Micro Power

by Kaponda

I sit in the nerve center of an underground movement in America that has created more talk than the wireless telephone. I observe the strategically placed compact disc turn and compact disc change, along with other elaborate broadcasting equipment, as gurgling sounds from the aquarium swim past my ears. The voice of the late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcom X) permeates the airwaves with the legendary “Words from the Front Lines,” as he echoes the difference between the house and field niggers on plantations in the South. I see a man garbed in a brown dashiki come into the room, wearing a warm smile. He is Michael X, the latest person to join the micro radio movement, and the founder of Bayview Hunters Point Radio, 103.3 FM.

Bayview Hunters Point Radio, 103.3 FM, is the wings on which the voice of Michael X soars through the airwaves of his beloved community, urging the masses to escape the slave mentality seared in their psyche. As Michael X prepares to communicate with the only community he has ever known, I ask him what forces in his life brought him to the front lines of community activism and emboldened him to step out of the conventional outreach box into broadcasting without the sanction of the Federal Communication Commission or a license therefrom?

“Basically, I’ve always had the urge to do good in the Bayview Hunters Point community, where I was born and raised. I dabbled in micro radio five years ago with Stephen Dunifer in Berkeley. I had an opportunity to do a radio show. During that show, I thought to myself, ‘Hey! I can do this, too. I need to bring this back to the neighborhood.’ It was not until the death of my 16-year-old son, who was killed in a drug-related incident, that I was inspired to do something, you know, to honor him,” the 50-year-old revolutionary concludes.

Stephen Dunifer, to whom Michael X refers, is one of the first disciples of Mbanna Kantako, the sighted black man whom many people refer to as the father of micropower radio. In 1987, Mbanna Kantako set up a radio station in his home in the projects in Springfield, Illinois. Mbanna Kantako justified his right to set up a micro radio station as his right based on the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights and its guaranteed right for ordinary citizens to communicate with their fellow citizens. Today, 13 years later, Mbanna Kantako still broadcasts in Springfield, Illinois, and he is the benchmark by which over 1000 other members of the micro radio movement across America are measured. Stephen Dunifer later brought the knowledge he acquired from Mbanna Kantako to Berkeley and launched Free Radio Berkeley, the radio show from which Michael X acquired his insight into community radio.

As he burrows his body into the chair he reaches for one of the two microphones to began a passionate petition to the community residents. “You were listening to words from the late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz...,” states the voice of the spiritual-minded Michael X who now embraces in his hands as if it were one of the many youth of the Bayview district to whom he cries out. He talks about the change that needs to occur in his community, and how its incumbent upon each individual to assume responsibility to effect change. As I sit beside him and listen to his broadcast, I can see how a slight shudder seizes him as he discusses the horrors visited on people in his community by forces within and without, horrors that linger in the mind like the swish of a basketball net from a flawless shot by an opponent that brought the crowd to its feet. His micro radio is a device that he uses to address those horrors. But it is like trying to even the score with a jigsaw.

As he honors his community with a selection from the album of Sly and the Family Stones, I ask him to explain some of the horrors that plague the Bayview Hunters Point district?

“The southeastern section, in particular, and most Black neighborhoods, in general, in San Francisco have long been neglected by City Hall,” begins Michael X as he ponders which of a litany of examples of governmental, environmental, and political abuses to begin. “There have been more than 20 deaths of young people in shoot outs, drive-bys and walkups within the last couple of years. There is a lot of children killing children in the Bayview and many of those deaths remain unsolved. In addition, the jails and prisons have become residents for more and more Black brothers and sisters, clear examples of political neglect,” states Michael X.

