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What Is a Barnraising?
Meet Zane Ibrahim!
And Learn How an FCC Chairman and a South African Former Pirate Ignited Prometheus' Fire!
Our Own Pete Tridish With the Legendary Zane Ibrahim!
In 1997, the movement to free the airwaves of the United States was in full swing. There were approximately a thousand pirate radio stations in the US, all defying the unjust broadcast regulations in a massive campaign of electronic civil disobedience. When William Kennard took office as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the pirates were all pretty worried -- because his last job had been chief council to the National Association of Broadcasters, the chief opponents of free radio in the United States. And in fact, within a month of coming into office, Chairman Kennard initiated a series of simultaneous raids on pirate radio stations, utilizing dozens of agents of the police, FBI, FCC and other law enforcement agencies.
The Philadelphia pirate station many of us worked with before we started Prometheus, Radio Mutiny of Philadelphia, got its first visit several weeks later. We responded with a dramatic demonstration and open air broadcast in front of Benjamin Franklins' printing press, a symbol of freedom of speech in the US. We also promised Chairman Kennard that we would start ten stations around the country for every one he shut down, and make the FCC's life really suck until they legalized community radio.
As our campaign of defiance gathered steam, Chairman Kennard visited South Africa on a tour promoting US interests in Communications in Africa. He visited Bush Radio, and met with Zane Ibrahim. Bush Radio had started under the Apartheid regime as an illegal pirate radio operation, but had been granted a license under the new democratically elected government. They since grew to one of the most influential community radio stations in Africa, which provided a wide variety of services to their community in Cape Town. After his visit, Chairman Kennard spoke several times in public about his visit to Bush Radio, and how seeing that station in action inspired him to work hard to make legalized community broadcasting a reality in the US.
Over the powerful and politically influential objections of his former employers at the broadcasting association, Mr. Kennard created a new set of rules allowing 100 watt community radio stations in the US. There were over three thousand applications, and to date over 500 construction permits have been granted. We'd like to thank Bush Radio for helping to inspire a new way of thinking about radio in the minds and hearts of decisionmakers in the United States.
