On Tuesday, starting at 7 a.m. the five Pacifica Radio stations will try and raise $200,000 for preservation of the Pacifica Radio Archives which contains 47,000 tapes spanning 50 years. There is a schedule of programing for the day (including recordings of Ann Sexton, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Patty Hearst, Fannie Lou Hamer, Paul Robeson, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, Yoko Ono, Bette Davis, Simone de Beauvoir, Jack Kerouac, Rachel Carson, the DalaiLama, and Lenny Bruce).

If you're not near a Pacifica station in San Francisco, LA, NYC, Washington, DC or Houston, you can listen online and pledge online.

A story in the New York Daily News points out that while Pacifica is known for political programming (which hasn't always been from the left - Cap Weinberger had a program on KPFA), it also has rich archives of cultural programming. They have already preserved all of the programs film critic Pauline Kael recorded at KPFA. And an LA Times article gives even more detail.

Update: The SF Chronicle also reports on the archive and the pledge drive which raised $170,000. Also, the audio from the day is online (highlights include hours 8 and 9 with Studs Turkel and 13 which features a new adaptation of the radio drama, "Sorry, Wrong Number').

Some programs from the archive are online in RealAudio. There is also audio from the Free Speech Movement.

In 2000, "POV" aired "KPFA on the Air" which traced the history of the first Pacfica station.