Free Radio Berkeley

SQUATTING THE AIRWAVES

Pirate Radio as Anarchy in Action

A society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties religious differences and their superstitious separatism. Far from being a speculative vision of a future society, it is a description of a mode of human organization, rooted in the experience of everyday life, which operates side by side with, and in spite of, the dominant authoritarian trends of our society.ⁱ

Colin Ward

When Colin Ward first wrote Anarchy in Action back in 1973, he included many examples of anarchist social organization in the areas of work, play, education and social welfare. Missing in action was pirate radio. Little is said in the Ward book about communications. One might assume that one of the reasons for this omission is because of the conflation of communications with mass communications. The assumption being that because of its massive scale, corporate hierarchy, and/or government bureaucracy, radio was not a suitable topic for tracing embryonic anarchist forms or ruminating on anarchist possibilities. Since the birth of the free radio movement, this assumption has been increasingly called into question, especially in relation to the latest developments in micropower broadcasting technology where the transmitter can be as small in size as a loaf of bread.

Radio Waves

While Ward’s book favorably references the British squatters campaign that originated in the Sixties, he could not have predicted that by 1979, just across the English Channel, Vrij (Free) Keizer Radio, named after the huge squatted housing complex in Amsterdam’s Keizersgracht, would take to the air, broadcasting mainly squatters’ movement and resistance news and music, and going live during the big political demonstrations and street riots of the day. Aside from playing this kind of tactical role in defending housing squats as occupied space, outside of capital or government control, pirate radio itself can be understood as a form of “squatting.” By using direct action, radio pirates can communally seize the airwaves and liberate them from institutional control.

In fact, from the mid-Seventies well into the Eighties, an explosion of pirate radio stations could be found plying the European airwaves from the studios of Autonomia’s Radio Alice in Italy, Radio Libertaire in France, Radio Dreyeckland in Germany, Radio Skokkeland in Denmark, and Radio Air Libre in Belgium. In Spain, where an anarchist revolution had been suppressed by General Franco with the assistance of both Hitler and Stalin, within a year of the hated dictator’s death, the first free radio stations would surface, including the decidedly anarchist Radio Libertaria in Valencia. Even from the vantage point of Colin Ward’s writing outpost in the UK, Radio Arthur would soon make its appearance. Named after union leader Arthur Scargill, its origins can be traced to the galvanizing radical politics of the British coal miners’ strike of 1984. The micropower radio movement in the States was born in the late Eighties in Springfield, Illinois with Black Liberation Radio, and then consolidated with the impetus of Free Radio Berkeley in the Nineties. Though not all of the pirate stations mentioned above were explicitly anarchist, they typically operated on a daily basis in ways that resonate with the nascent anarchist organizational forms profiled by Colin Ward in his book.

Once the free radio movement began to gather steam in North America, would-be Canadian pirates could get a front row seat on the action and, with the ever wider availability of inexpensive micropower equipment, it was only a matter of time before they too would want to participate directly. A contemporary case in point is Tree Frog Radio in British Columbia. This island-based station, with which I have been involved from its inception, has now been squatting the airwaves for over five years. From the start, it was to be an anarchist-initiated project that would be open to the community as a whole. Not everyone on the station is an anarchist, and not all anarchist programmers are always doing programming with specifically or exclusively anarchist content, but its origins and current organizational context are deeply informed by anarchy.

Tree Frog Radio

What then are Tree Frog Radio’s affinities with anarchism in Ward’s “everyday” terms? In essence, it is the human scale of the relationships within Tree Frog Radio and with its community that has won it broad-based support and widespread participation. As one programmer has explained the appeal of the station, “Big radio always felt so cold and distant, Tree Frog Radio, like our community hall, recycling centre, free store and farmers market, feels involving.” Though illegal, because it has been the embodiment of autonomous island culture, it has engendered community involvement. It has motivated community members to nurture and protect it over the course of its history, which began with an on-island showing of Rebel Radio, a film about the US pirate radio movement of the Nineties, after which around 20 community people began to envision starting our own station. Collectively, we combined the programming, technical, fundraising and organizational skills needed to launch Tree Frog Radio.

Most of the folks involved did not bat an eyelash in defense of the concept of legality. Though some concern was expressed about the possibility of a government clampdown, legality was not intrinsically linked to possibility. What was illegal, though riskier, was not necessarily dismissed as impossible. Of course, it helped that the island had long been conducive to libertarian living arrangements that were appreciated even by those islanders who would not necessarily identify as squatters or anarchists. In regard to the anti-authoritarian nature of island culture, many of the bohemian residents who came to live here in the Seventies were artists, poets, hippies, and Vietnam-era draft dodgers. While island demographics have changed over the years, the steady stream of free spirits has never really dried up. Most emblematic of an anarchist trace that is still very much in evidence on island is the fact that we have no cops. Because something so seemingly impossible as living in a place with no cops is indeed possible here, islanders are often more receptive than most people to imagining the creation of other autonomous zones. It is precisely this everyday sense of demanding the impossible that animates Tree Frog Radio. With this open attitude in mind, I will now explore the anarchist implications of the station’s libertarian organizational structures, such as community participation, volunteer labor, commercial-free programming, grassroots fundraising, consensus decision-making and community self-defense.

As to community participation, the station was started and continues to flourish as a result of the “sweat equity” of the community members who built and sustain it. Without ever resorting to such bureaucratic policies as “outreach,” “recruitment” or “affirmative action;” from the start, the station has quite naturally been a magnet for political, economic and cultural diversity. Not only the “usual suspects “ among anarchists and punks, but a grassroots assortment of marginalized islanders, drawn over the years from renters (a minority on island but a majority on the station), first generation immigrants, Québecoise and those culturally disenfranchised because of their youth, have readily taken to the airwaves over the years. Though the station welcomes the participation of all islanders as programmers, it has, from the start, been largely the “voice of the voiceless.” As one programmer has put it, “Tree Frog Radio provides the realization of the voice many of us have to share but cannot express otherwise.”

While many of our programmers do not own land, even those that do tend to be unusual—radical libertarians, back-to-the-landers, co-housing land partners, permaculture activists, unruly wage slaves, gender rebels, counter-culture mavens, habitues of the underground economy, and eccentrics of all stripes. Up until recently, the local Residents Association had been called the Ratepayers Association, reflecting in its previous incarnation, the assumption that it was the more established property owners on island who were the rightful community decision-makers. Of course, the fact is that renters indirectly pay property taxes as is evidenced by the soaring island rents that are in part a result of the local property owners’ ability to pass on their land taxes to their tenants. Yet, even though the name Ratepayers has now been changed to Residents, the fully-enfranchised islander is still unofficially conceived of as an adult property owner. Consequently, it is the voice of the more affluent property owner that is the one that is heard most often in public debate at Residents Association meetings, and those with little or no legally taxable income from employment or retirement pensions are rarely part of the public debate. Though the latter are not officially excluded, the alienating culture of formal meetings can often seem unappetizing or unwelcoming to those on the fringes, who choose instead, intentionally or in effect, to withhold their consent.

At Tree Frog Radio, there is no such aura of propertied legitimacy or elitist atmosphere of entitlement. Instead, the station’s free-wheeling lack of formalities attracts a different type of participant than the Residents Association. On the airwaves, the voice of the propertyless or atypical property owner holds center stage. Though the latter might own land, they do not claim a privileged status or act the part of landed gentry. Consequently, the political opinions expressed on our shows offer the listener access to a much broader spectrum of island politics than one can be exposed to by attending a Residents Association meeting, where, even with the best of intentions, the participatory spirit is stifled by the straitjacket of Roberts Rules of Order.

Another group that is represented on the station in ways that they are not elsewhere in the general cultural and political life of the community are recent immigrants. For example, in the entire region, there is no place on the radio dial other than Tree Frog where you can regularly hear local political commentary on island issues, listen to a scathing critique of Canadian domestic repression of indigenous peoples or get no-holds-barred commentary on the government’s dirty little war in Afghanistan; all from the “outsider” perspective of a programmer who is a first generation immigrant of Middle Eastern descent? Moreover, it is not unusual to hear a wide variety of music programming by our deejays, with some vocals in Farsi, Czech, Yiddish, Yoruba or Kwakwaka’wakw, just to name a few languages that would never otherwise be heard in the public sphere on island.

Beyond recent immigrants, Québecois culture quickly found a voice on Tree Frog Radio as well. While in Eastern Canada, the politics of the French language is often hotly contested, in British Columbia, far from Québec, there is little in the way of a public voice for Francophone culture. Yet for the first several years, until she returned to Quebec City in 2008, Tree Frog broadcast a weekly program hosted by a woman of Québecois heritage, featuring French music and culture, which was presented entirely in that language. In a country that pays lip service to bilingualism, not even the nearest licensed community radio station within listening range provided such a service until much later.

As to island youth, at present, we have had two shows by deejays who are under 18 years of age, one of whom started at 14 during the early days of the station and another who began his show at the end of our fourth year on air at age 15 and is still on air. There is simply no public forum on island where a young person would regularly be given similar responsibility, along with an opportunity to learn radio skills while freely designing his/her own show just as the adult programmers do, or be able to participate in programmers’ meetings as decision-makers, or to deejay at station fundraisers. In essence, Tree Frog is a station whose programmers are drawn from the young and the young at heart. As one older programmer has expressed it “This experience has revived that sense of awe that I had in my youth when it was all new, when so much was out there to be discovered.” Our oldest programmer is in his sixties, an age group that faces similar barriers to doing licensed radio, whether on commercial, public or even community stations, as are encountered by youth in relation to the ageism of conventional broadcasting.

At licensed campus/community radio stations, while the programmers are volunteers, management is typically paid. At Tree Frog where there are no managers, it is an all-volunteer affair. There is no paid staff and so it is all a labour of love (though not without a bit of ego thrown into the mix). All in all, we are a non-hierarchical and self-managing bunch. At this point, Tree Frog meetings (which are open to all programmers and technical support folks) are mainly concerned with making consensual decisions about programming schedules, community fundraisers and station maintenance. In the past more philosophical and sometimes contentious issues such as whether to accept local business sponsorship for individual programs as a way of fundraising or whether to apply for a low watt (5 watt probationary) license were passionately debated. Both ideas were rejected as inappropriate and unnecessary after much internal discussion. In terms of becoming licensed, as expected, not only was the anarchist contingent at the station opposed to going legit, but, for other programmers as well, attempting to become a legal station was generally considered to be too expensive, to involve too long a waiting period, and to be too bureaucratic a process to pursue.

By now the station flows pretty smoothly on its own steam with only occasional programmer meetings and the use of a Tree Frog email list for information-sharing and trouble-shooting. If an islander wants to do a show, we’ll find him/her a slot in the schedule, offer some technical training and put that person on air asap. And because we do not have scheduled programming 24 hours/7 days per week, aside from our publicized programming, we allow for sporadic unscheduled broadcasts by any of our deejays or guest deejays during times when none of our regular programmers are slated to do shows. Since there is no commercial advertising on the station, we rely on grassroots fundraising to pay the bills which now consist of $35 a month for electricity, and incidental costs incurred in maintaining, upgrading and replacing the equipment. The land on which our tiny trailer/studio sits has been donated to us rent-free, and the trailer itself was sold to us at a discounted rate by an islander who supported our efforts. Much of the consumer electronics that constitute our studio equipment have been scavenged (at the island “free store”), picked up cheap at a nearby thrift store, or were donated (mixer, cd players, turntable, mics, and tape decks). Other studio technology has been rebuilt (computer) or, like the mixer and turntable, were eventually purchased new after our original ones had died and could not be easily replaced. We even had a second transmitter donated to us for live remotes by the person who built it at a pirate radio workshop in Berkeley, California.

As to our monthly electricity costs, they are paid for by the recycling of bottles. The station has its own Tree Frog bin at the island recycling center, and anyone can support us by simply depositing their beer and wine bottles in our designated repository. Though all of the other bins are for legal community groups, from the theatre group to the land conservancy, no one seems to mind that we are illegal since its obvious that we are providing a service to the community and not harming anyone in the process. If someone disapproves, they can just put their bottles elsewhere. Since our bin is always full of bottles, either our usual compliment of 12-24 programmers are really heavy drinkers or the community must think we are doing something right.

