On Air with Thin Air Community Radio

KYRS and KYRS Programmers in the Spotlight

2007-11-23T18:16:00.001-08:00

Summer 2007

Thin Air Radio is one of the few low-power stations in the country
by Mary Stampf

Since 2000, about 100 volunteers have helped Lupito Flores launch and operate Spokane’s low-power, 100-watt community radio station, Thin Air Radio on 92.3 and 89.9 FM.

Lupito Flores

KYRS hosts, co-hosts, substitutes, music reviewers, event organizers, fund-drive participants and other helpers all are volunteers.

Its programs incorporate perspectives and discussions on peace, social, economic and environmental justice, human rights, democracy and multiculturalism. “We seek to give back a small slice of the air waves to the community, to voices not heard on commercial radio,” said Lupito.

He became aware of how mainstream media covered environmental and conservation groups as a volunteer while studying English literature and technical writing at Eastern Washington University. “They were not covered or not covered fairly. If there was coverage, it was 30 seconds focused on a protester, not on the speakers,” said Lupito, who is now station manager of Thin Air Radio. “I saw media twisting and sensationalizing issues.”

During college and after earning his bachelor’s degree in 1991 and master’s degree in 1995, he worked with Save Our Wild Salmon, the Kettle Range Conservation Group, the Idaho Conservation League and Save the Hanford Reach Campaign of the Audubon Society. He also volunteered with the Sierra Club and the Lands Council, helping with their newsletters.

“As media consolidate and fewer corporations own more media, community radio is more important than ever,” he said. “The FCC is allowing the largest media corporations in the world to gobble up the last frequencies, stations and newspapers.

“A global network of major media is owned by seven corporations. In 1998, media conglomerates reached 75 percent of the world. Fox News and other media giants have a blatant bias and take political sides, vilifying and name calling,” he said.

Lupito in the studio

“Democratic government cannot operate without people having access to media,” Lupito said. “We have ‘state-run media,’ owned by a corporate class that funds politicians and pay to put people in office so they make rules favorable to them.

“We need free media to be a watchdog for abuse of power. Our media is in bed with power. The government even hires journalists to develop news pieces to push a slant, idea or product through Video News Releases (VNRs), which are fake news—propaganda. Nearly 25 federal organizations spend $250 million producing hundreds of VNRs as fake TV news segments.”

In 1999, while working with Kettle Range and Save the Reach, Lupito learned that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was offering a new FM service, low-power, 100-watt FM. “With most mainstream media controlled by huge corporations, citizen radio was appealing. Organizations and people working for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability never had a fair shake. Learning the FCC was giving a sliver of air space, I knew I had to act,” he said. There are many regulations. A 100-watt channel needs to be locally owned by a nonprofit in existence for at least two years and be for noncommercial community radio.

When low-power FM was instituted in 2000, 3,000 applied—about 60 percent were churches. In Spokane, five people came to the first gathering of people interested in a low-power station. They met at the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane.

In 2000, the application process began. Lupito and planners filled out pages of documents, hired a broadcast engineer and asked Citizens for Clean Air to serve as the nonprofit. The Community Building, at 35 W. Main, offered space for the station.

In 2001, a seven-day window opened in Washington, and Clean Air applied, but heard nothing until February 2003, when they received the permit.
Over the two years, they raised funds and kept up interest. By the summer of 2003, they had 100 founding members, who each gave $100 or more.

By October 2003, they bought equipment. Lupito found parts of two towers and a local ironworkers union donated labor to make them into a 120-foot tower.

The Prometheus Radio Project, a low-power support group that does “station raisings,” in the tradition of barn raisings, drew about 100 volunteers from around the country—Hawaii to New York—to help raise the tower and build the station. Lupito helped with a station raising in Louisiana. Prometheus also held workshops, training people to use the equipment and do interviews.

“It was an engineering feat,” said Lupito, describing working within the restriction requiring a low-power station to be three clicks away from any nearby station. A Sandpoint station is at 95.3, so Thin Air had to locate its transmitter antenna 10 miles west of downtown on the West Plains to avoid conflicting with that station.

On October 26, 2003, they flipped the switch and went on the air with 12 of the 64 program proposals submitted.

Because it was crackly downtown and could be picked up on the South Hill and North side, they needed a translator or repeater to rebroadcast the signal to a wider area on another frequency—92.3 FM—but the FCC would not allow Thin Air to own that frequency.

The Peace and Justice Action League applied and was given that 50-watt frequency. Then Thin Air Radio could be heard downtown, throughout Spokane and as far as Coeur d’Alene, Spangle, Fish Trap and Deer Park.

“Most people listen to the station on the translator,” said Lupito. “Some also listen to it online at kyrs.org.

The week the translator went on in February 2005, they learned the Sandpoint station had a permit to move its station closer to Spokane, which would knock Thin Air off the air.

“We were discouraged,” Lupito said. “We looked at several options. We wanted to play by the rules.”
So they held a conference call with their broadcast attorney, the Prometheus Radio Project and their engineer. They talked with the staff of Senator Maria Cantwell, a champion of the low-power FM bill in 2004.

The law says low-power FM cannot be three clicks away from an existing station, but does not say it can’t be two away, so they asked Senator Cantwell’s staff to check with the Congressional Research Service. With the Senator’s advocacy, the FCC agreed they could relocate to another frequency, 89.9 FM. The stations two channels away from that frequency granted waivers by August 2006. The antenna was re-adjusted.

“The regulations show how the FCC and media corporations dominate what we see, hear and read,” Lupito said. “The window to apply for low-power stations is closed, so there will be no more. Spokane is one of three big cities in the country to have a station. Most are in rural areas, but the cost of operations means many have stopped.

“Thin Air gives voice to the populations underserved and unserved by commercial or public radio,” he said.

The 60 programs—most of which are weekly—include two local teen programs, Raise Your Voice by high school students and Detention hosted by middle school students; a Spanish program and a Russian program; a locally produced environmental show, Earth Matters Now; Gospel Hour and Persian Hour. Kim Thorburn has a program on public health issues. Brad Read does interviews on global and local issues on Zombie Nation. There Goes the Neighborhood looks at city and county government.

Music filling times when there are no programs includes reggae, hip hop, punk rock, blues, jazz, country, inde rock, world music and native music. Thin-Air is listener-supported radio, relying on listeners to be members at $25. Locally owned small businesses can underwrite programs.

The station has applied for its own nonprofit status as Thin Air Community Radio with a board of 14 directors to develop policies and build committees, so it is no longer a steering committee of Citizens for Clean Air.

Lupito, as the only full-time staff, raises funds and manages day-to-day operations. He worked on it five years as a volunteer, then quarter time, then half time. In February 2006, he came on full time with a half-time program coordinator and an underwriting coordinator working on commission. There’s a volunteer coordinator and coordinator for the on-air fund drives. The office assistant is a part time volunteer.

For information, call 747-3012.

Mary Stamp - The Fig Tree - © June 2007
_____________________________________________________________________________
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SPOKESMANREVIEW.COM

Thorburn settling into new post

Former health district leader sets new goals at Planned Parenthood

Dr. Kim Thorburn talks about her job as medical director at Planned Parenthood of the Inland Northwest with Executive Director C.J. Gribble on April 6. (Jed Conklin The Spokesman-Review )

Jonel Aleccia
Staff writer
April 18, 2007

Two weeks after starting work as medical director at Planned Parenthood of the Inland Northwest, Dr. Kim Thorburn still has to double-check her office phone number when she returns a call.

Otherwise, though, the woman who was publicly fired last fall as
health officer for the Spokane Regional Health District says she's nearly up to speed in a new position that allows her greater latitude
to pursue a broad range of community health goals.

Sexually transmitted infections, reproductive decisions and teen pregnancy prevention are top issues for Thorburn, 56. She'll oversee clinical operations of the agency that treats more than 18,000 clients, mostly young women, each year.

"To me it is one of the most important areas of public health," said Thorburn.

But the part-time post, which will pay $63,000 a year, is more than just another job.

For Thorburn, who was ousted from a public platform that allowed her to head the state Board of Health, it's a new vehicle to continue a quarter-century career while remaining in the Inland Northwest. "We like it here, yes," said Thorburn, who lives with her husband in Spokane.

For Planned Parenthood officials, hiring Thorburn could elevate the political profile of the local nonprofit affiliate.

"Dr. Kim brings a lot of breadth in public health," said C.J. Gribble, executive director of the agency. "I count on Dr. Kim being a presence at the national level of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America."

It was Gribble who contacted Thorburn last fall, after health district board members voted to terminate her nine-year contract, citing ongoing and intractable communication problems.

"I really thought this was an opportunity for Planned Parenthood because of Dr. Kim's sterling reputation," Gribble said. "I called and said 'Let's chat.' "

Thorburn, who received a $125,000 settlement from the health district, said while she didn't need the money she's now making at Planned Parenthood, she did need a position with purpose. "That's what I discovered made some difference," she said.

Among Thorburn's duties will be expanding the number of agency clinics from five sites to 10 in the next five years, increasing vaccinations and, perhaps, coordinating the use of Spokane patients in national clinical research projects.

Outside of her new position, Thorburn is expanding her profile as well. She's the host of a new radio program – "Dr. Kim Talks" – on low-power radio station KYRS, and she's hoping to become a regular consultant and public speaker.

"I've got a gig lined up at the Washington State Medical Association," Thorburn said. The topic? "How to Handle Politically Charged Issues."

The irony is not lost on Thorburn, whose health district tenure included intemperate e-mails, criticism of her clothing and allegations of shouting matches with board members.

Five months without work offered plenty of time for reflection, said Thorburn, who acknowledged she mourned the loss of her job, which was in jeopardy for two years.

"I probably wasn't reading the signals early enough," she said.

Community members who protested Thorburn's firing said they were pleased at her new career direction.

"Dr. Thorburn is brilliant, and she will make an impact on any agency she joins," said John Roskelley, a former Spokane County Commissioner and health district board member who hired Thorburn.

Linda Finney, executive director of Leadership Spokane, said Thorburn would be a "good fit" at Planned Parenthood and a welcome presence in the region. "I'm glad we won't lose her as a leader or a bird watcher," said Finney, referring to one of Thorburn's hobbies.

Thorburn said she's just grateful to be past the contentiousness of last year.

"It's water under the bridge. I'm moving on," she said. "They can take my job, but not my community."

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=185139

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A Policy Of Injustice
~A film dedicated to all the political
prisoners around the world~

By 11th Hour Films

Starring Shahrokh Nikfar
(Host of The Persian Hour on KYRS)

A Policy of Injustice

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ON BENDED KNEE

Press Release of Senator Cantwell

FCC Agrees With Cantwell and Keeps Spokane’s KYRS Radio on the Air

Cantwell worked to preserve Spokane community station, continues push to encourage local radio nationwide

Wednesday, October 25,2006

WASHINGTON, DC – Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved KYRS radio’s bid to move from 95.3 FM to 88.9 FM, ensuring that the Spokane-area low-power FM station can remain on the air. After the FCC initially indicated that the move might violate existing low-power FM statues, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) asked the Congressional Research Service to examine whether the Commission correctly interpreted the law on which it based its concerns. The resulting report, which Cantwell forwarded to the FCC, determined that the bid for a frequency change by KYRS did not violate current statutes governing low-power FM. The report gave the Commission the flexibility to allow KYRS to change frequencies. In its approval of the move, announced Wednesday, the FCC determined that the frequency change is in the public interest. Cantwell has long worked to encourage media diversity and support low-power FM radio, and has teamed up with Senator John McCain (R-AZ) to back legislation that would encourage more community radio stations.

“This decision will keep another voice in the Spokane media market and encourage a wider range of views here in the Inland Northwest,” said Cantwell, a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC. “This is especially important during a time when our country is seeing a race toward mass media consolidation. Here in Washington state, we have 15 low-power FM stations, and this number might soon grow. I’m going to keep fighting to remove the artificial barriers that keep these stations off the air because local, community-based stations are key to preserving media diversity.”

