KPFA Marchers

# 184

In 1949 pacifist Lewis Hill founded Berkeley's KPFA as the nation's first listener-supported station with a strong bias toward participatory democracy. Fifty years later the national Pacifica Foundation fired KPFA's general manager, imposed an on-air gag order and locked out the staff. A shantytown of protesters took over the street in front of the station. Ten thousand people marched through the streets of Berkeley in the largest demonstration since the Vietnam War. Part of the 1999 parade was a small but emotional echo of the march held two months earlier.