The ACTivist Volume 16, Number 2

The six years I spent broadcasting on CIUT-FM were among the most interesting and productive of my 84 years.

However, on the morning of October 1, 1999, the nature of CIUT changed in ways few realize, and my life has not been the same since. When volunteers arrived that evening to do their shows, they learned that the locks had been changed. A small hand-written note stuck to the front door said that the Student Administrative Council (SAC) of the University of Toronto was now in charge of the station and that an internet radio company, Virtually Canadian (IcebergMedia.Com), would take over nightly from midnight to 6:00 AM.

All live overnight slots were cancelled and moved to daytime slots. Spoken word shows were significantly reduced. The main spoken word show, Caffeine Free, was cut by two-thirds: from seven and a half to just two and a half hours a week. The duration of most other shows were cut in half.

A week later, Virtually Canadian began piping in pre-recorded dance music. The original Spoken Word programs were drastically cut to accommodate the condensed schedule, five people were banned from the station, and all of us who refused to sign a contract were ousted from the station too.

Is it a coincidence that just three months earlier the Pacifica Radio Board shut down it's flagship station, KPFA, even calling-in the riot squad to arrest staff, volunteers, and fans. There has been little mainstream coverage of these two events; so in case you had not heard of them, here's a tale of two campus/community stations, two shut-outs with different tactics and different lessons for us.

Ironically, KPFA was the original North American campus/community radio station. Born fifty years ago on the Berkeley University campus in California, it was a part of the hotbed of activism in the San Francisco Bay Area free speech movement, anti-McCarthyism, and anti-Viet Nam War protests. It was founded to provide a voice for the dispossessed, a voice for the voiceless. Programmers and technicians were not paid, their motivation was the experience of hands-on radio and the enlightenment of their listening audience. Free of corporate control, it provided critical views not heard elsewhere.

Based on similar principles, CIUT-FM was granted 15,000 watts in 1987 to bring jazz, non-commercial music and a large component of spoken word to Southern Ontario, reaching over into Northern New York State. Like KPFA it was to be a volunteer-run station, with a skeletal managerial staff. As host of Tuesday Caffeine Free, I was privileged to interview a who's who of knowledgeable and concerned people, including: Buzz Hargrove, Kahn-Tineta Horn, Dave Broadfoot, Sol Litman, John Clark, The Raging Grannies, Barry Zwicker, and more than 600 others. The delving, questioning and exposing of little known intellectual treasures every Tuesday was as stimulating as anything I've ever done.

U of T's Yellow Dog Contract

Why did I refuse to sign the contract? I call it a Yellow Dog contract. I first heard about this anti-union tactic in 1936 and I wasn't going to be fooled by it in 1999. A respected peer is bought-off to trick the workers, to frame the contract so it appears supportive of workers' rights and needs. This company shill "sells" the contract. Much later, the workers find out that they have been fooled; but, it is much too late.

True, CIUT had a quarter-million-dollar debt from former mismanagement, but the university ignored repeated warnings of the growing problem. Also, the corporate take-over was done without volunteer or listener consultation. No special appeal was made to the listener/supporters for financial aid. In fact, the 1999 fundraising drive was never launched. Even worse, 25% of air-time has now been sold to a private internet broadcaster with connections to mining inerests. Several directors of Iceberg Media.Com, which owns Virtually Canadian, are directors of mining companies such as Banro Resources Corporation. Banro has mining interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country racked by civil war. Often these conflicts are exacerbated by mining and oil activities. This kind of corporate activity goes against the grain of what CIUT has stood for prior to the takeover.

To sign this contract was impossible for me. I never in my life crossed a picket line, I fought fascism in the Second World War, and for seven decades I have fought for the rights and needs of ordinary Canadians. So, I joined the many CIUT activists who resigned from the station. It was an insidious coup.

In Berkeley, the coup was very audible. KPFA listeners were treated to the sounds of a scuffle during the six o'clock news. An armed guard dragged the programmer out the studio. The station went dead. The listener reaction was just as dramatic. Hundreds of angry listeners converged on the station. Originally reluctant to get involved, the police moved in with riot gear at the request of the Washington-connected chair of the Pacifica Board, Mary Frances Berry.

Staff and supporters alike were taken away in paddy wagons. Oakland and Berkeley city council supported KPFA. On 31 July 1999, almost 15,000 people marched in protest from the Berkeley campus to the town centre. This was the largest demonstration in Berkeley since the Viet Nam war. They were protesting, not against the government this time, but against Pacifica radio, a network of alternative stations across the USA including New York, San Francisco, Washington, Houston and Los Angeles. KPFA was their founding station.

In Toronto last October, the streets were quieter than in Berkeley last July. Hundreds rather than thousands protested outside the U of T Student Administrative Council and the university administrative offices. Aside from the campus newspapers, The Varsity and The Independent, there was little media coverage. The issue was noted in the letters section of the TorStar-owned, eye Magazine. Toronto's independent magazine, Now Magazine was eerily silent. Peter Goddard of the Toronto Star wrote one column about the shut-out, and a former CIUT programmer did a short piece for CBC, but mainstream media did not acknowledge the importance of events unfolding at CIUT.

At both radio stations, people were ousted for questioning past financial management. In March 1999, KPFA's general manager, Nicole Sawaya, was fired with no reason given, but she, like some CIUT personnel, had been raising questions about how funds were used.