At first we had to do fundraising to pay for the trailer and the original radio transmission technology (transmitter, antenna, power supply, compressor/limiter) at a total cost of around $1500, but by now our only fixed cost is electricity which tends to be payable through our recycling dividends, with the occasional fundraiser used to purchase a piece of equipment. These fundraisers have taken the form of dance parties which are deejayed by our programmers or themed sit-down dinner parties where the cooking is done by us. Both take place at the community hall as would be the case for any other island fundraiser. In each case the person who attends these grassroots fundraisers gets to participate in supporting the station while attending a community social event in return for their contribution to Tree Frog. In the ensuing direct interaction, we get to meet our listeners face-to-face, though the latter happens informally all the time at the local recycling centre, general store, bookstore, bakery or café as well. Typically, the station’s supporters use fundraising occasions to get an updated copy of the schedule, arrange to go on-air in the future themselves or tell us personally what they enjoy or find problematic about our shows (any complaints go directly to the programmer rather than to the station as a whole). We also get the occasional unsolicited personal check or cash (the latter is preferred since we have no bank account for obvious reasons) at these fundraising events. Yet, in the eyes of the Canadian government, we at Tree Frog are viewed as lawbreakers simply because we want to communicate with our neighbors without a license.

Because of our illegal status, and our desire to be “underground” but not entirely clandestine (as is evidenced by this article), we are aware that the possibility exists that we might be in danger of being shut down by Industry Canada, which is the enforcement arm of the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). However, the CRTC typically operates on a complaint-driven basis, except for when they accidentally come upon a station during their routine survey operations. Therefore, unless someone complains about a station’s existence, it is pretty safe. Industry Canada does not have the mandate, budget or staff to go around looking for pirate stations without a prior complaint. Complaints are typically from commercial broadcasters in relation to pirate signals that they contend are interfering with their licensed signal. Therefore, unless a pirate station is intentionally trying to interfere with the CBC or a corporate station’s signal (and most are not), the chances of drawing a complaint are relatively small, though the risk is still there. In fact, as chance would have it, official notice was taken of our radio broadcasts on one occasion. However, once we became aware of being monitored, before we could be found, we went off air temporarily, then resumed our broadcasts a few weeks later.

Another kind of possible complaint might come from unintentional interference with low power tourist information or emergency broadcast frequencies, and so care must be taken to avoid such problematic overlap. Finally, a disgruntled listener who is offended by a station’s programming and contacts the CRTC can ask them to shut down the station. In general, such complaints typically are the result of a listener being upset by political content, scatological language, denigrating personal innuendo, or can sometimes just stem from a grudge against one or more of the programmers. Rarely, do they take the form of a moral crusade against lawlessness.

At Tree Frog, we are not trying to intentionally interfere with another station’s broadcasts by crowding their frequency partly because that would interfere with ours as well, so complaints in that regard are less likely. Moreover, our visible role on the island means that we have confidence enough in community support to risk a complaint. Any islander who complained to the CRTC about us would be depriving the entire community of a cultural amenity that has become quite well entrenched as part of island life at this point. Consequently, they might think twice about attempting to shut us down. As we say, if you don’t like what’s on Tree Frog Radio, you can either become a programmer yourself, change the channel, shut it off, or just choose not to listen in the first place. In terms of the latter options, we do not lose any advertising revenue based on listenership statistics since there is no advertising. This in turn allows us not to have our programming options restricted by the constraints of marketing research studies and “audience share” data.

However, should Industry Canada for some reason be dispatched to come over to the island to ferret us out, warn us to cease and desist, close us down and/or confiscate our equipment; our first line of community self-defense is the ferry. Sympathetic ferrygoers are our early warning system that trouble might be headed our way in the form of an Industry Canada triangulator van. As it stands, whenever an Industry Canada vehicle is noticed getting on the ferry, we usually get a heads-up call from someone. Similarly, many islanders, though not themselves affiliated with the radio station, let us know that they have our backs when it comes to Industry Canada by alerting us as to when it might be prudent to temporarily go off-air while the feds are on-island on other business. For example, when the Industry Canada van is scheduled to be on island to check the volunteer fire department’s emergency broadcast signal, we usually find out about it through the grapevine so that we can lay low during their visit. And, of course, the various grassroots lines of defense publicly mentioned in the above paragraph do not include more covert means of obtaining sensitive information about regulatory surveillance or the use of subterfuge tactics to keep Industry Canada guessing about our location.

A Tree Frog in the Berry Patch of Anarchy

Tree Frog Radio is both a refusal and an affirmation. It is a refusal of the demeaning and disempowering passivity of the bureaucratic model of licensed mass communications, and it is an affirmation of an everyday anarchism that is rooted in mutual aid and individual freedom. While the squatted airwaves of pirate radio can be seen as an example of Ward’s “seed beneath the snow,” we can look to the ubiquitous on-island presence of the blackberry vine as a way of expanding upon that metaphor. Since wild blackberry seeds have a hard seed coat, they can remain dormant even under winter snow. Rather than constantly requiring cultivation during the growing season, the self-propagating nature of blackberries, implies instead the opening up of artificially enclosed space for wildness to flourish. New blackberry bushes can start not only from seeds (which are typically not planted but spread by animal droppings) but from subsurface rhizomes or crown regrowth.

Stephen Collis has expressed the affinity between the humble blackberry and anarchy in his poem, “Blackberries,” which he read here on-island one summer evening in 2007. Here is an excerpt:

the fruit which I celebrate

growing everywhere we cannot purchase

what no one owns shared

thus our blackberries remnant commonsⁱⁱ

Unlike the garden variety blackberry, which might be compared to licensed radio, the notoriously difficult to control wild blackberry which is capable of springing up anywhere, might be likened to the unruliness of the squatted frequencies of pirate radio. In essence, the gardener’s nightmare of a wild blackberry invasion might alternatively be understood as the gatherer’s utopian dream of Big Rock Candy Mountain ease and abundance. In fact, the relationship between the gardener and the gatherer are not necessarily mutually exclusive in that the same person might be engaged in both activities. One person’s steadfast commitment to gardening a plot of land need not be condemned in order to appreciate the wandering life of the gatherer and vice versa. For some, it is finding the right balance between the two which makes the whole meaningful.

In the case of Tree Frog Radio, it has been the community that has provided the space and the nurturing soil, with the spark of direct action generating enough light and heat to facilitate the initial growth. However, once up and running, like a spreading underground rhizome, the subversive tendrils of free radio can spontaneously proliferate with the brambled tenacity of wild island blackberries.

Ron Sakolsky

This article is dedicated to all Tree Frog programmers and our ace tech support crew for providing the energy which animates the station, and to our community which has enabled us to flourish. Personal thanks to all Tree Frog participants for their encouragement and support in the writing of this article, and particularly to Bruce, Jerry and Robert respectively for allowing me to quote their words on what the radio station means to them.

i Colin Ward. Anarchy in Action. London: Freedom Press, 1973/82, p. 14.

ii Stephen Collis. Blackberries. Toronto: Book Thug, 2005/06, pp. 15 and 35.

by Stephen Dunifer

In the international arena, free radio is the term best suited to describe the ongoing rebellion against not only control of the broadcast airwaves through licensure and sanctions, but the neo-liberal/free market paradigm as well. Entering the lexicon around the late 1960’s, the term free radio was used to describe the broadcasting efforts of offshore broadcasters such as Radio Caroline and Radio Veronica operating in Europe. Popular support was widespread for these “pirate” broadcasters who played music and aired programming not heard on the BBC and other state controlled services. Even community radio as a broadcast form did not exist in Europe at that time, and is still somewhat limited. Although specific details are often difficult to obtain on the global breadth and depth of free radio broadcasting, the picture that emerges is one of a very vibrant and universal movement. Unlike the rosters of community radio stations maintained by organizations such as the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), no central registry exists for free radio broadcast stations – due in large part to the elusive nature of the activity itself.

At its core, free radio is an expression of immediacy and a rejection of state and corporate control. From very early on, free radio has played a central role within popular struggles for liberation and self-determination internationally. Beginning in the late 1940’s, Bolivian tin miners began to create radio stations as part of a larger process to counter ongoing repression by autocratic government and military forces. Over a period of 20 years, approximately 30 radio stations were established in the highland mining communities of Bolivia, most of them after the successful social uprising of 1952 which led to nationalization of the mines. Despite their ultimate destruction following the military coup of 1981, the legacy of these stations remains as one of the most outstanding examples of grassroots radio in history. Apparently, this is still well understood in Bolivia where new community radio stations, now numbering about 30 with a goal of at least 50, are carrying on the already established tradition of street radio. During the indigenous protests that eventually culminated in the election of Evo Morales, street reporters and community radio stations played a vital role in maintaining and increasing the effectiveness of the protests, blockades and strikes. Unlike what might be termed NGO (non-governmental organization) radio, such grassroots radio stations do not originate under the auspices of a formal institution. Instead, they arise from the participatory process of the community itself. As in the case of the Bolivian tin miners and many other similar situations, free radio is a collective expression of the entire community. Full participation by the community is the heart of the radio station, not an afterthought or add-on as in the case of many so-called community radio stations.

Arising from the specific needs and issues of the community, free radio stations require no further legitimization other than that given by the communities creating them. Outside legitimization is only a means by which to throttle expression, limit participation and stifle content. It is one thing to declare that free speech and the right to communicate are human rights as stated by the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but quite another struggle to actually act on these principles and assert control over the means of communication. Further, free speech, like other fundamental rights, is an inalienable right. It is as connected to human nature as breathing. Inalienable rights exist a priori, no institution or state can grant or confer them. Suppression, control and disregard, or protection and guardianship, are the only options left to state and institutional actors.

Free radio has been integrated into a variety of popular struggles, from Radio Rebelde, established by Fidel Castro as part of the liberation of Cuba from Batista, to Radio Venceremos in El Salvador, and it has served as an important tool in the arsenal of the guerrilla forces fighting against the occupation of East Timor by Indonesia. It has become the voice of the favelas in Brazil where some 2000 free radio stations exist without government sanction or approval. When threatened with closure by government agencies, communities arise to defend their voices. Mass strike actions by taxi drivers forced the Taiwanese government to abandon its effort to shut down underground radio stations in the mid-1990s. On numerous occasions indigenous communities have put their bodies between their radio station and government forces attempting to shut them down. Following the Zapatista uprising in 1994, a subsequent call was made by Subcomandante Marcos in 1996 for the creation of an international network of grassroots media. In response, independent community media entered into a new period of revitalization and regrowth in step with a burgeoning anti-globalization movement. Many community voices had been silenced not at the point of a gun, but by neo-liberal polices which privatized the broadcast airwaves and mandated their sale to the highest bidder. A single FM frequency or channel for the entire country of El Salvador had a price tag of $100,000. Onerous regulatory policies combined with civil and monetary sanctions were brought to bear against any community laboring under the assumption they had the right of free speech and expression.

For those who resist, the steel fist of state-sanctioned police or military violence rests within the velvet glove of neo-liberalism and is enforced by a global corporate mafia. A handsome profit has been made in selling crowd suppression technology, gear and weapons to both developing and first world countries as mass protests against corporate globalization and neo-liberal policies have broken out on an international scale. Close on the heels of the arms merchants came the lawyers and consultants representing private security firms and mercenaries for hire. To avoid an embarrassing repeat of the shutdown of the WTO in Seattle, steel cordons were raised in Genoa, Prague, Cancun, and dozens of other cities to protect the elite gatherings of the G8 or WTO from the masses who were insisting that another world was possible. Yet, unlike people, radiowaves cannot be easily fenced out. This is a primary reason why free radio is considered an ominous threat by those who wish to maintain their reign of domination and control. After all, the first paragraph in the Dictatorship for Dummies book states: “Seize the radio stations dummy.” A slogan that evolved with Free Radio Berkeley goes like this – “If you cannot communicate, you cannot organize; if you cannot organize, you cannot fight back; and, if you cannot fight back, you have no hope of winning.”

It may be difficult for people of First World media-saturated countries to understand the importance of free radio and community broadcasting to social movements abroad. For example, during the mid-1990’s, a broadcast station was set up in the northern coastal farming area of Haiti. As part of a larger movement for land reform, this station began broadcasting what the market prices for crops should be in Creole, the native language. To many, no big deal, just a farm report. However, for the farmers, it was the difference between barely making it and not making it at all. It was common practice for crop buyers to cheat the farmers by lying to them about what the market prices were. Without any means of knowing otherwise, the farmers undersold their crops. This practice came to a grinding halt when the farmers were informed of what the actual market prices were. Rich landowners and agricultural businessmen, threatened by these circumstances and increasing incidents of land seizure by the peasants, hired local police to destroy the radio station and kidnap its principal organizer, the mayor of the town who was one of the leaders of the land reform movement. Despite the destruction of the station and the wounding of a night watchman, the mayor eluded capture. After the situation had calmed down a bit, the mayor demanded compensation from the government for the loss of the equipment and facility. Surprisingly, he eventually received it, enough to replace the equipment and even buy a more powerful transmitter. For some, radio is just entertainment, for others it is a lifeline.

