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The next step, will be to remember our objective.

The students are being courted with the usual calls for understanding the process, for effecting change within the system, for using the system’s mechanisms to bring about reform. Examining all sides of the issue apparently. Looking at the station’s sources of funding, for example, to see if the effect of upsetting conservative donors can be countered elsewhere.

But this isn’t about how Colorado College or KRCC can afford to do this, this is about doing the right thing!

As a community seeking media reform, we know this isn’t just about DEMOCRACY NOW on the radio, this isn’t about a “left-leaning” voice on the radio, this isn’t about a political adgenda on the radio. This is about truth on the radio. This is about objectivity on the radio to counter everyday media disinformation.

And this is where the college and KRCC are making a very condescending assumption: that Colorado Springs is too ignorant to appreciate objective news reporting, that conservatives are by definition ignorant.

Americans in general have been coming to see that the media has been lying to them. That mistrust is being felt particularly hard by conservatives whose fiscal ideals have been betrayed by their politicians, while the press has looked on uncritically.

We’ll be scheduling a brain-storming meeting to plan for the next round of this fight. The fight to make people in the right places do the right thing.

Dear President Celeste,
We ask that you receive these well-intentioned letters of petition asking for you to consider airing the news program DEMOCRACY NOW on the public community radio station operated by your college.

We ask that you consider these attached letters in addition to the other petitions you’ve received:

1. The similar petition letters which have already been mailed to you directly.

2. Those letters from past years and seasons, making the same request.

3. Those community members who’ve left notes on the mykrcc.org website.

4. Those community members who’ve written letters to the editors in the local media.

5. Those who’ve left notes on KRCC’s official website, notes which have repeatedly been deleted.

6. Those who’ve called KRCC, during each fund drive, and between fund drives.

7. Those CC students who’ve submitted letters to you in the past years and semester blocks.

8. Those students who’ve signed the current student petition.

9. For all those students whose signatures are on petitions yet to find their way to your office.

10. And for all the letters to be arriving late from further community members and KRCC listeners!

Please accept all these voices in making your decision to improve the quality and level of responsibility to which we want to hold our local media.

Thank you,
Eric Verlo
Representative
PIKES PEAK MEDIA ALLIANCE

KRCC has for several years opposed airing DEMOCRACY NOW. Here are some CAMP CASEY talking points to counter KRCC’s usual palabum.

“Can’t afford it.”
No, it’s free. DEMOCRACY NOW is free for the first six months, after which it will have the support of the listeners or it won’t. Plus, it will replace something that costs money now. So cost is not relevant.

“Don’t want ADVOCACY JOURNALISM.”
Amy Goodman describes her show DEMOCRACY NOW as “advocacy journalism.” It advocates OBJECTIVITY and TRUTHFUL journalism. Similarly, NPR advocates an agenda if its own: ALL THINGS [which the corporate/globalization/oil/military underwriters don’t mind being] CONSIDERED.
A one hour format is not enough time for DEMOCRACY NOW to consider all things in the news, it’s hardly even time time to consider everything NPR is censoring!

“No room in the line-up.”
Of course something will have to go, and the stricken program will have its disappointed fans. A bad teacher’s dismissal will always be met with objections from whatever students were enjoying the teacher’s shortcomings.
A likely candidate for expulsion from the KRCC line-up might be PRI’s THE WORLD. THE WORLD is wide-eyed, sentimental, ethnocentricity passing for international news. Its rush-hour time slot is an enormous waste considering THE WORLD clearly panders to people well below driving age.

“Our community is too conservative.”
Nonsense. Our community is what we make it. A teacher doesn’t say “my pupils are too ignorant to teach!” No, you teach them. KRCC is responsible for the community it serves.

“We’ll be seen as too liberal.”
Why would objective journalism be mistaken for having a political slant at all? KRCC might be surprised by the magnitude of listener interest which will come from all sides of the political spectrum. Colorado is full of military families which yearn to hear unadulterated news from Iraq. More and more conservatives have come to see that the current cabal in Washington does not represent them, and they see that the media is conspicuously uncritical.

“Don’t want to.”
Well boys, pony up. When this war is finally unraveled, when the Neocons are dethroned and held accountable for their profiteering and war crimes and attacks on our civil liberties, their propagandists too will be judged.

Please join us at 1pm on Monday, December 5th as a we deliver this year’s KRCC DEMOCRACY NOW PETITIONS to Colorado College. There will be a procession of VOICES UNHEARD, (except on Democracy Now!):

1. From CAMP CASEY to the CC WORNER CENTER: north on Nevada Ave, across Cache Le Poudre, then west.

2. Come as your choice of oppressed voice. Represent people who suffer without reprieve as a result of a media which ignores their plight.

a) Kneeling supplicants can represent the downtrodden, the world poor forced to its knees: those born into indentured servitude, those imprisoned, those indiginous peoples at the mercy of globalization.

b) Participants who prefer to walk can represent other unheard voices: the infirm who rely on social services, our nation’s invisible poor, the outsourced jobless, the working poor, the injured vets, etc. Causes or identities can be depicted in posters or photos.

c) A coffin will be be dragged along to symbolize the ignored dead: the under-reported genocide, aids, state terrorism, uncounted war casualties.

d) Others still can march not as representatives of the victims but as themselves: the ignored vast population who stand in solidarity. The peace movement for example!

e) Invisible participants can represent the uncounted voters.

3. We could welcome (or provide our own) counter-protesters to attend as representatives of those who are not under-represented by NPR: fat cat Americans, Iraqi kids kissing American soldiers, an earth not suffering under global warming.

4. Those walking on their knees will use walking staffs which will trail a long red banner which reads WE WANT DEMOCRACY NOW!

5. A delegation of Colorado College students will petition President Celeste in his office at 1pm, IN ADVANCE of the arrival of the community procession.