From Fragile Paradise to Fields of Change

Bennington in Changing Times

Opening a Senate investigation of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in March 1968, Sen. J. William Fulbright described what was taking place across the country as a “spiritual rebellion” of the young against a betrayal of national values. The war in Vietnam was coming home.

In Bennington a cultural storm was brewing as newcomers arrived in Vermont during the late 1960s. At its center were the schools. Fifty years later, photos and ideas from this video essay helped to inspire an exhibit in 2019 (6/28-11/3) at the Bennington Museum, Fields of Change: 1960s Vermont.  The sound track includes music by John Cage, Spirit, Donovan, Bob Dylan and Eric Anderson; guitar and vocals by Dave Putter; photos, narration, piano solos and editing by Greg Guma. With thanks to Jamie Franklin.

Review: Lasting Impact

“Although the epicenters of the counterculture movement were located in and around Brattleboro and Plainfield and throughout Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the Bennington area boasted its own artists, artisans, photographers, clothing designers and political activists whose work brought the larger story to the local arena, sometimes resulting in opposition.”

Narration 

In March 1968, Sen. J. William Fulbright described what was taking place across the country as a “spiritual rebellion” of the young against a betrayal of national values. Over half a million troops had been mobilized to fight in Vietnam. The operative logic was that it might be necessary to destroy the country in order to save it.

Then a shot rang out in Memphis and ended the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Demonstrations erupted in 125 cities.  More than 20,000 arrests. The mobilization of federal troops and the National Guard. Two months later, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, just after winning the California primary. 

By Summer, there had been over 220 major demonstrations on campuses across the country. 

By then I had moved to Vermont. And I wasn’t the only one. Thousands of us came. I was with a group of young idealists who wanted to distribute and distribute films. The first step was to create film societies across the Northeast. 

The name of our dream was the American Film Academy.

“Strange country up here; New Hampshire and Vermont appear to be the East's psychic answer to Colorado and New Mexico – big lonely hills laced with back roads and old houses where people live almost aggressively by themselves.” — Hunter Thompson

That’s Kitty when she was around 20. We’d fallen in love and gotten married. She was from Shaftsbury, but we found a place in the Village of Bennington. And kindred spirits. 

Then a cooler place on Depot Street, with a health food store downstairs. We called it the Gingerbread House. But that was later...

In September, some young Republicans hired us to produce a multi-media light show for a state GOP meeting at the Paradise motel. It was a strange idea — but the Academy was in trouble and we were desperate. The reaction was less than enthusiastic. 

Afterward, Liz Dwyer wrote a scathing article for the Bennington Banner. It was so upsetting that we had to reply in a letter to the editor. We saw ourselves as creative entrepreneurs. But some people saw us as part of an unwelcome invasion:

“As AFA employees, we are upset most about the glib manner in which our organization is maligned by people who do not understand our work and are afraid to inquire about it.” 

“We are teachers, students, and artists....We do not circulate underground or low-life films... In fact, we are now supplying the films for the YMCA film program.”

By then, two of us had taken temporary teaching jobs at The Prospect School, a progressive elementary school in North Bennington. Its aim was to deepen each child’s experience of the world through individualized instruction and working with all kinds of materials. The kids were free to move around, talk with others, and pursue their own projects and ideas.

It was great work. But soon I took a very different job, reporter and photographer for the Bennington Banner ... and found myself working with Liz Dwyer, the editor who had panned our light show. We became great friends.

On my third day the editor, Tyler Resch, took me to a school board meeting, drew a diagram of people around the table. And left. It was sink or swim. And a political storm was brewing. A new high school had been built. But it was also at the center of Bennington’s cultural divide. Its alma mater, “The Impossible Dream,” turned out to prophecy. An idealistic plan for progressive local education was about to be derailed.

The school superintendent resigned and a dispute had developed over who would replace him. The elementary school board wanted the Assistant Superintendent. The supervisory union wasn’t so sure.

It looked like a minor dispute. But it was really part of a bitter struggle, a local culture war, and the stakes were the future of education and community life.

