My name is Hannah Sassaman. I work at an organization called the Prometheus Radio Project – our international headquarters shares space in this center with a Methodist congregation, jujitzu classes, Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and a community kitchen. We build radio stations around the world – and in my over five years with Prometheus, I have had the distinct honor of helping farmworker organizations, community groups, and neighborhood social justice pioneers from Nashville to Nairobi as they have built their very own community radio stations.

I have been lucky enough to witness – to midwife – the births of dozens of these stations. After five years, there is nothing I have experienced more powerful than the first moment a new radio station comes on the air. The silence and hope – the anticipation of something going wrong – time standing still as we wait for the first words to fill the room where we have all been working so long over transmitters, consoles, soldering irons – is suddenly broken by the first words of the station going live.

There are many parallels to the power of a shofar, calling to a family of people, close and near, at peace and in strife – a sound achingly familiar and new, rending the space we share, all at the same time – and the power of a radio station.

But in this shul, the parallel that comes most readily to mind can be found in “The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting”, by David Barsamian:

Today, most journalists comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. They have become overpaid stenographers to power who compete for the best hair on the air. Instead of watchdogs, they are lapdogs.

When KPCN-LP, La Voz de la Pueblo, a low power station in Woodburn, Oregon, took to the FM dial for the first time, just over a year ago, the tension and release of that first moment on the air was nothing if not a shofar – a clap of thunder promising a nourishing rain to those who could hear it – and understand it.

The farmworkers of the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos de Noroeste – the Farmworkers and Treeplanters United of the Northwest – had once held a spot on a powerful AM radio station not far from town. They leased one hour a week on the dial, broadcasting labor organizing messages, and helping the farmworker communities of Latino-majority Woodburn connect with each other, and fight for their rights in the fields. When the local farm owners in the community decided that the voices of PCUN were too dangerous, they asked the AM station to cancel their lease, eclipsing them from their dial for years.

As the Pineros y Campesinos Unidos prepared to return to the FM dial, this time on a frequency that no one could take away from them, they counted down to the moment of first broadcast, in Spanish. Veinte! Diecinueve! Dieciocho! Diecisiete! The numbers spilled over each other, and children shouted along with deejays who shouted along with cooks and farmworkers and volunteers from a thousand miles away. Tres! Dos! Uno! Si Se Puede – we all yelled.

If you were tuning in to hear prepackaged news, aggressive right-wing talk, or overproduced music – you were out of luck. But from its first moment – messy, joyful, angry, focused on change – the station was a shofar blast for the thousands who could hear it in Woodburn – and who could then learn to blow the shofar – to take a turn at the microphone – themselves.

The mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah says we are obligated to hear the sound of the Shofar – that this is Yom Teruah, the day of Shofar Blasts. But on a day when we are called to judgement – judgement of ourselves, of how we can better the world around us – don't we potentially lull ourselves into sleep by treating this holy and difficult noise as an obligation?

In his essay from 1998, "Lift Up Your Voice like the Shofar!", Rabbi Arthur Waskow quotes Franz Kafka:

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.

The leopard of God's Voice becomes a liturgy, says Waskow. We drone the reading, or even call it out. But it has lost its roar, its lashing tail.

I think of the big media that suffuses our lives as an obligation – we consume this media, though it doesn't awaken us to fight for justice, we let it's daily drone, it's weekly, monthly, and yearly repetition, lull us into complacency.

Building community radio is my way of bringing something new into the world, one place, one station at a time. On this Rosh Hashanah, may we all act with justice and create acts which bring others to justice – by crying out for it, to paraphrase Shemot, “exceeding loud; so that all the people that are in our camp tremble.”

My good friend Ian Howard has been involved in a number of interesting and innovative projects over the years. This latest endeavor really pushes the envelope for grassroots media, DIY broadcasting, and community empowerment. The OpenFM Project is very exciting stuff!

Adapted Consulting Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Laura Drewett
[T] +1-202-292-4242 / +1-647-722-5629 ext. 5011
[E] ldrewett@adaptedconsulting.com
[W] http://openfm.adaptedconsulting.com

RADIO ADAPTED FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD;
Adapted Consulting Inc. Launches its New Open Source Radio Station —OpenFM

TORONTO, ON – August 21, 2007 – At midday in the Sahara, several dunes past Timbuktu, the sun is blistering hot. During the months when the Harmattan winds blow, the air is dense with sand. The strong winds blow constantly, so that by day’s end everything is left covered by a think reddish film of dirt – the floors, the furniture and, in the case of a radio station, all of the electronic equipment. Such conditions present their own unique set of challenges. So when Adapted’s Co-Founder, Frédéric Renet, couldn’t find a commercial radio that was right for this situation – durable, energy efficient, easy to repair and affordable – he decided to build his own. From this first design created to withstand the harsh climate of Mali comes Adapted’s OpenFM.

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I've been here in Boston at the Alliance for Community Media Conference and met up with Hannah Sassaman from the Prometheus Radio Project and Faith Swords to build a small microtransmitter. This microtransmitter allows one to legally transmit everything from your computer, Ipod, or other device to any FM radio within several hundred meters.

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The Urbana-Champaign IMC, Radio Free Urbana, the Prometheus Radio Project, and CUWiN are all teaming up to lauch a new low power FM radio station, host the grand opening of the new IMC Community Media and Arts Center, and launch the first phase of multimedia integration into the wireless networking software. Nov 11-13, 2005!

I've been involved with the Radio Free Urbana group for several years and led the Capital Campaign to buy the IMC's Community Media & Arts Center (boy was that a fun three years), so this is a big confluence of projects for me (obviously, the CUWiN integration is just icing on the cake). This barnraising has been a long time in coming, and there's a ton of work still to be done (including critical fundraising to offset the costs of construction of the first floor and building of the radio station studio). But when people ask the question, "What's the future of media?" what's being built this November here in Urbana is the answer.

More info at: http://www.prometheusradio.org/urbana.

Join the Urbana Champaign Independent Media Center, Champaign Urbana Wireless Network (CUWiN) and Prometheus for another hair-raising spine-tingling electrically-charged weekend radio project!

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