The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in San Francisco, Sept. 20-23, 2000, will be the occasion for numerous protests. The demonstrations are being organized by people who say that the NAB is the WTO of broadcasting. Protesters, many of them veterans of the "Battle of Seattle," are calling for what they call the "Skirmish in San Francisco."
Last Tuesday I spoke with one of the organizers, Stephen Dunifer, of Free Radio Berkeley. My regular readers will remember him from my column of Feb. 7, 2000, "Radio Silence. He's been called the "Johnny Appleseed of the micropower broadcasting movement." It's an understatement.
We met at Free Radio Berkeley's headquarters in a West Berkeley warehouse. It's a spacious combination of office, production facility, classroom, meeting room, and R&D center. It's a tidy place and well laid out, not at all the dusty, cluttered wizard's den one would expect. Stephen himself looks pretty much like you'd expect a wizard to look. Since he's far more intelligent and knowledgeable about the NAB than I am, I decided to let him speak to you for himself.
Nessie: Is the NAB really the WTO of broadcasting, or is that rhetorical hyperbole?
Stephen: I would say it is accurate in respect that the WTO represents large corporate interests in the global economy. The National Association of Broadcasters essentially represents the interests of corporate broadcasting in the country. They are a Washington lobbying organization. They have been very effective in getting what they want. In the opinion of many people, they are one of the most effective lobbying organizations in Washington D.C., not just because of the money they can throw around, that their individual corporate members can throw around, but because every politician needs media access. They represent that media access.
They can dangle the money in front of the politicians, but they also have them by the short hairs as far as media access is concerned. That's really where their ultimate power lies. They can either make or break somebody by the degree of media attention they receive and the kind of media attention they receive.
Nessie: Would you say that their control over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is comparable to the American Medical Association's control over the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)?
Stephen: It's similar, yes. We have a situation where regulatory agencies that have been tasked to regulate particular industries have become, for all intents and purposes, captives of those industries that they're supposed to regulate, the FDA with the AMA, the Forest Service with the extraction industries, and so forth.
Nessie: How many pirate stations are we talking about?
Stephen: It's hard to get a figure, but I'd say that at any given moment there are probably hundreds of stations on the air.
Nessie: And you guys here help make that happen. How do you do that?
Stephen: Well, what we do, you can see all around you here, this tons of equipment, parts, and so forth. Basically, we design and manufacture the transmitters, the kits, everything you'll need. Essentially we're a one-stop shop for people who want to set up a small micropower FM radio station, and not only in this country. We've helped people in Haiti, in Mexico, in East Timor, in Africa, and other countries. What we design and build is rather inexpensive. You can put a station together for about $1,500. It's very low cost.
Nessie: What's the range of something like that?
Stephen: If you put 75 watts up on a good hill, the signal will go 20 or 30 miles. In the flat, if you put it up 60 or 70 feet, it'll only go 10 or 12 miles. They're very effective. In an urban area even a 4 or 5 mile radius could reach a hundred or two hundred thousand people.
Nessie: That makes you very dangerous.
Stephen: They don't want people talking to each other. They don't want people organizing across class lines, across ethnic lines, across whatever, across any lines that they want to draw artificially. Ruling Class Acres is located at the corner of Divide and Conquer.
Nessie: Let's focus on the NAB demos specifically now. What are you trying to accomplish?
Stephen: Basically what we're trying to accomplish is we're going to bring maximum static to the NAB. There will be a lot of media around. We want to use them as a public forum, as a means of education, to bring out what exactly the NAB is all about, who they represent, and why people have to listen to the same stupid formats all across the country, bland radio that doesn't have anything to say for itself other than some sort of bottom line for the investors, and the fact that the NAB is essentially an enemy of free speech. They have done everything possible to quell the free speech rights of people to speak on their own airways in this country.
And we want to make known to as many people as possible that these are people and corporations who believe that they're the only ones who have the right to speak on the airwaves which they think they own, that they basically have stolen, aided and abetted by the FCC. Our mission, basically, is to reclaim those airwaves. You might say that we're the spectrum repo team.
As far as I'm concerned, the FCC is not that big of a problem. I care very little about what the FCC does or what rulings they create or any of that. Because the real power of this movement is going to lie in how many people decide that the airwaves really belong to them and not to Rupert Murdoch or Disney or some other corporate entity. These are the people's airways.
Nessie: Have you done your media outreach here? Are reporters aware that you're going to have these demos?
Stephen: Well, press releases have gone out. The media has been alerted. But whether they show up or not, we will have our own FM media coverage. We're supplying our own coverage. We expect to have a transmitter set up in SOMA, another in the Mission, and in some other areas.
There's going to be a lot of stuff happening. We're doing public outreach. We're having forums. We're having training sessions. For example, here at the shop we'll be teaching people how to build transmitters, build antennas. We're doing workshops on video, audio streaming, audio and video editing, all kinds of ways that people can create their own media.
This will be an opportunity for a lot of people to come together and plan strategies for the future. We're having the micropower broadcasting war council meeting on Saturday the 23rd at New College, 777 Valencia, San Francisco, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and we'll be focusing on evolving further national strategies for taking micropower broadcasting even further. Down the road we're even looking at expanding to AM and to TV, as well.
Nessie: Can anybody come to this thing at New College?