A Golden Age

In the 1930s Martha Graham was instrumental in making Bennington College the epicenter of the modern dance world. The Bennington School for Dance, precursor of the American Dance Festival, was an innovative laboratory where pioneers experimented, trained students, and created early works that defined modern dance.

A generation later the area became a nexus for modern art. As the story goes, it began with art critic Clement Greenberg and painter Helen Frankenthaler. They were soon joined by Paul Feeley and other painters who helped connect the emerging avant-garde movement based at the college with the New York art scene. 

By the 1960s the community was hosting a veritable artist colony — although many folks did their best to ignore it. An article in Vogue even updated Vermont history, calling painters like Anthony Caro, Kenneth Noland, Vincent Longo and Jules Olitski the new Green Mountain Boys.

The original Green Mountain Boys were a revolutionary era militia led by Ethan Allen, who met at the Catamount Tavern in Old Bennington. It burned down in 1871.

A century later Greenberg’s idea was that art should be disciplined, but without sacrificing vitality. The concept combined distance with enjoyment and freedom. Bennington seemed perfect ... not far from New York and Boston, but sufficiently removed. An ideal place to play out an unusual artistic vision.

But the golden age was over by the time I arrived. And a conservative political storm was brewing. At its center was the high school.

Impossible Dreams

Mt. Anthony Union High School was thriving ... a new campus, engaged students, creative faculty. Even professional level productions of big musicals like West Side Story, The Fantasticks, and My Fair Lady. 

It wasn’t all about the arts. There were also innovative vocational programs and volunteer projects like DUO, a state idea. The name stood for “do unto others” and it let high school students spend half of a School year on a project that responded to a real community need. 

But what made Mt Anthony different was a creative spirit, and the dynamic head of the music Department, Jack Carton.

But a power struggle was brewing between two tribes. And then the state Commissioner of Education stepped in.

To break the superintendent stalemate he unilaterally merged Bennington’s Supervisory Union with another board and appointed its superintendent to head the new “super district.” George Sleeman could keep his job. But his rise had been blocked. His allies were stunned and his brother would not forget. The struggle between modernists and traditionalists would continue for years.

After that the first public flashpoint was a high school musical, and the spark was the poster. The poster was banned and on opening night the house was half-filled. It almost felt like a boycott. I didn’t realize it at first, but a moral majority culture war had just begun.

Yet protests were also growing — against the Vietnam War, and the culture war at home. 

Fifty years later it all became an exhibit at the Bennington Museum.

Greg Guma, a journalist, magazine editor, community organizer, and the author of several books including The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution, supplied numerous photographs and much of the background information for the exhibition. Like many young, progressive activists and hippies, Guma moved to Vermont after graduating from college. “It was 1968 and I was fairly traumatized by what was going on during my final semester,” he said. “The war, the election of Nixon, the protests, the assassinations. Like a lot of people, I wanted to flee the violence and try to find better values in a less complicated environment.”

Guma got a job as a reporter and photographer at The Bennington Banner where he chronicled many of the historic changes taking place in the state. “I was one of only two reporters, so I was exposed to many aspects of society,” he said. “I watched the culture war unfold.” — Stratton Magazine, 8/30/2019

Campus Paradise Lost: The Fall of Burlington College

Just before classes began at Burlington College in September 2011, President Jane O’Meara Sanders offered local media a tour of the school’s new campus and her vision of the future. A few days later, she followed up with the Board of Trustees, cheerily pleased with the press coverage and the school’s mention in a Newsweek-Daily Beast poll as the number one college for “free-spirited students.” 

Finally, she wrote, “we are getting the creative message through nationally.”

One of the country’s smallest post-secondary institutions, originally launched in 1972 as a “school without walls” for non-traditional students, Burlington College was about to turn 40. In addition to a large new campus, it was adding academic majors and had ambitious plans to more than double its enrollment by the end of the decade.

Sanders, wife of Vermont's famous junior US Senator, presented a range of optimistic enrollment goals, sometimes reaching as high as 500 students within five years, double the highest figure in the school’s history.

