Free Radio Berkeley

Being KIND

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 17:20:14 -0800

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

NOW I'M PISSED OFF AT THE FUCKING FCC EVEN MORE

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 20:10:36 -0800

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

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:34:35 -0800

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

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:29:07 -0800

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

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:09:31 -0800

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

FCC Fine Structure - The Jolly Roger Comedy Troupe explains how...

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:06:14 -0800

FCC Fine Structure - The Jolly Roger Comedy Troupe explains how the FCC arrives at a specific fine. This group produced quite a number of satirical audio pieces during the 1990’s.

Photo

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:42:08 -0800

Permissible Viewpoints

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:56:09 -0800

“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?

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:13:32 -0800

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.

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

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:54:46 -0800

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

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:55:00 -0800

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!!!

Set Your Radio Free - Sung by Carol Denney and Company. A bit...

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:35:08 -0800

Set Your Radio Free - Sung by Carol Denney and Company. A bit of Free Radio history and an appeal to set your radio free.

Luke Hiken, lead attorney for Stephen Dunifer and Free Radio...

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:17:14 -0800

Luke Hiken, lead attorney for Stephen Dunifer and Free Radio Berkeley in FCC vs. Stephen Dunifer, speaks to why we need Free Radio.

Free Radio - Liberating the Commons

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:29:00 -0800

“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

The Begining

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:28:56 -0800

The Begining