A-Infos (en) Kantako's Human Rights Radio Continues to Defy the Thought Police

["Martsch, Martin" <Martsch.Martin@uis.edu>]

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By Mike Townsend
	November, 25 1999

Greetings on this, the 12th anniversary of Human Rights Radio.

The FCC's Thought Patrolman, Will Grey, has spent a decade trying to shut
down Mbanna Kantako's Human Rights Radio.  Working out of the agency's
Chicago area office, Grey has made three 400 mile round­trips from his
office to Kantako's home.  Each time he hands Mbanna a legal notice
demanding that he "get­off­the­air within 1 0 days or else!"  Each time
Mbanna punks him out and tells him to "Beat It."

When Grey showed up on December 2, 1998, 91/2 years! after his first "cease
and desist order," I felt sure this was the real thing.  This was especially
so because the FCC had been on a national tear shutting down scores of micro
stations.  So, I sent out an e­mail article to the National Micro­Radio
Movement informing them of Mbanna's imminent shut down. (See attached ). Ten
days passed and nothing happened.  Nine months passed and still nothing
happened.  Then on September 30, 1999, Will Grey showed up again with a new
"cease and desist within 10 days order," starting the whole process over
again.  It's like the two previous visits had never occurred.  Ten days
passed and nothing happened.  As I write this, 40 days have passed and still
no FCC Swat Team has raided the Kantako home.  So, it's anybody's guess as
to what is going on.

Various theories have been bandied about as to why Kantako hasn't been shut
down.  In
no particular order they are as follows:

1. It's because Kantako vows to go to jail before he runs out of
transmitters.  If that happens Amnesty International will be petitioned to
declare him a "political prisoner" and the international organizing begins.
That's a price too high for the FCC to pay.

2. It's because he's Black, blind, and his family is on "Welfare." It
wouldn't look good trying to crush a person who is supposed to be selling
candy bars instead of being the founder of the Micro Radio Movement.  Even
if the authorities refuse to jail Kantako, shutting him down will still make
him a martyr of resistance, and with so many disaffected people in this
country, that creates more problems than it solves.  The strategy suggested
by this theory is to just let Kantako burn himself out.  He can't go on
forever.  Unfortunately, for the FCC, that could be long time.  The iron man
of micro­radio is celebrating 12 years on­the­air today.  We have to give
Will Grey credit though.  He's been there with his legal notices for 10 of
those 12 years.

3. It's because Kantako's courage and example are widely respected around
the country and not shutting him down damages his credibility and raises
doubts in the Micro radio Movement about his having some sort of deal with
the FCC to remain on the air.  It's kind of like the F.B.I.'s Cointelpro
Program against the Black Panthers in the 60's when they planted rumors,
created false documents, etc. to create distrust and internal friction
within the movement.
4. It's because the FCC has to get the okay from the federal attorney's
office, here in Springfield, before they can conduct a raid on Kantako and
that office has balked at granting this order.  According to this rumor, a
key legal person in this office was an activist in the 60's Civil Rights
Movement and has no taste for raiding Kantako and shutting down a station
with "Human Rights" in its name.

5. It's because Kantako's highly astute critique of the corporate power
structure's grip on America is a unique opportunity to examine in depth how
authentically poor Blacks think and feel about their situation in this
society at the Millennium, and what remedies they are devising to achieve
their human rights ­­­ in other words it's a great intelligence gathering
opportunity.  Some argue that Springfield's police are the best educated
Paddy Rollers in the country when it comes to understanding minority issues,
not because of attending "sensitivity" and "diversity" classes, but from
listening to Human Rights Radio.  It's not because they're trying to become
educated, but because they're trying to keep tabs on what Kantako is up to
next.

6. It's because a raid on Kantako in Abe Lincoln's hometown and final
resting place would give the capital city and it's Lincoln­crazy, tourist
dependent economy a black eye (if you will excuse the pun).  If Kantako
responded to a raid by calling for a nation­wide (and world­side) tourist
boycott of Springfield, the financial repercussions could be significant.

7. It's because of all or some combination of the above theories.

8. Only the FCC knows and even though they're supposedly broadcast people,
they're not broadcasting.

Whatever the reason, the FCC has barked loudly 3 times over the past 10
years, but has not bitten.  Meanwhile, Kantako could care less as he
prepares for his 3,915 night of broadcasting tonight.  He's been on 24/7 for
more years than he can remember and considers it a blessing to have one more
night to promote a Human Rights Revolution.  Stay Tuned.