Two weeks later, however, she unexpectedly resigned after reaching a private settlement with the Board of Trustees. A press release from the college, which had purchased buildings and property previously owned by the Catholic Diocese for $10 million less than a year before at her urging, said that Sanders would step down on Oct. 14 but gave no reason for the change.

So began a four year slide that ultimately led to the sudden announcement that Burlington College would close by the end of May 2016. 

In January, Catholic parishioners in Vermont asked the US attorney in Vermont and the inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to investigate if Ms. Sanders committed federal bank fraud by misrepresenting the college’s fundraising commitments to secure loans for the land purchase. As faculty and staff emptied the school building prior to a May 27 takeover by the People's United Bank, locks were changed, students held a public funeral, and one witness close to the administration claimed that computer hard drives had been seized by unnamed officials.

Staying Small

Had it survived, even with a 34-acre campus offering views of Lake Champlain and five times as much space for classes and offices, Burlington College would have remained one of the five smallest colleges in the country. In Vermont only two schools had fewer students. For four decades, BC's annual enrollment had fluctuated between 100 and 250.

To double that number by 2020, enrollment would have to increase by at least 12 percent a year, a goal well beyond the national average and a radical departure from the school’s track record. The $10 million purchase of the Catholic Diocese property, as well as committing to more than $3 million in renovations, had put the school under serious financial, management and academic pressure. 

During the previous decade Burlington College’s annual income had grown by about half a million, from $2.744 million in 2001 to $3.372 as of 2008, based on federal 990 tax filings. But until recently enrollment had been on the decline. Between 2001 and 2008, the number of students dropped by about 40 percent, from 250 to 156. Enrollment had risen since, reaching somewhere between 180 and 200 students attending part or full-time at the time Sanders resigned.

While the number of students had decreased during the last decade, income from tuition had increased from $1.998 to $2.912 million. The school kept pace financially through a series of tuition increases that accelerated after Sanders became president. Tuition rose over 60 percent from $13,120 in 2003, the year before she arrived, to $22,407 in 2011.

During the same period the school’s assets also increased, from under a million in 2004 to $1.454 million by 2008, or around 50 percent. Sanders’ salary went from $103,500 to more than $150,000.

Of Vermont’s 30 colleges and universities, only seven cost more – Green Mountain, Landmark, Bennington, St. Mike’s, Marlboro, Norwich and Champlain. The University of Vermont’s in-state tuition was about $6,000 a year less. Despite its attractive new campus, Burlington College was at a competitive disadvantage, especially for in-state students, and lacked sufficient discretionary funds to embark on the kind of sustained marketing it needed, especially with increased overhead.

Sanders Takes Charge 

Prior to becoming Burlington College president in 2004, Jane Sanders worked as campaign manager for her husband Bernie Sanders, then a US congressman. Her credentials also included a stint running Goddard College and almost a decade as head of youth services for Burlington, mainly during the Sanders administration.

In 2005 she said that increasing student numbers was vital because tuition dollars would help pay for the overall plan she was developing. As it turned out, tuition dollars rose but the number of students didn’t. The college was also mindful of its mission to stay small, she added. In 2006, however, she announced a $6 million expansion plan. The initial idea was to build a three-story structure next to the current building on North Avenue.

Hired at about the same salary as her predecessor, President Sanders received salary bumps for the next five years, ultimately topping $150,000 in 2009. During the same period tuition rose by more than $5,000 while enrollment dipped to 156 students.

By 2008, students and faculty were expressing frustration, especially after the dismissal of popular literature professor Genese Grill. Students, faculty and staff said that the environment at the school had become toxic and disruptive. In interviews, many blamed Sanders and decried what was described as a “crisis of leadership.”

More than two dozen faculty and staff left the school during Sanders’ tenure, according to then-Student Government President Joshua Lambert. Grill claimed she was fired for criticizing Sanders, particularly for a letter to Academic Affairs Committee Chair Bill Kelly blaming Sanders for an “atmosphere of fear and censorship” on campus. Sanders called Grill’s critique unfair but declined to discuss the details. 