While the fact remains that African Americans make up only seven percent of the population of the state of California; in truth, the concerns of Michael X that an astounding 38 percent of the prison population is African American are worth examining. To get this disproportionate number of representation is like trying to draw a thousand aces in a single-deck pinochle game. The cards have to be stacked to defy these laws of probability. Michael X and others will argue that the hand dealt to the Black community in the Bayview district has been stacked. Or, another way to explain the disproportionate number of African Americans in prisons throughout California is that members of the African American race are evil savages, not unlike a Timothy McVeigh, who deserve wholesale incarceration -- or worse. A more logical explanation, of course, of why Blacks are disproportionately incarcerated is that the sentencing laws in California are stacked against African Americans. Rather than apply rigid sentencing laws to people who harm others through gross imprudence, the California legislature has targeted a particular drug and declared war on it.

I was one inmate, for example, out of over 2000 inmates in San Bruno Jail in the year of 1996. A startling 75 percent of the African American population of San Bruno Jail was incarcerated for drug-related offenses -- like possession of rock cocaine, the equivalent of a nuisance crime. Furthermore, these laws are framed to lock African Americans out of sight, forever, by including mandatory sentencing for a third felony, possession of a rock of cocaine, for example.

Conversely, while there are 12 percent of African Americans in America, there are less than three percent of Black owned and operated radio stations. Again, this disproportionate lack of ownership of Black radio stations in America has to be a result of a strategy designed by the Federal Communication Commission and National Association of Broadcasters to lock the voices of people of color out of the airwaves.

So, with the knowledge that there are less than three percent of programming by people of color, I ask Michael X How it feels to be a part of the micro radio movement and why has he taken on this mammoth responsibility?

“I am the Clint Eastwood of the Bayview community. I have ridden into a town of desperadoes. This is a town of outlaws and outcasts. Its a town where the imaginations of its residents are unrestrained It is a town that is besieged by a corrupt government that sells the land of the community to the highest bidder to empty its bowels and devour it with hazardous waste. Like Clint Eastwood rode through town and corrected the corruption, I’m riding through town to clean it up. My goal is to restore peace to the town of Bayview, and I’ll ride into the sunset after my job is completed,” concluded Michael X.

Michael X may successfully curry favor with the residents of the Bayview district, but he may find it very difficult to ingratiate the Federal Communication Commission, who recently shut down three micro radio stations in Berkeley for broadcasting without a license. The FCC has been inconsistent in terms of its eligibility guidelines for obtaining broadcasting licensing for less than 100 watts of power. For example, in January of 2000, it was legal to broadcast with less than 100 watts of power. “Now,” according to Michael X, who broadcast with 40 watts of power, “It is illegal, again,” states Michael X, as he continues. “A person can get a license from the FCC if the radio station broadcasts in rural areas, only. The FCC is not issuing licenses in urban areas because, according to the FCC, ‘there are no available frequencies.’”

I ask Michael X if he thinks the FCC will eventually upset his applecart?

“Yes,” utters the undauntable Michael X, as he prepares to surrender the airwaves to prepare for the next show.

On this Sunday, however, there was no FCC to fear. A special guest, who hosts a radio show on 103.3 FM every Sunday, Marie Harrison, of the San Francisco Bayview Newspaper, enters the room and prepares to take over the airwaves for the “Marie Harrison Show.

Clad in a soft white blouse with denim jacket and pants, Marie assumes control of the airwaves and begins her interplay with the community. Marie wastes no time with her report on the recent discovery of the black beauty sand and environmental issues in Bayview, issues on which she is versed. She continues her diatribe with an appeal to the community members to reach out to young people.

“I think we need to work with a lot of our young folks,” stated Marie. “They’ve got a lot of good ideas. We need to bring them up to par. We need to let them know that we are there for them. When I keel over the day after tomorrow or the day after that, somebody has got to be in my place, and somebody has to be there after that person. It is a never-ending battle for education, knowledge and the sheer will-power to get up and do something worth doing. We need to have me. We need to have you. We need to have your next door neighbor, and the folks across the bay to bring all of their knowledge to help us resolve some of these issues,” Marie continues as I prepare to walk out into the streets of the Bayview Hunters Point district.