Within the context of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas constituting themselves as one large community without borders and asserting their sovereignty, free radio and community broadcasting is construed as yet another sovereign right. With homes and villages destroyed by mud slides, rivers and lakes polluted, cancer rates off the charts, mountains ripped open and laid bare and forests stripped – indigenous people are all too well aware of their role as the canary in the coal mine of neo-liberal/free market fundamentalism. Moreover, free radio is a means by which they can preserve their languages and cultures and sovereignty. For indigenous people, the ability to communicate is a matter of life and death.

Nowhere has this struggle to communicate been more dramatically played out than recently within the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Mere coincidence cannot explain the fact that the poorest state in Mexico, Oaxaca, also has the highest percentage of indigenous people. During the early hours of June 14, 2006, 3000 state police armed with truncheons and shields carried out the order of Oaxacan Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, to disperse the teachers union(APPO) and break up their encampments (plantons) in the City of Oaxaca. Special attention was paid to Radio Planton operating at the center of the encampments in the zocolo (city center) – which was attacked and destroyed by the state police. This naked display of violence lit the fuse of resentment and rebellion on the part of indigenous communities who had been exploited and marginalized for generations. What began as an annual protest occupation by APPO in the capitol of Oaxaca quickly grew into a full-blown state of insurrection. Showing their resolve, the teachers and their community supporters retook the zocolo after the police retreated.

Radio Planton, originally conceived in 1998 by the teachers union, began its first broadcast in the city of Oaxaca on the morning of May 23, 2005 at 94.1 MHz as a voice for not only the teachers but the community as a whole. It quickly became broadly reflective of the diverse aspects and nature of Oaxacan society with 70 percent of the programming being representative of that larger community. After the attack of June 14, the local university’s two radio stations, one FM and the other AM, became the voice of the teachers and community – Radio Universidad. Responding to broadcasts on Radio Universidad for massive nonviolent civil disobedience, virtually all government buildings in the City of Oaxaca were shut down by either occupations or blockades. Constructed of everything from bricks to burned-out cars and buses, barricades appeared on every major street. Government city halls and other buildings were taken over in 25 other towns as well. Thus began what was to be called the Oaxaca commune. On August 1, 2006, 2000 women marched to the state TV Channel 9 facility to demand an hour of airtime so that their truth would be told. Rebuffed but not stymied, the women took over the facility which included one FM and one AM station as well. In so doing, they wrote another chapter in the history of people, and most particularly women, seizing the means of communications and reclaiming what is theirs. By evening the women were broadcasting on Channel 9 with demands for the resignation of the governor. Videos by indigenous community members followed the initial broadcast. For the next approximately 3 weeks, the indigenous communities saw what they have never seen before on channel 9—themselves!

In response to the occupation, armed paramilitaries and police attacked the main transmitter and support equipment for Channel 9 in the early morning hours of August 21. High velocity bullets ripped into equipment, effectively putting Channel 9 off the air for the duration. One person was wounded. As the word spread about this attack, a spontaneous movement seized 12-15 commercial radio stations in Oaxaca City. Expecting to be attacked at any time, neighborhoods and communities throughout Oaxaca City organized a complex network of barricades and notification systems such as bells or fireworks to warn of an impending attack by the police and/or paramilitaries. The people were in control and the official government no longer functioned in many parts of the state of Oaxaca. Humiliated by the turn of events, the governor and his allies in both the Mexican government and private sector commenced a “dirty war” against the popular assembly movement. Reminiscent of similar tactics employed in Central America in the 1980s, people were “disappeared” and became targets of “random” shootings. One of the victims of this “dirty war” was Brad Will, an American journalist, reporter for Indymedia and documentary filmmaker. He was shot and killed on October 27, 2006 by police and paramilitaries acting on behalf of the governor. Interestingly enough, Brad had been involved in the creation of a free radio station, Steal This Radio, in New York City in the mid-1990s. Increasing numbers of Federal troops were brought in to crush the popular rebellion. Finally, a force numbering approximately 4000 were dispatched in November 2006 to recapture Oaxaca City and return it to “normalcy.” Despite repeated attacks, including being strafed with bullets, Radio Universidad continued to broadcast until the very end as the voice of the Oaxaca commune. Police forces were never able to invade and shut down the station. Fierce and determined resistance prevented federal police from entering the university. Free radio stations were operating in other communities as well. Trying to copy the radio efforts of the popular assembly movement, the political party of the governor, the PRI, put its own station on the air as part of a disinformation campaign.

It would be impossible to properly cover all aspects of what transpired in Oaxaca during this period within the context of this chapter. Although widely covered by independent media outlets and progressively-oriented Mexican newspapers such as La Jornada, mainstream sources both outside of and inside Mexico were virtually silent. When they did choose to speak, it was to blame the popular movement for the violence and provide cover for the actions of the governor and the police. In Mexico, the television broadcast media outlets are controlled by only two entities – Telvisa and Azteca. Being both pro-corporate and pro-government, neither entity will ever speak truth to power, contenting themselves to be stenographers for the elite and to continue their efforts to pacify the population with a plethora of mindless entertainment. Although the dominant population of Mexico is indigenous, they are rarely seen or heard in the established Mexican media. When they do make an appearance, it is usually to be portrayed in a negative light. A rigid caste system has existed in Mexico since the arrival of the Spanish colonizers. This underscores the importance of what has transpired with the popular assembly movement in Oaxaca and why free radio stations in the hands of indigenous communities are a vital part of the ongoing struggle for self-determination and freedom whose narrative cannot simply be fit into a preordained leftist mold.

Overall, media policy in Mexico is in a rather retrograde position when compared to other countries in Latin America – even Columbia saw the necessity for community radio and recently issued hundreds of blanket licenses. Community radio had essentially been considered illegal until new legislation made some provisions to legalize it. To be expected, most existing community radio stations were not invited to the table to discuss the provisions of this legislation. While the South American division of AMARC has a progressive and radical history, the same cannot be said of the Mexican branch. Instead, the Mexican representative of AMARC interjected herself and a handpicked group of delegates from a small number of stations into the process. An onerous arrangement resulted in half of about 15 community radio stations being shut down as part of the deal, another indicator of why not to necessarily trust in NGO representatives who can have their own agendas and self-promotion as their primary operating principles.

It is clear that both indigenous communities and popular assemblies and movements in Mexico, and Oaxaca specifically, have not been waiting for legitimization by any entity, government or otherwise. In Oaxaca, as of May 2009, there were dozens of free community radio stations on the air, with 150-200 stations operating in the entire country. Radio Planton returned to the air in early 2007. When you ask these communities about the importance of their radio stations, some common themes emerge. They are means by which to preserve language and culture, to bring news and information to the community, to organize against further exploitation and stealing of resources, to empower women and children to have a voice, and to entertain with music and stories. Because of their power, there are various actors who will kill to silence them. Two women working with Radio Copala, the voice of the Triqui community of San Juan Copala, were murdered on April 7, 2008 by seven gunmen wielding AK47s. Their car was ambushed while they were on their way to a community radio workshop in Oaxaca City. Two other people in the car were injured and a four-year old child barely escaped harm. Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists and media activists.

Based on my own personal experiences in conducting transmitter building workshops in Mexico, there is both a pressing need and demand to establish more free radio stations, not only in Mexico but throughout the world. Primarily, the obstacles to an even more vigorous growth of community broadcasting are funding, training and support. In January 2007, Free Radio Berkeley’s Project TUPA (Transmitters Uniting the Peoples of the Americas) in conjunction with local organizations and people, conducted two 5-day transmitter building and radio station creation workshops in Oaxaca City. Attended by about 50 people, mostly in their early twenties (some younger, some a bit older), who represented 24 Oaxacan communities, these technical workshops were accompanied by evening sessions on the social aspects of community radio and provided the represented communities with the knowledge and equipment to establish their own radio stations. With small grants and personal donations totaling around $12,000-$14,000 in US dollars to cover both equipment costs and operational expenses such as food and rental of facilities, these workshops proved to be very cost effective – 24 radio stations for an average cost of about US$600 per station. As proven in Oaxaca, radio has an immediacy and flexibility that no other medium possesses. All you need is a transmitter, a properly situated antenna, a mixer, 1 or 2 microphones and a CD player or mp3 pocket player. Put everything on a table, make your connections, position the antenna and go on the air within 15 minutes. Anyone within range with a radio is a potential listener. Some have suggested that radio is no longer necessary now that we have the internet. Such a view is dangerously naïve. Sever a few critical fiber optical cables and there goes the network. Further, it is very First World-centric. For the equivalent cost of 1 or 2 computers (US$1000-$1500), a complete radio station covering a radius of 8-10 miles can be established.

Future Directions in Technology

As the June 2009 social unrest in Iran underscores, not enough emphasis can be placed on the necessity of having a decentralized means of communications. With the digerati extolling the role and impact of social networking sites, cell phones, and PDAs on the ongoing protests in Iran, an obvious weakness of these centralized networks has been exposed for all of those who care to examine it. Iran’s communications network, installed by a joint venture of Nokia and Siemens, came with a monitoring centre whose capabilities include the examination and control of every byte of data passing through it. A process called deep packet inspection allows for the ability to troll for keywords and block any communications containing those words. This is far more insidious and effective than merely blocking specific internet site locations which are assigned a unique address known as an IP address. IP address blocking can be countered by the deploying of proxy servers with constantly changing IP addresses, an activity cyber-activists have been engaged in to support the protests in Iran. Further, most cell phones now come with GPS receivers, which allow for the user’s location to be immediately known whether the cell phone is turned off or on. Older model cell phones can be tracked by tower triangulation. Software programs can be downloaded on cell phones to turn them into monitoring devices for any conversations taking place within the range of the microphone, all without the permission or awareness of the user. Such technologies may be much more Faustian than utopian, especially in light of programs such as Echelon and the installation of FBI black box taps (known as Carnivore) on the servers of every internet service provider.

Within this specific context, free radio becomes all the more important because it cannot be centrally controlled and shut down. Every tool has both strengths and limitations and any intelligent user of media tools must recognize this fact. Reliance on any one tool is foolish and shortsighted. Further innovations must be created and established to put technology to work for people and communities. Cory Doctorow, in his sci-fi novel, Little Brother (New York: Macmillan/Tor-Forge Books, 2008), shows a possible way forward with the development of extranets – local wireless mesh networks that allow for regional and local communications. Created with inexpensive wifi transceivers and software for self-configuration, extranets are a way for local control of communications to be exerted. Software defined radio receivers are yet another emerging possibility.

It cannot be denied that the internet has made the world much smaller in many ways and allowed information and news to flow in ways unimaginable a decade ago. Equally important to consider though is that information without context is propaganda. De-contextualization is a primary means of control. Free radio is able to provide context in an immediate and direct manner. As part of a synergistic deployment of media and communications controlled by people, not corporations and government, free radio is a plant which only needs further watering and propagation to blossom and maximize its inherent possibilities. Let a thousand transmitters blossom!

Originally appeared as a chapter in Islands of Resistance - Pirate Radio In Canada by Andrea Langlois, Ron Sakolsky and Marian van der Zon. 

The Low Power FM Deception

In response to the recent decision by the Federal Communications Commission to expand the LPFM broadcast service based on the Local Community Radio Act of 2010

by Stephen Dunifer

Free Radio Berkeley

xmtrman@pacbell.net


www.freeradio.org

Despite the well-intentioned efforts of organizations such as Prometheus Radio Project and Free Press to reform the media landscape, these efforts have only played into the hands of the government and the corporations who control it. This is the nature of reform, nothing more than a discussion about how to make the jail cell more comfortable - leaving intact the established relationships of power, control and finance. In the case of Prometheus Radio Project, they have fallen victim to their own historical revisionism, forgetting it was a national campaign of electronic disobedience (the Free Radio Movement) that forced the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revisit the issue of low power community broadcasting. Hardly a gesture of beneficence from then FCC chairman William Kennard who began his legal career with a 1 year fellowship from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), assuming the role of assistant general counsel for the NAB shortly thereafter. Moving on from there, he made partner in a DC law firm (i.e. lobbyists) representing corporate communications interests prior to being appointed FCC Chairman by Bill Clinton in 1997. Currently, he is the Managing Director for the Global Telecom and Media Group of the Carlyle Group. It was Bill Clinton who signed the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996, leading to an intense period of further media consolidation and control.

As a whole, the Free Radio Movement was not interested in a few crumbs off the table or an extremely thin slice of the pie — it wanted the entire bakery! The airwaves belonged to the people and the people were going to take them back. Despite its own particular shortcomings, this movement, over a period of less than 10 years, was able to elevate the discussion of media ownership and control to both a national and an international level. Although it did not blossom into a movement until 1993, it owed much to the slightly earlier efforts of radio radicals such as Black Rose, Bill Dugan, Mbanna Kantako, and Tetsuo Kogawi. During this period, normally not well known academic authors and media critics such as Robert McChesney were finally able to find a national platform for their views on media consolidation.