The American Association of University Professors, which became aware of the dispute, noted that Burlington College lacked a grievance policy for faculty, an omission considered “quite unusual.” Robert Kreiser, program officer in AAUP’s department of academic freedom, tenure and governance, told the weekly, Seven Days, “A faculty member should have the right to speak out about actions and policies at his or her own college.” He offered to help Sanders draft a new policy but she declined.

We are leaving a 16,000 square foot building on 2 acres to a 77,000 square foot building on 34 acres. Instead of a lake view, we have lakefront.”

                                                                               – Jane O’Meara Sanders

Despite faculty resignations and student objections, the trustees continued to  back their CEO. “The board is quite confident in Jane’s leadership, and we stand by her,” said Patrick Gallivan, who was board chair In 2008.

By 2011, the Board was being chaired by Adam Dantzscher, a credit and debt consultant, and Gallivan, a vice president at St. Michael’s College, had become vice chair. Members included two local orthopedic surgeons, a psychologist and a workplace consultant, the development director of Fletcher Allen Hospital and an emeritus faculty member from UVM.

The business community was represented by David Dunn, an advisor at the Vermont Small Business Development Center; Rob Michalak, Director of Social Mission for Ben & Jerry’s; and David Grunvald, vice president of Preci Manufacturing, a leading Vermont military contractor. The Board was rounded out by peace activist Robin Lloyd, student representative Brendan Donaghey, and Jonathan Leopold, former Chief Financial Officer for the City of Burlington.

Originally appointed as city treasurer by Bernie Sanders decades earlier, Leopold had become treasurer of the Burlington College board, and chaired the crucial Finance an d Facilities Committee. He'd left city employment the previous June, as controversy erupted over his handling of Burlington Telecom financing, but continued consulting for the city under a short-term contract. His wife Roxanne was part of Burlington College’s core staff; she headed the school’s psychology and human services programs.

Buying a Campus 

When the school community gathered to honor the 34 members of its 2011 graduating class at its new campus, Sanders acknowledged that the only man who could have brokered such a deal with the Roman Catholic Diocese was real estate mogul Antonio Pomerleau. A prominent local Catholic, Pomerleau had been a prime target of Bernie Sanders’ political attacks when he first became Burlington mayor. But since then they had become family friends. 

“He understands relationships,” Jane Sanders explained at 2011 graduation ceremonies. “Not just ‘who you know,’ but an understanding that leads to a reputation, and to trust.”

As a result of more than two dozen sexual abuse lawsuits, the Catholic Diocese was on the hook for $17.65 million in settlements. The property initially went on the market for $12.5 million. Although $10 million looked like a bargain, not everyone was impressed. According to Erick Hoekstra, a developer for a local commercial development firm, City officials may have overvalued the property. Even if hundreds of housing units were eventually built on the land, a more realistic price was $5 million to $7 million, he claimed.

The college’s vision for its new land base was ambitious but expensive. The main building was already being renovated for classrooms, administration offices and labs. Eventually, the former bishop’s residence, with a view of Lake Champlain,  would provide space for public events, study rooms and visiting faculty.  For the first year $1.2 million was budgeted for renovations. But it would cost at least $2 million more to complete the transformation, including work on an enormous building previously rented by the Howard Center to provide housing for about 16 students.

“It’s fabulous,” said Sanders. “We are leaving a 16,000 square foot building on 2 acres to a 77,000 square foot building on 34 acres. Instead of a lake view, we have lakefront.”

According to Dantzscher, the strategic plan developed five years before had basically been achieved. “Now we can decide and dictate our own destiny,” he predicted.

To make this dramatic expansion work financially, the college tried to lower some of its expenses by refinancing debt and improving energy efficiency. However, Sanders acknowledged that completing the move would require still more borrowing. In addition, a $6 million capital campaign (increased from an initial $4 million) had been launched. But progress was slower than hoped.