“We are so grateful for the senator’s tenacity on our behalf,” said KYRS Station Manager Lupito Flores. “We’ve been under threat of encroachment by an out-of-state commercial station for more than a year, worrying whether we would be able to stay on the air. Senator Cantwell should be commended for working with the FCC to find a solution that is good for everyone. The senator is a great champion for Low-Power FM community radio, and we really appreciate all she's done for our little community radio station.” KYRS—a 100-Watt low-power Spokane station among the largest and most successful low-power FM stations in the country—reaches over 300,000 people through its primary signal at 95.3 FM and its translator station operating at 92.3 FM. However, in September 2003, the FCC granted KPND—a full-power Idaho station also broadcasting on 95.3 FM—a construction permit to build a new broadcast facility closer to Spokane. This new facility will increase the station’s broadcast power, allowing it to reach the Spokane market while still serving its primary market in Sandpoint, Idaho. Once KPND completes the facility, its signal at 95.3 FM will cause harmful interference with the KYRS signal. Because FCC rules clearly state that a low-power FM station can receive interference from a full-power station, but cannot cause interference to the full-power station, the new KPND antenna would mean an end to KYRS unless the station moved its primary signal to another frequency. The FCC decision allowing KYRS to move its primary signal to 88.9 FM means the station can stay on the air after the completion of the new KPND antenna. KEWU-FM (Eastern Washington University) and KHQ-TV (Channel 6) both agreed to the move as well. Cantwell has worked to encourage media diversity and support low-power FM radio. In 2004, Cantwell joined a bipartisan coalition of her colleagues, including Senator McCain, to introduce a bill that would lead to growth in the number of low-power FM radio stations nationwide. In 2005, Cantwell and McCain introduced the Local Community Radio Act to expand low-power FM service and include additional protections to radio reading service for the visually impaired. Cantwell and McCain were able to add this legislation as an....
cantwell.senate.gov

KYRS Policy Discussion

2007-11-23T18:14:00.001-08:00

If you have policy questions or concerns, this is the place to voice them. It is important as KYRS programmers that we all have some input regarding what the policies of the station are. We should not allow a few to decide for the majority so let's talk about policy.

At the KYRS Board of Director's first meeting on April 11, 2007, the issue of station policy was discussed. Perhaps because KBOO (Portland) is a well-established community radio station in our region of the country, KBOO's policy and personnel manuals were given primary consideration by the Board at that first meeting. It was suggested that in the pages of that policy manual one could feel thirty years of struggle and that adopting those policies would be a way to avoid those years of conflict.

In those 30 years of conflict reside, in many ways, the heart and soul and personality of that great community radio station. The same could be said about any great community organization.

Certainly every community organization needs its policies and procedures. But to impose artificial rigid policies and procedures with the intent of circumventing conflict is to deny the creative potential in conflict.

This is the type of issue which lends itself precisely to the reality of a collective. The Board of Directors of KYRS will continue to meet and discuss and adopt policy. The Board's policy committee--which met on Saturday, April 29, 2007 in 3rd floor board room at the Community Building--will continue to meet and formulate and propose policy.

How will KYRS programmers provide their input into the policies which will significantly impact their experience at the station and the impact of that on the listeners, members and volunteers of the station, not to mention the large Spokane and Eastern Washington communities?

The Collective is already being portrayed by some as not functioning, despite the fact that it has met every two weeks for 2 1/2 months. Please let other programmers know and attend. Once there make your voice heard.

NEXT KYRS PROGRAMMERS' COLLECTIVE MEETING:
10th PROGRAMMERS' COLLECTIVE MEETING
Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 6 PM
Community Building, 35 W. Main St., Spokane, WA
If upon arriving, no one is there, find us at the Red Lion Tavern (Main and Division).

Feminist Programming

2007-11-23T18:13:00.001-08:00

__________________________________________________________________

http://www.angelfire.com/bc/women2000/collectives.html

Collectives

Every woman has power of her own. When women decide to join together to work on a focus of interest, the power is expotentiated. One theory notes that the number of women (or people in general) working together has the power of that number squared. So, four women working together would manifest the power of 16 women working independently. Below are some resources of collectives that exist - ones that focus on a diverse range of topics and issues. Most are open to new members and represent worthy causes important to most women. There are a few sites listed here that have useful resources to help you form your own collective, if none exist. As well, if you know of a collective of interest to women, submit the information Here!

Boston Women's Health Book Collective - authors of the renowned publication, "Our Bodies, Our Selves" attempt to inspire a women's health movement around the globe.

Creator's Guild - a collective of women and men who form a multinational organization of creative professionals and hobbyists.

Empowerment from Below: Self education and empowerment of grass-roots women's collectives - excellent paper on the dynamics and benefits of working with other women at a grass-roots level.

Las Comadres - A Feminist Collective Negotiates a New Paradigm for Women at the Us/Mexico Border - wonderful article from Genders Online Journal.

Learning Exchanges: A Tool for Women's Collectives to access Resources - informative article on how to form learning networks for collective purposes.

Persistent Pacificism: How Activist Commitment is Developed and Sustained - useful paper by sociologists James Downton and Paul Wehr.

Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) - Based in India, SEWA believes that the basis of development and progress is organization. Self employed women must organize themselves into sustainable organizations so that they can collectively promote their own development.

South Asian Women for Action (SAWA) - is a Boston-based, progressive, non-hierarchical collective of women of South Asian descent.

Toronto Video Activist Collective - Video Activist Collectives: a discussion-starter - We are hoping to find other communities interested in video activism with whom we can share footage and ideas - and to find new members of our own community.

Webgrrls International - the women's technological knowledge connection - resources, articles, dialogue, support.

Wild: Women's Institute for Leadership Development for Human Rights - advancing human rights in the United States through the leadership of women and girls.

Wings: Women's International News Gathering Service - Raising Women's Voices Through Radio Worldwide.

Women Defending Ourselves Collective - A women-run collective working to end violence against women, primarily by teaching women-only self defense throughout the Bay Area. The classes include physical techniques, verbal defense and assertiveness, and discussion of issues of violence.

Women's Radio Collective - a birds-eye view of one woman's experience at fitting into a Canadian radio collective.

Abstract

Journal of Radio Studies

2004, Vol. 11, No. 2, Pages 169-183

(doi:10.1207/s15506843jrs1102_3)

A Mic of Her Own: Stations, Collectives, and Women's Access to Radio

Susan Carter‌

Michigan State University

As the 1960s came to a close, increasing social and political pressure was brought to bear on broadcasters to augment women's participation on the air. The pressure, from changes in civil rights laws and the Second Wave of the women's liberation movement, took several different forms; three models o f women's access to the airwaves emerged in the ensuing decade. Women using the models to gain access to the air met with varying degrees of success. This article will discuss the ways in which women broadcast, particularly on the radio during this period, and why two of the three models o f access faded as the Second Wave lost energy at the end of the 1970s.

Printable PDF (831 KB)

PDF with links (832 KB)

http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15506843jrs1102_3

A INTERNATIONAL WOMEN NETWORK IS BORN

The idea of creating an international network of women working in community radio was born in AMARC’s Fourth World Conference, held in Dublin in 1990, where a group of women found a space to discuss their issues, and proposed establishing a permanent link of solidarity between women working in participatory radio around the world.

In AMARC 5 in Mexico in 1992 the AMARC Women’s International Network was formally institutionalized
and a permanent position on the otherwise regionally defined board of directors was established to
represent the interests of women. Coordinators for the Women’s Network in each world region were elected.

Since there has also been a vice-president for Women on the board of AMARC, Maria Victoria Polanco
from Colombia, re-elected in AMARC 6 in Dakar, Senegal in 1995.

The objectives of the Women’s International Network which were established in this Conference were as
follows:

· Encouraging exchange between women who work in community radio around the world.

· Providing training.

· Looking for funding to develop the network and implement specific women’s projects.

· Creating a code of ethics to guarantee the equal treatment of the women working in AMARC members’ radios stations.

At the same conference in 1992 in Mexico, it was decided to establish a regional AMARC-office in Europe.
This helped the Women’s Network under AMARC-Europe to initiate its efforts to strengthen women’s
representation in community radio and to promote more programs about women, our experience,
knowledge and visions.
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________

Women Grab the Microphone!

Women put more dynamism in radio and the Women's International Network
in Community Radio shows how.....

by Bianca Miglioretto

Women come from everywhere, go everywhere and talk about everything. So let's grab the
microphones and occupy the airwaves. Because if we look at mass media and at radio in particular,
the presence of women in every sphere of society and life is just not reflected. There are fewer women
than men heard over the radio and if women are projected on radio it is often in a very voyeuristic and
sensational or traditional way, full of stereotypes that are far from our realities.

Community radio or participatory radio, as they are also called, offer the best opportunity to women
to grab the microphone and talk about the issues that interest them, play women's music seldom
heard elsewhere, raise the consciousness on gender issues, inform women about their rights.
Women have a lot to say and what they have to say shows a completely different, powerful, diverse,
and active picture. This in turn shows the big contribution of women to society and their important
participation in changing the world.

Women Grab the Microphone

______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

Women's Radio Programs
http://www.feministezine.com/feminist/music/Womens-Radio.html

Amazon Radio - "Women's Music for all who color outside the lines." Heard on WPKN in Bridgeport, CT. This site is home
to the National Women's Radio Archives, playlists, events, women's music links and more.

Face the Music - Airing Thursdays 8-9:30 p.m. on WCUW Worcester 91.3 FM, Face The Music is the second longest
continuously running lesbian/feminist music program on Community Supported Radio in the United States.

Her Infinite Variety, WORT-FM 89.9, Madison, WI - Sunday 11:30 AM - 2:00 PM Her InfiniteVariety showcases women
in all genres/styles of music. Includes feminist and lesbian music, other music made by women, interviews, comedy,
poetry, community announcements. Hosts: Sue Goldwomon, Tara Ayres, Mary Waitrovich.

Her Turn - WORT Radio, Madison WI Sunday 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM News and information by and about women in a
magazine format. Includes shorter news stories and in-depth features produced by the Her Turn Women's Collective.

KRCL Community Radio - "Woman to Woman" and "The Second Decade" are just two of the women's radio programs
at this station based in Salt Lake City.

Outbeat Salon - an LGBTIQ radio show at KRCB, Santa Ros. Airs Sunday nights from 8-9pm PT (or online at krcb.org).

Sirens Muse - Sundays from 1-3 pm Eastern time on WPVM 103.5 FM in Asheville NC - Sirens' Muse offers the 2 hours of
the best in contemporary women's music - local, national, international - the show streams live on Sundays and the latest
show can be listened to anytime from the WPVM archive page.

Something About the Women - Something About the Women is perhaps the longest-running women's music radio show
in the United States, if not the world. On the air since 1975, this collectively-run show features music by women artists
spanning all genres, from folk and rock to jazz and world music. The show airs on the Tufts University radio station,
WMFO 91.5 FM in Medford, Massachusetts on Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The show is streamed live on the
Internet at http://www.wmfo.org/or you can listen to and download previous shows from the archives at
http://www.satwomen.com/archives.htm

WERU-FM Community Radio in Maine: 89.9 Blue Hill & 102.9 Bangor. Lots of folk music here and two programs
specifically about women: Womenfolk Tuesday Evenings at 9 a.m. and Women's Windows Sunday 8 p.m.

Womanotes KBCS.FM Bellevue Community College, Wednesday, 7 PM
Enjoy music by women of the past 75 years with hosts Mary Brabec, Teresita Heiser, Christine Linde, Kristin Walsh
and Tracey Wickersham.

Women in Music with Laney Goodman - Women in Music with Laney Goodman is a weekly, one-hour radio series with
an eclectic mix of the best music of female artists from around the world. Women of Note hosted by Fern Saturdays,
8-11 a.m. You can get more information, and listen online at The River, WRSI in Western Massachusetts and Southern
Vermont.

The Women's Independent Music Show - An internet radio show that showcases women's music, especially the
independent female artist. Hosted by Diane Ward.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

http://www.womensradiofund.org/femradio.htm

WINGS thanks the Sister Fund for the research funding for this outline.

ANATOMY OF RADIO 101:
An outline for choosing and funding radio projects

Training Resources

2007-11-23T18:12:00.001-08:00

“The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
— Stephen Biko

radio.oneworld.net
-- Glossaries, guides, production guidelines, tutorials

BBC On line Journalism Courses
-- BBC Journalism training including Cool Edit Tutorial and quiz

Association of Independents in Radio--AIR
-- A comprehensive resource from equipment, editing, interviewing, software, production, etc.

itrainonline.org
-- A step-by-step workshop on how to use Cool Edit software for digital sound editing.

www.archive.org
-- Audio archives

Cool Edit training video on YouTube
-- Cool Edit training video
(as an example of what might be done)

freeradio.org
-- International Radio Action Training Education

KYRS Board of Directors Information Page

2007-11-23T18:10:00.000-08:00

*NEXT MEETING OF KYRS BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

Thursday, June 14, 2007 from 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM in the Mezzanine of the Community Building.

************************************************************************************************

Who We Are by Lupito

Thin Air Community Radio is run almost entirely by volunteers from the community, people like you who have a passion for independent music and ideas. All locally produced programs are hosted by volunteers.

