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These are organizations grounded in grassroots assertion of democratic values and the ongoing struggle to keep speech free in a commercially-dominated media system.  There is also a strong theme of resistance to  military action abroad and its impact on civil liberties at home.   Consider:

• Pacifica, the first US community radio network and KPFA, the first listener-sponsored station, were founded after WWII  by Lewis Hill, a poet, journalist and pacifist.  KPFA is now one of 5 stations in Pacifica's network.
• Prometheus is a radio station "barn-raiser".  In the last few years it has choreographed the labor, expertise, and resources of local radio community members with that of outside volunteers to build  ten low-power FM stations from scratch.  Last month, Promethus raised up KPCN FM in Woodburn, Oregon - a Spanish-language radio station owned and run by Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United).
• 206 Zulu, another key organization, is the Seattle Chapter of the Universal Zulu Nation, which "represent(s) and innovate(s) the elements of Hip Hop while striving for worldwide peace, equality and empowerment.

Community radio is already networked through organizations such as these, and also on a national level through the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. So what's different about NWCRN?

Gavin Dahl, KAOS Radio Lewis Leonard & Jeremy Lansman Glacier City Radio	Pete Tridish Prometheus Radio Project
Gabriel Teodros & Khasm 206 Zulu (Universal Zulu Nation)	Amoshaun Toft Radio Indymedia Bill Aal Tools for Change

Photos courtesy Jonathan Lawson, Executive Director, Reclaim the Media.  See full size of these photos and more on Jonathan's blog

 

Geography, first.  NWCRN is regional, with stations from  Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Oregon, and British Columbia.  Geographical focus is not surprising  for community radio, where localism comes with the territory, so to speak.  At one of the summit workshops, I overheard Gavin Dahl, Production Director of Evergreen College's Kaos Radio, refer to NWCRN as a way to "regionalize without delocalizing", an intriguing comment that brought to my mind an observation made by Phil Mitchell of 2people recently -- that in an increasingly globalized world, "localism" is a matter of relationship, as well as geography.  

Technology is the network's other defining factor. Audioport, a new communications utility recently developed by Pacifica, provides its  operational platform.  Producers can meet inside Audioport's virtual  workrooms to collaborate on broadcast programs and to share training, tools, protocols, templates, and strategies.   Stations get access to Audioport  and membership in the network, for an annual fee.  When Pacifica brought Audioport to a radio community that wanted to network, it brought, in a sense, music to a party where people wanted to dance.

The Northwest Community Radio Summit combined two days of workshops and panels for radio insiders with a September 16 event at Town Hall headlined by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, with a full slate of other speakers, a Pepperspray film on KPCN's barnraising, and a surprise appearance by Lieutenant Ehren Watada. The Hall was packed, the audience was lively and liberal with  laughter and ovations.  Here's  Elliot Stoller's photo essay on Seattle IndyMedia.

Two nights previously I'd been at Town Hall when Jim Hightower spoke there and advised the audience that alternative media must unite.  Millions of people are reached by alternative media every day, Hightower said. It's up to us to gather together the power we already own, to claim that power by coordinating.  Community radio, alternative newspapers, bloggers -- all of these should be coordinating their work. I had been thinking on a different level about the potential of community radio recently from conversations with Sabrina Roach of KBCS 91.3 FM, which had been one of the sponsors of the Hightower event. Sabrina had been a Prometheus "barnraiser" for KPCN FM, and her account of that event had inspired me to attend the radio summit. So now I wandered around after the Goodman talks and asked people what they thought of Hightower's advice.  Karen Toering of Reclaim the Media and one of the principle organizers, said why don't you come to our "sausagemaking" session at CHAC tomorrow?

CHAC is Capitol Hill Arts Center, an old brick and timber building, run by an organization with a tasty philosophy: "Art can Nourish Like Food".  I walked into its storefront at 11 am,  past a coffee counter with people waiting in line, and into a large room in the back.  The person who looked most to me like a facilitator was Bill Aal of Tools for Change and Bill, in fact, did turn out to be the master facilitator.  Bill asked me which group I was most interested in - and then pointed me to the table of organizers discussing content collaboration and management. Can I sit in and listen as a blogger, I asked. "Sure," someone said, "that's what this is all about."

Sakura Saunders Common Frequency Ursula Ruedenberg Pacifica Radio

Susan Gleason Reclaim the Media Lupito Flores Thin Air Radio: KYRS

Russell Edwards Puget Sound Access

Photos courtesy Jonathan Lawson, Executive Director, Reclaim the Media.  See full size of these photos and more on Jonathan's blog

 

I listened in as the content collaboration group discussed matters of reliability, access, security, and quality.  Backroom collaboration on programming was differentiated from public access issues. Draft proposals were crafted.  Ideas for content-sharing and standards were discussed.  The "critical mass" model - rapid regional coordination of programming in respond to fast-emerging events (for example, large street demonstrations) - was discussed.  This seemed to me an arena offering obvious potential for near-term collaboration between blogs and radio and I exchanged emails with one of the participants to discuss it further.

What I got from a discussion that was often technically above my head, was first, that we will likely see what evolves around Audioport in the NW get adapted for community radio networks in other regions of the United States.

Second, I understood as I listened that the kind of cross-technology, cross-culture, continual-innovation approach that defines where we are heading with alternative media can be seen as a metaphor, even a model, for better unifying the progressive movement.    While the corporate world increasingly consolidates economic and political power, progressives struggle with the opposite trend, fragmentation.  There is - almost more than anything else - a tremendous  need for bridge-building across the issue, cultural, regional, political, and media divides.   Alternative media is not only a primary push-back force against increasingly powerful threats to democracy and our physical environment  -- but also a key unifying tool.  It's worth the time and trouble to break the barriers - conceptual as well as technical - in order to continually bring that force to its next level.  

I love the story that Jeremy Lansman told in the summit's opening session, of how he provided KBOO with its first antenna by climbing the tower of a nearby commercial radio station with a tape measure, noting the dimensions of that antenna, and scaling to account for the difference in KBOO's frequency.  Then he took his drawing to a machine shop for fabrication.  This represents for me the kind of radical pragmatism we need to build almost anything that is worth living inside, a kind of fearless spirit animating all the organizations featured in this story.

At the end of the day, the break-out groups convened for a final session.   Bill Aal led the wrap-up with a few minutes of envisioning where community radio might be five years hence.  Community radio, I thought, daydreaming as usual, is like a spaceship traveling at a speed that causes it to be infinitely larger on the inside than on the outside.  It's a cultural hotspot - and welling out of it, innovation, creative energy and even fury, truth irrepressible that won't be left unspoken or unsung, oxygen for democracy.

Note: I attended only the second day of the summit's workshops and meetings.  Highlights of the first day included plenary speeches by Jeremy Lansman, co-