With a history beginning in the early days of radio broadcasting, radio as a tool of popular liberation, struggle and expression has always been the instrument of choice whether as: a voice of US labor in the 1920’s; part of the Resistance during WWII; an expression of the Bolivian tin miners’ struggles in the 1950’s; Radio Rebelde, the voice of the Cuban Revolution; radio ships blasting rock and roll into the British Isles when the BBC refused to play such music; the pirate radio explosion in Europe during the 1970’s and 1980’s; and, Radio Venceremos and Radio Farabundo Marti in El Salvador during the Central American “Dirty Wars” of the 1980’s.

It was this spirit that attracted many individuals and communities to the Free Radio Movement. Although the campaign of electronic civil disobedience did not get really rolling until early 1995, when a Federal Judge refused the FCC’s motion for a preliminary injunction to shut down Free Radio Berkeley, broadcasting stations started taking to air soon after Free Radio Berkeley received widespread publicity in 1993. Unlicensed FM radio broadcast station took to the airwaves across the breadth of the US and divergent areas such as: the traffic medians of Mexico City and Haitian Slums. From the beginning, Free Radio stations operated by communities of color received a rather disproportionate degree of enforcement action by the FCC.

Faced with a radio rebellion, the FCC and National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) responded with the expected heavy hand of repression – the NAB is considered to be the most powerful lobbying group in DC since their member control any given politician’s face time in the media. For the FCC, this consisted of raiding stations and threatening the levying of high fines against anyone who had the temerity to believe that the airwaves belonged to the people. A laughably histrionic PR campaign was waged against the Free Radio Movement by the NAB – one claim being that the proliferation of unlicensed stations would literally cause airplanes to fall from the sky. To many, it seemed possible the NAB might consider the hiring of private mercenaries to deal with the situation if their PR efforts and the enlisting of local radio stations in an overall campaign against Free Radio Stations failed to stem the tide. During the course of their convention in 1998 where they were met with organized demonstrations for Free Speech on the airwaves, an NAB daily trade publication stated that they had originally considered one of the leaders of the Free Radio Movement to be just a minor annoyance, but in light of the protests on their doorstep in Las Vegas, he was now considered to be a major threat.

In fact, this sort of kick-down-the-doors, SWAT team mentality lead to the early retirement of the head of the San Francisco FCC field office during the mid 90’s. He was perceived by his superiors at the FCC as being too much of a loose cannon. (Although, this did not prevent an actual multi-jurisdictional SWAT raid on the home of a Tampa Radio broadcaster, Doug Brewer.) Despite immense efforts and resources, both the FCC and NAB lost the PR battle, as far as the court of public opinion was concerned.

Most likely, cooler heads prevailed at the FCC who told the NAB to back off and allow them to handle the situation in a time tested manner – co-option. Given the trend, it was likely a full-fledged Federal Court victory would be given to the Free Radio Movement – almost achieved in the case against Free Radio Berkeley. A Waterloo moment the FCC sought to avoid at all costs.

Combining co-option with an another trusty tool, divide and conquer, the FCC announced that it would establish a Low Power FM (LPFM) broadcast service, but anyone who had been engaged in unsanctioned acts of broadcasting would not be eligible for a possible future LPFM license. In other words, go off the air now if you ever have any hope obtaining a license at some indeterminate point in the future. To be expected, quite a number of Free Radio folks responded with a resounding “F” you. Other stations went dark.

In typical fashion, the FCC created a rather difficult and costly (at least in terms of what it cost to set up a Free Radio Station - $1000 to $2000) LPFM license application process in 1999. Of course, the NAB got its Congress Critters (the lobbying probably carried out by the FCC Chairman’s former law firm) to immediately to pass a bill ironically titled the The Broadcast Preservation Act of 1999. This bill severely curtailed the number of LPFM stations by imposing upon them harsher technical standards than were applied to non-LPFM stations – thus preventing any stations from being established in urban areas of any size.

Some former broadcasters (labeled pirate by both the FCC and NAB) decided to unfurl the Jolly Roger, sheath the broadswords and spike the cannons, seeking a less confrontational approach by organizing the Prometheus Radio Project to assist communities with the LPFM application process and station building. Unfortunately, they engaged in more than a modicum of historical revisionism in attempt to cast off their past and make themselves more appealing to funding organizations such as the Ford Foundation, who are more than skittish about “illegitimate activities”. These same foundations fund a number of so-called progressive voices, considered by a number of folks to be information gatekeepers.

According to the Prometheus narrative, the entire LPFM service, limited as it was, came about as a result of a reasonable and fair-minded FCC chairman William Kennard seeing the need for such a service. Given his corporate background, pigs were much more likely to fly. Such a narrative was a disservice and an affront to the many people, communities and their supporters and legal groups such as the National Lawyers Guild who had put so much on the line in the cause of Free Speech.

Unprepared to the handle the large number of LPFM applications, it took the FCC an inordinately long time to grant LPFM construction permits and licenses to community organizations who had managed to deal with the entire process. Several large national religious organizations contributed more than their fair share to the confusion by filing hundreds of what amounted to be bogus applications on behalf of local religious groups who had no idea what LPFM was or that someone else had filed in their name.

During this period much of the energy of the Free Radio Movement dissipated due to a number of factors. Engaging in media reform was more appealing and less risky than electronic civil disobedience. The established, progressive left never accepted the Free Radio Movement - concerned about image and offending Democrat Party associated foundations, the source of much of their funding. Being a rather diverse amalgam of anarchists, DIY punks, community activists, libertarians, 60’s radicals and contrarians with very little in the way of funding and resources, the Free Radio Movement was not able to create a more evolved, comprehensive and unified strategy, moving beyond the more immediate aspects of putting FM broadcast stations on the air.

Despite these shortcomings, the Free Radio Movement made a number of significant contributions to the media landscape. One being the idea of sharing media content, specifically MP3 audio, via the internet several years prior to Napster and podcasting becoming household words. Instead of audio cassettes being mailed between radio stations, an audio content sharing website, Radio4all.net, was established to facilitate the sharing of radio programs. Radio4all.net is still going strong today with thousands of audio programs available for download. This ultimately led to the concept of the open publishing model being applied to all types of media – the basis for the Independent Media Centers. In collaboration with Wired magazine, some the first webcasts of live radio were made from the studios of Free Radio Berkeley. Finally, the first time a webcast had been made of a political protest occurred when live audio from a demonstration outside the Berkeley studios of KPFA in 1999 was relayed by a small FM transmitter supplied by Free Radio Berkeley to a nearby receiver feeding the audio to a computer audio server.

An embryonic LPFM service presented a number of challenges to the Free Radio Movement. Many folks felt this was a small victory but more concessions from the FCC should be demanded. During the commentary phase prior to the official launch of the LPFM broadcast service, the FCC received thousands of letters and such. From the point of view of the Free Radio Movement, if such a service was going to established, it would have to be totally non-commercial, locally owned and controlled and structured in a manner to be as financially and technically feasible as possible for grassroots organizations. Further, with the advent of digital TV (an 80 billion dollar give away of spectrum) looming on the horizon, a demand was made for the ultimate expansion of non-commercial FM broadcasting into VHF TV channels 5 and 6 (to be abandoned when the digital transition to UHF channels took place), thereby adding 60 new FM channels to the broadcast spectrum. Needless to say, this has yet to implemented – the phrase “a snowball’s chance in hell” is appropriate.

A general consensus along with a good deal of grumbling emerged from the Free Radio Movement along the lines of - we will accept LPFM, but the war is not over. At that point, two divergent currents emerged. One being the folks who decided they would keep putting stations on the air no matter what and the other represented by the Prometheus Radio Project. A third wave consisted of people who held a more ecumenical position of maintaining the need for a continuing campaign of electronic civil disobedience while at the same time providing whatever assistance they could to communities who wished to engage in the LPFM process. If a few deserving communities could establish a voice with an LPFM station, then that was all for the greater good of media democracy and Free Speech.

The Prometheus Radio Project did their best to create a firewall between itself and the notion of electronic civil disobedience. Inherently, this is the genesis of the title of this article – the LPFM deception. It was a deception on a number of levels. By distancing themselves from civil disobedience the Prometheus Project deceived itself into thinking it could prevail on the policy level with out the threat of street heat. Instead it found itself in a protracted, decade long legislative struggle to expand the LPFM service. By what amounted to a legislative miracle, they did prevail with the passage of the Community Radio Act of 2010. As a result, the FCC will open the window for new LPFM applications in the Fall of 2013. In addition, in coalition with a number of other organizations, they were able to beat back an effort by the FCC for further media deregulation. Ultimately, their strategy may have worked, but at what cost?

By focusing primarily on the legislative level and achieving legitimacy, another deception has taken place - that being to limit the imaginative possibilities grassroots broadcasting offers. Imagine this, non-union workers are demonstrating outside of a Wall Mart armed with the usual picket signs, leaflet and megaphones. But wait, there are also large signs being held up at key points in the parking lot and entry points on nearby roads. These signs say “Tune to 87.9”. A transmitter has been set up nearby in a van or car to broadcast a continuously looping message at the frequency of 87.9 MHz – an electronic leaflet. Workers who are supportive can listen to the broadcast in the safety of their cars without risking their jobs by being seen by management taking a leaflet directly from the folks on the picket line. Drivers going by can tune to the station to hear about what is happening, hard to hand a physical leaflet to car going by at 35 MPH. Drive by Radio. This is one of many possibilities. Temporary stations pop up at community gatherings such as flea markets, concerts and farmers’ markets. All schools, senior and community centers and libraries should have their own stations as well, an impossibility under the current regime imposed by the FCC.

Another not so obvious self-imposed deception concerns the exact nature of a broadcast license. At the most fundamental level, a license is a business law contract between an individual acting on his own behalf or on the behalf of an organization and the government agency issuing the license. It does not matter whether it is a fishing license, driver’s license or broadcasting license. Signing the license form is an implicit abandonment of normally protected rights and presumption of innocence. Possession of a broadcast license allows the FCC to regulate speech (the 7 dirty words), issue fines without any proof other than their say so and enter the station premises at any time without notice or search warrant. Further, fines and penalties cannot be adjudicated at a local Federal District Court. They must first be appealed through a serpentine process within the FCC itself prior to seeking any other legal remedy. After exhausting all administrative remedies within the FCC, the appeal process is then handed off to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Washington, DC – arguably one of the most conservative and reactionary court districts in the US. Needless to say, the FCC appeal process is an exhaustive and expensive journey. Individuals operating a Free Radio station without sanction or license retain their basic rights of Free Speech, presumption of innocence and protection from unlawful search and seizure – at least in theory with what is left of the Bill of Rights.

At another level, it is deceptive thinking to assume that what the FCC has offered us is the best that can be achieved. Yes, an additional 800 LPFM stations is a good thing, depending who ends up with licenses. The major issue of who owns the airwaves has yet to be resolved in any meaningful way, however. Leading to the more general question of who is going to control and own the Commons – the people or the corporations? The current chairman of the FCC is putting forth a proposal that would allow one corporation to own 8 radio stations, 2 TV stations, one newspaper and internet access in any given market area. By taking the strategy of electronic civil disobedience off of the table, the FCC, in relative peace, can continue to being a captive protector of the corporations it is supposed to regulate.

One could take the cynical position of radio broadcasting does not matter, being a legacy technology in this new era of internet information and such. But the reality is that if they come for my radio in the morning, they will come for your internet in the afternoon. Free Speech is anathema to the state and the corporations it serves. Remember, it was just recently proposed to give the White House an internet kill switch. Events taking place in the Middle East over the last few years demonstrate what happens when governments feel threatened by popular movements and revolt – they shut down the entire communications network, forcing a return to the use of legacy technologies such as fax, packet radio, dial-up ISPs, etc. Imagine the consequences if folks in those countries had had portable FM transmitters with laptop studios ready to go. All the various forms of communications do not exist in isolation from one another. They must be combined together to form a synergistic whole, as the Independent Media Centers have demonstrated, to achieve their full potential as a tools for personal and collective liberation.

While the potential addition of 800 or so new LPFM stations is to be welcomed, it remains to seen as to whether radical and grassroots communities will find a voice by this means. It is a matter that will require a high degree of organizing and the establishing of coalitions on an unprecedented level. Finally, one must avoid self-deception by not seeing LPFM as a final victory, but rather one battle of a continuing war for not only the broadcast airwaves but the entire Commons.

This letter was posted to the editor of NewsStreamz.com in San Marcos, Texas by Joe Ptak, one of the founders of KIND Radio, on July 24, 2008

Dear Editor, I would like to correct the record concerning the recent news release about the City of San Marcos’ new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Low Power FM (LPFM) Radio Permit and give y’all a little bit of history on the issue as well as make a suggestion on the matter.

