I was introduced to WBAI over 30 years ago as a student activist ready to follow in the footsteps of people like Elombe Brath, one of my elder mentors at that time, whose consistent and long-standing example of scholarship and service to African Liberation led me to a role in community media. In my first truly empowering role as an independent producer of the Bronx-based Public Access show, The Melanin Chronicles, I learned the disciplines of journalism and activism. With that exposure in mind, I appreciate the management of the noble legacy of WBAI and that’s why I hope to keep serving the Local Station Board as its Chair.
WBAI has been an integral part of my media consumption since my early realizations that the American corporate press did not have a track record of serving the Working Class, nor were the Ruling Class owner/operators of their media machines likely to ever change the systemic impact to enable the forces of oppression. In this respect, the mission of WBAI has been very close to my professional, social, political, cultural and even economic intentions to undermine the colonial American forces of White Supremacist Patriarchy and Imperialist war-making.
Of late, my role as a listener and as a member of the Local Station Board has found me less than satisfied with the lack of developing ways that Pacifica meets increasingly popular technical demands among our Working Class non-corporate media consumers. I would like to help usher in a new age of technical and programming effectiveness for the WBAI listeners in the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania Tri-State Area. I believe that a new look at how Terrestrial Radio can incorporate Internet-based video content would be more purposeful and may bring increased listener interest, engagement and a membership population that’s more financially committed.
I hope, as the Chair of our Local Station Board, that I can work with our other board members to evolve independent “Peace and Justice Radio”.