Radio Free Alcatraz

Radio Free Alcatraz is one of my favorite things that happened in all of radio history So lets start at the beginning. Almost everyone is at least passingly familiar with the iconic Alcatraz prison.  The actual Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island. The 22 acre island is 1.25 miles off shore from San Francisco. Spanish naval officer Juan Manuel de Ayala charted the island in 1775 by as one of the three islands he identified as "La Isla de los Alcatraces." The name was an error. Alcatrace is Spanish for Gannets, a North Atlantic bird. Ayala had more likely seen Pelicans. More here.

You might be wondering about it's Native American history. Well, there doesn't seem to be much. The island was mostly bare rock, possibly with coastal grass and scrub. In 2001 The Alcatraz Island Historic Preservation and Safety Construction Program wrote "There is no record or remaining evidence  of prehistoric usage of Alcatraz Island by Indian Tribes." Lets discuss. It's possible that Native Americans determined that the bald rock in the bay wasn't very useful. The first Indians to "live" on the island would have been the 19 members of the Hopi tribe imprisoned there for seven months in 1895 for refusing to allow their children to be taken to government-run boarding schools.

Things got way more interesting in 1964 when five Sioux Indians: Richard McKenzie, Allen Cottier, Martin Martinez, Garfield Spotted Elk, and Walter Means landed on Alcatraz in March 1964 and tried to seize it. They invoked the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie as a legal precedent establishing their right to reclaim surplus federal land and filed a claim. This may have technically been Native Peoples first to attempt to settle on the island. Regardless of the legal merits of the claim Federal Marshals kicked them out.  Five years later they returned in much greater numbers. More here.

In 1969 a fire destroyed San Francisco’s American Indian Center. After the fire, Native American activists proposed re-establishing one on the now vacant Alcatraz. Their proposal was denied.
In multiple phases in November of 1969 Native American activists "colonized" the island anyway. The primary landing was on November 20th with 89 men, women and children. On Thanksgiving, 1969, an estimated 400 Native Americans gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving. The occupation would last another 18 months.

Prominent members of the movement included: Richard Oakes, Katherine (Jody) Beaulieu, Adam Fortunate Eagle, chairman of the BANAC (Bay Area Council of American Indian Affairs), Verna Clinton Tullie, Dean Chavers, Stella Leach, LaDonna Harris, Jerry Hatch, Allen Miller, Ron Lickers, Mickey Gemmill, and Gerald Sam, Carol Miller, Daniel Bomberry, Larry Benegas, Elaine Dempsey (Wintun), Ross Barden, Grace Thorpe, and both LaNada Boyer Means and Leman Brightman of UNA (United Native Americans). LaNada, was actually the first Native American student at U.C. Berkeley.

On December 22, 1969, KPFA began its first live broadcast from Alcatraz, hosted by spokesperson John Trudell, a Santee Sioux from Omaha, NB. Trudell had studied radio and broadcasting at San Bernardino Valley College and was a natural for the role. He interviewed residents of the island and visitors.  Al Silbowitz, then manager of KPFA got a grant and with Trudell installed some borrowed and donated radio equipment, on the main cell block building on Alcatraz.  Their programs aired on the Pacifica Network which consisted, at the time, of KPFA in Berkeley; KPFK, Los Angeles; and WBAI, New York. The program was somewhat irregular in schedule but was 15 - 30 minutes long.

The vision for Alcatraz was an egalitarian society. But due to the press attention some people naturally rose to prominence such as Richard Oakes and John Trudell. Oakes left the island with his family in January 1970 after his step daughter fell from a stairwell and died. His departure created a leadership vacuum. Vagrants and hippies began to settle on the island. Eventually non-Indians were prohibited from staying overnight. The native population at this time was about 50 people, 40 of whom were women.

Each episode of Radio Free Alcatraz began with a recording of Buffy Sainte-Marie singing "Now that the Buffalo's Gone." Buffy Sainte-Marie visited the island in person in May of 1970. But by June of 1970 the program was being recorded in the Pacifica Studios. The final program aired in September of that year.  More here.

In May 1970 the federal government began to transfer Alcatraz to the Department of the Interior and the National Park System. That's when the government shut off the electricity and telephone service. The same week the government removed their water barge. This left the occupiers with a small generator for power, butane stoves cooking and a severe water short age. When the barge was removed, different sources cited that they had either 70,000 or as little as 4,000 gallons of water. Then on the night of June 1st, 1971, provocateurs set a fire which destroyed several buildings. On June 11, 1971, Federal marshals invaded the island to remove the remaining residents. At the time, the residential population was just six men, five women and four children. More here.

The results were good and bad. In the years that followed, members of AIM (the American Indian Movement) organized occupations and protests at Plymouth Rock, Mount Rushmore, Wounded Knee, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and dozens of other sites across the country. Richard Nixon ended the Federal policies of termination and assimilation and implemented the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. But Richard Oakes was murdered by a white supremacist in 1972 and John Trudell's family were killed in a suspicious fire in 1979.

Today the Pacifica Radio Archive houses many recordings of Radio Free Alcatraz on 1/4” reel tape. Not all of these tapes are digitized yet. If you want to donate go here.

