieting.

The book Women and Journalism, by Deborah Chambers, Linda Steiner and Carole Fleming (2 Brits and a Yank, accounting for the strange spellings), contains only this short statement on the subject, “US experiments in feminist radio have been relatively sparse, although the left-wing ‘progressive’ network WBAI [she means Pacifica] has aired feminist programmes, as have assorted college and university radio stations. Many of these have emphasized music and poetry rather than news, and so, strictly speaking, they are not key to the history of journalism….”

So my first reaction is just sheer shock, that in all this time, over 40 years, since the second wave of feminism began, with the explosion of women into nearly every field, that there has not even been one attempt to capitalize on that energy with a regular national broadcast.

My next reaction is to get pissed off at women, who fail each other on so many occasions. I think about all the women’s businesses we used to have here in the Bay, which went under largely because of our fickleness and lack of support. Bookstores Old Wives Tales, A Woman’s Place, Mama Bears; Woman Crafts West, which sold lovely local jewelry, pottery and cards; bars Ollie’s, Amelia’s, Maud’s, Peg’s Place, A Little More; cafes Artemis and the Brick Hut; newspapers Feminist News, Lesbian/Contradiction and Sojourner (which was from the East Coast); I could really go on and on. And I think, well our little radio show won’t be the first or the last casualty of this curious inability to maintain a feminist version of brand loyalty.

Finally I get around to thinking, well what about looking beyond those who identify as feminists, and thinking about women. What would draw women to listen to a show that is not going to do segments on hair and diet, that is not going to be the public radio version of The View? What about this casually mentioned fact, that “many of these” feminist shows have emphasized music and poetry? We have done some shows that had a lot of poetry and they were never my favorites, because I don’t love poetry, but I think they were pretty well received.

The best solutions I can come up with are:

1) that we try to develop ourselves as a kind of Democracy Now for women. That is, we listen to what DN! does and try to do it too, but always looking for women with interesting things to say and a women’s/gendered perspective on the issues of the day. This is what my coproducer Rivian has been saying for a while. We obviously couldn’t do it by ourselves, because we’re a tiny little volunteer women’s collective, while DN has eight or nine full-time producers, plus interns, so we would need to join forces with all the other embattled women’s media projects out there, which I am pleased to say we have already started exploring.

2) that we do more pieces on relationships – not stupid self-help ones, but serious pieces that look at the dynamics of women’s relationships with each other, with men, in lesbian couples, with parents, in the workplace … Just in my casual research for this blog, I discovered a couple things that seem interesting to do interviews about, including a survey about bullying in the workplace which reports, among other things, that 37% of workers have been bullied, 57% of targets are women, 60% of bullies are men but women who bully choose other women as targets 70% of the time. I know that months ago, I mentioned wanting to do a piece about how women who are long-term single (like me) have to make new friends every few years, as our friends disappear into couples. And the women I mentioned it to immediately said, “Oh, yes, I’m really interested in that,” and volunteered their own stories on the topic. More recently, I’ve been thinking about my mom, who was only 54 when my dad died, which is 4 years older than I am now. She has now been single exactly as long as she was married and she’s had to create new circles of friends several times because so many of her friends have died out.

3) that we try to find a way to look at celebrity culture in a way that is not mainstream or mean-spirited. Katha Pollitt, the wonderful feminist columnist for The Nation, mentioned that when I interviewed her as something that women are very interested in, that left media typically won’t devote time or space to. When Eryn (a young African American woman who works with Women’s Mag) interviewed a couple of her friends just before the inauguration, one of the things they talked about was the Obamas’ relationship and contrasted it to Coretta King and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s relationship. Something I would never have thought of, but it was quite interesting and not dippy. I know a lot of really smart, critical, progressive women who are really drawn to celebrity gossip, and I think it’s something we should try to harness.

Okay, enough for now, if you have any feedback on any of this, please let me hear from you.