The first thing I need to correct was San Marcos Spokesman Ken Bell saying that there is no commercial radio station in San Marcos. I can understand his ignorance because the San Marcos FCC Commercial Radio Permit is held by 103.5 BOB-FM and Bob is an absentee landlord who talks at our community not with us. Unfortunately, Bob is more concerned with his image and Austin advertising dollars rather than the state of the San Marcos River.

That is one of the reasons that in March, 1997, the Hays County Guardian reclaimed the LPFM airwaves for the benefit of the citizens of San Marcos and ran a non-commercial, bilingual, public access community radio station relying on donations and volunteers to broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a new show starting every two hours for 3 1/2 years.

The mission of Kind Radio was to defend the liberty of San Marcos residents by providing local community access to speech about matters of the highest public concern, political and economic reform, cultural and historical perspectives and information about local and international environmental issues.

The second correction I need to make is the City’s claim to have applied for the permit in 1999. That would have been impossible because the FCC only accepted LPFM applications from Texas between June 11-15, 2001. During that week the City was joined by the Hays County Guardian, Earth First! Texas State (SWT at the time) Federation, Nosotros La Gente, Dave Newman, and a kid from Wimberley who’s name I can’t remember right now in filing applications seeking the San Marcos LPFM permit.

I found it ironic that Mr. Bell came up with the bright idea of an emergency radio station during the 1998 flood because for thousands of San Marcians that flood crystallized the arguments in favor of LPFM.

I would also like to note for Mr. Bell that even though no radio station with commercials like KTSW and BOB-FM helped out in the flood, there was fortunately non-commercial Kind Radio operating to provide a lifeline to those stranded and a way for families to account for each other. For hour after hour citizens called Kind Radio through the night and days that followed to share information regarding the conditions in their area, alert emergency personnel to people who needed to be rescued, report road and school closings, shelter locations, phone numbers for emergency and disaster relief agencies, and to share the tale of the “floating pumpkins.”

That San Marcians were able to share a little bit of comical relief even in the most distressing of times showed the true heart and character of our community.

The reason Kind was so effective during the flood was because the community had become accustomed to tuning in regularly to find out what was going on that day socially, culturally and politically, so for many San Marcians when the flood hit and they turned on the radio, Kind Radio was already tuned in.

Kind Radio allowed our community to talk to each other during good times as well as bad and allowed the diverse segments of our community to share their experiences and argue over their differences of opinion in an open forum without time constraints. We were also blessed to be exposed to the immense wealth of talent which resides in our neighbors and we all take for granted.

From live musical performances by Blue October, Shelly King and Ray Wiley Hubbard to Heads Up! news alerts, ravings from “the Rock” with Pappy, children’s tales of Bones, rhyming and Rolling with Dough, amazing prophesies of Captain Conspiracy, cautionary tales of Ripple and Colonel Forbin, acerbic ranting of the Village Idiot, musica exotica del mundo, even the expletive deleted on Jodi’s World, I could go on and on to most importantly live open phone interviews with candidates for public office, Kind Radio expressed the passions of our community without commercial interruption.

Can anyone who heard it live forget the “Greatest Mayoral Debate of the 20th Century”?

I believe that the thousands of people who fought for the right to broadcast on LPFM in San Marcos should be respected and represented.

I request that the City set up a Radio Board to coordinate public access programming. The Board should consist of one representative from each group which competed with the City for the LPFM permit, the Hays County Guardian, Nosotros La Gente, Earth First! Texas State Federation and Dave Newman and one member appointed by the Mayor and each City Councilman. If that kid from Wimberley is still around and interested he should get a seat on the Board too.

While the City decides the type of radio station San Marcians will have , please don’t be like Bob. Be Kind.
Yours in Free Speech,

Joe Ptak

This email was recently received.  The senders name was removed by request:

When I sat down at my computer a few minutes ago, I was looking for an FM
Radio transmitter that would satisfy a yearning to hear my music whilst I
mowed my 2-acre lawn.  Since I visited your website, It has turned into a
very emotional “NOW I’M PISSED OFF AT THE FUCKING FCC EVEN MORE” attitude.
NOW I want 500 watts, and fuck the license. 

Let me tell you why it’s odd.

I spent almost half my life in the Air Force, taking orders, giving
orders, but specifically OBEYING orders.  I felt that this was best for my
country.  Now I am A TELEVISION ENGINEER.  Since I got this job, I thought
that the FCC was NOT quite all there.  i.e a few cards short of a deck.
With the Digital transition, I believe even more that they are raging dolts.
They just refuse to think things out before making decisions.  They have not
addressed LPTV or Translator stations AT ALL, and refuse to comment when
asked.  This really pisses me off, as I personally assume responsibility for
one translator, and the community it serves. 

Now do you think it’s odd that a law abiding television engineer would be so
mad at the organization that keeps him employed?

So you’ll know for future reference, I’m on your side.  I will always be a
supporter of free speech, provided it does not interfere with someone else’s
freedom, even if they have lots of money and own many radio or television
stations.  That’s the beauty of the whole idea.  If nobody gets stepped on,
then nobody complains.  Or at least they shouldn’t have the right to
complain.

For the record: I still intend to obey the FCC’s regulations with my
television station, even if I think they’re stupid.  I will do this because
I’m not the only employee.  My translator will continue on transmitting on
Channel Eleven with a Digital to Analog adapter on it’s input.  I will not
let the people of the community it serves down.  They cannot see our digital
or analog transmitter as they are in a deep valley, and the translator is
their only connection to the rest of the state.

Thank you for being there today, and I extend my best wishes that you
continue.  Right now I’m going to continue looking for an FM transmitter,
but my requirements have now changed.  I WAS looking for a small 1/4 watt
Stereo unit.  Now I want at least 2 watts.

NPR’s war on Low Power FM: the laws of physics vs. politics

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080427-nprs-war-on-low-power-fm-the-laws-of-physics-vs-politics.html

By Matthew Lasar
Published: April 27, 2008 

National Public Radio continues to move aggressively against Federal Communications Commission proposals that would, if not allow nonprofits to build more Low Power FM stations (LPFM), at least let existing ones survive the intrusion of new full power neighbors. NPR is quite plain about the matter in its FCC filings: it stands opposed to the Low Power exceptions, even though they might help keep FM offerings diverse. NPR charges that the FCC is putting feel-good policies ahead of the laws of physics.

“The laws of physics have not changed, and a system of full power broadcast stations serves many more listeners with less interference compared to low power broadcasting,” NPR told the FCC this month. “While LPFM stations may advance the interests of localism and diversity, the Commission cannot assume that LPFM is inherently better than full power service.”

NPR opposes proposals to strengthen rules allowing LPFMs to obtain channel interference waivers when an “encroaching” full power station arrives on the scene. And the broadcaster decidedly dislikes measures that would require new full power signals to offer technical and even financial help to an LPFM that they’ve suddenly squatted on (or squatted next to).

This is a serious issue, because over the last decade the NPR service has expanded from 635 to 800 affiliated stations. Public radio’s stance on this puts it at odds with practically every media reform group in the country. But first, let’s recap the history of this bitter struggle, which goes back almost a decade.

A victory deferred

After years of highly-publicized battles between pirate radio stations and the FCC, agency Chair William Kennard’s Commission in 2000 set up some rules to establish two classes of LFPMs: an LP100 class with a maximum of 100 watts of power and an LP10 class with a limit of ten watts. License applicants for this new service had to honor various limits: nonprofit status and a “second adjacent” rule which meant that an LPFM could not set itself up within two channel notches of a full power station.

The FCC established that restraint in defiance of National Public Radio and the National Association of Broadcasters. Both entities demanded that a three notch No Man’s Land be thrown up around a full power signal. NPR pursued this goal with particular vigor, going so far as to suggest that the FCC disregarded laboratory tests that showed that LPFM stations without third adjacent restrictions would interfere with its member stations. Nonetheless, the agency stood these accusations down. It concluded that “imposition of a third-adjacent channel separation requirement would restrict unnecessarily the number of LPFM stations that could be authorized.”

So the big guys raised hell and asked Congress to stomp the FCC’s 2000 Order. Capitol Hill complied with a rider to a District of Columbia appropriations bill that instructed the FCC to put that third adjacent rule in there, despite the FCC’s own conclusions.

This was a big setback for LPFM, because it meant that significantly fewer such stations could be licensed in more densely-populated areas. As the FCC later conceded, various “otherwise technically grantable applications” became “short spaced,” prompting “the eventual dismissal of those applications.” The agency subsequently canceled 17 licenses and almost 100 construction permits “for failure of the holder to satisfy certain procedural and/or technical requirements.”

The DC Congressional rider did contain one silver lining. It authorized the FCC to commission an engineering study on the third adjacent problem, which the government did. The wheels of agency process moved slowly, but they moved. A little over two years later the Mitre Corporation submitted a report on the second/third adjacent problem, from which the FCC once again drew the conclusion that the third adjacent rule was not necessary.

Then, on December 11th of last year, the FCC enacted an Order and Proposed Rulemaking asking Congress to permit it to re-establish that second adjacent guideline. Mike Doyle (D-PA) in the House has sponsored such a bill, as has Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in the Senate.

While we wait for Congress …

The Commission’s December 11th Order also asked for comment on other proposals to help keep afloat the estimated 809 LPFMs broadcasting in the United States. These include more firmly establishing procedures for second adjacent waivers. At present, if a new full power station shows up too close to an LPFM, agency practice has been to consider a waiver if the smaller signal suddenly finds itself afoul of the second adjacent limit. The FCC now wants to turn that occasional practice into a rule, but it also wants guidance on under what circumstances it should grant such leeway. And the Commission wants public wisdom on whether its waiver procedures should be expanded to first and even co-adjacent situations.

Second (and NPR truly hates this idea), the FCC wants to know if the “encroaching” full-service station should be required to offer technical assistance and even financial help to an LPFM that can demonstrate full power interference. This might include paying for filtering technology and other interference aides. And the agency thinks that a full power station should give an LPFM advance notice if the former anticipates interference with the latter.

“It should also be required to cooperate in good faith with the LPFM station in developing the best technical approach,” the Commission contends, “including a possible LPFM site relocation, to ameliorate the interference and/or displacement impact of its proposal.” In addition, the FCC proposes to raise standards for the kinds of LPFMs that get this sort of help, and seems to be leaning towards codifying these new policies only for stations that provide eight hours of local programming on a daily basis.

Finally, the FCC proposes to use contouring methodology to license new LPFM stations. Contour measurement is a more flexible way of assessing the possible interference of a broadcast signal. It takes into account mountainous and watery areas, therefore offering station applicants a wider range of “new licensing opportunities,” as the FCC puts it.

Defense and offense

On April 7th, a medium-sized platoon of public interest groups and radio stations filed a 23-page statement on behalf of these proposals. They included the usual suspects: Prometheus Radio, Free Press, Benton, Future of Music, and Reclaim the Media, plus quite a few parties you don’t come across very often, such as the Forest Hills School District of Cincinnati, Ohio. These 46 groups enthusiastically endorsed the FCC’s suggestions.

“Low power radio stations are governed and operated by community based organizations with limited resources,” they wrote. “It is only fair, then, that full-power stations that choose to move into the low power radio’s community must provide technical and financial assistance to assist the low power station in resolving interference or in its move to a new channel.”

In addition, the filing took on the delicate issue of FM translators, which NPR affiliated stations rely on heavily to expand their audience reach. Prometheus wants to limit the number of translators. No entity, Prometheus et al says , should be able to own more than ten translators in the biggest 303 Arbitron measured markets “on a basis that is primary to an LPFM station that pledges to provide local originated programming.” In addition, LPFMs should not be able to convert to translators.

Needless to say, NPR sees these matters very differently, and was not afraid to be blunt about its perspective in its filing, submitted the same day as Prometheus. When Congress created the Low Power FM service, NPR’s comment argues, it intended these stations to broadcast “where full power stations could not.” Thus the Commission should understand LPFM stations as “secondary to full power stations,” NPR writes.

From this point of departure, practically everything that the FCC recommended in its December 2007 Order becomes illegitimate in NPR’s eyes, ignoring “longstanding policy determination that full power service is the most efficient use of broadcast spectrum.” If an LPFM wants a second adjacent waiver, it must first “resolve all actual interference complaints,” NPR insists, and prove that “other factors” have not caused the problem. But it should get no help from the encroaching full power station in question: “The Commission has no place demanding that one NCE [Non-Commercial Educational] station reallocate its scarce resources to another, unrelated one, no matter how deserving the Commission believes the latter to be.”

And as for notifying an LPFM of impending signal interference, NPR says that’s not an All Things Considered broadcasters’ job. “If the Commission perceives a special need to alert LPFM stations to potentially significant Commission actions or provide other accommodation, the Commission itself should take on those tasks.” In a more recent filing, submitted to the FCC on April 21st, NPR also opposed the ten translator limit.