Subsequent investigations have suggested that Sanders overstated donation amounts in a bank application for the $6.7 million loan used by the college to purchase the land. She apparently told People’s United Bank that the college had $2.6 million in pledged donations to support the purchase. But the college received only $676,000 in actual donations from 2010 through 2014, according to figures provided by the college. That’s far less than the $5 million Sanders listed as likely pledges in the loan agreement, and less than a third of the $2.14 million she told People’s Bank the college would collect in cash during the four-year period.

Two people whose pledges are listed as confirmed in the loan agreement told VTDigger that their personal financial records show their pledges were overstated. Neither were aware that the pledges were used to secure the loan. Burlington College also cited a $1 million bequest as a pledged donation that would be paid out over six years, even though the money would only be available after the donor’s death.

Evolving Academics

In its final years, the most popular academic programs at the school included film, photography, fine arts and integral psychology. As part of an expansion plan, new majors were proposed in media activism and hospitality/event management, as well as four new Bachelor of Fine Arts degree programs. It already offered study abroad opportunities, including one in Cuba with the University of Havana, and an Institute for Civic Engagement to promote an informed, active citizenry.

Most Burlington College students were under 25, a contrast with both the school’s early history and recent educational trends. Nationally, the number of older students was rising faster than enrollment for those under 25, a pattern expected to continue. The question confronting the Board of Trustees was whether a small school, even with a lovely new campus, could succeed in doubling its student body in the current academic and economic environment. 

Sanders' critics said the underlying problem was that she was more concerned with image and marketing than academic quality. As one former faculty member who asked to be kept anonymous put it, she preferred hiring “young inexperienced, but ‘hip’ people whom she hopes she can push around.”

Dynamics of Growth 

If there was a precedent for the school’s expansion hopes, it was less than a mile away at Champlain College. Founded as Burlington Collegiate Institute by G.W. Thompson in 1878, it was renamed Burlington Business College in 1884, moved to Bank Street in 1905, and relocated to Main Street in 1910.

The College took its current name in 1958 and moved to the Hill Section of Burlington. That year, it offered only associate’s degree programs, had about 60 students and no dorms. But it had grown enormously in the decades since then, launching new programs in the social services, adding a campus center in 1989, bachelor’s degree programs in 1991 and online education as early as 1993.  Today it has around 3,000 students and a sprawling campus.

In contrast, Burlington College, while expanding its core and adjunct faculty from 15 to almost 100 over the years, its staff from less than 10 to 61, and its budget from $200,000 to almost $4 million, never saw significant enrollment growth. In fact, while Champlain’s student body was exploding Burlington College’s declined.

One of the differences was that Champlain expanded its campus based on increased demand for business and technology education, while Burlington College hoped that better facilities, more majors and a larger land base would attract students. In other words, if you build them – programs and facilities, that is – they will come. However, this approach was at odds with the school’s original intent – academic freedom and self-designed studies in diverse community settings rather than on a traditional "bricks and mortar" campus. 

A larger campus created opportunities but also challenges. In the former category was space to create dorms for up to 100 students, an attractive campus for mid-career professionals in master’s programs, plus labs and a student lounge. But it made rapid growth essential. If student enrollment didn't rise consistently, it was clear that the new campus would become a burden, one that required either dramatically increased fundraising, even higher tuition costs, or somehow leveraging the school’s land base to compensate.

About four years after the purchase, faced with bankruptcy, Burlington College was forced to sell most of the property to developer Eric Farrell. At first the idea was that the school might remain, retaining some programs in a small portion of the former Catholic Diocese headquarters, with Farrell building 600 housing units on the rest of the land. For the City of Burlington, this would represent tax revenue. Like the Catholic Diocese the College was tax exempt. 

Now Burlington College is completely out of the picture, and any housing built on the land will bring in property taxes. Some of the units will even be affordable. But the questions surrounding the untimely demise of Burlington's most progressive college will haunt the community for years to come.

Much of this material was first published in 2011 by VTDigger.

Related story: Why Jane Sanders Left Burlington College

Lost Radio Horizons: Before the Fall on Planet Pacifica

 Talking to Pacifica, 2006

It should have been a dream come true. But I couldn't stop worrying. Smiling nervously at the crowd, hundreds of radio producers, hosts and tech people gathered at the Portland Hilton for the annual meeting of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, I beat back anxiety and began to speak.

