Recent struggles at radio station KPFA -- including demonstrations and a protest march -- have been greeted with knowing remarks about the 1960s and Berkeley radicals. The station is operating again, at least for a time, but PNS commentator Judith Coburn writes that the issues involved are very much of the 1990s, and should concern us all. Coburn has written all over the media map from "The Village Voice" to "The Los Angeles Times" and has taught media at the University of California.

It was radio at its most electrifying. A shout, "Put down the gun!"  Sounds of a scuffle, more shouts. A broadcaster being arrested while his microphone is on, and the outrage, the sound of the outrage ripping right out over the air until the plug is pulled and the station goes dead.

Belgrade? Beijing? Havana?

Berkeley, California, the summer of the gag. Three radio programmers at KPFA-FM fired, nearly a hundred arrested, shots fired into offices, finally a lockout by management. Listeners rushing to the station, picket lines, the streets roiling with tens of thousands of listeners, many with gags tied over their mouths.

"How Berkeley," reported the media, always trying to revive the '60s. White-males-over-50 try to relive their youth.

But this was a free speech movement for the '90s, a fight against attempts to monopolize the public airwaves and radio culture itself. KPFA's license -- bought for $1700 in 1949 -- is now worth $75 million. Too much for its own management not to get power-hungry.

And most of the combatants are not over 50, although most members of the board of the Pacifica Foundation are. The struggle is about whether young black hip hoppers and avant gardniks can protect their air space from the commercial playlist, whether progressive talk show hosts can put prisoners and farmworkers and lesbian artists on the air and call it news. It's about whether America's only network of listener-supported community radio will finally be silenced.

"Listener-supported" sounds like National Public Radio, but there is a world of difference. NPR is, like Pacifica, a network of non-profit FM radio stations, but NPR listeners have nothing to say about what is on the air or how the station is run. Those decisions are made by management. And individual stations have little to say about national programming -- only a few originate programs. Most just subscribe to a daily "feed" like commercial stations.

Pacifica, and especially KPFA, is an altogether different animal. Before it even went on the air, potential listeners were chiming in about what kind of music they'd like to hear, what issues they wanted to quarrel about, who should manage the station. KPFA exploded because the Pacifica board violated its own traditions -- firing the station manager, then telling staffers they could not have a say in what was happening at the station. Programmers violated this gag order and the firestorm was ignited.

At Pacifica, listeners have been known to organize formal lobbying groups to advocate new shows or protect old ones. Many of the best programs have been produced by unpaid volunteers, sometimes for years. Pacifica's specialty -- live coverage of protests and explosive government hearings which get short shrift from mainstream media -- can be directly affected by listener response. When they want to hear something they let it be known.

Margot Adler of NPR's "All Things Considered" remembers how thousands of letters poured in when she had a women's show on Pacifica's New York station. Now, although millions may hear her NPR reports, she rarely gets a single letter.

But Pacifica's listener-based independence has been eroded by the general commercialization of FM radio, by rabid hostility from Congressional conservatives toward public broadcasting -- and by its own board's concessions to mainstream broadcasting, especially taking government funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. These funds led to the creation of a top heavy, highly paid (by Pacifica standards) Washington bureaucracy which wants a network more like NPR than Pacifica.

Last week the Pacifica Board ended the lock-out at KPFA, but its plans suggest they have not yielded. Staffers have been told they are on a six-month probation with orders to improve ratings.

But ratings are about marketing a station to corporate and government donors or advertisers, not listeners. Will the San Quentin prisoners who listen to a low rider music show be a significant audience to Mobil Oil or the CPB? Is a radio show worth broadcasting only if huge numbers of people tune in?

The Pacifica Board has already turned its Houston station into a mainstream salsa and weather station indistinguishable from commercial FM. (It was Houston's station manager whom Pacifica brought into KPFA to play canned music during the lock-out). What alternative will there be to the liberal, sanitized Beltway news and culture emanating from NPR if Pacifica stations become NPR clones? The drive to silence Free Speech Radio may gag not only its listeners but us all.