New Orleans The Grassroots Radio Conference is an interesting confederation of progressive, noncommercial community radio stations from around the country. Annually, they have a conference. I spoke at one some years ago in Portland and showed part of The Organizer movie. I didn’t make it to the conference in Louisville, but bought the t-shirt. Chaco Rathke represented AM/FM and our stations in West Virginia at the 2023 conference. This year, the conference was being held in New Orleans, largely at the instigation of one of our fellow low-power stations, WHIV-LP, that took the bull by the horns. WAMF-LP, which is licensed to AM/FM, was listed as a co-sponsor, but we didn’t do much of the organizing. New Orleans, being New Orleans, attracted a fairly good crowd. Reportedly, 200 were registered, which seems like a strong showing.
Chaco was there for the full schedule. I came by to participate on a panel at the final plenary on the first full day. I saw someone from the Fayetteville, Arkansas low-power, I had met years ago. I talked to Jim Ellinger from Austin, who reaches out from time to time. “Radio Bob” Dunn, our jack of all trades, volunteer engineer for WAMF and most of the low power stations in our area was there and did a workshop on PlayList, the software that we and others use to pull all of the pieces together. Later, I met the woman behind the station in Asheville, North Carolina, who might be very helpful in connecting everyone there once we get the station in Fayetteville, North Carolina on the air. I also met someone from WBAI, the giant, but beleaguered Pacifica station in New York City, who assured me that things were going a bit better these days. One of our pre-pandemic and soon to be again hosts, got some folks together for great gumbo in our neighborhood afterwards which was a winner. It’s good to bring people together!
The stated subject of the panel where I was scheduled was “Disinformation: When Bad Narrative Kills Good Policy.” I wasn’t sure exactly what they were looking for, but going positive, I had reached out for the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation for material on ALICE – Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed – families, that I could distribute, since that’s a ongoing theme at KABF promoting programs for lower-income working families. I thought perhaps some other stations around the country might pick up the banner and run with it as well. The plenary had a good crowd of 85, so it was an opportunity.
I met one of the co-panelists, Mike Schmidt, who it turned out was the district attorney in Multnomah County, Oregon, where Portland is located. He had just lost his bid for re-election after a disinformation campaign. Gradually, I got the point of the panel. I was there as an expert on disinformation, not because of the radio work where we countered this problem, but because of my relationship with ACORN and its victimization through disinformation in 2009-2010, leading to its bankruptcy, dissolution, and rebranding of state organizations in the United States.
Adapting, I went back to my early work organizing against the Vietnam War and then welfare rights, also classic stories of disinformation in their own right. I didn’t dwell much on ACORN, because it was a well-known story to this crowd, and the moderator, Alex Lawson of Social Security Works and a local LPFM in DC, had been ACORN adjacent, as they say, back then while working at HCAN, the Health Care Action Network, where ACORN was also a partner, and was able to share the experience with the crowd. I made the ALICE pitch and exhorted folks to use their megaphones to improve the fortunes and conditions of low-and-moderate income families.
In my last minute, I argued that progressive noncom radio stations needed to work together and build a network, like we were trying to do. The Grassroots Radio Conference is a great place for all of these fellow travelers on the airwaves to do some networking and share skills, but it could also be a place to network stations together in common purpose, whether voting or on issues or whatever. I made the call. We’ll see if anyone heard it. We have some powerful megaphones, if we use them well.