"It's good to be with media makers who don't believe that climate change is just a rumor," I told them, "who don't think immigrants coming to the US for a better life should be turned into criminals, and who didn't need over three years to figure out that the administration manipulated public opinion and distorted reality to go to war in the Middle East." 

It was sincere. But also a good way to break the ice with a radical audience ten years ago. Looking back, things don't seem to have changed that much. Denial, resentment and lies are still politics as usual. 

Six months before that I'd been home in Vermont, co-editing a statewide weekly newspaper, writing articles and working with correspondents from around the world. If someone had predicted that I would move to Berkeley and run a radio network, I would have checked their pupils. Friends don't let friends drive crazy.

For a long time I had been working in the world of progressive politics and independent media, writing and editing, developing documentaries, attending protests and organizing conferences, getting arrested for good causes, and taking part in assorted campaigns. In Burlington, Vermont's largest city, I'd edited newspapers and magazines, and helped win a non-violent political revolution that put Bernie Sanders and other progressives in charge for three decades. In Vermont and New Mexico I led social justice groups. In Burlington and Santa Monica I ran bookstores. Basically, I was an organizer, manager and communicator, and, on a good day, a change agent. Reinforcing the image, I'd even named one of the book businesses Maverick.

Yet none of that prepared me for Pacifica, a multi-million dollar left-wing media network with hundreds of union employees, a thousand volunteers - demanding to be called "unpaid staff," a labyrinthine democratic governance structure, and a storied history of rough internal struggles. I had been Executive Director for three months, and was delivering my first talk to an audience beyond the Pacifica community.  

"Although I've been a journalist," I explained over the luncheon clatter, "I also have come to believe that words aren't always enough. That's why I went to the border between Nicaragua and Honduras with other members of Witness for Peace during the Contra war, why I committed civil disobedience in front of the gates at a GE armaments factory, ran for local office as a progressive insurgent, and spoke out publicly against the Iraq war and attacks on fundamental rights..."

At first they were more enthusiastic about the meal being provided by the network than anything I had to say.

"What have I learned along the way?" I asked the room. "That corporate media's handling of the news has become increasingly unreliable over the years. In fact, mainstream journalists find it difficult, if not dangerous, to cover stories that do not fit neatly into what is known as the Washington Consensus. Meanwhile, corporations have developed sophisticated strategies to promote the stories they want to see, and prevent others from being aired or published. The result is perception management, a highly effective form of social engineering."

That is precisely why alternative sources are important, despite their battling factions, difficult personalities and frustrating structures, I said then. And I still believe it. "Small, accessible and affordable technologies can help people to challenge the knowledge monopoly of elites. And radio is one of the most accessible vehicles for alternative viewpoints. It's intimate, production can be inexpensive, and can reach people through hundreds of outlets around the country and sometimes the world. And at community-run stations there is certainly more diversity and programmatic pluralism than almost anywhere else in media."

People were starting to pay attention. But what they wanted to hear most was my vision for the country's original listener-sponsored radio network. I had been working on that since my first days on the job. In a nutshell, I explained, my agenda was to get more local voices on the air, to revitalize the network's moribund national programming, to maximize its human and overstretched technical resources, to honor and expand its diversity, and to encourage people to work together with more mutual respect. 

As modest as this may sound, it would have been as reasonable to promise peace in the Middle East. But I didn't know that yet. And thus I proceeded to read excerpts from the statement developed more than a half century earlier by Pacifica founder Lew Hill. They were noble ideas - to be an outlet for the creative skills and energy of the community, to promote the full distribution of public information, to provide access to and use of sources of news not brought together in the same medium. With each, I offered examples of how the idea could be applied in the early years of a new century.

But there was something even more important to say, something I wanted to share and very much hoped was true. "Pacifica has finally emerged from its extended internal crisis," I said. "And maybe it is ready to stop making war on itself." At this point the room exploded with cheers and applause. I had struck a chord, appealing to the desperate hope shared by almost everyone there that the battles and negativity of the past decade were over.