Stephen: Absolutely.
Nessie: So you're inviting my readers to come on down?
Stephen: Oh, yeah. We want them to. It's great raising hell in the streets. That's always fun. But our mission as Free Radio Berkeley IRATE, which stands for International Radio Action Training Education, is one of empowerment of people, by teaching them the skills and giving them the tools they need to create their own broadcast media. That's where our strong point lies.
We have an ongoing apprenticeship program. People come in here and work with us and learn how to build equipment, and they help us do what we need to do. We're sort of a crossroads. People are always dropping in. And basically we want to get to the point where people can go out and teach other people media, whether it's microradio, or streaming media, or setting up Independent Media Centers, learning how to use computer editing equipment for audio and video. These are all ways that can have huge impacts in terms of ways people are able to organize and communicate with one another.
Nessie: It's all legal, right?
Stephen: Absolutely. It's all up in front. It's a free speech issue.
Nessie: So the police have no reason to get involved, right?
Stephen: Not here. But I do notice that the IMC in Philadelphia has been named in a police affidavit. Now the powers that be are trying to say that the IMCs are actually . . . (chuckles) . . . you know, it's really hilarious to watch these guys try to figure out who's in charge of these demonstrations.
Nessie: Ha, ha. The joke's on them.
Stephen: They're now trying to say that the IMCs are actually coordinating all of this. Most of the IMC stuff is streaming media. It all requires computer access. Sure we have people out in the demonstrations with laptops, some of them with wireless modems, sending stuff back, but I don't see anybody running around with wireless PDAs keeping in constant communication with the IMCs. That requires a pretty hefty level of technology for the IMCs to fill that role even if they were.
But it's this authoritarian model way of thinking the powers that be have that "Well, there's gotta be somebody in charge!"
Nessie: They're geared to a strategy of decapitating strikes. Unfortunately this does not work on horizontally organized people.
Stephen: Yeah. It's hard to decapitate a swarm.
Nessie: Do you think that what they're doing in Philadelphia is the first step of them gearing up for a big conspiracy show trial à la Chicago '68?
Stephen: Well, they'll look like utter idiots then. But that's never stopped them before.
Nessie: Well, no. It would be the best thing that ever happened to our side, because they would look like such total fools. But I'm not sure they realize that. How stupid do you think they are? Are they going to come around and bust you?
Stephen: All I have to say is, "Come on down!" To really stop microradio they're going to have to start busting churches and Boy Scout troops. They're going to have to bust senior centers. You know, like, "Drop the microphone, grandma. You're coming with us." It's not going to go well with the public. When the public starts perceiving free speech and journalistic activity being targeted, they get pretty mad.
They also have to consider the fact that there are a lot of people involved in this. Even though there's not a large amount of political involvement by people in the technology sector, a lot of the people in that sector identify with us in a certain respect. I don't think everyone does, but an awful lot have the opinion of "let us be ourselves and leave us alone" kind of attitude. And I don't think the governments, local or federal, and the corporations really want to tick off people who are particularly bright and particularly people who have computer programming skills, because they could cause extreme problems for them.
For example, a lot of the people that built the government computer systems are much more disposed to us than they are to them. One has to ask the question, how many back doors have been left in those systems that have been built? If there was a massive attack on the infrastructure via the Internet, I have a feeling that if the government and the corporations were stupid enough to mount that sort of a blitzkrieg on our informational infrastructure, I would predict that within a short period of time afterward, quite a number of government computer systems would develop sudden, severe cases of amnesia, if not total collapse.
Nessie: If there's going to be a wizard's war with the corporate-government complex, we're going to win. Our wizards are better than their wizards. They're better positioned, too. That's the bottom line here.
Stephen: That's the point. How far do they want to push it remains to be seen.
Nessie: How realistic is it to believe that public pressure can break the power of the NAB over the FCC? Is that a realistic expectation, or should we keep planning to work around them?
Stephen: I say work right over the top of them. In order for this to work, people have to go beyond being informed, to active engagement. My analysis is that it's a target-rich environment out there, an opportunity. What the people have to do, basically, is say, "Screw the FCC and the NAB and anyone else who comes along with them," and set up their own micropower stations, build their own media, and tell the government and tell the corporations to go take a flying leap.
Nessie: Well, this is what people have done to the DEA and the IRS. There's no reason it shouldn't work on the FCC.
Stephen: There's no way they are going to be able to cope with thousands of radio stations being on the air, unless they want to come down in a military manner to suppress it. And that will just evoke an even stronger response back.
Nessie: There's a limit to what they can do. And what we ourselves do is that limit.
Stephen: That's right. We can sit here and crank out transmitter kits. We can get other people to produce in other parts of the country. This is not copyright information. This is copyleft information. If people want to set up production in other parts of the country and start cranking out circuit boards and transmitters, more power to 'em. The technology's cheap and easy to do.
Nessie: So the movement does not rely on you, personally, to be the quartermaster. If you walk out there today and have an "unfortunate accident," it's certainly not going to put an end to this.
Stephen: Not at all.
Nessie: Isn't that reassuring?
Stephen: That's what we're trying to do. Our whole mission has been to educate and empower people and show them how to do this themselves.
Nessie: Any parting words?
Stephen: People need to tell the NAB and the FCC to kiss their Bill of Rights.
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