Why Commuinity Radio is Important

 
Democratic, community-based radio is alive and well in the United States. It lives in big cities, rural communities, Indian reservations, college campuses, and small towns. It speaks English, Spanish, Navajo, Apache, Lakota, Russian, Creole and Hmong. It broadcasts music, news, theater, literature, and talk shows.

For over 50 years community radio has been providing alternative information, helping communities discuss their issues and to get organized; it has been preserving language and culture in Native communities and speaking to immigrant populations in their own language. With the consolidation that has happened in commercial radio, community and public radio are often the only local radio stations to provide emergency information.

The Mexican Fine Arts Museum in Chicago's Latino community owns WRTE, a youth station that presents news and information produced by young people in Spanish and English.

Pacifica Network,  Free Speech Radio News, and Democracy Now present news and information that no other news outlet is covering-and these programs are broadcast on community radio stations all over the country. Network stations freely exchange content and information on a national scale, to produce cutting edge news and information for their local communities.

On the Hopi reservation KUYI is helping to preserve the Hopi language by broadcasting Elders telling stories in Hopi every morning. These broadcasts are played in the school buses so that kids can listen-and learn on their way to school.

In northern Minnesota, KAXE is developing a collaborative community website working with the local papers, the community college, a local foundation and the cable access channel.

KVMR in Nevada City, California, stepped up during an emergency. A mentally ill man was on the street shooting people. The station let people know to stay away from the area where he was. But they didn't stop there-they broadcast town hall meetings about mental health services in the county and ultimately helped to get extra funding from the state to improve these services.

In New Orleans, the Jazz and Heritage Society operates WWOZ to preserve and celebrate the music and cultural heritage of the area. Volunteers from the community, many of them musicians, share their music collections with listeners-over half of them listen over the internet. Locally, hotels and cabs tune their radios to O-Z so that visitors get the musical flavor of the city as soon as they arrive. The New Orleans Jazz Festival and the French Quarter Festival are broadcast live and there are regular programs originating from clubs around the city. These broadcasts not only give exposure to the more famous musicians in New Orleans, but also present rising musicians. The station and the music community have developed an extraordinary relationship of mutual support; for example, WWOZ helped establish and raises funds for a musicians' health clinic.

Since hurricane Katrina, O-Z has been using its airwaves to activate the community and to distribute essential information for the people in the city. They have also worked with the music community to help save the record collections, replace ruined instruments, and to provide assistance to displaced musicians who are trying to get home.

This gives you an idea of what the more than 200 community stations are doing now. Imagine how much more can be done if we can double or triple that number.