The Al Jazeera Network

Al Jazeera has been trying to make real American inroads for almost five years now. last week I read an article in the Hartford Advocate that three non-commercial stations in connecticut were considering carrying Al Jazeera (AJE) news. This list included WPKN, WESU and WHUS. the network is owned and funded by the emir of Quatar and it's English language radio broadcast is already carried in at least three markets: Burlington VT, Toledo OH, Washington D.C.  All those are for TV News. For me this is pretty exciting. It brings a third big voice into a news arena that's presently totally dominated by NPR, with Pacifica playing a distant third following the BBC in it's total number of affiliates. More here.

Talks began in September and then by early December it was announced that Pacifica was adding news broadcasts from the Al Jazeera English TV news channel to Pacifica's five stations across the United States, including WPFW, KPFA, KPFK, WBAI, and KPFT. With that move, Pacifica became the second American Radio Network to air programming from AJE. The first was MHz Networks, an educational broadcaster based in Falls Church. They have carried AJE TV broadcasts since 2009.

Their pace is pretty impressive. The CBC, the government-funded network of our northern neighbors was founded in November of 1936 and barely has any presence in the United States at all. actually it's primary conduit into the US is on available on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 137.  A handful of CBC programs are carried on america radio stations. American Public Media has distributed "As It Happens" from CBC Radio One for years but few stations carry it. Only A handful of other CBC programs have crossed the 45th parallel:  Definitely Not the Opera, The Vinyl Cafe and Q I know have all recently aired inside the United States. But that's it. After 75 years their toehold remains tenuous at best. Pacifica by comparison has over 100 affiliates.

Nonetheless AJE has held onto it's toehold. In 2004 Vidéotron  applied to the the CRTC for permission to carry AJE programming. The request was met with opposition from Jewish and pro-Israel groups, including B’nai Brith Canada, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Christian Friends of Israel. The CRTC was not intimidated and granted the license with certain restrictions. 

Pacifica first added the programming in December but they just added AJE to their morning line up.  Yesterday KPFA dropped their Morning Show and split the 2-hour time slot between Democracy Now and Al Jazeera English which is produced in Washington, D.C. That move was less political and more abotu cost-cutting but it isn't helping AJE's awkward entry into the market.

Toledo got their first peek at AJE programming in March of 2007. Buckeye Cable in Toledo picked up AJE in and received mixed reactions. Buckeye serves approximately 150,000 people in northwest Ohio. Buckeye has described the feedback as "overwhelmingly positive."

In Burlington by May of 2008 Burlington Telecom was already openly discussing dropping AJE. They had received 200 complaint letters after 2 years of carrying the network. By a 7 to 0 vote (with three abstentions), their city council urged Burlington Telecom to keep AJE in it's channel line up. It was a bold move for the a small, publicly owned fiber optic network that at the time was only 3 years old. More here.

In Washington D.C. three networks carry AJE: Comcast - Channel 275, Cox – Channel 474, and on Verison FiOS it's on Channel 457. The last of these was in beginning in July 2009, when Fios began carrying their feed 24/7 via the through the MHz Network. Strangely in our Nation's capitol this barely generated a ripple of discomfort.  Personally I'm glad to see the conflict is petering out to a murmur.

The Bombing of KPFT

KPFT was founded by journalist Larry Lee, who convinced Pacifica Radio to establish an independent radio station in Houston, TX. His dream became a reality in March of 1970. In that same year, KPFT became the first, second and only radio station in the United States to have its transmitter bombed by terrorists. More here. 

The first sound to emanate from 90.1 FM in Houston was the song Here Comes The Sun from the then-brand-new Beatles album, Abbey Road. About two months later on May 12 members of the KKK blew up the KPFT transmitter, and the station was off the air for weeks.

Several months after completing repairs and returning to the air, the transmitter was bombed a second time! The October 6th bombing caused much more extensive damage. The cost of the damage was estimated to be about $35,000 —that's $222,000 in today's money adjusted for inflation. KPFT was off the air for more than three months. They resumed broadcasting on Wednesday, January 20th, 1971. A guard of armed police surrounded the station. They interviewed the mayor and the chief of police who both sided with the KKK, questioning their right to broadcast, and accusing them of airing obscene records.  Arlo Guthrie performed live in studio opining his set with Alice's Restaurant. This was the song that they had been playing when the October bombers struck.  Guthrie stepped up to the mic and said:

"So I was sitting in West Palm Beach yesterday, —this is in Florida— and I said "Wow, I'm gonna go over to Houston. What am I going to do there?" I mean maybe somebody will bomb me.. I didn't have any songs about bombs, or nothing like that, so I had to write one. I'd like you to sing it with me..."

A decade later, the KKK's Grand Wizard claimed that his greatest act "was engineering the bombing of a left-wing radio station," hinting none-too-subtly at KPFT. In 1977 bomber Jimmy Dale Hutto was ratted out by FBI informant Russell Rector. Russ has been in the witness protection program since the bombing because the KKK was pretty upset about his informing. Ultimately a whole quartet were indicted: Louis R. Beam Jr., a 24 year old salesman; Peter Lout Jr., a 26 year-old construction worker; Jimmy Dale Hutto a 24 year old chemical worker, and Paul William Moratto a 24 year old electrician. Hutto for his part was arrested in February by the FBI as he was driving toward California with Moratto. His intention was to dynamite more Pacifica radio stations.

Despite the actions of these right-wing terrorists, The Pacifica Network grew to five stations: KPFA in Berkeley, KPFK in Los Angeles, WBAI in New York, WPFW in Washington, and KPFT in Houston. Until 1983 it also included KRAB in Seattle. More here.