community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
Rustbelt Radio for August 4, 2008
by Pittsburgh IMC: Rustbelt Radio collective
Monday, Aug. 04, 2008 at 9:38 PM
radio@indypgh.org 412-923-3000 WRCT 88.3 FM
On this week's show... * We bring you a special retrospective program, as Rustbelt Radio co-founders and today's co-hosts Andalusia Knoll and Matt Toups look back at four years and almost 200 episodes of the show. They're both moving on and this will be their last show with us!
audio link: 
MP3 at 27.3 mebibytes
Welcome to this week's edition of Rustbelt Radio, the Pittsburgh Independent Media Center's weekly review of the news from the grassroots, news overlooked by the corporate media.
On today's show...
Rustbelt Radio is broadcast live from WRCT studios every Monday at 6 PM on 88.3 FM in Pittsburgh, and the program airs again on WRCT every Tuesday morning at 9AM.
We can also be heard weekly on the following stations:
We're also available on the internet, both on WRCT's live webstream at W-R-C-T dot ORG and for download, stream or podcast from our website at radio dot I-N-D-Y-P-G-H dot org.
We turn now to our look at Rustbelt Radio four years ago:
That was the beginning of our first Rustbelt Radio ever, on May 25, 2004.
Rustbelt Radio started in the spring of 2004 with humble beginnings. Fellow WRCT DJs and social justice activists Andalusia Knoll, Matt Toups, and Quinten Steenhuis talked during the monthly Critical Mass bike ride about our desire for a new local radio news program inspired by shows like Democracy Now!, combining both the fledgling Pittsburgh Independent Media Center and WRCT's long running Public Affairs Department.
As each of us were already passionate about radio and committed to a broad range of social justice movements in Pittsburgh, we decided that a new kind of news media was necessary. We felt that the radio spectrum in Pittsburgh lacked the kind of grassroots independent news that inspires both reporters and listeners, connecting them to the important issues within their own community and the world at large.
Starting in May 2004, we started producing a hour-long program under the name "Rustbelt Radio." Using some equipment checked-out from WRCT, we went out to gather stories in Pittsburgh, learning to use the complicated digital audio recorder as we went. We edited our recordings using Audacity, the open source audio editor which is free and available to anyone. Then on May 25th we took our stories into WRCT's Studio A, and introduced them live on the air.
In the months that followed we produced a new show every two weeks, and soon more volunteers started contributing. In January 2005, bursting with new volunteer energy, we became a weekly show.
As the show grew, we found that a important part of Rustbelt Radio's uniqueness is its structure and process. Instead of relying on the traditional hierarchy of paid reporters and editors, we use a collective structure that enables volunteers with the resources and support they need to share their news and stories with the world. We seek to demystify news reporting so that our listeners and participants can listen, read, and watch media critically, and also to provide tools, skills and an audience for independently created news.
Since then we have featured in depth coverage of critical issues in the Western Pennsylvania region including the public transit crisis, casino development and resistance and the impact of the coal industry.
Today we present some of the stories we remember best from the last four years of Rustbelt Radio.
With only a few episodes of Rustbelt Radio under my belt, on October 16th 2004 I went to Pittsburgh's historic Freedom Corner in the Hill District to cover a visiting group of Bangladeshi garment workers. This was a remarkable event where a wide range of activists from local movements met at that corner to stand in solidarity with struggling workers from a distant part of the world. Here's part of the story we aired a few days later:
(http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/15956.php)
Folks from so many different social justice movements in Pittsburgh were there, student groups, immigrants rights groups, labor unions, anti-sweatshop activists and even a veteran of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. It was an exciting event to be a part of and I hope with my microphone (and my digital camera) I was able to share it with the rest of Pittsburgh.
Also on that show, October 19th 2004, we had Rick Rowley of Big Noise films in the studio before he showed his film "The Fourth World War" for the first time in Pittsburgh. Just as we were on the streets of Pittsburgh documenting local activists linked in a larger global struggle, Big Noise films was all over the world filming grassroots movements as they happened. He talked to us about the implications of this radical independent media around the world:
That was Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films, on an early episode of Rustbelt Radio. Rustbelt Radio volunteers would later expand their reporting from beyond the streets of Pittsburgh to places like Mexico, Bolivia, New Orleans, and Ireland.