Mike Townsend
University of Illinois at Springfield
217/206­7574

Mbanna Kantako can be reached through: townsend.michael@uis.edu.
His address is 1113 North 5th  Street, Springfield Illinois 62702
Telephone:	217/789­0038 (leave message on answering machine)

You can support Human Rights Radio by making a $20 or more donation.  In
appreciation, we'll send you the most awesome Tee­shirt in the Micro Radio
World.



Human Rights (Radio)

By Mike Townsend
11/25/98


Mbanna Kantako's Human Rights Radio, the 11year old founding and flagship
station of the international micro­radio movement, is scheduled to be raided
and ripped off the air by the FCC's thought police before the micro­radio
movement, is scheduled to be raided and ripped off the end of the year.
Kantako received his "Dear Mbanna" certified letter from the FCC dated
November 4. It ordered him to cease broadcasting immediately or face the
consequences­ a visit from your friendly SWAT team with, perhaps, a black
military helicopter thrown in for good measure.

So be it says Kantako who plans to be on­the­air broadcasting when they
break down the door.  Mbanna Kantako, still blind, still black, and still
broke founded the micro­radio movement when he went on­the­air on Nov. 25,
1987 broadcasting from his family's small apartment in the John Hay Public
Housing Project in Springfield, IL, just down the street from Abe Lincoln's
home.  His original one watt transmitter was purchased from an electronic
mail order outfit in Paradise, CA. for a little over $200.  It had a
broadcast radius of about 8 city blocks, but that was enough to reach
several thousand blacks on Springfield's segregated east side, as well as
most of the downtown area, including the state capitol complex which is home
to thousands of workers during the day.

Kantako used the radio as an organizing and advocacy tool to address issues
of social injustice, especially in the minority community.  His perceptions
and thinking evolved over the years and were reflected in the station's
identity which went from WTRA to Zoom Black Magic Radio to Black Liberation
Radio and, then, finally to Human Rights Radio.  The name changes mirrored
the expansion of his concerns from one of black issues to one of human
rights for all people.

As the station evolved, so did its cast of contributors.  It became a family
affair with his wife Dia and his children, Konnadi, Mbanna Jr. and Ebony
playing increasingly important roles.  Kantako's current transmitter, a
15­30 watt, $600 model that covers a 3 mile radius was purchased with
donations of $100 each from six prominent scholars; Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman,
Ben Bagdikian, Herbert Schiller, Michael Parenti and Sidney Willhelm.  When
the FCC is finished with it, it should be placed in a museum somewhere.  Not
long after beginning the broadcasts, Kantako realized he had stumbled across
a model of social action that could be used in low­income neighborhoods
across the country.

Recognizing that he did not have the resources or technical expertise to get
broadcasting kits into the hands of others Kantako, instead, sought to
promote his station as an idea that could be duplicated by others.  He felt
the technical expertise would surface if the idea of micro­radio could be
spread around the country.  An excellent article by Richard Shereikis in the
Illinois Times got the ball rolling.  Black.  Blind.  Poor.  On welfare.  In
public housing.  One Watt.  Illegal.  Defying the system.  Radical.  The
story was irresistible.  NPR, NFTV, The L.A. Times, Spin Magazine and dozens
of others eventually did stories.  The idea went national, even
international.

Inspired by the Kantako stories, the hoped for electronic expert surfaced in
the person of Steven Dunifer who founded Free Radio Berkely, set up a small
broadcast kit production facility in a Berkeley loft and became the"Johnny
Appleseed" of micro­radio.  Several recent articles have estimated the
number of micro stations in the U.S. at over 1,000 and the FCC claims to
have shut down more than 400 in just the last two years.  Once fearful that
Kantako might become a martyr that could spark a movement if he was shut
down, the FCC waited for him to burnout on his own.  It was a grave
misjudgernent.

Kantako, if not the man of steel, turned out to be an iron man.  In 1995,
after years of harassing Kantako for operating his "illegal" radio station,
for leading marches and demonstrations against police brutality and for
organizing an alternative tenants' rights association, the Springfield
Housing Authority suddenly announced that instead of remodeling the 600­unit
John Hay site, it would be tom down.  The city offered many reasons for
making this decision, but on the East side of Springfield many people
believe it was to get rid of Kantako.  Like a cat with nine lives, Mbanna
landed on his feet again when Dia located an upstairs apartment just north
of the business district, still in range of the east side community.  And
the landlord turned out to be none other than the publisher of the Illinois
Times, the paper that first broke the Kantako story.