From that point onward, they heard most of the plan. In particular, a three point agenda - programming, organizing, and peace. "By programming I mean locally-generated, mission-driven national programming," I said. "By organizing I mean better internal organization to make full use of resources and talent. And by peace I mean a process of reconciliation. It's time to bury the hatchets and move on." More applause. 

But how did it go? Not as well as I hoped. For the next two years, attempts at management reorganization ran up against protests about local autonomy and suspicions that there might be another national power grab. We made some improvements in collaborative national programming, but there remained a core demand that each station control its own airwaves. Thus, no changes could be made without a long, thorough and, some would argue, seemingly interminable process of consultation with many stakeholders. As Pacificans often ruefully mused, democracy is messy. 

Technological investment was delayed or deferred by a tendency to create budgets from the bottom up, an approach that left issues of concern to the national organization for last, and made reductions in spending on network-wide needs the easiest solution whenever money was tight. Meanwhile, coordinated marketing was virtually impossible in an organization where no one really spoke for the organization without fear of being blindsided. I never saw much consensus about image, except perhaps to be a passionate cheerleader for every good cause that came along.

Pacifica was also grappling with several long-term issues: Difficulty adapting to fundamental changes in audio distribution, declining listenership and the erosion of Pacifica’s traditional revenue source, and, after several cycles with a new experimental structure, the need to make some serious adjustments. But declining audience and listener loyalty could only be addressed by looking hard at programming, and this was linked to questions and confusion about Pacifica’s mission and organizational structure.

Things went from bad to worse over the next decade. As network historian Matthew Lasar noted, in 2015 a report from the Pacifica National Finance Committee’s chair "put the network’s operating deficit at $2.17 million, with liabilities leading assets by over $4 million. Much of this money is owed to Democracy Now!" Beyond that, Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding was being delayed due to problematic accounting, and the organization struggled to recover from a divisive public confrontation. In 2014 a fired executive director and her supporters had barricaded themselves in the Pacifica national office until the board ultimately dislodged them with a temporary restraining order. Afterward, conspiracy theories flourished as California’s attorney general conducted an audit.

But those problems came later. In 2006, Pacifica was in relatively good shape, financially and organizationally, and it was time to wind up my remarks to the broadcasters in Portland. 

"There's more to the mission," I began, "and much more to say. But for now, please consider this: The tasks facing independent media in the months and years ahead are crucial. With the administration in free fall and the Right in disarray, it's time to seize the moment. The question is how. My suggestion is that we work together, set aside our minor differences and squabbles - we can get back to them later - and project responsible advocacy, real news and informed opinion. While doing that, however, we should also celebrate our differences rather than allow them to divide us; after all, isn't respect for diversity one of the things that distinguishes us from the forces that have used fear of those who are different to undermine freedom? 

"Our job, as I see it, is to bring a sharp critique and a progressive vision to millions of radio listeners, to wake up the airwaves and shake up the world. It is an opportunity we should not miss, and a responsibility we cannot afford to ignore."

Looking back, this was probably a high point of my time on Planet Pacifica. I'd given voice to a vision that resonated with many of its stakeholders. For weeks afterward, staff and Board members and people who worked at affiliate stations, whether they were in the ballroom or read the speech, said they'd been inspired. Six months later, at Pacifica's Annual Meeting, I was able to report more progress, as well as the highest revenues in network history.
  
But those remarks also expressed a misreading of the situation. Or perhaps just lingering faith in an elusive dream, rapidly vanishing over the horizon. After all, no speeches - no matter how popular or persuasive they seem, and not even the best of intentions are enough to change ingrained economic and political realities or a divided culture that has taken root over generations. Democracy also doesn't guarantee success, civility or harmony. It's a lesson I've seen demonstrated more than once, from New York and Burlington to Albuquerque and Berkeley.

Related stories:  

Pacifica Radio's Progressive Meltdown (2014) 

Is Pacifica Radio Worth Saving? (2016, by Matthew Lasar)
Planet Pacifica: The Inside Story