Thin Air Community Radio Board of Directors

Jon Snyder

Twa-le Abrahamson
Susanna Lopez
Debra Reed
Mimi Marinucci
Kathleen Russell
Karla Childs
John Orr
Jay McConnaughey
Ric Conner
Fred Strange
Theresa Sanderson
Bill Barrington
Lupito Flores

Thin Air Radio Board Bios

Jon Snyder, I am a husband and father of two and have lived in Spokane most of my life. I have volunteered for several non-profits groups including Lutheran Community Services Rape Crisis (Spokane), Reko Muse Gallery/Rock Club (Olympia WA), KAOS Community Radio (Olympia WA) and Men Overcoming Violence (San Francisco CA). But the organization that I have put the most energy into is KYRS, for which I have been a devoted volunteer since 2001, having served on the steering committee, as tower construction supervisor, as founding program director, and board president. I will be stepping down from the board in October to make way for the at large board member.

(Note: Snyder is also the publisher of both OutThereMonthly and GO GREEN DIRECTORY)

Mimi Marinucci moved to Spokane from the East Coast in Fall of 2000. She is an associate professor of Women's Studies and Philosophy at Eastern Washington University. She is especially interested in feminist and GLBTQ issues.

Susana López has lived and worked in the Spokane area for 30 years. She is a graduate of UC, Davis and is currently affiliated with the EWU College of Business and Public Administration at the Riverpoint campus. Leisure activities include spending time with her daughter and grandchildren and friends, gourmet cooking, camping, and philanthropic work.

Debra Reed: I am dedicated to serve the community that I live in. I appreciate people’s differences. I value family and cherish my close friends. I have served on several boards, President of Onyx Theatre, Treasurer of the NAACP, and President of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. I have worked with the same company for 17 years, currently in an upper management position.

Bill Barrington is a life-long Spokanite, married, home owner, semi-professional song writer and musician, member of the Latah Valley Neighborhood Council, employed by a local bookkeeping and tax preparation firm.

Fred Strange is a long time partisan of the station and its mission. Fred is a part-time poet and professor of social theory and anthropology, and a full-time domestic worker caring for seven and eight year-old grandchildren.

My name is Karla Childs. I made Spokane my home 27 years ago. I believe we must treat all people equally and that all voices should be heard. I believe in KYRS. It's our duty to keep the community informed, especially of the news underreported by the mainstream media. I hope to contribute to OUR station.

Twa-le Abrahamson, a Spokane Tribal member, is the youth coordinator for SHAWL (Sovereignty, Health, Air, Water, Land) Society based on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington. SHAWL’s main focus is the historical uranium mining activities on the Reservation and its effects to an indigenous community. SHAWL also oversees a youth media training program on the Reservation. She graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in environmental studies. She has been organizing on social and environmental justice issues for four years and is currently active in many national and international organizations and networks such as Indigenous Environmental Network, Third World Majority’s Media Justice Network, and the Western Mining Action Network.

Kathleen Russell was born in Spokane, graduated Shadle. Art scholarship to RSSD, San Francisco, 1965. Graduated WNMU 1986. Many years working in New York City, one year in Dublin, Ireland.and lots of time in Mexico. Sold over 100 paintings, mother of Max and Ashley Bloom. One year as host to Need to Know political discussion group, and Democracy School graduate!

Hello, my name is Jay McConnaughey. I am employed by a tribal government (sovereign) as an ecologist working on Hanford superfund issues. I am a founding member of KYRS, a major donor to KYRS and the Spokane Translator Association, and have been an active volunteer beginning with the barnraising of KYRS in 2003. Activities I enjoy include steelhead and trout flyfishing, yoga, pilates, and hanging out in Spokane with friends.

Theresa Sanderson: I am a trustworthy and honest person. I am a person who acts in the interest of others with a spiritual grounding. My work experience is in the legal field. I am excited about being a part of the KYRS family and sharing the opportunities it provides.

John Orr: A large percentage of my adult life has been in management positions (Computer systems development, Sales and Marketing) with various companies in California for 10 years and in Spokane for the last 35 years. I have extensive experience in the management of organizations from an operational as well as a financial perspective. For the past 15 years I have been a Real Estate sales agent. In 1999 after reading Robert McChesney’s book “Rich Media, Poor Democracy” I became convinced that media democracy is one of, if not THE core, issues facing our society. I am passionate about the loss of a free and open media in this country and convinced that without a critical media our Democracy will not survive. I am very happy to have the opportunity to apply my energy in support of this station and the advancement of free media in our country.

Ric Conner is a long-time supporter of KYRS and has lived in Spokane for 20 years. He has a degree in Environmental Science and travels extensively. He co-owns Ganesh Himal fair trading company with his wife Denise. Ric has a passion for environmental and social justice, devoting much of his life to building a more just and sustainable world.

Lupito Flores--KYRS station manager. Ex-officio, non-voting member of the Board of Directors.

These are the 14 members of the board of directors of KYRS. There were 15 members but one member, Tim Connor, is no longer on the board. He was asked to resign and did so. This was a disappointment to some station members and programmers.

According to the bylaws of KYRS, the station manager--in this case Lupito Flores--is a non-voting, ex-officio member of the board of directors. In other words, he is on the board as part of his job, but does not have a vote.

WEBSITES AT OTHER COMMUNITY RADIO STATIONS

2007-11-23T18:05:00.000-08:00

Looking for an idea for your show's website?This one might be worth checking out.

Great resources on the right side. By the way, it is done (with some tweeking) with Wordpress.

http://www.lyingmediabastards.com/

___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

KYRS was blessed for a time to have a world class webmaster, Hawke, donating his time to the station and to the creation of a website for the station. A very busy and talented man, he has many other commitments--to his family, to his art, to his trade. Despite many challenges, he left KYRS a great foundation to build upon for their website.

Here is a list of Community Radio station websites that Hawke posted on the KYRS.ORG website. There are some interesting ideas here on layout, format, functionality, etc. Check them out and then share your thoughts with others.

And once again--thank you, Hawke, and may you always fly high!

http://www.radiotierra.org/
http://kbcs.fm/
http://www.kpfa.org/
http://www.wort-fm.org/
http://www.radiofreemoscow.com/
http://houston.kpft.org/
http://www.kboo.org/
http://www.radiopio12.org/
http://www.kfai.org/

http://www.wmpg.org/
http://www.radiobilingue.org/
http://www.kdna.org/

KYRS Crisis: Bannings, Firings, Dissolution of Committees, Re-write of Bylaws, Elimination of Consensus

2007-09-23T19:12:00.000-07:00

*******************************************************************************

--------September 23, 2007------

KYRS COLLECTIVE

kyrscollective@gmail.com

Collective: A group of people who share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives are also characterized by attempts to share and exercise political and social power and make decisions on a consensus-driven, egalitarian basis.

The KYRS Collective has met every two weeks since late February 2007. The 'executive director' of KYRS recently acted to prevent the Collective from meeting in the Community Building. As one might expect with most banned organizations, this in no way has resulted in the dissolution, nor the abandoning of the vision, values or goals of the Collective. The Collective continues to meet with the intent of insuring that KYRS adheres to the sacred words of the Mission statement, including its waning commitment to the values of diversity, community and, as evidenced in the recent bannings of programmers, democracy. The specter of the epic battle for the survival and integrity of KPFA is raised by the recent actions of the board and ownership of KYRS. It is ironic that the one of the first pages posted at this Wiki site dealt with the struggle for the survival and community control of KPFA. It was offered as a precautionary tale. Now a similar struggle is underway at KYRS. It is incumbent upon those with an interest in true community-based radio,consensus-based decision making and other elements of the mission statement of KRYS to inform themselves regarding the recent decisions by the 'executive director' and a fraction of the KYRS board to suspend all committees, ban programmers, remove permission for the Collective to meet in the Community Building, conduct closed board meetings without minutes, and other actions which indicate that effectively an internal coup has occurred at the station.

****

_________________________________________________________________

Report back from KYRS Collective Meeting of September 20, 2007

Having been shut out the Community Building, the KYRS Collective meet September 20, 2007 at Lutheran Church. Attendance was the most dynamic and diverse to date with current and banned programmers and staff, concerned KYRS community members, and volunteers. As has been the case since the day the Collective was formed it was stated again that membership in the Collective is open to all.

Concerns continue about the power structure of the station, the form of participation, lack of clarity regarding the mission statement, etc. There continues to be a desire to see a more "horizontal" form of democracy than the current traditional corporate "hierarchical" style.

All of these concerns have been exacerbated by the recent closed board meetings, the suspension of all KYRS committees, the bannings and revocation of memberships of two programmers and one staff member. The structure of the station has changed with no participation by nor even notice to the membership of the station.

KYRS COLLECTIVE
kyrscollective@gmail.com

The same questions that the Collective has asked for months remain? Are the bylaws silent, vague, or clear on the whether or not a programmer can be on the board? What is the relationship between the KYRS mission statement and what actually goes out over the airwaves? What's on the programmers' wish list? How to get the funds applied to meet those needs? Why is the equipment being stolen and destroyed without regard for the impact on the ability of programmers to do their work?

--See copy of the original Bylaws at end of page as Word document--
(A fraction of the board recently modified the Bylaws and made changes such as deleting the word "consensus" and other changes. In that these actions were carried out in secret and closed meetings without minutes or other notes, the full extent of the anti-democratic actions taken by the station are unknown.)

___________________________________________________________________________

Welcome to the KYRS Programmers Collective WIKI.

Here we can have extended conversations about issues that affect us all.

At the KYRS Thin Air Community Radio 89.9 and 92.3 FM website you will find a programming
calendar, events listing, programmer bios, streaming audio of KYRS programming, underwriting
information and much, much more:

http://www.kyrs.org

And to view the exciting schedule of KYRS programming, go to: KYRS Programming Schedule

___________________________________________________________________________

Suicide by Cop -- I'd Have Jumped Too

2007-08-02T07:40:00.001-07:00

I’d have jumped too

(originally posted by David Brookbank at spokanepoliceabuses.wordpress.com July 28th, 2007)

After a botched attempt by the Spokane Police Department to taser him into submission, a suicidal Spokane man jumped to his death from Spokane’s Monroe Street Bridge mid-afternoon yesterday (7/27/07).

The situation on the Monroe Street Bridge reminds me of a scene from the 1992 version of The Last of the Mohicans starring American Indian Movement leader Dennis Means, Madeline Stowe, Daniel Day Lewis, and Wes Studi. In a scene late in the movie, the French-allied Huron Indian Magua is on a rampage of vengeance across the granite landscapes of the western frontier of the white colonies. He has taken as prisoner and presumed bride Alice, the youngest daughter of the British General Munro. At one point on a cliff trail while Magua’s party is in hot pursuit of Chingachgook, Uncas and Hawkeye, Alice steps to the edge of the cliff. Magua, demonstrating a frantic but fleeting moment of humanity, attempts to lure her back from the edge. Not surprisingly, she looks over her shoulder at the abyss below and jumps to her death on the rocks below.

Faced yesterday with the Spokane Police Department’s homicidal history and deceptive tactics, a Spokane man chose to jump.

According to the Spokane Police, he had been on other bridges in the past and had threatened to jump. And he survived every time.

Faced with the Spokane Police Department, I would have jumped too.

Remember how on September 22, 2003, the Spokane Police shot 17-year-old Lewis and Clark student Sean Fitzpatrick in the face, arm, and torso rather than to wait him out or allow his father to intervene?

Who do these cops think they are?

As a social worker over more than 25 years I was disappointed–and said so publicly–when I heard recently that the Spokane Police had made a pact with our local county mental health agency to work more closely together in the field. As I read it, essentially someone has convinced Spokane mental health workers that they are at such risk that they should put the lives of the public and those mentally ill they pretend to help at risk by putting the trigger-happy, taser-trained Spokane Police Department in a position to assert its law enforcement “discretion” in determining when to stop mental health intervention and turn it over the gun-totters from the police.

Spokane Police Chief Ann Kirkpatrick–lawyer, police officer, and public relations’ master that she is–managed to get a picture on the front page of the Spokesman-Review of herself “consoling” the victim’s family on the Monroe Street Bridge immediately after the incident.

The SPD and other law enforcement in Spokane are busy training themselves in the use of every possible type of weapon, crowd control device, and technique of submission one can imagine. These individuals in their periodic training on dealing with conflict and human nature always have one bottom line.

They are the law, they are the ones with the discretion, they are the ones who get to call it over when they decide it is over.

And so it is over for one more Spokane citizen who suffered the botched “rescue” efforts of the Spokane Police Department. For all the SPD’s police training, all their psychological profiles, all their we-know-better because “we are the police”, the outcome is still the same.

One more dead Spokane citizen.

I have one thing to say.

Get the *&$!# out of my face, officer!

The Chief said that they were offering this poor man the opportunity to save face.

Chief, it is time for you to save face.

Publicly confront the Spokane Police Guild. Put your career and credibility and your democratic credentials on the line for the people of Spokane.