In a sense, NPR has traveled full circle on this matter. In 2000 it protested imagined signal interference from LPFMs. Now it insists that real interference from its affiliates’ signals should be someone else’s problem.

In its FCC comments, National Public Radio claims that it “continues to support the LPFM service and the Commission’s efforts to ensure that it remain true to its original ideal.” But a detailed examination of public radio’s stance on LPFM will lead some to a different impression. “To the extent the Commission is motivated by the desire to prevent the loss of LPFM stations,” NPR writes in the same statement, “we also regret the community’s loss of a valued public service, but risk is inherent in the secondary nature of the LPFM service.”

Perhaps, then, NPR sees LPFM as a lesser species that, with time, will be driven to deserved extinction. That is, if the Federal Communications Commission does not enact rules that thwart the survival of the fittest.

Further reading:

Prometheus et al’s FCC April filing
http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6519871520
National Public Radio’s April filing
http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6519871369

.

Mumbai: Community radio for slum residents

Shai Venkatraman
Wednesday, August 27, 2008, (Mumbai)
Two girls in Mumbai are leading students and residents of slums to host
shows on a radio station started by the Mumbai University.
The girls are spearheading a change through community radio.
Born in a Mumbai slum, 17-year-old Gautami Chawre, a factory worker, has
never been to school. Now her radio shows on MUST Radio have made her the
talk of her neighbourhood.

“I never thought that I could become a radio jockey. I used to listen to
other RJs and wonder if I could do this. Now I know I can. In my workplace
everyone used to stay I speak too loudly. Now they tell me at least you are
putting your voice to good use,” said Gautami.

Another girl Shenaz Shaikh is also learning to be a radio jockey.
It is an initiative by the Mumbai University community radio station, MUST
Radio to bring about a change in local slum communities by talking about
issues like health, hygiene and education.

“We decided to choose people from the slum community itself and train them
to be radio jockeys. It is a big USP because people will listen to someone
their own kith and kin. They think it is from their own basti,” said Pankaj
Athavale, consultant, MUST Radio.

“People from my neighbourhood come up to me and ask me to talk about certain
things or recite poems on air,” said Shenaz.
From school textbook lessons to vegetable prices, job opportunities for
daily wage labourers, the radio show has something for everyone. No wonder
it has got people talking.

“I never thought she could go this far that people would be talking about
her. I am really very happy,” said Gautami’s mother Lata Chawre.
“It will be good if others take to it also. Especially girls because it is
important they do well,” said a local resident.
Like Gautami, many of the residents of the slum colony have never been to
school. However, the community radio station has opened up a whole new world
for them, where they too have a chance to be heard.

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080063155&ch=8/27/2008%208:27:00%20PM

NAB: the lobby that cried wolf

http://reclaimthemedia.org/broadband_cable/nab_the_lobby_that_cried_wolf=6276

Submitted by jonathan
Wed, 2008-10-29 

by Michael Calabrese, New America Foundation

Over the past week, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has bombarded Congress with a flurry of doomsday pronouncements, claiming broadcast television is under attack by the FCC and advocates seeking to open unused TV channels (TV white spaces) for wireless broadband and mobile Wi-Fi devices.

If all of this sounds a bit familiar, that’s because broadcasters always scream “interference!” when faced with any new competition or use of the empty TV band spectrum they are hoarding. In 1974 broadcaster’s tried to kill off a nascent TV service called cable television, claiming it would destroy “free” TV. And in 1998, when the FCC wanted to open up the FM band to low-power community radio stations, the claim was intolerable “interference” (later proved false). In 2001, when the first DVRs came out — and now again in 2008, with TV white spaces — broadcasters are predicting the imminent destruction of broadcast television.

The unfortunate reality is that NAB lobbyists will say just about anything to maintain their exclusive grip on the broadcast spectrum. As former New York Times reporter and author, Joel Brinkley, observed: “Above all else, [broadcasters hold] sacred the eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Not Give Up Spectrum.”

In “The Lobby that Cried Wolf,” the New America Foundation provides a glimpse of broadcasters’ lobbying path of deception, highlighting the repeated NAB campaigns to keep others out of their spectrum and providing parallels with the current campaign against white space devices.

For the past 50 years, broadcasters and their respective lobbies have relied upon a broken record of scare tactics, gross exaggerations and underhanded attacks to oppose some of the most important communication advances of the 20th and 21st centuries including cable TV, the VCR, the DVR, FM radio, satellite television and radio, and even cellular phones.

In 2000, the FCC approved low-power FM community radio stations to operate on the third-adjacent channel after thoroughly examining interference issues. In response, the NAB told Congress “this is a prescription for chaos on the airwaves” and flooded the Hill with copies of an infamous audio disc that simulated the supposed interference from low-power stations. Three years later, an independent study for the FCC by Mitre Corp., a military contractor, found no significant interference issues with the FCC’s proposed LPFM service.

The NAB predicted similar interference nightmares in regards to low-power television stations and wireless microphones. Yet, today there are more than 836 low-power FM stations, 2,900 low-power TV stations and more than 400,000 wireless microphones operating throughout the TV band on an unlicensed basis. Despite the NAB’s pronouncements, neither chaos nor harmful interference ensued.

Download a copy of the paper here.
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/lobby_cried_wolf

“As a nation, we are resolute in our refusal to identify the true nature of our actions, and in our refusal to acknowledge the consequences of what we do. This may well be true of most nations throughout history. Yet there is a direct correlation between a nation’s power and influence, and its reliance on myth and other public relations ploys. As the world’s sole superpower, the United States via its ruling class saturates its subjects at home and abroad with propaganda on a scale and with an intensity that have rarely been surpassed. As is true of all propaganda, permissible viewpoints are confined within suffocatingly constricted boundaries of thought; variation of any moment from the prescribed guidelines is prohibited.”

Arthur Silber - “Regrettable Misjudgments”: The Shocking Immorality of Our Constricted Thought

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/11/regrettable-misjudgments-shocking.html

Arrrrrrrr you ready for some pirate radio?

http://www.californiaaggie.com/article/1929

Course offered through Davis People’s Free School

Written by CHRIS RUE
Published November 13, 2008 

The Davis community got a peek inside the world of local radio through the Davis People’s Free School course, pirate radio. Taught by Davis resident and radio enthusiast Mark Chang, the class will meet again to set up an antenna and broadcast a radio show throughout Davis. Contact Chang about the upcoming broadcast or future pirate radio classes at toptriode@gmail.com.

The term pirate radio, which refers to unlicensed radio transmissions, comes from the first broadcasts of music in England in the ’60s. According to Chang, a group of people boarded a ship and broadcasted music from just off shore.

“Maybe that’s where the word ‘pirate’ first comes from,” Chang said. “They were broadcasting from a boat.”

The class overviews the fundamentals of radio, including the theory of making radio waves and an explanation of the parts that go into making a radio. By the end of the course, Chang will teach his students how to set up a full time radio show and broadcast a short signal from anywhere - even a bicycle.

“People [may] have specific questions about how to make a transmitter, so they can ride a bicycle around have other bicycles play the same music,” he said.

Radio has always been an interest to Chang, a UC Davis graduate. He set up and hosted his own pirate radio show in Davis from 1993 to 1999 called Davis Live Radio. In addition to playing music, Chang would broadcast roving reports, speaking to locals such as a drunken woman at a laundromat to people at the Jack-in-the-Box drive through, all from the confines of his living room.

“It was almost like I was cruising around town meeting people, but I was just sitting in my living room just talking,” he said. “I wanted to have a sense that people out there were participating and get people excited about it.”

The pirate radio class draws on Chang’s experiences and goes into the details of setting up a mini studio. He will explain how to use parts like antennas, transmitters and amplifiers - equipment that can be bought online.

While creating a broadcast signal has become increasingly straightforward, staying on the air is a more difficult task. With the Federal Communications Commission giving preference to commercial stations, there is “not much more room left on the radio dial” for a pirate radio show, according to Chang.

“The airwaves are controlled by the corporations,” he said. “The FCC isn’t really protecting the low power radio stations.”

KDRT, a volunteer-driven radio station in Davis, recently won a bout with the FCC to avoid being pushed off the air, which shifted their broadcast from 101.5 FM to 95.7 FM. According to production manager and radio host Autumn Labbe-Renault, the Davis community “stepped up” to protect local radio.

“It would not have happened without the support of the community and our elected officials,” she said. “We are here to fill a void in local content.”

The Davis People’s Free School, a non-hierarchical learning project established in the 2007, contacted Chang about teaching a pirate radio class. Marguerite Wilson, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the School of Education and one of the founders of the free school, believes the pirate radio course falls in line with their values.

“I think that pirate radio, among many other things, is a great example of people learning how to do and know things themselves rather than relying on institutions,” she said in an e-mail interview. “I think Mark’s class is a great way to make something that is normally inaccessible to most people - i.e. radio technology - accessible to wide group of people.”

For more information about the Davis People’s Free School, check out their page on Davis Wiki or e-mail davispeoplesfreeschool@riseup.net.
—

CHRIS RUE can be reached at arts@theaggie.org.

http://www.cityonahillpress.com/article.php?id=1464

2008-11-20
Devin Dunlevy
City News Reporter
City on a Hill Press

Free Radio Santa Cruz (FRSC) is no ordinary radio station.

The station headquarters is a cramped room with posters all over its walls. “Build a wall of resistance; don’t talk to the FBI,” reads one. “One percent of the U.S. owns 40 percent of the wealth ­ what’s your share?” reads another. Countless vinyl albums occupy the small number of shelves.

But the biggest eye-catcher is the prodigious “Jolly Roger” flag draped in the corner. This is fitting, as FRSC is one of a growing number of pirate radio stations popping up all over the country.

Broadcasting without a license, the station has been in open defiance of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) since it began airing in 1995.

Why? Because Free Radio holds that the FCC regulates not in the public’s interest, but in the interest of corporations that dominate the airwaves.

Radio activists are concerned about the media conglomerates, like Clear Channel Communications, that have the largest market share of the radio industry. Clear Channel owns 900 stations, the biggest owner of full-power commercial radio stations in the United States.

Free Radio’s goal? To make room for radical discourse often shunned by the mainstream media, and to air other diverse programming that commercialized radio simply ignores.

FRSC is part of the larger “micro-radio movement” seeking to change licensing laws to accommodate low-power broadcasting. Low-power outlets are typically community-driven, and have smaller budgets and weaker broadcast strengths than high-power stations.
According to “Uncle Dennis,” a programmer for FRSC, the station collaborates with other independent radio outlets like Pacific Radio, the oldest public radio network in the United States.

“We use a lot of Pacifica programs and those of other alternative producers,” Uncle Dennis said. “We attend the Grassroots Broadcasting Conference when we can.”

Free Radio DJ “Augusto Cesar Sandino Segundo” has been part of the project for five years. He currently hosts his own show, “The Global Local,” which airs Monday nights from 7 to 9 p.m.

Segundo gave a voice to Flavio Santi Vargas, an Ecuadorian indigenous leader trying to raise awareness about his community’s concerns, on Nov. 3.

Ecuador’s indigenous movement is currently waging protests against the government’s support for large-scale mining activities by multinational oil giants like Arco. Vargas feels that these activities are threatening the indigenous territories.

“Radio has an incredible history of being used in people’s movements,” Segundo said. “People have broadcasted revolutionary messages in Third World countries.”

Stuart Abel is a friend who accompanied Vargas during the interview. He said that Vargas’ community is seeking to bring in spiritual tourists as a source of income.

“His community wants to raise money to protect themselves from the oil companies that are polluting their rivers,” Abel said.

“We do live in a forest, and we work together,” Vargas said. “The jungle is our pharmacy, the jungle is our supermarket, the jungle is our life.”

Vargas will be in the United States for six more months before heading back to Ecuador.

Over 10 Years of Unlicensed Broadcasts

The affinity groups Earth First! and Food Not Bombs played a role in getting the station on its feet back in the 1990s. Food Not Bombs organizer Kim Argula was one of the founders of FRSC. The station’s transmitter was originally set up in her room.

“The airwaves really belong to us. It’s up to the people to take back that which U.S. corporate interests and government regulators monopolized,” Argula said in one of the station’s first broadcasts. “Stop for-profit brainwashing. Build revolt by networking nationally and internationally.”

Eventually, the noise of the 24-hour programming was too overwhelming for Argula. The collective tried moving the equipment elsewhere in the house, only to be caught by the landlord. After being kicked out of the house, organizers moved to a new location at 120 Campbell St.

The movement began to grow after Argula and others “bumper-stickered” the entire town.