From the very first show, Rustbelt Radio has persistently followed stories of police abuse and brutality, especially in our region. On our first show and for months to come, the work of the Pittsburgh-based group People Against Police Violence was featured many times... (more about deaths at the hands of police in pgh?)
One memorable recurring feature on Rustbelt Radio was Ron Anicich's Bad Cop No Donut program, produced at CKLN in Toronto. He brought us reports on incidents of police abuses in our region, followed by this memorable introduction:
Late in February 2005 Rustbelt Radio aired a feature-length story scrutinizing tasers, the so-called "less lethal" weapons sold by Taser International and, as Ron Anicich pointed out, used worldwide. But little did we know that only a few months later, we'd be reporting from the scene of an incident where Pittsburgh police used tasers against defenseless anti-war protestors in Oakland!
That story, which aired nationally on Free Speech Radio News, was written and produced in one very long night by Andalusia Knoll and Matt Toups of Rustbelt Radio. That week we learned, in a tragic and disgusting way, that large national issues can and do come home to Pittsburgh. We're just glad that, unlike many taser victims, the activists tasered in Pittsburgh that day escaped with their lives to continue the struggle for justice today.
In early 2007 Pittsburgh was gripped by Steelers mania, as the local football team advanced to the Super Bowl for the first time in ten years. As the team went to Detroit to meet the Seattle Seahawks, Rustbelt Radio had reports on the treatment of homeless in Detroit during the game, and ABC's refusal to run PETA's "Milk Gone Wild" anti-milk advertisement.
When the Steelers defeated the Seahawks on the cold, snowy night of February 5th, fans across Pittsburgh poured out onto the streets. Some of the largest concentrations of fans were in the South Side and Oakland neighborhoods, where fans shut down streets, set furniture on fire, broke windows, and clashed with police.
On our February 6th 2007 broadcast, Rustbelt Radio featured a collage of sounds from that night's unrest, as told by Pittsburgh police officers, produced by Matt Toups. Here's a brief clip:
While Super Bowl stories may seem more lightweight than many issues we cover, we are proud to have looked at the social justice issues ahead of the Steelers' arrival in Detroit. And when we look at the relaxed police response to the rowdy postgame celebrations, which involved many burning cars and destroyed property, we expose the hypocrisy of the police in their reaction to protest movements. While a protest may or may not impact a small amount of private property, the police claim that they must use violence to protect sacred "private property" looks ridiculous when compared to that night, when people from all over Pittsburgh shared in the joy of lighting a car on fire as the police watched!
Several key contributors to Rustbelt Radio have left us this year, so in this retrospective show we'd like to highlight their contributions as well. Diane Amdor created the recurring segment "Word on the Street" made up of recordings with people walking on the streets of Pittsburgh. (Matt's contribution: the segment also featured the music of the Youngblood Brass Band)
One of my most memorable Word on the Street pieces was from Columbus Day, 2008, as Diane spoke to various folks in Pittsburgh about the "holiday" and about indigenous peoples in America:
Vani Natarajan is another recently departed Rustbelt Radio contributor who worked hard to report on important local news including reproductive justice, immigrant's rights, and GLBTQ issues.
Vani spoke to several queer teens in Pittsburgh in this feature story that aired in October 2006:
Vani now lives in New York where she works with teens as a librarian in Brooklyn. She spoke to us about why producing a story like this one was important for her:
Vani's work accomplished two important goals for Rustbelt Radio, sharing the passions of our contributors and inspiring our listeners to struggle for justice in their community.
In addition to Diane and Vani, this year we're also saying goodbye to two other dedicated Rustbelt Radio volunteers. Ellen Pierson joined us as a summer intern in (2006?) and has been back every summer since then, and produced an hour long feature on development in the Hill District. She also reported from Ireland, and recently produced a nationally broadcast report from the recent FCC hearing in Pittsburgh for Free Speech Radio News. And Lizzie Anderson will be leaving us soon, after starting our regular feature on prison issues, 2.3 million and rising, reporting on important local issues like schools in the NorthSide. We'll miss you, Lizzie and Ellen!
