Steal This Radio!
By Peter Spagnuolo

(from the Shadow Issue #38)

Lower East Side squatters, activists and radio enthusiasts, inspired by
the success of the growing, nation-wide micro-power radio movement, have
added their community to the growing list of radical centers with "pirate"
(non-licensed), low-power stations on the air. Following the examples
already set by established stations such as Black Libera-tion Radio,
broadcasting in a Springfield Ohio housing project, and the Bay Area's
Free Radio Berkeley, the Lower Side's Steal This Radio collective formed
in September of 1995 to begin acquiring equipment and technical expertise
with an eye towards launching a micro-power station that would serve their
community. 

By early November of last year, STR had purchased components to assemble a
five-watt transmitter, some of which came via Fret Radio Berkeley's
Stephen Duni-fer, whose activism in spreading the gospel of grass-roots
communication from Central America to Alaska has made him a kind of Johnny
Appleseed figure to the micro-power movement. Showing that old squatter
know-how, the collective built a radio frequency antenna entirely out of
plumbing supplies, tested its equipment from rooftops, and by Thanksgiving
was on the air at 88.7 FM, using borrowed turntables, donated tape decks
and mix-ers, and various equipment of dubious origin. The first few months
of the station saw only Friday broadcasts, from dusk un-til the early
morning hours, with hopeful plans to expand. 

Moving to a different location every week, the collective quickly became
known for the best floating party in town, presenting live music, poetry,
fiction and drama every week, in addition to record-ed music by an ever
expanding crew of djs. The station's mobility allowed it to present live
events too, such as the ABC No Rio Zapatita Art Show benefit - though
producing a broadcast or live bands presented challenget Indeed, while
most so called "pirate" stations can be started for $200 with a working
low-power transmitter, a cassette player, and a microphone, from the very
bcginning Steal This Radio had its sights on something more ambitious.
Fast Forward, the station's technical chief, describes STRthe kind of
free-form, sound collage our in-house Audio Damage Laboratories features
several nights a week -- really requires more than a walkman and a mixer
-- say $500 as a good starting point, and it goes up from there. Still,
STR members point out, this is a far cry from the minimum $60,000 in
startup costs the broadcast industry esti-mates is required for the
smallest FCC--licenced station. 

Upgrading first to twelve watts in January and again in April to twenty
watts, the station has expanded its pro-gramming as well. While the radio
parties are now a thing of the past, the station has grown rapidly,
gaining more diversity in the process. Now broadcasting five days per
week, STR presents anarchist news and events, a nightly community
cal-endar, a weekly interview, and talk shows, as well as several hours of
Spanish-lang-uage programming. "It was always our in-tention to make our
programming as wide-ranging as possible -- not to have people just playing
their favorite music, but to have things that spoke to the whole gamut of
Loisaida residents --squatters, low-income tenants, activists and
non-activists," says Queecueg a col-lective member. "I don't think you can
justify micro-power philosophy on any other basis than community need." 

It is the realization among activists in general that the concentration of
media sources in a few corporate hands -- such as Time-Warner, Turner,
Capital Cities and other conglomerates -- each owning vast holdings in
radio, broadcast and cable television, movie production, and publishing --
has created the a need for communities to take back the airwaves for their
own constructive uses. The means for this are within reach. "The air-waves
are public, yet the government in-sists on its strict and exclusive right
to regulate this public property, and then deeds away their use to the
corporate sector, which is interested only in profits," says Queequeg This
reality, and micropower broadcasting's answer to it is at the heart of the
on-going Federal prosecution of Stephen Dunifer and Free Radio Ber-keley.
Duniferhim, with the help of the National Lawyer's Guild's Committee on
Democratic Communica-tion, has been nothing short or heroic. (See Shadow
#37). 

Says collective member DJ Chrome, "Giving a voice to the people in this
neighborhood is our mission -- to make a vehicle for organizing and
forging com-munity among the people of the Lower East Side." To this end,
Chrome presents a weekly show, Neighborhood News and Views, with
interviews and talk on issues that are community centered. A recent show
broadcast an original interview with Democratic District Leader Margarita
Lopez, a long-time Loisaida activist and outspoken opponent of Councilman
An-tonio Pagin. D.J. Chrome adds, "In a predominantly working class
neigh-borhood like ours, many people don't have the time or energy to be
fully in-formed on the things going on here that affect them -- real
estate development, city policies--or, the information they do get comes
entirely from one side. With this show, they can get takes on issues from
the people who live in their own neighborhood, and they can also bring
their issues to the show, create dialogue." 

Ideally, Steal this Radio's organizers envision the micro-power station as
a sort of giant community drum that people can tune in to. For this to
work, says collec-tive member Grace O'Malley, "the station must develop
the greatest degree of ac-cess for community members to program-ming --
anyone with an idea about a show they think the community needs, or
announcements, or events for the calendar, should feel free to bring their
ideas to us -- we're committed to finding a way to fit it all in." The
only rules in place about programming, she adds, are "no hate speech," and
a willingness to accept the station's legitimate security concerns. 

Fast Forward points out the station's enorrnous potential when he
contrasts its listening area with that of other micro-power stations. "We
get approximate coverage from the western edge of Williamsburg to about
the Bowery, and from Delancey Street to Stuyvesant Town. A station like
Free Radio Berkeley may be better situated in a flat, low-rise area for
sending a signal very far, while our signal has to contend with a dense
grid or large concrete and steel obstruclions -- but the up side of this
is that with all the density of multiple dwelling units, tenements and
such, we have some 75,000 people living in a tight area -- we don't need
to send a signal very far to have a large potential listenership." But how
many people are listening? "We get complaints from people trying to tune
us in," says Fast Forward. "Some of them are on the fringes of our range,
so they need to put a better antenna on their stereo receivers, or try
moving the boom box to a different location in their rooms. As we upgrade
our signal, we hope people keep trying."

http://www.freeradio.org/mpb/stealths.html