“They were literally everywhere ­ in the bathrooms, on posts … and they were really well done,” Argula said in a 2005 interview with programmer “Skidmark Bob” about Free Radio’s history. “We got a lot of listeners that way.”

Things went smoothly until the FCC raided the station in 2004. Right after a broadcast of Democracy Now!, two dozen federal agents stormed FRSC and seized over $5,000 worth of broadcasting equipment. This was the first time the station had ever gone to static due to government intervention.

What followed was a community outcry, and nearly 150 people went to protest the raid as it was taking place. The strong showing of support made it possible to restore the online stream at freakradio.org within 48 hours, and the station was re-transmitting at 101.1 FM less than a month after the raid.

Although FRSC recovered from this fiasco, it still remains vulnerable to any future action taken by the FCC.

“There is nothing we can do to prevent a raid from the FCC and/or federal marshals,” Uncle Dennis said. “We rely on community support to keep going and to rise again if we are raided again.”

In the FRSC interview, Argula reflected that despite the struggles the station has faced, Free Radio’s programming has improved over the years.

“When we first started, it was not professional to any degree; it was very much amateur presentation,” Argula said. “But now I listen to the shows, and the quality and content is exceptional. It’s better than any of the radio stations in town.”

The Road Ahead for FRSC and Micro-Broadcasting

Free Radio currently broadcasts at an output power of 200 watts Effected Radiated Power (ERP). The signal reaches past Aptos and almost to Watsonville, but the listening area was severely disrupted after a Christian rock station recently starting transmitting on 101.1 FM from Mt. Toro.

“To counter this, we would have to increase our power to a thousand watts ERP, which would then start to interfere with the Carmel station and bring the FCC down on us for the interference,” Uncle Dennis said. “There are no current plans to increase our output power.”

Many local politicians have been strong supporters of the station. The Santa Cruz City Council has passed three resolutions embracing its presence in the community, including one issued immediately after the raid in 2004.

City Councilmember Tony Madrigal said the current system of regulations “puts the little person in an unfair position.”

“When it comes to Free Radio Santa Cruz, whether or not you disagree with their programming, it’s hard to disagree with the basic idea of local people having control over a local radio station,” Madrigal said.

FRSC is only one example of a number of unlicensed low-power FM (LPFM) stations across the country. Others include Berkeley Liberation Radio and Free Radio Olympia. Some have been shut down over the years, including San Francisco Liberation Radio, which was raided by the FCC and San Francisco Police Department in 2003.

Free Press, a media advocacy organization with over 500,000 members, is fighting to make it easier to acquire low-power licenses. It argues that low-power stations can strengthen community identity, provide opportunities for youth and empower minority groups.

But the low-power proponents face an uphill battle from the consolidated high-power stations that express concern over interference. According to National Public Radio, full-power broadcasters reach a broader audience, so they provide a greater service and should be rewarded with priority over the airwaves.

Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty said he supports the local station.

“Free Radio Santa Cruz constantly criticizes the City Council and me for our policies, but that doesn’t mean I won’t fight for its right to broadcast,” he said. “The media is being consolidated to such an extent that I think it is important to maintain as many independent media outlets as possible.”

On the issue of further FCC intervention, Coonerty recommends that supporters remind the FCC that the community values the station. He acknowledged the need for broadcast media reform in the United States.

“We need to level the playing field,” Coonerty said, “so that small radio stations can have access to the airwaves that are owned by the public.”

Lipstick on a Pig: The Folly of Media Reform

By Stephen Dunifer

As the saying goes, no matter how much lipstick you apply to a pig, it is still a pig. Such is the case of media reform. In the final analysis, it is a discussion about making the jail cell more comfortable.

No matter the nature or degree of reform proposed, media reform advocates are blind to the greater context out of which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) arose. Surrendering the broadcast airwaves to corporate interests is the accepted narrative surrounding the Communications Act of 1934, enabling legislation that created the FCC. True as this narrative may be, a much larger political gestalt was in motion.

Put succinctly, the corporate media empires are large cogs in an engine of imperial war and conquest. This relationship was formalized by the Communications Act of 1934.

As much as the left tends to wax nostalgic about the 1930’s, it ignores the largely covert war preparation program that was put into play by Roosevelt with domestic economic recovery, social uplift and job programs providing the cover story. Roosevelt implemented a sweeping mobilization of resources and programs to place the United States in a position to conduct a major global war in the Pacific and Europe.

Beginning with the Committee on Public Information (aka Creel Commission), whose World War I propaganda efforts are well documented by Noam Chomsky in the book Manufacturing Consent, the US government continued with both overt and covert efforts to regiment the public mind - aided and abetted by academia, media institutions and industry. Witness the extremely racist cartoons created in the 1930’s to portray the Japanese in the worst possible way. If your intent is to move a population from a relatively pacifist or isolationist position to one that is supportive of a global war, then it would make perfect sense to place the broadcast spectrum in trusted hands – RCA, Western Electric, etc. Certainly not labor unions whose definition of a bayonet is “a sharp instrument with a worker at each end.” Further, you sweeten the pot with the prospect of obscene war profits – according to some statistics, corporate America made $1,000,000 of profit for every US service person killed during World War II. Finally, you take the propaganda machine that has been running since 1916 or so and supercharge it once the war has begun. At the end of WW II, this machine was not switched off. Instead, it was turned full bore on the American public. Many major media figures, both frontline journalists and corporate bosses, had prominent positions in this war propaganda apparatus. For example, William Paley, CEO of CBS, served as deputy chief of the psychological warfare branch of General Dwight Eisenhower’s staff. When that is not sufficient you buy journalists by the dozen as the CIA did in the 1950’s. Now, most of them are such skanky whores they do not have an asking price.

Given the integral and vital role of media in creating and maintaining a hyper-saturated propaganda environment domestically and an ongoing campaign of media imperialism abroad, one would have to be delusional to think that any degree of reform is going to fundamentally alter this reality, or be allowed to have any meaningful effect by the ruling elite. As long as reform is maintained as the only “viable and realistic” option available, and its advocates can roam about their comfortably appointed play pens, underwritten by liberal foundations, then those who run and service this mechanistic Moloch, to which all must be sacrificed in the name of profit and greed, can rest undisturbed.

Further, most advocates of reform fail to recognize that every citizen of the United States is the target of an ongoing psychological warfare campaign. It is terra-forming of the human internal landscape. An old movement slogan had it right, “It is hard to fight an enemy who has an outpost in your head.” When someone is carpet bombing your mind every second, minute and hour of the day, blowing the hell of out of your sense of self-esteem, self-identity and self-worth, would any intelligent, free thinking person believe that media reform aspirin is the solution and cure? No bloody way!

Yes, many worlds are possible. Only if we step outside our jail cells and reject the narcotizing effects of reform. Our only option is to continue to create our own systems of media and information with massive campaigns of electronic civil disobedience on a global scale. Screw their broadcast regulations, intellectual property laws, v-chips, internet filters, self-appointed gate keepers, proprietary software, indecency standards and all other impediments to the free flow of news, ideas, cultural expression and artistic/intellectual creativity. Stick your thumb in the Cyclopean eye of media monopoly and thought control. Hack the planet, hijack the starship!!!

“Radio is one sided when it should be two. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him. “ Bertolt Brecht - “The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication”

Since the very beginning of radio broadcasting many people and communities have envisioned it as precisely this – a way for the community to speak to itself and to give voice to the voiceless. Further, community radio has been an intimate friend of many struggles for self-determination and liberation from oppression.

In the late 1980’s a community in Springfield, Illinois, initially organized as a tenants rights group, empowered itself with 3-5 watt FM broadcast transmitter. Calling it microradio, its founder - Mbanna Kantako - went on the air to stop the rampant and violent abuse of his community by the Springfield police department, a housing project. Within a short period of time the radio station, first known as Tenants Rights Radio then Black Liberation Radio (later changed to Human Rights Radio), became not only a source of resistance to the depredations of the police but a vital source of news and information for the community. It was a medium where people could hear the voices of their neighbors speaking about their concerns, sharing their art, music and culture as well as gripping bedside interviews with the victims of police brutality. Despite the eventual razing of the John Hays Housing Project and the dispersal of its residents, Human Rights Radio remains on the air in Springfield, Illinois. Due largely to the efforts of Human Rights Radio, the degree of police brutality against the African-American community has dropped precipitously.

Although he was not involved directly in the creating of the Free Radio Movement, arising a few years later in the early 1990’s, Mbanna Kantako served as an inspiration and example for many others to follow.

“The Radio of the Future — the central tree of our consciousness — will inaugurate new ways to cope with our endless undertakings and will unite all mankind.”

“The main Radio station, that stronghold of steel, where clouds of wires cluster like strands of hair, will surely be protected by a sign with a skull and crossbones and the familiar word “Danger,” since the least disruption of Radio operations would produce a mental blackout over the entire country, a temporary loss of consciousness.”

Velimir Khlebnikov - The Radio of the Future

Since the early days of radio broadcasting, unlicensed broadcasting, referred to pejoratively as “pirate broadcasting”, has existed side by side with “legitimately” sanctioned broadcasting. Usually the endeavor of single individuals and communities, it did not become a political and social movement in the United States until the early 1990’s where it emerged as the Free Radio Movement or Micopower Broadcasting. Organized or not, unlicensed broadcasting has always been an attempt to gain access to the broadcast commons by rejecting the confined spaces (political, social and artistic) created, regulated and imposed by the state. In response, commercial and pecuniary inerests promulgated constructs restricting access to the broadcast commons.

Since the inception of Communications Act of 1934, which essentially placed the broadcast airwaves in corporate hands with a modicum of regulatory oversight by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), there has been a ever increasing transfer of media resources into fewer and fewer hands. Beginning in 1934, the FCC has waved the fig leaf of “public need, necessity and convenience” to cover the naked ownership of the public air-waves by corporate entities. The seeds for a grassroots media rebellion were sown by over a decade of broadcast deregulation starting with the Reagan presidency and culminating with the massive multi-billion dollar give-away known as the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

With massive media oligarchies looming on the horizon, it was becoming apparent to some people that action had to be taken - the more the radical the better. As a direct Free Speech challenge to the regulatory structure and statutory authority of the FCC, Free Radio Berkeley took to the airwaves on April 11, 1993. Seeking to break to the corporate stranglehold on the broadcast spectrum, Free Radio Berkeley’s efforts soon began to inspire others to adopt the strategy of direct action.

Within the first year after the initial broadcast of Free Radio Berkeley, it became clear that the Free Radio Movement was part of a much larger global endeavor. Community radio is rooted in the struggles of people for a just and humane existence. Whether it was: Bolivian tin miners establishing radio stations in the late 1940’s as part of a campaign to improve working conditions; Radio Rebelde’s role in the Cuban Revolution; Czech citizens creating clandestine radio stations after the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 by the USSR; or the supportive role of community radio in the recent uprising by indigenous people in Bolivia to reclaim their natural resources – community radio has always been a tool of expression and organization.

“By not having to answer to the monster media monopolies, the independent media has a life work, a political project and purpose: to let the truth be known. This is more and more important in the globalization process. This truth becomes a knot of resistance against the lie. It is our only possibility to save the truth, to maintain it, and distribute it, little by little, just as the books were saved in Fahrenheit 451—in which a group of people dedicated themselves to memorize books, to save them from being destroyed, so that the ideas would not be lost.”

- Subcomandante Marcos addressing the Freeing the Media Teach-In, January, 1997

After the first coup against Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, Free Radio Berkeley supplied transmitters to peasant organizations fighting against the coup. Transmitters also went to both the Chiapas jungle and the urban streets of Mexico City. International efforts by Free Radio Berkeley were first formalized as International Radio Action Training and Education (IRATE). With the broadcasting operation shut down by a federal court injunction, all the energies and resources of Free Radio Berkeley were turned toward empowering people and communities with the tools, knowledge, technology and ability to build and create their own radio stations, both domestically and internationally. Currently, Free Radio Berkeley operates a project called TUPA – Transmitters Uniting the Peoples of the Americas. Overall, the goal is to establish regional transmitter manufacturing and training facilities throughout the Americas, and create a Free Radio Federation of the Americas that will work to secure and maintain the right to communicate by the peoples of the Americas.

As the struggle initiated by the Zapatistas against the depredations of neo-liberalism and global capital began to coalesce into a world-wide movement of resistance and direct action, a global alternative media network was born in the CS gas and pepper spray permeated streets of Seattle in 1999 – the Independent Media Center (IMC). It combined all the emerging alternative media elements into one synergistic entity. Occupation of the streets had morphed into an occupation of the electromagnetic sphere. Using a central web site and mirror sites, the IMC was able to provide continuous coverage of the events in Seattle through audio and video streams, still images and written articles and an internet radio station which provided a 24 hour stream that was picked up and rebroadcast by Free Radio and community radio stations around the world. Over 500 journalists and media activists contributed to this effort. Several local Free Radio stations joined in the effort as well. One operated from a platform in a tree on the Olympic Peninsula using a directional antenna to beam the signal into Seattle. Since then, the number of Independent Media Centers has grown to over 150, covering every continent with the exception of Antarctica.