It is time for you, Chief Fitzpatrick, to come out openly and unequivocally for immediate independent oversight of the Spokane Police Department in the form of a Boise-style Ombudsperson.

Furthermore, you should bring an immediate end to the practice of killings by your officers being investigated by the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and vice versa.

We are sick and tired of being the victims of Spokane PD brutality, arrogance, and faulty judgment.

Either you are the Chief, Ann, or you are not. We are awaiting your choice.

THE ROLE OF SPOKANE, FAIRCHILD, AND THE SERE/JPRA PROGRAMS IN US TORTURE AND GENEVA CONVENTION VIOLATIONS

2007-06-30T13:09:00.000-07:00

(Update from original version posted 6/27/07--
from original & source materials)
(All blue underlined words and phrases are links to
websites, documents, maps, etc).

Fairchild AFB is home to a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) Program. SERE Programs train soldiers, seaman, airmen, CIA operatives, and others--including foreign nationals--in resistance techniques. However, they also provide military and other government torturers, trainers, foreign nationals, contractors (aka US government mercenaries employed by corporations such as Blackwater, CACI International, and Titan Corp) and psychologists, among others, the opportunity to develop, refine, practice and polish their torture techniques.

In their must-read June 29, 2007 Spokesman-Review article, reporters Karen Dorn Steele and Bill Morlin reveal that "the SERE program is used by the Army at Fort Bragg, where Green Berets train, and at the U.S. Air Force Survival School near Spokane, where thousands of other trainees are instructed annually." Using first-hand reporting and research as well as reporting from sources such as the New Yorker and Salon.com, Dorn Steele and Morlin reveal the role of Spokane area psychologists and businesses in the U.S. government's reverse-engineering of torture resistance training.

These techniques of torture--witnessed at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other U.S. facilities around the world--have been employed by the U.S. government, military, intelligence agencies, contractors and foreign agents with the express purpose of breaking human beings as part of the global U.S. "war on terror". That so-called "war on terror" has produced worldwide denunciations of U.S. preemptive attacks, massacres of civilians, torture, disappearances, use of "depleted" uranium, and other actions which are illegal under international standards and laws.

* * *

Fairchild's SERE Program -- The premiere Air Force SERE program

* * *

In fact, not only is Fairchild home to a SERE program, it is home to an even more exclusive and secret program, SERE/JPRA (Joint Personnel Recovery Agency). This unclassified Department of Defense (DOD) memo shows that the SERE/JPRA site at the PRA White Bluff Site at 11604 W. NEWKIRK ROAD, SPOKANE, WA 99224 was the host in May 2007 of the DOD SERE Conference and the DOD SERE Psychology Conference.

As the memo shows, foreign government representatives from the U.S. government's Iraq "coalition" partners participated in the two conferences as did three representatives from each of the FBI, DEA, and CIA. In point of fact, the facility has all the markings of a CIA facility such as those at Warrenton, VA and other locations in the U.S. (compare the similarity between the facility maps by clicking the respective links above).

On September 16, 2002, a prior SERE Psychologist Conference was hosted by the Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency at Fort Bragg for JTF-170 (the military component responsible for interrogations at Guantanamo) interrogation personnel. The Army's Behavioral Science Consultation Team from Guantanamo Bay also attended the conference. Joint Personnel Recovery Agency personnel briefed JTF-170 representatives on the exploitation and methods used in resistance (to interrogation) training at SERE schools. The purpose was the reverse engineering of interrogation resistance to design more "effective" torture techniques. (See "Shrinks and the SERE Techniques at Guantanamo")

Wording in the declassified memo indicates that topics dealt with at the SERE Psychology Conference include such topics as how to conduct psychological and other forms of torture in a way that is psychologically and morally palatable to the torturer as well as how to justify those actions under the law and in a way that can be argued to be "ethical" and "legal". The memo states, "The first two days will focus on sere/code of conduct issues and reintegration. The remaining three days involve discussion and training on ethic, research, and SERE Orientation training". (See conference agenda here).

* * *

Torture, the Geneva Conventions and the School of the Americas

By Ann Wright, US Army Reserve Colonel

(quote) Do Special Operations Forces of the Army, Navy Marines and Air Force practice on detainees the interrogation techniques they are subjected to during their Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training at Ft. Bragg, NC, Fairchild, Air Force Base, WA and Naval Air Stations in Brunswick, ME and North Island, San Diego, CA? What are the limits of abusive interrogation techniques taught to CIA and CIA contract interrogators in the various CIA training areas around the Washington, DC and other locations in the US? (end quote)

* * *

Report of the Department of Defense Inspector General, August 25, 2006

DOD Interrogation Techniques -- The Office of the DoD Inspector General produced a Review of DoD-Directed Investigations of Detainee Abuse (Report No. 06-INTEL-10) on August 25, 2006.

(excerpt) The report made three findings. One of them was that SERE, a course designed to prepare selected American forces to withstand interrogations that did not abide by the Geneva Conventions, was turned into a program for harsh, coercive interrogation. In this way, a course of training to resist cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment was transformed into a program to counter this very resistance. This program was carried out in the interrogation of Guantánamo prisoners before it "migrated" to Iraq. Officially, Guantánamo prisoners were not entitled to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions; Iraqi prisoners were. The finding in question is entitled "DoD Interrogation Techniques ..."

* * *

Physicians for Human Rights letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
regarding SERE

(excerpt) The OIG additionally found that the SERE methods later became the standard operating procedure for interrogations conducted in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and had migrated from Guantanamo due, in part, to training and support from JPRA, BSCT, and Special Operations psychologists and others. (end excerpt)

* * *

“Improving the Fighting Position”: A Practitioner’s Guide to Operational Law Support to the Interrogation Process (From the July 2005 edition of The Army Lawyer )

(quote) This balance between legitimate manipulation and inhumane treatment in the form of physical or mental abuse orcoercion is articulated as a key principle of interrogation operations in FM 34-52:

The GWS, GPW, GC, and US policy expressly prohibit acts of violence or intimidation, including physical or mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to inhumane treatment as a means of or aid to interrogation.

Experience indicates that the use of prohibited techniques is not necessary to gain the cooperation
of interrogation sources. Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. (end quote)

* * *

Spokane Journal -- June 2007-- It's No Game at Base's Survival School

* * *

The Torture Question Frontline Special Watch it online

Abu Ghraib photos

The Abu Ghraib files by Joan Walsh -- A 10-part evidentiary series from inside Abu Ghraib prison accompanied by 279 photographs and 19 videos based on the U.S. Army's own investigation of the three month period from October 17-December 30, 2003. Nine essays follow the photos and videos.

Iraqi woman detainee in U.S. custody.
* * *

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/50191/
(excerpt) In fact, there are likely people being "tortured" in this manner as we speak at Fairchild Air Force base Washington as a part of their "Land Survival" program (the POW resistance training). The only difference is that those at Fairchild have in the back of their minds the fact that their "torture" is only going to last 2 days. Many different career fields go through that training. Most field intelligence, anyone who flies (pilots and aircrew), SERE naturally, special forces and a few others.

* * *

http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?14+Duke+J.+Gender+L.+&+Pol'y+815
(Excerpt from Trip Report Summary of Commissioner Elaine Donnelly). During her two-day trip to Fairchild AFB, Washington, August 9-11, 1992, Donnelly talked to instructors about their realistic "rape scenario," in which male trainees are taught to manage more intense feelings when a female colleague is threatened with sexual assault or worse, so that enemy captors cannot exploit those emotions. Donnelly described parts of the SERE training that she saw at Fairchild Air Force Base during her visit:

Without knowing what to expect, I found myself locked in a cramped black box that was both physically and psychologically uncomfortable. I also participated in and witnessed interrogation exercises designed to suggest but not duplicate the physical and emotional stress of being a POW. As the night wore on, a sense of cultural dissonance began to overcome the camp's logic of equality in the simulation of brutality.

A woman I watched being interrogated was very capable, but she was totally in the power of a man much stronger than she. What I saw was an unmistakable element of inequality that-in the opinion of many Commission witnesses-cannot be overcome by peacetime training programs or psychological techniques. As the interrogation continued, it was easy to visualize the possibility of sexual abuse as well as physical harm at the hands of a menacing enemy. For reasons of survival, the SERE training for aircrew members makes sense. . . . However, the politically-correct unisex nature of the resistance training is very seductive; it is easy to become "desensitized," meaning accustomed, to the idea that men and women are interchangeable equals in a world of torture and abuse. The SERE trainers asserted that the entire nation must prepare itself for this very real possibility if women are assigned to combat positions.

* * *

http://www.womanhonorthyself.com/?m=200605
(excerpt) An interview with trainers at the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training center at Fairchild Air Force Base uncovered a logical but disturbing consequence of assigning women to combat: “If a policy change is made, and women are allowed into combat positions, there must be a concerted effort to educate the American public on the increased likelihood that women will be raped, will come home in bodybags, and will be exploited..” (end excerpt)

* * *

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/06/1428250

http://www.neverinournames.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1551

* * *

Robert Johnson, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A.r of Clinical Preventative Medicine Family Medicine proudly lists on his resume
USAF Survival, Escape, Evasion and Resistan

* * *

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usaf/66trs.htm
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Training Instructor Course. The 66th Training Squadron based at Fairchild Air Force Base, Spokane, Washington, conducts the survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) training instructor course in select areas of Washington and Oregon. The course is a physically demanding six-month program designed to teach future SERE instructors how to teach aircrew members to survive in any environment. The course includes instruction in basic survival, medical, land navigation, evasion, arctic survival, teaching techniques, rough-land evacuation, coastal survival, tropics/river survival, and desert survival.

* * *

http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2005_07_03.html
(quote) The SERE program also uses waterboarding, continual bombardment by loud noise, and sexual humiliation. Several sources told Mayer that psychologists trained in SERE techniques had advised interrogators at Guantánamo and elsewhere. One of the most disturbing things about the article is its suggestion that what started out as a stupid means of getting information evolved into pure sadism. As a retired colonel who attended a SERE school as part of his Special Forces training said, "If you did too much of that stuff, you could really get to like it. You can manipulate people. And most people like power." (end quote)

* * *

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=10496

Senate probe focuses on Spokane men

Karen Dorn Steele and Bill Morlin
Spokesman-Review Staff writers
June 29, 2007

Two Spokane psychologists are the focus of a congressional inquiry into the use of harsh techniques to interrogate terrorist suspects in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and other secret military and CIA detention centers.

In an article published last week, the online magazine Salon.com identified psychologists James E. Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen as key developers of the interrogation program — which the magazine said was linked to the CIA and likely violated the Geneva Conventions against the torture and mistreatment of prisoners.

The interrogation methods, according to a recently declassified Pentagon report reviewed by The Spokesman-Review, are “reverse engineering” of techniques taught in the military’s SERE program, set up to train U.S. special forces and flight crews in the principles of Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.

The SERE program is used by the Army at Fort Bragg, where Green Berets train, and at the U.S. Air Force Survival School near Spokane, where thousands of other trainees are instructed annually.
(cont'd at http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=10496 )

* * *

SERE SOLUTIONS, INC -- SERE Solutions, Inc., is owned by Spokane-based contractor Michael Lyons. In 2006 Lyons received a $47 million US Air Force grant with the 336th SERE Training Group at Fairchild AFB after 2 years of extensive assistance from the Washington State College of Business Small Business Development Center. Lyons operation employs at least 37 people in various locations.

SERE Solutions, Inc, lists an address of 6603 S. Shelby Ridge Rd., Spokane , WA. Interestingly, that same address was the site of the Democratic Party Sixth Legislative District Precinct No. 6151 meeting in 2004.

SERE SOLUTIONS INC (6603 S SHELBY RIDGE RD; small business): $2,161,904 in 2 contracts in 2006 $2,146,904 with Air Force for Training/Curriculum Development. Signed on 2006-03-20. Completion date: 2006-09-30. $15,000, same as above. Signed on 2006-06-28. Completion date: 2006-09-30.

* * *

For more information, cut and paste the following lists of words into an internet search engine:

USAF Survival Escape Evasion and Resistance Training Fairchild AFB
SERE Fairchild torture
SERE JPRA Spokane
SERE Spokane

* * *

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_11_12.php
http://boards.billmaher.com/showthread.php?t=49981&page=17
Torture Teachers -- Salon article
Open Letter to President of American Psychological Association
More Waterboarding (video) -- not quite as sanitary as this military training video
Free Soul Jah--The CIA, Torture & George Tenet's Body Language (Video of a CIA director in action)
(See the Cryptome Eyeball Series at http://eyeball-series.org/ )

* * *

For more on Blackwater:
Iraq for Sale (video excerpt)
Blackwater: America's Private Army (video)
Blackwater @ www.sourcewatch.org

* * *

Unanswered questions for Spokane reporters, broadcasters, activists & citizens:

Have "high-value detainees" been flown into Fairchild, Felts Field, Spokane International Airport, the helicopter landing pad at Spokane's SERE/JPRA site at 11604 Newkirk Road or other Spokane locations to be subject to interrogation and torture?

