My dad came home from work when I was 12 years old, said that a radio station on Market Square had been bombed. We learned it had been bombed by the KKK, as was the subsequent bombing a couple months later. I figured then, and I figure now, that any station worth the KKK bombing has to be worth listening to, and have done so ever since.

Sure, I enjoy the music programming (and lets be honest, that's what generates pledges and membership), but those same pledges help keep community and cultural programming on the air as well, which are no less valuable. You might say it's a matter of connecting the dots.

Over the last four years, we've been able to bring KPFT back from the brink of financial disaster, and today we are the only station operating in the black, paying its bills and meeting its obligations. Programming has been the engine that accomplished that.

The job is not finished, if it ever can be, but we need to continue working, increasing listenership and thereby membership; we need to be reach a point at which we can retain a regular General Manager; and we need to have sufficient resources to sustain us in the inevitable event of an emergency.

We can do that, but it takes wiling spirits, teamwork and cooperation amongst folks with differing viewpoint but the same goal - not mere survival but a thriving KPFT with roots and reach into the community.

I want to help.