I am a member of KPFT, a totally listener supported community radio station in Houston. The station first came on the air on March 1 , 1970 with the first song played being "Here Comes The Sun" by the Beatles. The KKK decided that they did not like a community radio station that played any and all music and let any one that wanted their voice heard come to the station and speak out. So just a little over two months later, on May 12, 1970, the KKK blew up the transmitter. After several weeks of repairs, the station was back up and running. THEN, on October 6, 1970, the fuckers did it again! The song being played at the time of the second interruption was "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie. On January 21, 1971, when the station came back on air, Arlo was in the studio to play "Alice's Restaurant" live. How perfect is that ?
I listen to the station 6-7 hours every weekday and one of my favorite shows is Democracy Now, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales. These are two of the best broadcast journalists in America. Period. You will learn more in the hour that you listen to this program than you will doing anything else that day. No commercials and they shoot straight as it gets.
We are having our fall fundraiser presently and imagine my pleasant surprise when it was announced that Juan Gonzales was coming to Houston to promote his new book News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, co-authored with Joseph Torres of the media reform group Free Press, and to help out the station.
Well, it took mere seconds for me to pounce on the phone and pledge to do the meet & greet.
So, this past Wednesday, Oct 26, I went to Talento Bilingue de Houston and met and listened to Juan and Joe speak.
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| Juan blew us away |
The man's eloquence and depth of knowledge on media history in America is unmatched.
Here is Amy's interview with Juan and Joe and you can see what real journalism is all about.
Also this following week on Tavis Smiley on PBS, Juan will be making an appearance.
“Juan González and Joseph Torres have rendered a splendid public service with this highly readable and engrossing story of how the press sees—and doesn’t see—who we are as a people. Race and ethnicity, power and privilege, the visible and the invisible are at the core of our democratic crisis today, and it’s hard to imagine a better way to face the challenge than to be armed with the story this book tells so well.” ~ Bill Moyers, Public Affairs Television.
I want to thank La Regina for allowing me to share my experience here.
[Thank you, austin!]