What involvement exists between the Spokane Police Department and the Spokane County Sherriff's Department with the SERE/JPRA program? How many SPD and SCSD personnel are graduates of SERE/JPRA and other government or private coercive interrogation training programs?

What is the level of collaboration in surveillance of U.S. citizens, Spokane area activists, members of the media, and others by government agencies in the Spokane area--FBI, DEA, ATF, USCIS (formerly INS), Spokane Police Department, Spokane County Sherriff's and others--as well as involvement of contracted companies and organizations such as SERE Solutions, Inc.

Why has the 12th Special Forces Group--which supposedly hasn't existed for more than a decade--been listed in the DEX phone directory listing for the U.S. Army Mann Hall Army Reserve Center in Spokane, Washington? The specific listing is for Detachment B4 and B5 Co B 3rd BN 12th Special Forces Group. What is the non-existent 12th Special Forces Group and its personnel actually doing in Spokane?

Why is Ciber, Inc. at the same Mann Hall Army Reserve Center in Spokane? Ciber, you may know, is the same folks involved in, among many other things, in the electronic vote fraud scandal. Why when one calls the Mann Hall Army Reserve Center at 489-6441 does one get a message for Ray at Ciber, Inc.?

How many Spokane Police Officers are former U.S. military, what sort of training do they have, and how much of that training may help explain their attacks on protesters, killings of citizens, and other lawless behavior? (See bio of 27 year Spokane Police Department officer Skip Pahvlischak, an instructor for this Team One Network tactics and weapons training). http://www.teamonenetwork.com/TeamOneCatalog2007.pdf

"Mariposa"--La Voz de Radio Venceremos

2007-06-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

Marina "Mariposa" Manzanares
The Voice of Radio Venceremos

Mariposa....gran mujer salvadoreña..... Hasta La Victoria Siempre
tu junto a Santiago, fueron las voces del Fmln, en aquel tiempo en que el campesino salvadoreño tuvo que tomar las armas para defender su dignidad....

Mariposa valiente, has soportado la muerte de tu familia;
todo por decir la verdad,
la verdad de un pueblo oprimido por una democracia burguesa.
Viva Shafik, Viva Mauricio, Viva la Mariposa

Mariposa, voz con fúsil en mano, voz con huracan
que recorrió los rincones de El Salvador.
Fuistes la brisa de la esperanza. Te he escuchado otra vez (antes estaba pequeño
pero cuando escuchaba tu voz me alegraba, era un canto de amor
en la desesperanza de aquel Arcatao heroico).
Sólo que esta vez estoy mayor pero la piel se me derite al escucharte.
Mariposa mañanera, libre libertaría sigue animándonos en esta lucha hacia la victoria.

Mariposa insurgente...
Pajaro Rojo...
Dos hermanos, una familia de heroes y martires.

Mariposa--Una de las grandes heroinas de Cuzcatlan. Ahora mas que nunca
la juventud salvadoreña requiere de sus incaudicables compañeros
que hicieron grande al FMLN, en el 2009 se acaban 20 años de miseria.
Patria chiquita mia, mi mamasita chula, vas a ver
que linda vas a ser cuando seas libre,
bien peinadita, vestidito nuevo, cachetes chapuditos
vas a ser hermosa, vas a ser grandota, patria chiquita mia.

July 19, 2006

El Salvador

F.M.L.N. Resists Wave of Repression

Elderly Parents of Marina "Mariposa" Manzanares Assassinated

Lara Pullin, Green Left Weekly (radical newspaper), New South Wales, Australia,

On July 5, secondary students organized a protest in San Salvador against bus fare hikes and increasing energy and food costs, which was met with violent repression by riot police. (Photo: Yuri Cortez / AFP-Getty Images)

"I'm letting you know they have killed my parents … I don't know exactly at what hour but it was early this morning … you are my only family now, and we can't rest until justice is done."

On the morning of July 1, members of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) and solidarity activists around the world received this heartfelt plea from Marina "Mariposa" Manzanares, the well-known, brave, and inspiring voice of Radio Venceremos during El Salvador's protracted civil war.

Juana and Francisco Manzanares's family are well-known activists. Mariposa's brother "Paco Cutumay" was the lead singer of the popular band Cutumay Camones, which was part of the national liberation movement. He was one of the first political prisoners captured in the 1980-91 civil war and was assassinated by the National Civil Police in 1993.

Salvadorans are accustomed to violent military dictatorships and coups, as this tiny and very picturesque Central American nation was ruled by dictators for most of the 20th century. Today, the right-wing Arena party governs on behalf of El Salvador's elite, which includes the vast business interests of the former murderers granted impunity after the long and bloody civil war. Despite the negotiated end to the war and the F.M.L.N.'s transition from guerrilla struggle to mass political and parliamentary activity, the Arena party has again resorted to violent means to enforce its unpopular neoliberal economic policies.

El Salvador's usually bloodthirsty media barely reported the murder of Mariposa's parents. Most media made a small mention of a robbery-related killing, but failed to report the three hours of torture, the covering up of evidence with oil and lime, and that the only items missing were F.M.L.N.-related paraphernalia, T-shirts, and posters, memorabilia of the Manzanares's son and anything colored red. Yet thousands of people responded on the streets, rallying to support Mariposa, the local community of Suchitoto, and the F.M.L.N., and to denounce violence and the death squads and to call for an end to impunity.

Mariposa and her family had received many death threats prior to the murders, and she continues to be threatened and harassed. Twelve other F.M.L.N. militants have been murdered in the past three months in a resurgence of repression of the F.M.L.N. and popular movements. At the same time, the Arena government has encouraged the flourishing of criminal gangs and activities, which also serve as a cover for the government's failures to manage the economy in the interests of the majority of the population.

On July 5, secondary students organized a protest in San Salvador against bus fare hikes and increasing energy and food costs, which was met with violent repression by riot police. A large number of police as well as snipers and attack helicopters were deployed near the National University, where police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at students. Two police officers were killed in the clashes.

The police violated the university's legal autonomy by occupying the campus for four days, evacuating more than 700 people and capturing 30 students, who were released from jail after four days due to lack of evidence. A university administrator was gravely injured by police, with a bullet lodged near his heart.

Shortly after the violence broke out, President Tony Saca told the media, "I formally accuse the F.M.L.N. of being behind these actions."

At a press conference, the government tried to justify the use of force by police, falsely claiming that the students were armed with AK-47s.

According to Beatrice de Carrillo, head of El Salvador's Human Rights Office, the violence on July 5 was the worst human rights abuse documented since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992. Trade union offices were raided under the pretext of looking for the students'/F.M.L.N.'s illegal arms caches and F.M.L.N. National Assembly deputies have been harassed. A visit to the home of F.M.L.N. deputy Blanca Flor Bonilla by police in riot gear and masks, who threatened her safety in front of her children, left the popular organizations fearing the worst from the Saca government's support for violent repression and death-squad tactics.

Saca has also pledged to shut down the F.M.L.N. by appealing to the United Nations to declare the F.M.L.N. an armed terrorist organization that should be proscribed from political participation. The F.M.L.N. is Arena's major opposition and governs more than half the population at the municipal and state level and has the single biggest number of deputies of any party in the National Assembly. During the unrest, Arena also tried to enact draconian new "anti-terrorism" laws, but failed to convince the assembly to pass them.

The F.M.L.N. has pledged to continue to operate as a party of the people and the social movements, committed to peaceful democratic processes and to continued disarmament in El Salvador, especially of the repressive forces of the state. The F.M.L.N. has called on all Salvadorans to express their opposition to the social and economic mismanagement of the Arena government and its latest repressive measures. Another mass demonstration was held in San Salvador on July 15 involving trade unions, student organizations, feminist collectives, the churches, and other movements united against the violence.

From Green Left Weekly.

(From self-imposed exile in Eurpose following the July 1, 2006 assassination of her parents, Mariposa was interviewed on Los Caminos de la Vida on KYRS 92.3 FM in late 2006).

Comunicación Popular

2007-06-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

~Comunicadores Populares para la Autonomia~
Cosechando la Voz de los Pueblos

A traves de la comunicacion popular,

participativa y democrata
Con comunidades indiginas y campesinas

de Mesoamerica

~Peoples' Broadcasters for Autonomy (COMPPA)~

Harvesting the Voice of the People

Via participatory and democratic community media
With the Indigenous Peoples and Campesinos of Mesoamerica

ZNet -- Growing Movement of Community Radio in Venezuela

2007-06-02T16:13:00.001-07:00

A community radio station in Venezuela

"Construyendo El Poder Popular"

ZNet | Activism

Growing Movement of Community Radio in Venezuela

by Sujatha Fernandes -- December 24, 2005

Four young people sit around a large table, writing furiously amid piles of notes, cans of soda, and scrunched up papers. They could be kids doing their homework or studying for exams. But these young women from the shantytowns, aged between 17 and 22 years, are preparing for their hour-long program, “Public Power,” on air in ten minutes on community radio station Radio Perola, 92.3FM, in the Caracas parish of Caricuao.

Caricuao is one of the outer western parishes of Caracas. As the subway train from the center of Caracas approaches the parish, we pass by precarious ranchos, or flimsy tin and board houses, nestled in the sides of the looming hills and large project-like buildings with bars across the windows. Radio Perola is located on the ground floor of one of these “projects” or popular blocks, known as Canagua. The broadcasting studio is a small room, painted bright yellow and covered with posters from the social justice movement and community radios. On one large corner table there is a mixer, microphone and computer, and at a round table in the center there are several mikes and chairs.

Like other community radio stations in Venezuela, Radio Perola began as a clandestine station nearly nine years ago, and activists have fought for it to be legally authorized by the state. Under the hip-hop inspired slogan, “Maximum Respect!,” community journalists at Radio Perola are creating spaces for new voices, such as those of the young women, to be heard.

The young women divide their program “Public Power,” into distinct segments. These include an invited guest to speak about a specific topic relevant to the community, a news segment, a roundtable discussion about a particular current event, and then a segment called, “Community Realities.” During this final segment, the women debate with each other, as well as with listeners, who call in or send text messages via their cell phones. Today the young women are addressing the theme, “Living in the Barrio.”

“A barrio is not just hills full of stairways, the barrio is the community,” says Lilibeth Marcano, a 20 year-old member of the collective, who opens the discussion during this segment of the program. “I live in a barrio, Santa Cruz de Las Adjuntas. It’s not like they’ve always told us, that if you live in a barrio you don’t have a future, that if you live in a barrio you’re nobody. It’s not like that.”

Young people, especially those from the barrios, are realizing that they do have a future and they can play important roles in their communities. All of the four young women from the “Public Power” collective say that they were inspired to become community journalists following the hijacking of information by the private media during the right-wing coup d’état against leftist President Hugo Chávez in April 2002.

One member of the collective, Gladys Romero, was 14 years old at the time of the coup. She recalls that, “There was a lot of misinformation, they took the alternative media off the air, and I as a student, as a young person, felt the need to promote the real information to inform the community about what was happening in the country.”

The private media has accumulated a large degree of power since the late seventies, due to the growing deregulation and commercialization of media in Venezuela. In 1979, the Venezuelan government sold Channel 5, a state-owned channel, to the private sector. Through the eighties and nineties, successive governments continued the expansion of concessions to media corporations, leading to the centralization of the media in a small number of conglomerates. Private television at a national level has been monopolized by the Cisneros group (Venevisión) and the 1BC group of Phelps-Granier (Radio Caracas Televisión). Out of 44 regional television networks, nearly all are linked by chain to private networks Venevisión, Radio Caracas Televisión, Televen, and Globovision. This small group of corporations also control radio-electric spaces and the national press.

Since Chávez was elected president in 1998, and especially in the tense days of the oil strikes by business sectors in December 2001 and during the lead-up to the coup in April 2002, this powerful private media has run a fierce campaign to discredit him. A few hours after Chávez was removed from office on April 11, 2002, opposition spokesperson Napoleón Bravo came on the air and falsely broadcast that Chávez had resigned. While opposition leaders were taking over the presidential palace and dissolving democratic institutions, the private media was running its regular broadcast of cooking shows, soap operas, and cartoons. Members of the community were deprived of access to information, as the government-owned television station, Channel 8, and several community radio and television stations were taken off the air.