Gag laws were then applied, forbidding programmers to discuss station matters on air. However, several KPFA programmers held a press conference letting the public know about Sawaya's firing. They were also fired. The big difference between KPFA and CIUT's gag laws is that Pacifica subsequently allowed a six month trial period permitting programmers to discuss station affairs on air; the University of Toronto CIUT station gag law still holds.

Who benefits from destabilizing community volunteer-run stations? A former president of Pacifica explains the corporatization" of volunteer-run alternative media in the United States: "Management gets stronger, and there comes strong pressure from Washington and the CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to move to the centre, with money from the public broadcasting world dangled - a pressure to be more conventional. Media and information are very powerful and very subversive, especially when you're trying to create a consensus, and you have a major national network that can reach 25% of the population saying that emperor Clinton has no clothes. There's a strong impetus to mute it."

And who are some of the "muted" voices at CIUT ? Here are three volunteers silenced long before the October "Blitz Krieg":

Bill Green is a former Caffeine Free host who demonstrated an uncanny talent for ferreting out financial mismanagement under various regimes at the station. An in-your-face whistler-blower, he was banned from the premises on more than one occasion starting in 1996. In 1998, he was banned from going anywhere on campus where CIUT meetings and other related CIUT activities were being held.

Like Green, Eddy Brake was a ten year veteran programmer. His weekly Blues show, Eddy's Place, featured monthly independent blues live in the studio. He was "fired" for questioning the cozy relationship between the Toronto Blues Society and the Maple Blues Awards. (One member of the CIUT staff was on the blues society board). Another programmer who had disparaged The Music Gallery (on air) a few months before was mildly disciplined, but Eddy was out the door, briefly reinstated, and then charged with harassment and banned from the premises as of October 1, 1999. Brake has now initiated a lawsuit against CIUT, the undergraduate student council (SAC), and some individual representatives from SAC and the University who are remaining board members. Brake is charging them with defamation of character, libel, and slander.

A third veteran programmer, Bruce Cattle, also had his membership revoked following the takeover. Bruce had been active for years at the grassroots level with the spoken word programming committee and on the board. He had been outspoken about mismanagement at the station and had taken his criticisms to the air in order to inform listeners. Bruce is a great muckraker. With a decade of legendary social action on and off the microphone, he hosted Wednesday's Caffeine Free. Not only did he announce a wealth of upcoming speeches, forums, conferences, and demonstrations, but his tape library of these enriched the programs of many other hosts on Toronto's three campus/community stations: CIUT, CKLN & CHRY.

Rebecca Chua, an About Town host and an active Spoken Word Committee member, Ricardo Persaud from the weekly Peacetide programme, and Thor Volokwyn of Thor's Leather Shorts were also ousted from the station on October 1, 1999. Some programmers such as Karen McCrindle (ethniCITY) and Rod McNeish (No Media Monopoly) gave up their cherished shows on principle.

The Need For Solidarity

A few longtime hosts, some of whom initially protested the take-over of the station, returned to avoid losing their show, their pulse on their community, or perhaps they just did not understand the implications of signing the contract and going back. I share their desire to be back on air. But more important to many of us is the need for solidarity.

My motivation for doing Caffeine Free was the hope that I could help things change. Ideas - such as Noam Chomsky's revelation about the pre-Kosovo NATO ousting of the United Nations - need to be known before we can hope for change.

CIUT is a four letter word that should stand for HOPE. What hope is there for a station that brings in corporate radio? CIUT should not stand for CORPORATISM IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. KPFA should not have to stand for KEEP PEOPLE FROM AGITATING. It is well known that he or she who pays the piper calls the tune.

Meanwhile, CIUT drags along, driven by monotonous commercial ads peppering the daytime airwaves, advertising Virtually Canadian's slick dance programming. Spoken word shows are particularly weakened due to the reduction in allotted time and the absence of training.

How long is it before corporate censorship takes over the spoken word content? Regardless of the financial need that got CIUT into this predicament, allowing a corporate presence at CIUT or KPFA is bound to eventually silence the voice of the voiceless.

KPFA has just come to the end of its six month trial period of free speech on the air, and may be sold by Pacifica.

In a Le Monde Diplomatique article (October 16, 1999), writer Barbara Epstein concluded: "The fight to save KPFA is about retaining a radical voice in the commercialized American media. It is about opposing the spread of the corporate model of power and the market values that accompany it. This is an important struggle."

The same can be said about CIUT and Canada. Here's what media critic Barry Zwicker had to say about the corporate take- over: "It's the most current, jarring example of a trend across the country and around the world, toward privatizing and corporatizing public broadcasting. Until recently, campus/community radio operated fairly freely, if on a shoestring budget. It's usually the only source in the city of a radio blend of alternative programming, voice of the marginalized commercial free programming, and questioning of the status quo."

JOIN THE PROTEST NOW: Supporters of campus/community radio can do a lot for that cause by protesting the chopping of these alternative voices. Gobble-iz-a-tion is the enemy, reversal the goal.

If you want to help out the CIUT struggle, you can write to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and insist they return CIUT to its original mandate of community-access radio.

To File a Broadcasting Complaint, please call the CRTC Toll-free at 1-877-249-CRTC (2782). The CRTC Fax number is (819) 994-0218. Their world wide web is www.crtc.gc.ca

Learn more about the CIUT Volunteer Action Committee by accessing www.tao.ca/~vac or contact Michael Craig, VAC Chair at (416) 533-3830, email jaymike@interlog.com, fax 533-3831. To help Eddy Brake's law suit, call (416) 921-4580.