“The first great struggle of the IWW was for the free speech necessary to spread the word and organize. Free speech was free, the Wobblies found, only if what was said was what the bosses wanted the workers to hear. Otherwise it had to be paid for by a jail sentence and often by a slugging from police or vigilantes. It was generally held, particularly in the West, that the First Amendment did not apply to the IWW because its cowboys, lumberjacks, and miners were un-American. The IWW fought for free speech by exercising it, and exercising it on such a wholesale scale wherever it was threatened that the jails bulged and the streets echoed with the forbidden word until the authorities rued the day they had ever banned it.”

Labor’s Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men And Women by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais

Grounding itself in the direct action tactics of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and using the combined tactics of legal action and street heat employed to great effect by the Civil Rights Movement, the Free Radio Movement began a series of protracted battles and skirmishes with not only the FCC itself but the unseen hand behind the FCC - the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). Representing the multi-billion dollar broadcasting industry, the NAB is without a doubt the most powerful lobbying organization in the United States. It directly controls which politician gets the most face time before the public, thus, the NAB calls both the tune and the dance.

When the FCC’s initial attempt to silence Free Radio Berkeley with a preliminary court injunction failed in January, 1995 the NAB declared open war on micropower broadcasters - urging its members to report any unlicensed broadcasting to the FCC. It was amusing to see these media giants falling into histrionic fits of apoplexy over small community broadcast stations with power levels under 100 watts taking to the airwaves by the dozens. According to the NAB, planes would fall from the sky and the very core of the empire was under attack. Wrongly or rightly, many people interpreted the rejection of the preliminary injunction against Free Radio Berkeley as a green light to put their stations on the air.

During the year prior to the first broadcast of Free Radio Berkeley, legal strategy was being developed and fine-tuned to respond to the likely response and intervention by the FCC. Attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications (NLGCDC) had prepared initial briefs to defend Mbanna Kantako. Enlisted to support Free Radio Berkeley, the NLGCDC continued to refine the legal arguments and conduct further research. Drawing on variety of sources, including case law and international covenants, the attorneys put together an impressive legal argument for micropower broadcasting and Free Radio.

One key thesis maintained that if the government was going to restrict Free Speech activity it had to do it in the least restrictive means possible, otherwise the government was acting unconstitutionally. By prohibiting community broadcast stations operating with 100 watts or less of power from being on the air, the FCC was restricting Free Speech. Further, by creating a regulatory process with an extremely high cost for entry into the realm of applying for and securing a broadcast license, the FCC created an artificially high barrier that only the wealthiest could scale. Citing Article 19, section 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice”, NLGCDC attorneys finished off with an appropriate capstone to their work. When Free Radio Berkeley went on the air, the FCC was unaware a legal bear trap had been baited, awaiting their first step.

To avoid being shut down by the FCC, Free Radio Berkeley began broadcasting from the Berkeley Hills every Sunday evening for 3-4 hours. Operating with battery-powered transmitters and broadcast equipment carted about in an external frame pack, FRB carried on in true guerilla fashion for a period of several years until the denial of the preliminary injunction placed the situation under jurisdiction of the court and out of the FCC’s hands. Within 6 weeks of the initial court hearing Free Radio Berkeley emerged as a 24/7 community broadcast station situated in a stripped out bathroom on the second floor of a house on the Oakland/Berkeley border.

From the very beginning, it was apparent the Free Radio Movement needed more than cogent legal arguments, no matter how compelling. Unlike other movements, it had to go beyond just mass numbers willing to engage in direct action. It needed technology to make the broadcasts possible. At that time low cost broadcast equipment and the knowledge to use it properly were very hard to obtain. Free Radio Berkeley’s founder, Stephen Dunifer, recognized this weakness. As someone skilled in electronic and broadcast engineering, he designed and built the first transmitters used by FRB. Further, these designs evolved into a series of kits manufactured and sold by FRB. Workshops and training sessions began to be offered by FRB to empower people with the knowledge and skills to build their own transmitters and set up broadcast stations. Merging inexpensive DIY electronic broadcast technology with political and social action gave rise to a new concept – electronic civil disobedience. Not only were people defying unjust laws with their bodies, they were doing it with transmitters in their hands - a strategy that fired the imaginations of many and boggled the minds of both the FCC and NAB.

Not prepared to deal with a burgeoning swarm of guerilla radio activity, the FCC and NAB relied on the sledge hammer approach, a tactical misstep that only served to raise the stature of Free Radio in the court of public opinion. Of the many articles appearing in both the mainstream and alternative press, nary a discouraging word was said about Free Radio. Despite, in one instance, the highly choreographed display of police power with multi-jurisdictional SWAT teams engaging in pre-dawn raids with automatic weapons drawn in Tampa, Florida – the movement continued unabated.

On the legal front, despite winning every procedural issue, Federal Judge Claudia Wilken issued an injunction against Free Radio Berkeley after the FCC submitted its second motion for summary judgement. Judge Wilken’s ruling rested on rather obscure technical grounds and logic of the Lewis Carroll variety. She stated Free Radio Berkeley did not have legal grounds to challenge the FCC’s authority because no application had been made for a broadcast license. An odd ruling since an application process for the type of community broadcast station Free Radio Berkeley had become did not exist. It was the suspicion of many that the judge had been influenced by the powers-to-be. During the entire course of the 4-year legal battle the FCC failed to respond in any substantive manner to the legal arguments raised in the defense of Free Radio Berkeley

Despite the silencing of Free Radio Berkeley in June 1998, the Free Radio movement continued. Court cases involving other micropower stations such as Steal This Radio in NYC did not result in the vindication of Free Radio. From the very beginning it was understood the probability of success in the Federal Court system was low. However, by being present in such high-visibilty venues, the status, credibility and visibility of the Free Radio Movement reached a height unobtainable by other means.

Faced with an ungovernable situation and enforcement nightmare created by the Free Radio Movement and increasing public pressure, the FCC was forced to take some sort of action. Eventually, in January 1999 they issued a rule making process establishing a very limited low power FM broadcast service (LPFM). Viewed by many within the micropower community as a form of damage control and a divide and conquer strategy, this LPFM service only allowed the establishment of low power stations in rural communities due to overly stringent channel spacing requirements.

Even given the limited nature of LPFM it was immediately opposed by both the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio. As a result of intense lobbying efforts by both, Congress passed a bill (ironically titled: The Broadcast Preservation Act of 1999) to severely curtail an already limited service. The NLGCDC responded to the initial LPFM rule making proceedings and has been instrumental in assisting with the LPFM application process. Several former micropower broadcasters lowered their black flag of radio anarchism and formed the Prometheus Project to aid LPFM applicants, organize “barn raisers” to put community stations on the air, lobby for expansion of the LPFM broadcast service and oppose further media consolidation by direct legal intervention.

Despite the historical revisionism promulgated by elements within the LPFM community and media reform circles, the rapidly growing movement of electronic civil disobedience by the Free Radio Movement forced the FCC to create the LPFM broadcast service and put the ownership and control of the airwaves on the national agenda. Divide and conquer was definitely on the FCC’s agenda as it sought to divide the Free Radio Movement into: “good pirates” (folks who had hung up their skull and crossbones and broadswords) who were swayed by the rather hollow promise of obtaining a license sometime in the distant future; and “bad pirates” who were not tempted by the siren song of legitimization.

Aware of both the limitations of the legal low power route (LPFM) being offered and the legal risks involved, individuals and communities continue to establish Free Radio stations. Not satisfied with the crumbs swept from the FCC regulatory table and wary of pitfalls and compromises associated with being licensed, proponents of Free Radio continue their struggle to liberate the broadcast commons from corporate domination and control.

“Secondly, In that we begin to Digge upon George-Hill, to eate our Bread together by righteous labour, and sweat of our browes, It was shewed us by Vision in Dreams, and out of Dreams, That that should be the Place we should begin upon; And though that Earth in view of Flesh, be very barren, yet we should trust the Spirit for a blessing. And that not only this Common, or Heath should be taken in and Manured by the People, but all the Commons and waste Ground in England, and in the whole World, shall be taken in by the People in righteousness, not owning any Propriety; but taking the Earth to be a Common Treasury, as it was first made for all.”

Gerrard Windstanley – The True Levelers Standard Advanced: Or, the State of Community Opened, and Presented to the Sons of Man (1649)

Within the last 500 or so years, there has been a steady encroachment, usually at sword point or musket muzzle, upon the commons by an alliance of private interests, capital and the state. Enslaving mostly indigenous populations and transforming public resources into sources of extractive profit and tossing the resulting pollution back into the common sphere, the Frankenstinian masters of this endeavor view the world through a pecuniary lens of self-interest, exploitation, greed, entitlement and self-aggrandizement - mistaking the lens for the world itself.

The Free Radio Movement seeks to: tear down the regulatory and statutory fences enclosing the broadcast commons ; stomp the “No Trespassing” signs into the mud; and expose the hypocrisy of the FCC which has failed miserably to impose any notion of public trusteeship on the broadcast industry.

By exposing the theft of the broadcast airwaves, the wider takeover of the entire commons on which the wellbeing of the people and the planet depend becomes readily apparent. Replacing the filters imposed by Fox, ABC, NBC, et al by a genuine form of communication amongst communities empowers and encourages people to take matters into their own hands.

Communication denied to a community is in fact a death sentence, sometimes literally. Consider these two examples of alternative outcomes

Anne Elizabeth Moore cites the failure of commercial radio to meet an urgent, life-threatening community disaster in this passage of a 2005 issue of Punk Planet: “In 2002, an ammonia tanker derailed in Minot, North Dakota. Residents and authorities alike tried in vain to get a hold of an actual human broadcaster at six local Clear Channel affiliated stations to warn listeners of the danger in going outdoors. Unfortunately, these stations play mostly satellite feeds, and no one answered the telephone that day for an hour and half. One man died and pets and livestock were killed. Over 300 or more people were hospitalized with injuries and partial blindness.”

Contrast that with the efforts of KIND Radio, a Free Radio Station that operated in San Marcos, Texas. During a hundred year flood in 1998, KIND radio was the only broadcast source information source for the community. People stranded on rooftops called the station to ask for help. Rescue teams listening to the station were thus informed as to where their assistance was required. Further, they informed folks where they could go for relief and what areas were flooded. No licensed broadcast station provided this life-saving service to the San Marcos community.

Or consider more recent events.

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, efforts to establish a low power broadcast station in the Houston Astrodome were thwarted by FEMA officials despite being granted a temporary license to do so by the FCC. Organizers had to rent a trailer and set up the station in the parking lot. Several efforts have been made to establish a Free Radio station in the Algiers section of New Orleans to aid in the reconstruction and revitalization of that community. As expected, these efforts for community autonomy and media empowerment have been thwarted by the FCC.

Only locally organized and controlled community broadcast stations have the power to speak to the needs of the community, allowing people to share their news, information, culture, artistic expression and needs with one another. The power of the Internet to link community broadcast stations with one another on a global level through Independent Media Centers and other related endeavors leads to the creation of a meta-community that is both global and local in its reach and scope.

Through the communicative power of radio and collective action, people and their respective communities gain the ability and power to reclaim and restore an authentic life.

“The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle’s form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system’s conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production.”

Guy-Ernest Debord - The Society of the Spectacle

Reducing everyone and everything to a commodity, either a black or red mark on the ledger of the marketplace is to condemn the world to an atomized, existentialist hell. The function of media in the United States is to create and maintain a hyper-saturated propaganda environment domestically and an ongoing campaign of media imperialism abroad - carpet bombing the human psyche with an endless stream of advertising and spectacle, intent on destroying-self-esteem, self-identity and self-worth.

Buy this, be that – it is all a distraction to steal time, body and soul. Divide and conquer on a grand scale. A Potemkin dance of light and shadow.

Embracing Free Radio as a form of media expression that is genuine and real is the first step on the road to liberation from the society of the spectacle. Only by coming together as communities can people begin to: form the relationships that really matter, tell the stories which impart a collective identity, history and purpose; dance, sing and celebrate life together; and forge new bonds of commitment and support. Free Radio is the Peoples Drum.

It is against this backdrop that the Free Radio Movement now stands. As an integral part of a global alternative media movement it offers people and their communities the means to reject the dominant narrative imposed by state and capital.

For further information please contact Free Radio Berkeley or visit the websites – www.freeradio.org and www.radiotupa.org

Free Radio Berkeley

1442A Walnut St. #406

Berkeley, CA 94709

510-625-0314

freeradio@riseup.net