During this time, it was mainly the alternative print media that was able to get the message out to the people about what was happening. According to Roberto, a worker at the Caracas Municipal Press, activists came to the press and labored to produce 100,000 copies of a bulletin, informing people about what was happening. Radio Fe y Alegría also came back on the air and began to make announcements about the coup. Through the bulletins, alternative radio, and the exchange of text messages through cell phones, people were able to pass on the news of the coup and come out onto the streets in massive demonstrations that would put Chávez back into power.

At the time of the coup, the alternative and community media broke through the silence and misinformation of the private media. The passing of information from mouth to mouth was a revival of Radio Bemba, an age-old tradition of gossip and communication in Caribbean countries, that has begun utilizing electronic technology such as radio to multiply messages.

Since Chávez was reinstated as President on April 13, 2002, two days after the coup, there has been an explosion of community radio stations. Activists across the country have sought to establish local control over the information reaching their communities. While in 2002, there were 13 licensed community radio stations nationally, as of June 2005, there are 170. In addition to these 170 legally recognized and funded stations, there have emerged over 300 unsanctioned community radio stations. These are created and operated by a range of local groups, including indigenous people in the Amazonian south of Venezuela, peasants in the Andean regions, Afro-Venezuelans in the coastal north of the country, and residents of the barrios in the major urban centers.

Technological advances have made radio broadcasting easy. For example, the community radio station Un Nuevo Día, located in a very poor barrio in the hills above the old highway out of Caracas, began in the bedroom of one of the women residents. The community journalists put a borrowed mixer, a cd player, and a microphone on the woman’s dresser. They transmitted through a small antenna. Invited guests would sit on the woman’s bed. Basic, accessible technology has allowed people in shantytowns and poor communities across the country the possibility to operate small-scale stations.

But community radio activists have had to fight a hard battle with the government to have their stations legalized. After Chávez was elected in 1998, community media activists began to raise issues of the right to communication. This led to the passing of a new law in 2000, entitled, “Regulation of Community Radio and Television.” This law gave communities the right to set up a station, but in order to gain authorization, or habilitación, the National Commission of Telecommunications (CONATEL) proposed that the stations meet requirements in four fields: social, legal, technical, and economic.

Carlos Carles, a journalist with Radio Perola, was involved in the process of drafting the authorization procedures. With his signature baseball cap, baggy clothing, and goofy grin, he looks like just another one of the chamos, or kids, at Radio Perola. But in several meetings with bureaucrats, Carles emerged as a key leader of the community media movement. In contrast to the bureaucrats, he put forth a strong, community based vision of what validates an alternative radio station. “They proposed techniques of demonstrating statistical data. Against this, we proposed local knowledge, oral narrative, historical memory, and the everyday work of the community,” said Carles. “As a result of this difference, we entered into a major debate, and we completely rejected the legal component of the proposal made by the Chávez government.”

Media activists were able to have their views incorporated into the authorization process. Nevertheless, the process remains heavily biased against poor community stations with few resources. During my visit to the CONATEL offices, in the spacious middle class suburb of Las Mercedes, I was shown a seventy page instructional guide that must be completed by community stations who attempt to obtain authorization.

Given the difficulties of complying with CONATEL’s regulations, community media activists decided to create a National Association of Alternative and Community Media, or ANMCLA. Carlos Lugo, one of the founders of ANMCLA and a community journalist with the station Radio Negro Primero in Pinto Salinas, sees the organization as based on the principle of the right to communication. “The community can themselves authorize a station and when the community recognizes the station, it is legal. There is no such thing as an illegal station – everyone has the right to communication.”

Ironically, the private media vilifies the community radio stations as propaganda vehicles of the government. An article published in the private daily, El Universal, on 26 June, 2005, refers to the community radio stations as “radio-electronic media of the state,” which are “employed for propaganda and political proselytism.” The writer laments what he sees as the lack of quality and cultural homogeneity of the community stations, and their bias towards the Chávez government.

But community radio stations have sought to retain their autonomy from the state, which is apparent not only in their struggles with state bureaucrats to ensure authorization, but in their willingness to criticize the Chávez government on important issues. In March 2005, activists of ANMCLA came together with social organizations and indigenous groups to protest the plan of the government to increase the extraction of coal in the oil-rich state of Zulia. The protesters pointed out that the plans would increase water contamination and health risks for the mostly indigenous population of the region who depend on scarce water supplies. They argued that the proposal violates the Kyoto Agreement and several articles of the Bolivarian Constitution that guarantee a clean and safe environment, and protection of indigenous resources. Although the outcome is still uncertain, community media activists have shown their willingness to criticize the government when community interests are at stake.

One of the crucial bases of autonomy for the radio stations is financing. The stations receive a limited amount of financing from the state. For those stations who are authorized, CONATEL or other state institutions such as the Ministry of Information (MINCI) might give direct financing for purchase of equipment or infrastructure. There is also some state publicity in community radio, for which the stations receive a small payment from the relevant institution.

However, what keeps the community stations on the air are the contributions of small businesses in the neighborhood. The state may give a one time contribution of 1 million bolivares ($US 470). But it is the regular monthly payments of one hundred thousand bolivares ($US 47) from the auto repair shop or one hundred and fifty thousand bolivares ($US 71) from the local bakery that maintain the activities of the stations in the long term. In this sense, community radio stations have become part of a vibrant informal economy in the barrios that exists at the margins of the formal economy.

“The idea is not that we should be community media sustained by the state, but rather we have the capacity to be self-sustaining,” said Carles. “Because if they give you money and they give you your daily bread, they begin to ask, why are you doing this, why are you doing that? We prefer autonomy in what we do.”

The community media gives voice to a range of groups and members of the community. There are talk shows, educational programs, cultural shows, sports segments, local history programs, children’s shows, cooking shows, and a variety of music programs, including salsa, bolero, hip-hop, rock, and llanero or country music. There are also social and political programs, which attempt to make visible certain issues such as race. Afro-Venezuelan radio journalist, Madera, has a program on Radio Negro Primero, which he says is “For black men and women.” These kinds of programs do not have space within the state-run media, and certainly have never been a possibility in the private media.

Community media broadcasts are a stark contrast to the stock fare of reality tv shows, soap operas, and game shows continually churned out by the private media. This latter programming nurtures a culture of consumerism that has grown along with globalization. Middle class youth compare expensive watches and brand name sneakers in the walkways of the prestigious Centro Sambil shopping mall in the eastern zone of Chacao. Wealthy parents hire companies to supply arcade video games to entertain their kids at children’s parties. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of barrio youth in the west of Caracas are creating their own forms of leisure that reflect much more closely the new community activism that has become a part of their lives.

With a shy smile, Gladys, the young student from Radio Perola, says that in the current political context, youth should not be so pitiyanqui, a derogatory slang term used to describe those who imitate Americans.

“With this revolution, we the young people are beginning to mature, and we are beginning to see the world from another point of view,” says Gladys. “I think that we are responsible people, we know where we’re going and we know that the future is in our hands.” And with this statement, Gladys packs her school books into her bag, and walks off giggling, arm in arm with one of her schoolmates.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sujatha Fernandes is a Wilson Cotsen fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University. She is currently working on a book, entitled, “In the Spirit of Negro Primero: Historical Memory and Culture in the Making of Urban Social Movements in Caracas.”

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=9393&sectionID=1

Making It Real Compared to What

2007-05-28T20:02:00.006-07:00

Making It Real Compared to What

The politics of the day. The music of the day.
They seem to go hand in hand.

How do they get combined? What is the listener hoping to hear on a community radio station? If the personal is political isn't the musical also personal and therefore political?

The answers are obvious on one level. We feel both politics and music in our souls and in our bones. They are both very real.

But real compared to what?

The KYRS Collective has met six times to date. The discussion and tenor initially tended heavily towards the purely political but has now moved to deal with the purely musical and on to the place where politics and music merge. With issues in the air like what music gets played when and how often and who decides and who loads automation and other important matters, it seems appropriate that deference be given to those requesting that the KYRS Collective conscientiously and collectively address these questions and others as they surface.

NEXT KYRS COLLECTIVE MEETING:
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 @ 6 PM Community Building, 35 W. Main Street, Spokane

http://www.popmatters.com/features/030328-iraq-neal.shtml

(excerpt)

Most classic soul listeners are very familiar with Edwin Starr's chart-topping song "War," which always gets referenced in potted histories of the Anti-Vietnam War movement. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," with its passionate, layered, and sophisticated pleas for peace, environmental justice and spiritually is generally regarded as one the most important protest recordings ever released. But very few of the folks who currently have Gaye, Starr, and a host of others on the nostalgia mix-tape, have even a fleeting clue of who Eugene McDaniels is.

And so: Eugene McDaniels had a solid, if not spectacular, recording career in the 1960s, singing pop ditties for the Liberty label. Disenchanted by the state of race relations in the late 1960s, most notably the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., McDaniels took a brief sojourn from the States. During this period, he wrote "Compared to What." The song was initially recorded and released by a young soul vocalist by the name of Roberta Flack: her version appeared as the opening track
on her debut recording, First Take (1969).

A second version of the song was recorded later that year by pianist Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris for their album, Swiss Movement, recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The McCann and Harris version became an international hit, selling over a million copies.

Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris for 1969 album,
Swiss Movement, recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Part 1

Part 2

At a time when black folks, American youth, and anti-war protesters were literally taking it to the streets, "Compared to What" was a scathing critique of social realities in the United States, taking aim at the clergy, "poor dumb rednecks," "tired old ladies," and the Vietnam War. McDaniels' lyrics were clear: even to raise questions about the war in Vietnam was considered an act of treason. McDaniels' observation, of course, resonates powerfully in the post-9/11 world, where folks like Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Noam Chomsky have openly questioned the legitimacy of U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The success of the McCann and Harris recording of "Compared to What" began a new chapter in McDaniels' career, as he was signed to the Atlantic Recording label. But this "second" stage was short-lived. McDaniels recorded two discs for the label, the second of which, Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse (1971), goes down in pop lore as one of the most blatantly political musical tomes ever recorded and released commercially by a major label. Headless Heroes contains critiques of blue-eyed soul ("Jagger the Dagger"); examines the phenomenon of "shopping while black" ("Supermarket Blues") years before "racial profiling" entered into the national lexicon; and checks the futility of race hatred ("Headless Heroes").

"The Parasite," on the same album, is McDaniels' most stinging critique, of the root of American Imperialism and its relationship to the genocide of America's native populations. On the track, McDaniels describes some of the early settlers as "ex-hoodlums" and "jailbirds" who used "forked tongues" in their drive to pollute the water and defile the air. Referencing the U.S. ideology of "Manifest Destiny," McDaniels sang that as "agents of God, they did damned well what they pleased."

Shortly after the release of Headless Heroes, the label "dropped" McDaniels. Apparently, he tweaked some folks at the White House with a not so thinly veiled shot at the Nixon administration ("Rewriting the standards of what's good and fair / Promote law and order / Let justice go to hell"). As myth has it, then Vice President Spiro Agnew gave a quick holla to Armet and Neshui Ertegun, the founders of Atlantic. In a recent article in the Kansas City Star, McDaniels reflects that the duo "fired me on the spot and killed the record." McDaniels disappeared as a recording artist, though he continued to write songs..... (end excerpt)

Music, Art, Politics and Free Speech

2007-05-28T19:59:00.001-07:00

A Bush no le va a gustar

"Do we have to conclude that it is the duty of every writer to "keep out of politics"? Certainly not!... I only suggest that we should draw a sharper distinction than we do at present between our political and our literary loyalties, and should recognize that a willingness to do certain distasteful but necessary things does not carry with it any obligation to swallow the beliefs that usually go with them. When a writer engages in politics he should do so as a citizen, as a human being, but not as a writer. I do not think that he has a right, merely on the score of his sensibilities, to shirk the ordinary work of politics. Just as much as anyone else, he should be prepared to deliver lectures in draughty halls, to chalk pavements, to canvass voters, to distribute leaflets, even to fight in civil wars if it seems necessary. But whatever else he does in the service of his party, he should never write for it. He should make it clear that his writing is a thing apart. And he should be able to act co-operatively while, if he chooses, completely rejecting the official ideology. He should never turn back from a train of thought because it may lead to a heresy, and he should not mind very much if his unorthodoxy is smelt out… But does all this mean that a writer... should refrain from writing about politics? Once again, certainly not! There is no reason he should not write in the most crudely political way, if he wishes to. Only he should do so as an individual, an outsider, at the most an unwelcome guerrilla on the flank of a regular army.... Sometimes, if a writer is honest, his writings and his political activities may actually contradict one another. There are occasions when that is plainly undesirable: but then the remedy is not to falsify one's impulses, but to remain silent."
—George Orwell

"There is no such thing as Art for Art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics."
—Mao Tse-tung

US Special Forces, No US Special Forces and booking guests on KYRS

2007-05-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

In light of recent events at KYRS, I thought this was worth considering...

