Show notes
A national "Defend free speech" town hall January 25 was co-hosted by Friends of Community Media, PeaceWorks Kansas City, Pacifica Fightback, and the African People’s Socialist Party/Uhuru. Roughly 100 attended via Zoom and another 25 joined together at Simpson House, 4509 Walnut St., KCMO 64111. The event began with three keynoters:
* Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party / Uhuru,
* Elisa Mejia of Insurgencia Femenina (Feminine Insurgency), Spanish-language program on KPFK Pacifica radio station in Los Angeles, CA.
* Dr. Gerald Horne, history professor at the University of Houston and host of Freedom Now! on KPFK.
Yeshitela discussed how he and two others with the African People's Socialist Party had been prosecuted for acting as agents of Russia without filing as such and for conspiring to spread Russian propaganda and sow political discord in the U.S. He said the government expected them to accept a plea bargain. They refused and instead fought and won: They were found not guilty of acting as foreign agents. They were convicted of conspiring to spread Russian propaganda and sentenced to three years probation and community service, and the judge acknowledge that they do community service routinely.
Mejia spoke about the need to expand Spanish-language programming, especially at KPFK in Los Angeles, and about her program, Insurgencia femenina.
Prof. Horne recommended substantial improvements in the media including an international campaign to raise funds for a national and international news bureau at WPFW in Washington, DC, to share content with the media organs from the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and their allies, such as Telesur, Press TV, Radio Havana, etc.
The presentations were followed by questions for the speakers then breakout sessions with one session in Kansas City and the rest virtual. Most of the report backs from the breakouts focused on how to improve the five Pacifica-owned stations (KPFA in Berkeley, CA; KPFK in Los Angeles; WBAI, New York; WPFW in Washington, DC: and KPFT, Houston, TX).
Spencer Graves, who led the Kansas City breakout group, said we need to improve local news and social media. Media scholars including Robert McChesney and Victor Pickard have recommended citizen-directed subsidies for local news nonprofits. This would represent an Internet-savvy reincarnation of the postal subsidies provided by the US Postal Service Act of 1792, which helped give the US during the first half of the 1800s possibly more independent news publishers per capita or per million population than at any other time and place in human history. This encouraged literacy and limited political corruption, both of which helped the early US stay together and grow both in land area and economically while contemporary New Spain / Mexico fractured, shrank and stagnated economically.
Most people alive today benefit from newspapers published 200 years ago, which they have never read nor in most cases never even heard of. Those newspapers helped build an open political environment that helped create demand for new products and services while also supporting research in basic science used by those new products and services. Public health measures adopted early in the US have yet to be adopted in some countries with less open media environments.
In the 1850s and 1860s, newspaper markets became increasingly dominated by publishers with expensive high speed presses.1 That trend combined with consolidation of ownership of media outlets gradually reduced the number of independent publishers. Today's Internet allows anyone to become a publisher, but audience shares are still highly concentrated. This concentration of ownership includes commercial social media companies that make money through market segmentation,
* Omali Yeshitela, chair of the African People’s Socialist Party / Uhuru,
* Elisa Mejia of Insurgencia Femenina (Feminine Insurgency), Spanish-language program on KPFK Pacifica radio station in Los Angeles, CA.
* Dr. Gerald Horne, history professor at the University of Houston and host of Freedom Now! on KPFK.
Yeshitela discussed how he and two others with the African People's Socialist Party had been prosecuted for acting as agents of Russia without filing as such and for conspiring to spread Russian propaganda and sow political discord in the U.S. He said the government expected them to accept a plea bargain. They refused and instead fought and won: They were found not guilty of acting as foreign agents. They were convicted of conspiring to spread Russian propaganda and sentenced to three years probation and community service, and the judge acknowledge that they do community service routinely.
Mejia spoke about the need to expand Spanish-language programming, especially at KPFK in Los Angeles, and about her program, Insurgencia femenina.
Prof. Horne recommended substantial improvements in the media including an international campaign to raise funds for a national and international news bureau at WPFW in Washington, DC, to share content with the media organs from the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and their allies, such as Telesur, Press TV, Radio Havana, etc.
The presentations were followed by questions for the speakers then breakout sessions with one session in Kansas City and the rest virtual. Most of the report backs from the breakouts focused on how to improve the five Pacifica-owned stations (KPFA in Berkeley, CA; KPFK in Los Angeles; WBAI, New York; WPFW in Washington, DC: and KPFT, Houston, TX).
Spencer Graves, who led the Kansas City breakout group, said we need to improve local news and social media. Media scholars including Robert McChesney and Victor Pickard have recommended citizen-directed subsidies for local news nonprofits. This would represent an Internet-savvy reincarnation of the postal subsidies provided by the US Postal Service Act of 1792, which helped give the US during the first half of the 1800s possibly more independent news publishers per capita or per million population than at any other time and place in human history. This encouraged literacy and limited political corruption, both of which helped the early US stay together and grow both in land area and economically while contemporary New Spain / Mexico fractured, shrank and stagnated economically.
Most people alive today benefit from newspapers published 200 years ago, which they have never read nor in most cases never even heard of. Those newspapers helped build an open political environment that helped create demand for new products and services while also supporting research in basic science used by those new products and services. Public health measures adopted early in the US have yet to be adopted in some countries with less open media environments.
In the 1850s and 1860s, newspaper markets became increasingly dominated by publishers with expensive high speed presses.1 That trend combined with consolidation of ownership of media outlets gradually reduced the number of independent publishers. Today's Internet allows anyone to become a publisher, but audience shares are still highly concentrated. This concentration of ownership includes commercial social media companies that make money through market segmentation,