They don’t want the PEOPLE enlightened...

by Isabel Estrada/PoorNewsNetwork Youth in the Media intern

I was dodging sheets of rain on Wednesday November 28th as I hurried towards 340 Townsend, the offices of KMEL radio, to attend a rally and protest of the firing of Davy D. Luckily my jacket was warm enough but it wasn’t waterproof so I was glad when another woman going to the rally came up from behind and covered me with her umbrella. I wondered if maybe the rally had been canceled until I came upon a group of people huddled under an awning. Marvin X was speaking, "David "Davey D" Cook was a "victim of corporate terrorism." As an African-American DJ who used his radio show, called Street Knowledge, on KMEL 106.1 as an open forum for the voices of bay area youth, Davy D was getting in the way of the corporate media’s agenda of "dumbing down America."

Davey D was fired on October 1st 2001 after serving KMEL as community affairs coordinator for 11 years. According to the station his firing was due to budget cuts but nobody really believes that. I’m more inclined to believe that it was because he talked about important and controversial issues openly. Only weeks before he was fired he had conducted an interview with Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland, the one dissenting vote on George W. Bush’s War Powers Act.

A sign being held behind me reads "KMEL The People’s Station?????????????" According to Ricky Vincent KMEL is the "enemy of the people," as a station that actually took away what little space Bay Area youth of color had on air. I spot Davey D. in the crowd, facing me with his hands in his pockets looking mad and somewhat fidgety. Oddly enough, especially for him, he was silent the whole night except for the brief acknowledgements he gave when someone complimented him. When Pecoya, Soul Sista Soul, came to the microphone she had us all chant "KMEL is not the people’s station." Pecoya sees Davey D’s firing as "symptomatic of what’s going on in the nation." From making it easier to acquire a warrant for a wire tap to detaining Green Party member Nancy Oden at Bangor Airport in Maine for no apparent reason, our civil liberties are being swallowed up as I write this article.

According to Pecoya, in Davey D’s case, he was one of the few people who provided Bay Area youth of color "access to skills a lot of inner city gangsters wouldn’t get any other way." Pecoya believes that being able to attain and discuss information like that provided on Davey D’s show Street Knowledge, is "paramount to each and every one of our survival." The team working to put Davey D back on air has three demands:

1. That Davey D. be reinstated as KMEL community affairs coordinator and that his show "Street Knowledge" be put back on the air immediately.

2. Increased community access and that issues that closely relate to the listening population (i.e. police brutality, gentrification) be discussed openly on air.

3. That KMEL demonstrate a true commitment to Bay Area Hip Hop and that KMEL support Bay Area Hip Hop artists by playing their music on air.

When JR Valrey stepped up to the microphone he didn’t waste any words. "They ain’t gonna do nothing if we don’t force them," he says of KMEL. His voice rang out over the crowd as he spoke of how KMEL is constantly playing "records that don’t talk about our real situations, our real lives. It’s a hard life. Let’s talk about being hungry."

Next to speak was a tall man dressed all in black with a gold ring on his pinky finger. He had emerged during the rally from a limousine surrounded by other men dressed in suits. He had neatly trimmed facial hair and a red feather in his hat. I heard someone call him a minister but when he took the microphone he didn’t say his name or where he was from. His words glided smoothly off his tongue, speaking of how Davey D had given people "a forum [to discuss issues] that are not always in harmony with what mainstream media wants." He was interested in the bigger picture. "There’s a world coming down around us…they don’t want the people enlightened…they don’t want any voices that threaten the status quo." He said "change your listening habits" and asked people not to shop at stores that support KMEL.

There were several powerful speakers including, Eve Patterson, Executive Director of Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Keith Carson and Wilson Riles who is running for mayor in Oakland and Van Jones from Bay Area Police Watch.

To close the rally, Soul Sista again stepped to the microphone to say, "we want to hear brothers speaking." She looked around at the 40 or so people surrounding her without dismay saying that next time each person would bring "10, 20, 30" people with them and the movement would only grow. She emphasized, "this is the beginning and not the end." She then led us in chanting, "Ain’t no power like the power of the people, ‘cause the power of the people don’t stop," as we made our way over to the KMEL headquarters. There we met four police officers standing in front of the door, feat apart, hands on hips and with sour faces. We ended the chanting with louds shouts and claps. I could just see the KMEL Board of Directors squirm.

As the rally began to disperse I saw the man with a red feather in his hat walking away and being followed by the men in suits. It was still raining but I figured it was my duty as a writer to go and ask his name. I splashed through the flooded street, feeling the water soak into my socks, and finally made it up to the last man in a black suit and asked what church they were from. He refused to tell me and told me that the man with a red feather was the spokesperson. I asked again with disbelief if he could tell me the name of the church, again he refused. So then I ran up to the man with the red feather and cut into his conversation with some other men. I felt shorter than usual among these tall men but I butted into the conversation and asked the spokesperson what church he was from. He looked down and said as though surprised to see someone there, "Mosque, Nation of Islam." When I asked his name it was clear he was anxious to get back to his conversation but he paused to say "Christopher."

Besides my discomfort at approaching a man who was surrounded by what I now realize were bodyguards I felt especially stupid at having asked what Church he was from. I resolved from now on in my journalistic career to always ask someone’s denomination instead of depending on what I hear from someone else. The whole incident reminded me of the scene in the Spike Lee movie "Malcolm X" in which the white woman runs up frantically to Malcolm X and he looks at her with ridicule.

I walked away feeling angry. For some reason I hadn’t been treated with the respect that I believe I as a young woman of color in solidarity with the cause, deserved. However, the feeling of the night in general soon overshadowed anything else. As one young man named Drew put it, "If you don’t stand for nothing’, you’ll fall for anything."