I am posting this blog entry by Nathan Moore, news facilitator of WORT 89.9 FM Madison, Wisconsin. The KYRS version of Moore's posting would be "US Special Forces, No US Special Forces and booking guests on KYRS".

The original post by Moore can be found at http://wortnews.blogspot.com/

Nazis, No Nazis, and booking guests on WORT

As a lot of you likely know, a group of "National Socialists", aka Nazis, has announced plans to hold a rally in Madison this coming Saturday. Several weeks ago, local activists formed a group cleverly called "No Nazis in Madison". The group has been organizing a counter-rally, as well as trying to use this as a catalyst to bring attention to issues of institutional racism beyond the knee-jerk response to the rally.

So, WORT is covering some of these activities. I received an email from the host and new producer of the Friday 8:00 Buzz earlier today. I've edited it for relevance to this issue and ease of reading, and have pasted it below. I've also pasted my response below that.

-----Original Message-----

From: Tonya Brito

Jonathan,

I've been following up on finding someone from No Nazis in Madison to interview re the demonstration/counter rally to the upcoming Nazi rally that they are organizing. The announcement sent out by the No Nazi in Madison group did not have a contact person listed and instead directed me to a couple of websites, including a members-only Yahoo group. I completed the online registration form in order to join the yahoo group so that I could communicate with them, sent an interview request and now have a contact person to talk to.

I have also received an e-mail from a neo-nazi with the National Socialist Movement who is requesting an interview. See below. I suspect that this person was lurking in the Yahoo group set up by No Nazis in Wisconsin.

I thought I'd write a brief "no thank you" response but wanted to check with you first to find out if anything more ought to be said/done.

Tonya

-----Nathan's Reply Message-----

I'm generally not in favor of bring neo-nazis or any kind of nazis on to the air. Producers and hosts at WORT do enjoy a remarkable amount of autonomy, so I can't say that you "aren't allowed" to bring any nazis on the air, but I do discourage it.

Though my personal news ethic hasn't been adopted as any kind of offical policy by the station, I think the best news & public affairs production for a community station should at its heart help rebuild and maintain a community's sense of itself, empowering listeners to engage in community activism. That includes fostering deliberation and understanding, as well as explaining systems and processes in depth. None of those things are benefitted by having nazis on the air. Nazis are anti-community, as they push to exclude large segments of our community and encourage people to destroy community. They do not contribute to fostering deliberation or understanding, given their zealotry and unyielding racial hatred. Our goal of serving the community is not met by understanding the motives of a race warrior. They also do not help us explain systems in any depth. Their explanation of most social problems is that it's the fault of blacks, Jews, gays, etc. That's the opposite of meaningful explanation.

We have no requirement - nor should we - to strive for "objectivity" in the traditional sense of the word. As if objectivity were even attainable in our socially created and defined world, we at WORT wouldn't necessarily want to seek it anyway, given our mission to air the voices of the underrepresented, challenge listeners, and promote communication, education, & understanding -- in a word, to build community through democratically run media. Building community necessarily positions us outside the realm of "objective" journalism, and requires us to make value judgments about which information and which sides of a story are more in line with our goals - while also remaining open-minded about the possibility of many paths to community-building and many visions of what a vibrant, flourishing, democratic community could look like.

Anyway, this has gotten very heady, especially so early in your tenure as Jonathan's producer. ; )

As an aside, WORT did put nazis on the air way back in 1977 or '78 - before I was even born. It went horribly. WORT was a very new station at the time, and the Madison left came out by the hundreds to protest the station for its then-news director's decision to invite the nazis on the air. The protestors blocked the unwelcome guests from getting into the station. I don't know what the hosts actually aired, but it wasn't the nazis. There's an article about it in our 25th anniversary book that long-time activist and WORT volunteer Allen Ruff wrote. He summed up the feeling of the protestors in a way that is still very relevant today - that is, that WORT airwaves are a valuable (and rare!) community resource, and that the nazis have no business on these airwaves.

Hope this helps! Sorry so long...

~Nathan

Objections to setting censorship standards

2007-05-27T22:29:00.000-07:00

While not opposed to a discussion of “etiquette” at the next collective meeting, I adamantly object to making any decisions on etiquette and censorship without an extensive, rigorous conversation and debate over a significant period of time and with broad participation on the matter. Because I am going to exceed the space limit in these comments, I am posting them as a Word attachment below (see bottom of this page).

Despite my frequent abrasiveness, let me start out by saying that I have the highest respect for Angela who is an extremely hard working and dedicated activist-scholar who is only just beginning to make what promises to be a huge mark on the world.

That said, I would be very concerned to see a brief conversation about etiquette take place and then have us “decide” what the “etiquette” for this site will be. Censorship--be it “justifiable” censorship or blatant authoritarian censorship--is censorship none-the-less. There is currently a major global debate and fight over censorship in which censorship and restrictions on free speech in the name of “etiquette” are a central element.

We as programmers already operate in an environment in which we are restrained by the seven words that the U.S. federal government has ruled off limits. Discussion of these FCC “obscenity” guidelines has provoked impassioned discussion among programmers as well as staff of KYRS. Everyone knows Janet Jackson’s nipple when they see it, but obscenity? (I was going to use the “t” word but--self-censoring to protect the innocent and the etiquette-conscious—chose to use “nipple” instead).

Our country is in a time of government espionage against citizens while private companies maintain massive data bases and record our web searches and web correspondence. People are afraid to speak up or stand out. A member of this station told me a couple years ago that she was afraid to participate in a protest march because she was concerned that she might find herself face down in an unknown place on a cold concrete floor subject to torture. What we need to be encouraging is more participation, more open speech, more controversial speech, and more provocative speech.

I must object to any attempt to quickly and easily reach a “decision” on standards to be applied to our Collective Wiki. While I believe that it is perhaps a good and important discussion to have on an ongoing basis, I believe that should be one of the last decisions we would take.

My opposition is based on my experiences as some one who was assaulted holding a sign at Mission and Hamilton protesting the war on 5/4/04, as some one who has had his character impugned for voting for Ralph Nader twice and having a homemade Nader 2008 sticker on my car since the day after the 2004 election, as someone who was verbally assaulted by war protesters at the last Iraq rally for carrying a sign which said “Support the Troops, No Way—Uniform Code of Military Justice, Nuremberg Principles, Geneva Conventions”, as someone who while handing out leaflets in front of the brass plaque with the Bill of Rights in front of the Federal Building and across the street from the Spokesman-Review was handed by the Federal Property Manager a reference to the Code of Federal Regulations and told that I had to fill out a petition to hand out information in front of the Federal Building. When I spoke at an EWU rally against the war in Iraq last summer it was suggested I impugned the character of the students and faculty of EWU by repeatedly stating in my speech, “It is a quiet, very quiet day in Cheney, Washington”, implying that we have the carefree leisure to go about our business peacefully day after day while war, famine, destruction, and repression take place all around the rest of the world.

If someone comes to this site and attempts to participate in the conversations on the Wiki stating that people have a right to go into a supermarket and carve racist statements on mangos in the hopes that a person of non-white descent buys them, I think we would all have questions about whether or not that type of comment was relevant, necessary or useful. If a person comes here flinging seemingly gratuitous expletives with no evident purpose and if that person can explain the purpose, I think we would engage them in trying to understand what they meant, felt and why prior to even considering banning, censorship, etc. For one thing, I have yet to meet the puritan among KYRS staffers and programmers.

Having been banned from various blogs and web groups, I again protest the idea of lightly setting etiquette/censorship standards. One of the sites I was banned from was the Spokesman Review’s “News is a Conversation: Readers Discuss Our News Coverage”

( http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/conversation/ ) where I “refused to stay on topic” as ordered by S-R staffers who police the site. That site is now virtually dead as pointed out by long-time S-R blogger Phil Bergen in his 3/8/07 post there entitled “News is NOT a Conversation”. One of my sins there was to refer to the state law regarding oversized political signs on yards in the midst of an exchange among bloggers about covenants restricting hanging laundry in yards. Bad, off-topic blogger. BANNED. Actually I think my banning had more to do with my critiques of the paper itself and my harsh criticism of the Spokane Police Department.

It is like the situation at the three ACLU sponsored events on Police Accountability earlier this year. Both the moderator and the police chief attempted to control the event by defining as off limits questions on open cases, questions preceded by comments, comments without questions, and anything they felt strayed from what they considered “the point”. On the third of the three nights I finally openly challenged the moderator, at which point a more “democratic”, free speech loving member of the League of Women’s Voters took over the moderation and allowed a freer participation by the audience. I am sure the first moderator was just acting out of her sense of etiquette, decorum, and the appropriate limits of speech in a nominally public forum.

Yes, they call it democracy, but it ain’t. Will the KYRS Collective Wiki go the same way? I say no. But then all the examples listed above would suggest I am wrong.

I would like to make a further point about language and censorship. We live in the second whitest city in the U.S. per capita for all cities its size or larger. KYRS, unfortunately and despite its best (best? really?) efforts, largely still reflects that reality. The audience for the Spokane Symphony, a KYRS programmers meeting, they essentially all look the same. If we are going to censure, who are the censors going to be? What biases will they bring to their censorship? Whose standard of “Etiquette” will be applied? Which side of town will it reflect? Who, really, among us wants to or should censure another?

I would like to conclude with a pet issue of mine. Anger. Where is the anger and outrage at what is going on in the world? Answer: it is all over the world except here. People are fighting and dying all over the world. People are engaging in marches and rallies fueled by righteous indignation accompanied by raised voices and raised fists all over the world, except here. Anger is a motivating force for action, be it the action provoking anger of Martin Luther King Jr, the action provoking anger of Jesus in the temple, the action provoking anger of the FMLN, FSLN, FARC, Viet Cong, Black Panthers, NOW, etc, or the action provoking anger of Daniel Ellsberg, Angela Davis, Bill Moyer, you continue the list. However, we—the people of the U.S—have been largely neutralized as a force capable of frightening, much less challenging the powers-that-be in this country. Why? In part because we have been emotionally decapitated.

Anger has become defined as a dangerous emotion, a vulgar emotion, a violent emotion, a criminal emotion, an irrational emotion, an emotion to be isolated, censored, quarantined, denigrated, shunned, feared, compartmentalized and excluded. Yet without our anger we are incapable of understanding the world. If we repress and compartmentalize our anger, we have to shut our eyes to what causes that anger. If we shut our eyes to what causes that anger, we can not give voice to those whose voice has been stolen by death, torture, imprisonment, media blackout, and dehumanization. Expressions of anger, almost by their very nature will be impolite and violate standards of etiquette. I implore us not to engage in mutual emotional decapitation and instead to allow impassioned speech and writing.

I hope I have raised enough issues and questions to make my point that even if we chose to address and discuss etiquette and censorship that we do not under any circumstances make quick, unexamined decisions.

I would also object to any decisions being made by a very small group of programmers even if they are the ones at the meeting or the only ones regularly participating in the meetings. (Just by way of example, only 6 programmers out of several dozens have participated in any way on this KYRS Collective Wiki and we are already discussing censorship). This last concern relates to my strongly held opinions about whether or not quantity of participation in something gives one more voice and vote than someone who—for whatever reasons—has a lesser quantity of participation in the same thing. The investment of time is a significant contribution (just as money is in election campaigns) but should it buy greater voice, vote and influence in a democratic organization or process?

(As a closing thought, I am also a moderator of the KYRS Programmers Collective Wiki. I do not believe that means I am any more than an equal of every other member of the Wiki and would not presume to censure anyone on my own judgment or even applying on my own a standard arrived at by the collective, if at all.)

U.S. Government Spying and Infiltration

2007-05-27T22:16:00.000-07:00

U.S. Government Spying and Infiltration

The following article by Spokesman-Review reporter Jim Camden is very important. The only question I have is about the verb tense in the first sentence of the article, which might more accurately read "Federal agents HAVE kept track" of antiwar demonstrators "since at least 2002". There is nothing in the article to suggest and certainly there is no reason to believe that the spying and inflitration activities by US government 'informants' and 'analysts' and 'spies' would have come to an end. And anyone with any knowledge of the U.S government and the history of activism in Spokane knows that the FBI spying goes back well before 2002, many years before.

Given that the Spokane FBI Office at 316 W. Boone (the Rock Point Towers) with its large roof top communication and intelligence gathering apparatus is just one mile north of the Community Building in which both PJALS and KYRS are located, it probably does not matter to the FBI agents located there that the KYRS signal "is not very strong", as an unnamed "analyst" reported in the documents obtained from the FBI by the ACLU.

One can only hope that the FBI's 'monitoring' activities provide them with much enlightenment and informative analysis from the likes of Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now, not to mention local KYRS programmers from shows such as On the Clock, Zombie Nation, Eat the Press, Does that Answer Your Question, About Our Town, and Los Caminos de la Vida.