Ever the resisters, Mbanna's family was the very last one to leave the
projects.  Remarkably, he had the station up and running within 90 minutes
of making the move.  Kantako's most convincing demonstration of the power of
micro­radio at the community level centered on the issue of police
brutality.  Springfield's black citizens had an unfortunate history of dying
at the hands of the cops.  After repeatedly broadcasting several gripping
interviews with actual victims of police brutality, an unpublicized change
came over the department.  Springfield, the home and the burial place of
Abraham Lincoln is heavily dependent upon tourist dollars.  It didn't look
good having Abe's cops beating and killing black citizens.  When Kantako
hinted at a tourist boycott, overt misconduct by the police changed
dramatically.  For the past several years Springfield has been literally
free of serious police brutality.  When the FCC shuts the station down,
nobody knows if the brutality will make a comeback.  The watchdog will have
been removed.

The current "shut down" letter Kantako has from the FCC is not the first one
he has received.  Back in 1990 the FCC paid a visit and took him to federal
court He was fined $750 and ordered off­the air.  He refused to pay the fine
and instead of shutting down he ratcheted things up several notches by going
"24/7", 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  The FCC backed off enforcing the
court order.  Without the input and support of his family there is no way he
could have kept up this grinding schedule.  Oh, and besides the radio
station, the Kantako family, on an all volunteer basis, runs the Marcus
Garvey School of Human Rights for 45 low­income youth (13 summers and
counting).  They also run the Senseia Kankaji Human Rights Club for these
same youth during the regular school year.  The Department of Public Aid, of
course, wants Dia to stop all this non­profit work with disadvantaged young
people and "get a real job".  Such is the state of "family values" as we
prepare to sail into the new millennium.  Kantako, who knew this
confrontation with the FCC would come someday, almost relishes what is about
to happen.  He believes that the shutdown, along with that of hundreds of
other micro stations around the country, convincingly demonstrates that we
do not live in a democracy, but an increasingly totalitarian "Corporate
State" where it's corporate rights, not human rights, that count.

The fact that this corporate state can't tolerate even minor challenges to
ifs total control of the information age reveals ifs fear of what the mass
of ordinary citizens would do if they knew what was really going on.
Micro­radio posed the threat of providing people with just that sort of
information.  Shutting down micro­radio is like shutting off a small gas
leak before it leads to a big explosion.  The shut­off carries a price,
however.  It forces the elite (or what Kantako calls "the class with no
class") to use naked state power against ifs own citizens, which deals a
blow to ifs legitimacy to govern.  And it cuts off a crucial source of
alternative information to the state itself, which, then, must increasingly
rely on its own paid 'experts" who, more likely than not, tell their leaders
( and paymaster) what they think they want to hear.  The result is planning
built on increasingly faulty data.

Problems, problems, problems.  Nobody ever said it would be easy for the top
5 percent to hang onto more wealth than the bottom 95 percent of the
population has.  When the FCC breaks into the outlaw Kantako family's
upstairs apartment and holds guns to everybody's head, they will be taking
on an awesome responsibility.  The 2000 plus homemade tapes they will remove
represent a decade of Springfield's history from an alternative perspective,
as well as an important part of the development of a national grassroots
citizen's movement.  It's the theft of history.  It's cultural genocide.
The power structure will have in it's possession items of evidence that
Kantako believes will one day be used against them for "crimes against the
people."

Kantako's last day of broadcasting won't be much different than the other
3,565 he has done.  There will be interviews with his mentor, former Black
Panther and Human Rights Visionary Senseia Kankaji; and another with an
employee of a national telemarketing firm that just skipped town without
paying its employees, dozens of whom were taken off welfare to fill the
fly­by­night firm's positions.  There will be "Notes On The Devil's News"
deconstructing the "official" version of the day's events as presented by
the mainstream media.  There will be lots of socially conscious rap and
reggae music.  There will be an audio rebroadcast of the children's
performances at last summer's rites of passage for the Marcus Garvey School.
And then, last and live, there will be the sound of the thought police
bashing through the door in a futile attempt to kill human rights.


	Townsend is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University
of Illinois­Springfield.  He helped
Mbanna Kantako found Human Rights Radio in 1987.  E­mail:
townsend.michael@uis.edu

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