A civil rights activist and head of the Civil Rights Commission, Dr. Berry also holds an endowed chair in American social thought at the University
of Pennsylvania. Of the seven books she has written, most deal with civil rights, feminism and the law. Berry also happens to be chairman of the Pacifica Foundation, an institution she seems bent on
destroying.It would be of no interest that Berry is black, except for the extraordinary way she plays the race card by accusing others, including people of color, of being racists.
In an in depth
article, "There's Something About Mary," published in Salon, San Francisco Bay Area freelance writer Judith Coburn takes note of Dr. Berry's volatile personality, her argumentive style, her
penchant for vindictiveness, her dismal record as chairman of the Civil Rights Commission and her antics as head of the Pacifica Foundation. The one thing Coburn left out of her article is the why.
Why are
so many who know Berry afraid to speak out on the record? Why is a woman with her set of credentials so ineffective and seemingly lackadaisical in her handling of the Civil Rights Commission? Why does she
appear to be on some mission to destroy the Pacifica Radio Network, one of the last -- if not the last -- free voices in broadcast? What is it about Mary?
Do we chalk up her peculiar behavior to some flaw
in her personality? It's within the realm of possibilities. It's also within the realm of possibilities that she's simply a miserable administrator who lets her ego overcome her lack of competence. Those who
did speak with Coburn, sans their names being published, referred to Berry as "a real loose cannon," as someone who would "shatter consensus and jeopardize initiatives... she distrusted people
[so] as not to be trustworthy herself..."
According to Coburn, the former manager of KPFA, Pacifica's flagship station in Berkely, CA, and Pacifica Foundation executive, Pat Scott, a
controversial figure in her own right, "rues the day she recommended Berry for the top Pacifica job."
Coburn quotes Scott, who also is black, as saying that Berry's tenure "could be the end
not only of KPFA but of the whole Pacifica network."
Then we have the other Berry. The Berry who fought to defend the Civil Rights Commission against President Reagan's appointees and Reagan himself
as they sought to abolish both affirmative action and the commission. For that, Reagan tried to fire her. The Berry who took part in the celebrity arrests at the South African Embassy in 1983. The Berry who
opposed Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March and charged that Farrakhan was guilty of "the most despicable, anti-Semitic, racist, sexist and homophobic attitudes imaginable."
How does this square
with the Berry who issued a gag order to prevent staffers at the five Pacifica stations from mentioning on the air the internal turmoil that was taking place? The Berry who appointed Micheal Palmer of CB
Richard Ellis (Houston Galleria office), the world's largest commercial real estate firm, to the Pacifica board's Finance Committee, then secretly had him look into arranging the sale either KPFA or the New
York station, WBAI, or both? Berry then publicly denied there was any intent to sell either station. Ironically, Palmer's email response fell into the hands of Andrea Buffa of Media Alliance, a Bay Area
media advocacy and education group, who made it public. And what about the Berry, who claimed the changes at KPFA were necessary to diversify the staff and listener base, yet "refused to meet with
people of color from the station's staff and leadership, who mostly opposed her high-handed attempts at reform?"
Then there was Berry's late August surprise visit -- Coburn called it a "drive
by" visit -- to New York's WBAI, which Coburn described "as the most bizarre episode yet." Was Berry in such a hurry to meet with the New York staffers that she left her glasses home? How else
to explain her lecturing those present about diversity, when most of the people in the room were black, Latino or Asian? Then she openly suggested the network sell KPFA and/or WBAI "and buy a string of
small black radio stations in the South." Coburn said a staffer characterized Berry's proposal as a "kind of black NPR" and went on to say, "Laudable, but to cannibalize Pacifica with its
own 50-year history and listeners? She should go out and build that network on her own and see how hard it is?"
Mimi Rosenberg, a labor reporter and local advisory board member at WBAI, happened to
stumble into that meeting. Rosenberg reported, "We were amazed how little she [Berry] knows about radio or what programming we do."
And where does Lynn Chadwick, the Pacifica board's executive
director, fit into the picture? Is Chadwick simply Berry's hatchet woman or does she have an agenda of her own? It was Chadwick who carried out the order to shut down KPFA last July. That action cost some
$500,000 for a private anti-labor police force, lawyers, a high priced San Francisco public relations firm and damage to the the station and its equipment. In addition, the Berkeley City Council has hit the
board with a bill for $200,000 in overtime costs for round-the-clock police protection during the ensuing peaceful demonstrations that took place outside the locked station. According to Coburn, it was Berry
who used her contacts at the Justice Department to get an official to call Berkeley Police Chief D. E. Butler "and ask why KPFA supporters who were peacefully demonstrating outside the station hadn't
been arrested." Before the city council intervened, a total of some 100 persons were arrested, including those inside the station during the July 13 shutdown.
So what is behind this move to destroy a
50-year-old people's radio network? Surely Dr. Berry isn't the sort to be intimidated by Sen. Jesse Helms, who has attempted to cut Pacifica's public funding calling it "a communist station." Is
she yielding to pressure from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to reign in the stations, their local advisory boards and listeners? CPB President Robert Coonrod threatened a cutoff of money if
Pacifica didn't dump local board members who served on the governing board -- an CPB obscure rule that Pat Scott had discovered and which had never been enforced.
Is it unreasonable to deduce there is
something far more nefarious going on than one woman's play for power at the expense of destroying the network? What will Berry and her allies gain by destroying Pacifica?
Pacifica Radio may not be to
everyone's taste, but free speech never is. And free speech is what this is all about. There is very little free speech in commercial broadcasting. Even public television and National Public Radio became
shadows of their former selves when they turned to big business and private foundations for funding. You might say they are neat and tidy, pretending to be full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. Is
this the fate that awaits the Pacifica stations?
Yes, Pacifica has had a tumultuous history. Tumult, though, is not necessarily bad. It keeps people thinking.
