Original Post Date
2020-01-12 05:37 PM
Original Body
The biggest joke in my youth in the late 70’s and 80’s was my goal to be a radio DJ because of my disability Cerebral Palsy I used to stutter. Yes, people like teachers, some family members, friends and counselor all laughed about the goal of being on the radio. Here is my story of my dream to be on the radio from 1980’s WCCC 106.9 FM Hartford, CT. to today with Poor Magazine’s KEXU 96.1 FM East Oakland, CA..
When I moved back to my mother after my dad and mom split, we lived in an apartment in West Hartford, CT.. right across the street of WCC C FM. WCCC-FM was the home of Howard Stern beginning in late 1979, where he hosted the station’s morning show. This was Stern’s first job in a large market. It was at WCCC-FM that Stern met Fred Norris, the longest-tenured member of Stern’s staff, who followed Stern when he left Hartford. Beginning in May 1996, Stern’s syndicated morning show aired every weekday morning on WCCC until he departed for Sirius Satellite Radio. At that time I was a hard rocker like Ozzy to ZZ Top to AC/DC so Stern was the person I listened to. I used to look out the living room’s window to see if I could seeStern’s get out of his care but I never saw him.
I wanted to go across the street and knock on the door of WCCC but I never did.. At this time boom box with cassette players were in, and I made homemade tapes where I recorded my voice introducing songs from what WCCC was playing at that time. As I went public about my goal of being on the radio, the laughter started and it was loud and all the time. I played it cool and tried to shrug it off but it did hurt and after two years I dropped my goal.
After years and years of being force to take speech classes, my consistent stuttering stopped, but my goal of being on the radio turned into being a lawyer however the media bug was still with me and came out through writing submitting articles to newsletters and newspapers. In the late 90’s because of Poor Magazine and Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization, DAMO got me back to my media love especially radio with mix of reactions. Gary N. Gray, the co-founder of DAMO had a great idea to start The Moore-Gray Matter Show on Berkeley public access TV in the late 90’s. The show was well supported with top notch tech people so Gary & I could concentrate on our guess and our script, music and cuts to live feeds, pictures and our logo. At the same time in the late 90’s my column, Illin-N Chillin on Poor Magazine dealing with race & disability also many articles in a Black Newspaper the San Francisco Bayview Newspaper were exploding and getting people’s attention.
In the 90’s Poor Magazine had a radio show on Berkeley’s KPFA Free Speech Radio 94.1 FM and they invited me on to read about issues facing Black/Brown people with disabilities. Although the listeners liked what I was reported on and Tiny & her mother Dee of Poor Magazine had my back but KPFA’s director at the time told Dee that Poor Magazine should not have me on their radio show because of my disability that affected my speech. Poor Magazine is still holding on to their small part on KPFA that have been cut down to only ten to fifteen minutes on Hard Knock Show.
I was very honor to be invited by Roland Washington to be apart of his show on the only Black radio station in the Bay area and I think in California. KPOO 89.5 FM & Washington supported me however because I was gentrified out of San Francisco to Berkeley the transportation became too much so I left. Back at KPFA in Berkeley in early 2000’s a collective of people with disabilities got together and wrote a radio show program and it was accepted. Pushing Limits is now a half-hour radio show providing critical coverage of disability issues and bringing the insight of the grassroots disability movement to the general public. Pushing Limits advances the voices of people who live with disabilities. It is produced by a collective of media makers and activists who themselves live with disability. The collective asked me to be involved and I agreed. My involvement last a couple years then after some negative feelings toward what I was producing mainly Black issues I decided to leave and went onto Berkeley Free radio that was duck tape kind of radio show that didn’t had FCC stamp of approval to air. After Berkeley Free Radio, online radio was blowing up at that time so I did a Krip-Hop radio show for only a year online this was mid 2000’s the same time I started Krip-Hop Nation in 2007.
Back to Poor Magazine in October 20017 Poor Magazine applied and got a low power community radio operator license from The Federal Communications Commission, FCC and now today in 2020 Poor Magazine’s KEXU 96.1 FM is on the air and Krip-Hop radio with Leroy Cerebral Palsy voice finally found his home with other poverty scholars.
Since 1980’s I have been a gust on many radio shows from BBC to stations in South Africa and all around the US. Today there are different disabled voices on radio and making their own audio blogs like Alice Wong’s The Disability Visibility Project to The World’s No. 1 Blind DJ, Anthony “DJ TouchTone in Philly on 100.3 WRNB & so much more! So come back and listen to KEXU 96.1 FM live if you live in East Oakland on the dial every Tuesday and Thursday or on soundcloud at the links below.
https://www.poormagazine.org/radio