May you sleep well, J. Edgar, knowing that your FBI boys and other law enforcement units (such as the Spokane Police Department and the Joint Terrorism Task Force) are hard at work violating the Constitution in Spokane, Washington.

Same as it ever was....

http://itwillbethundering.resist.ca/warrior_publications/fbicointelpro.html
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/cointelpro-methods.html
http://www.colorado.edu/EthnicStudies/ethnicstudiesjournal/Snapshot%20of%20COINTELPRO.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/FBI/COINTELPRO_Untold_Story.html
COINTELPRO--THE UNTOLD STORY
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spokesman Review

FBI kept eye on peace activists--Feds may have used informant in PJALS

Jim Camden
Staff writer
May 25, 2007

Federal agents kept track of antiwar demonstrations by the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane at least since 2002, at one point apparently getting information from a "spy" in the group as it planned a protest at a nearby military base.

The FBI gleaned information from the group's Web site, including that PJALS mentioned the launch of a new public radio station, and had other material dealing with a protest in the local office of then-U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Rusty Nelson, leader of the peace group and a longtime protest organizer, said he thought the surveillance was an effort to "quell dissent" and discourage participation in the political process. But there was one positive aspect, he said: "At least somebody's looking at our Web site."

Doug Honig of the ACLU's Seattle office, which obtained and then released the reports, said the FBI was wasting its time and taxpayers' money watching PJALS, which has a long history of peaceful protests.

"The FBI shouldn't have files on people who conduct peaceful protests," Honig said. But spokesmen for the FBI offices in Seattle and Washington, D.C., said the agency was not watching the group. It was likely watching individuals in the group, based on information it may have received that may or may not have proved true.

"No group is going to be of interest to us, except maybe al-Qaida," said Fred Gutt, a special agent in the Seattle office.

"We don't investigate groups," insisted Rich Kolko, a special agent in the bureau's Washington, D.C., office. "We investigate criminal activity."

Because the law allows the agency to remove certain information from records, including most names, it may not be possible to determine who was being watched, he said.

Neither Gutt nor Kolko was familiar with the specific records released to the ACLU. But Kolko said if the bureau receives a tip about criminal activity by someone in the group, it would be required to investigate, and even if the information was baseless, to keep a record of its investigation. "We don't purge records. If we write something down, we keep it," Kolko said. Among the records the agency keeps involving PJALS are:

•Notice from an unnamed "analyst" that the group had put a notice on its Web site that KYRS, or Thin Air Community Radio "is up and running at the Community Building, although the reception is not very strong."

•Several documents – including a copy of a newsletter called Peace News – deal with an April 2002 demonstration in Nethercutt's district office in the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Spokane. Eight protesters were arrested when they refused to leave after Nethercutt wouldn't speak with them. The congressman met them about a month later, and charges against all but one protester were dismissed.

•Repeated references to a former PJALS member who left the group to commit acts of civil disobedience that he suspected the organization would not tolerate. Michael Poulin, whose name is excised from the reports, loosened bolts in about 20 high-voltage transmission towers in the Northwest, which he said was a way to point out how vulnerable the towers were to terrorists. He was arrested while attempting to turn himself in, pleaded guilty to two federal counts of tampering with federal property and was sentenced to 27 months in prison in November 2003.

Poulin returned to Spokane after serving his sentence and has rejoined PJALS, Nelson said. He's a featured speaker in its current lecture series on "Empire."

•Two references to a March 2003 protest at the gate of Fairchild Air Force Base. The early-morning protest briefly blocked the entrance to the base and resulted in 10 arrests.

Nelson said the group suspected that PJALS had an infiltrator in the days leading up to the protest, because one new member who had been involved in the planning and shouted slogans at the beginning of the event disappeared when the other demonstrators moved into the street. State patrolmen, military police and the county's SWAT team were on hand that morning when the protesters arrived, he added.

"It was the greatest array of law enforcement we ever saw," Nelson recalled. "All of them, and we were 10 – well 11 if you count the infiltrator."

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=191488

KPFA--Media Democracy but Not Without Eternal Vigilance

2007-05-27T21:06:00.001-07:00

Reflecting on the fact that history can help guide us in our path to the future, the histories of other community radio stations are of relevance to those of us involved in new experiments in community broadcasting. KPFA's experience is both long and critical to understanding the multitude of issues raised for communities and programmers on these stations.

KPFA--Media Democracy but Not Without Eternal Vigilance

Wake-Up Call at KPFA

(from a goddess perspective)

By Laura J. Weinstock

KPFA, one of this nation's last remaining free speech radio stations, has been under attack since February 1999. After being shut down for almost a month by its own Board of Directors at the Pacifica Foundation, KPFA is back on the air. But, Pacifica still retains the ability to control, even destroy, the station. The future of KPFA is far from certain. When looking for answers, let's not reinvent the wheel. Instead, let us learn from our ancestors who worshipped the Goddess and lived for millennia without hierarchy and violence.

KPFA was founded fifty years ago by pacifists who wished to promote diverse cultural expression and to increase understanding between nations and peoples. According to Joan Marler, a volunteer programmer for 15 years at KPFA, it was created to be a "free speech station, not dominated by censorship or interests that would limit the free flow of ideas." To protect this original vision, KPFA has maintained an independent funding base. It does not accept government or corporate money and is funded by listener contributions.

The founders wanted to create a true democratic structure, asserts Marler, and KPFA is the "mother station of the world in this experiment with free speech and democracy." KPFA has been "crucial in circulating the most innovative ideas and in creating an informed population. It has been responsive to the local community. It has cut through the lies and effects of censorship so endemic to other media. Without free media you cannot have democracy." What happened? How did KPFA come to be shut down? There have been other attempts to shut down the station - during the McCarthy era for example. But the greatest threat posed so far has been the most recent attempt by Pacifica, an entity that, according to Marler, was "started as a handmaiden to serve KPFA and other affiliates and now is sucking up their resources like a cancer."

In a nutshell, the crisis began in February 1999, when Pacifica changed its internal structure, eliminating representation from the local stations. Shortly after, Pacifica fired KPFA's popular general manager, Nicole Sawaya. A gag rule was instated, forbidding programmers to discuss internal affairs on the air. Veteran staffers Larry Bensky and Robbie Osman were fired for violating this order. Another producer, Dennis Bernstein, was yanked from the studio, mid-broadcast. A lock-out began. Pacifica hired armed guards to keep staffers out; peaceful protesters were arrested. The station was shut down for 21 days. Information was leaked that Mary Frances Berry, chairwoman of the board, had seriously considered selling KPFA, located in the commercial airwaves, for millions of dollars.Thousands of protesters took to the streets. Widespread and intensive organizing, civil disobedience, fundraising, public outcry, even the intervention of certain politicians sent the message to Pacifica, that KPFA was a vital and loved resource which would not be easily relinquished. KPFA returned to the air, as did Bensky, Osman and Bernstein. The gag order was eliminated.
(Spokane's own Marianne Torres of the TAKE BACK KPFA coordinating committee at Berkeley arraignment of 52 arrested 7/13/1999)

Is there cause for celebration, now that KPFA is back and running? Not according to Mary Moore, long-time activist and founder of the Sonoma County Free Press. Moore, who has appeared on various KPFA shows throughout the years and is well-acquainted with several of the programmers, told me that the return to the air of KPFA "creates the dangerous perception that all is resolved when it is not." She told me that problems didn't suddenly arise out of a vacuum this February. At least as far back as 1992, there was "tension between the paid and unpaid staff" with the latter willing to take more risks against management. In 1995, this tension came to a head when Pacifica "purged" many of the people who had been more outspoken.

Coinciding with the firings was a mandate from Pacifica to diversify the station. But, diversify how? In a letter to Berry written in May 1999 and signed by 13 African American programmers, the writers affirmed that "KPFA staff remains one of the most diverse in public radio." "KPFA has maintained its commitment to diversity," stated Robin Birdfeather, a KPFA volunteer with roots in the Feminist Radio Network of the early 1970's. Since 1985, through the station's Apprenticeship Program, women and people of color have been taught radio production and engineering in an effort to remedy past discrimination and under-representation in media.

Did Pacifica want a more diverse listener base? "Yes," Moore agreed, "the listeners are mostly white and middle class; when you rely on listener donations, you are less likely to have working class supporters. But, she stated that Pacifica is not interested in diversity. "They played the race card as an excuse to keep control. And they did it in a horrible, mean-spirited way. The return of KPFA is not a victory. Pacifica allowed the station back for six months because of the public outcry, but there is no local advisory board and KPFA has no control. The takeover can happen again."

Birdfeather, who is currently involved with media affinity groups which watch the media portrayal of KPFA, concurs that the situation is not resolved. "Pacifica is ruthless, evil, power-mongering. They will do anything they want." Marler agrees that the station is still in crisis and that Berry is "spin-doctoring, telling lies, manipulating, to further undermine KPFA. Pacifica is from a corporate governmental culture, not from our culture. They have no idea what the value of listener sponsored radio is for people and for our times. They don't know and they don't care. The people who were supposed to safeguard free speech want to control and close it off; they refer to KPFA as a 'unit.'" She sees the return as a limited victory. To her, the loss of KPFA represents the "loss of the extent to which we have free speech and democracy. But even in its present state, there is depth, richness, preciousness."

It was while working as a KPFA programmer that Marler met and began to work with foremost archeologist Marija Gimbutas, renowned for her discovery of the existence of pre-patriarchal, Goddess-worshipping peoples. From the seventh to the third millennium B.C.E. and through 1450 B.C.E. in Crete, the people inhabiting what she refers to as "Old Europe" were peaceful, matrifocal,matrilineal and egalitarian. In her book, Civilization of The Goddess, Gimbutas states that they had "a rich and sophisticated artistic expression and a complex symbolic system formulated around the worship of the Goddess... as well as a balance of powers between the sexes. " These Goddess-oriented civilizations began to decline when they were invaded by alien peoples, the Indo-Europeans, who were warlike, hierarchical and patriarchal.

Gimbutas believed that our awareness of this prehistory might "affect our vision of the past as well as our sense of potential for the present and future. We must refocus our collective memory. The necessity for this has never been greater as we discover that the path of 'progress' is extinguishing the very conditions for life on earth."

During my conversation with Marler, I saw certain parallels between the KPFA crisis and the fate of Goddess-worshipping peoples. KPFA (like the Old Europeans) began with the clear intention of being cooperative and nonhierarchical. Women have played an important range of roles at KPFA. Birdfeather believes that the women have a "deep sense of community and communication with each other." According to Marler, there has been an attempt to have a balance between female and male contributions at least since the Second Wave of feminism. She mentioned that KPFA was the only place where she could have openly explored the discoveries of Gimbutas.

In contrast, the Pacifica Foundation is clearly operating in a hierarchical, topdown, patriarchal, warlike mode, motivated by greed and the desire to control. Interestingly enough, no one I spoke to seems to know what went wrong. How did this entity come to have the power to destroy KPFA? In a similar vein, no one really understands why exactly there were warlike invaders at a time when people practiced peaceful worship of the Goddess. We presume that the peaceful people fell easily because, unaware of war, they had no weapons and experience with defending themselves. But what caused the Indo-Europeans to become patriarchal and warlike? We can only guess.

Nevertheless, there is much we can learn from our ancestors. Gimbutas's work is so threatening that many people want to bury it. Yet many of us believe that it was our ignorance of the Goddess and those who had a good quality of life worshipping her, that has led us to our current, destructive era.

Knowledge of the Goddess has been suppressed for millennia. It is crucial that we examine these patterns of dismissal and cover-up so we can begin to transform ourselves and our world. Beginning with the crisis at KPFA.

What lessons have been learned? Marler stressed the continued need for solidarity. "All of the programmers remained in solidarity, refused to be censored and didn't break to the powers that be." The latest crisis has resulted in a tremendous awakening of activism. Birdfeather stated that veterans of the Free Speech Movement and an explosion of other activists have all come out of the woodwork. People have been organizing within the local community and with the 65 other affiliates of Pacifica. Media affinity groups report on KPFA and work toward freeing all of the U.S. media.

Perhaps the most important lesson is awareness and prevention. When someone acts in an objectionable manner, respond quickly. Moore's newspaper has critiqued Pacifica since 1992. She wonders why the revolt is happening so late. I echo this sentiment. Unlike the Old Europeans, the creators of KPFA and their successors were not strangers to a world of greed and evil. It would have been far simpler to control Pacifica if KPFA had reacted immediately to any signs of danger and disrespect. Like the 1995 firings of outspoken staff. Instead, signs were ignored and Pacifica got stronger.

Fortunately, people are awakened now. KPFA is alive and kicking because of the thousands who took to the streets. I hope it is not too late.