BTW, the agent I’ve been working with on my novel for the last two years just told me that she can’t do anything with it for the foreseeable future because one of her junior agents is ill and she had to take over all her clients. I’m getting ready to start combing The Writer’s Market again, and sending out queries, but if anyone has any suggestions, they’ll be most welcome.

An Open Letter to Naomi Klein

Dear Naomi Klein,

Thanks so much for your incredibly brilliant work. With The Shock Doctrine, you have given me a great framework for understanding the current economic and political crises. Now, however, listening to you on Democracy Now three times in the last few weeks, I would like to make a suggestion.

Those of us who listen to DN! are well familiar with your critique, familiar enough to do it for ourselves. So next time they call you, why not say, “You know what? I don’t really have anything to add to what I’ve said the last few times I’ve been on. Here are some names of women economists and policy researchers you haven’t interviewed. Try to get one of them.” (In the event you don't have such a list, I'd be glad to share mine with you. I just interviewed two of them on KPFA-Pacifica.)

That’s step one. Here’s step two:

Get together with all the other really smart, well respected experts you’ve been on panels with recently. Make a video of yourselves laying out a progressive – not radical – program of action – things you would like to see the Obama administration do that they might actually consider doing (e.g., put Paul Krugman on the economic team; suspend or repeal the time limits for welfare recipients who can’t get jobs; sign the Employee Free Choice Act; don’t use a bailout of the auto industry to crush the unions; etc.). Post the video on YouTube and post the link on every blog or website you can post to. Ask every blogger you are in touch with to post the links on their blog. Make it go viral. Make sure the Obama team sees it. Demand a response from them.

Step three: Put out a press release letting the mainstream media and the alternative media know what you’ve done. Make noise! The story: progressive economic analysts are using the technologies popularized by the Obama campaign to change the direction of the Obama administration. Keep on them until they cover you.

Then go back on Democracy Now! to tell everyone how you accomplished your great victory.

This is not meant as an empty challenge. The administration is moving to the right so far so fast because they know the right is a threat, and they know the left isn’t. I am unwilling to spend the next four years the way I’ve spent the last eight – shaking my head and feeling hopeless while I listen to the news. The time for critique is past; the time for action is now.

Your sister in struggle,

Kate Raphael

My Pieces on KPFA (Radio) Women's Magazine

August 20, 2007: Three U.S. activists detained in the Philippines

July 23, 2007: Zimbabwe, interview with local musician Julie Drucker, who recently returned from Zimbabwe, about the economic collapse in that country and how it is affecting the lives of the traditional women musicians

July 2, 2007: The Avon Walk Against Breast Cancer, boon or boondoggle? Interview with Barbara Brenner of Breast Cancer Action

April 23, 2007: Secretaries Day, my friend Rosemary and I interview our coworkers about the meaning of this corporate holiday,

April 9, 2007: The Left Media and the Gender Gap. Interviews with Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, and Katha Pollitt, long-time columnist for The Nation magazine

December 4, 2006: International Day Against Violence Against Women, discussion with Janelle White from San Francisco Women Against Rape; Joy Duenas from Gabriela Network; Athena Colby, author of a study on human rights abuses in Haiti

August 14, 2006: Israeli Palestinian and Jewish feminists on the Israeli peace movement in the face of a new assault on Lebanon

June 5, 2006: "Interrupted Life: Incarcerated Mothers in the United States,"an art show currently showing at New College of California. Interviews with curator Rickie Solinger and organizer Helene Vosters, as well as two formerly incarcerated mothers: Angela Wilson, who now teaches theater in jails and prisons, and Linda Walker, an activist with All of Us or None.

November 7, 2005: Human Trafficking: Not Just About Sex (mine is the second segment)

July 18, 2005: What Choice California? Interviews with Parker Dockray of ACCESS Pro-Choice Women's Health Information and Referral, Dr. Eleanor Dray of San Francisco General Hospital, and Saundra Spears, on the challenges of finding and funding abortion in California

June 20, 2005: Lesbians in Palestine, an interview with Alex, member of ASWAT-Palestinian Gay Women