Back in 2007 I had the opportunity to study with Aymara sociologist and Bolivian Historian Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. Cusicanqui has both researched and participated in social movement that are part of Bolivia’s long history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism and imperialism. Cusicanqui provided me with much inspiration as she recounted storeis of everyday people in Bolivia fighting against the exploitation of their natural resources of water and gas and attempting to preserve their indigenous culture and their right to consume and grow coca leaves. I hope that you will also be inspired by the following excerpt of an interview that I conducted here during her stay in Pittsburgh.
That was just Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, discussing Bolivian Anarchism, the health benefits of the Coca plant and indigenous peoples fight for sovereignty. To hear the complete the interview visit radio.indypgh.org
Over the past year I have become involved with the worker run daily international news program Free Speech Radio News or FSRN as a reporter and member of the steering committee. FSRN regularly highlights the voices of marginalized communities most affected by social and economic policy changes, and just like Rustbelt Radio, challenges old models of media access and media control. On the following segment about the local community radio act I featured the voices of people involved with Low Power FM radio stations across the country and the high value they place on localized media.
http://www.fsrn.org/audio/download/262/AKnoll20071102.mp3
That story orginally aired in Fall of 2007 on Rustbelt Radio and Free Speech rAdio News. To listen to more programs of FSRN listen every weekday to WRCT at 5:30 PM or visit fsrn.org to download, stream or podcast or donate to help keep this crucial news source on the air.
Those are some of the stories we remember best from the last four years of Rustbelt Radio.
Over the years our show has reached the radio dial beyond Pittsburgh, first to WVJW-Bennwood, near Wheeling West Virginia, then to Washington and Indiana counties near Pittsburgh. We've also been on noncommercial radio stations in Ohio, and our work has been featured on grassroots radio shows in Detroit, Los Angeles, and elsewhere!
We hope that Rustbelt Radio will have a long future and be an integral part of the growing media justice movement, confronting and transforming the structural racism, econonomic injustice and corporate control in our media and communications systems. Rustbelt Radio is working to create a vibrant, independent, and publicly accountable media system that serves our communities' needs and protects our communications and cultural rights.
But the future success of this mission depends upon you. 2008 has been a year of transition for many of our core volunteers, so to continue we need your help, especially now!
Recently we've been broadcasting segments and programs created by other independent media sources to fill in the gaps as our volunteers can no longer keep up with all of the important local stories that need to be covered in Pittsburgh. We need you to volunteer for Rustbelt Radio and keep locally produced independent news on the air. We offer training in all aspects of radio production. No prior experience is necessary, only a commitment to independent media in Pittsburgh. Whether you have a lot of time to give or just a little, every contribution is valuable.
This week we have a special calendar of events. As each of us leave Pittsburgh, you can join us one last time to benefit important local causes:
( ??? On next Monday, August 11, tune in to hear the last-ever Brass Band Power Hour... ??? )
( ??? the baglady's last music show? ??? )
[ Outro Music: use full length clip instead of cart!! ]
Thanks for tuning in to a special Rustbelt Radio, Matt and Andalusia's last time on the show! ... here on WRCT Pittsburgh, WPTS Pittsburgh, WNJR Washington, WVJW Benwood, and WIUP Indiana.
Rustbelt Radio will be broadcasting specials and previously produced shows for the rest of August, as we spend time training new volunteers and preparing for the fall season. So now is the time for you to get involved, we need more help! To contact us, email RADIO at I-N-D-Y-P-G-H dot ORG.
As always, all of our shows are available for download or podcast on our website at RADIO dot INDY-P-G-H dot ORG and this show can be heard again Tuesday morning on WRCT at 9 AM after Democracy Now!
This week's show contained the work of former Rustbelt Radio contributors Vani, Diane, etc.... and was produced by Phill Cresswell.
Special thanks from (andalusia and i / matt and i -- depending on speaker) to all of the wonderful volunteers we have worked with over these four years, we feel very lucky to have worked with you all! We both look forward to listening to new editions Rustbelt Radio for years to come.
Rustbelt Radio for August 4, 2008 (ogg vorbis)
by Pittsburgh IMC: Rustbelt Radio collective
Monday, Aug. 04, 2008 at 9:38 PM
radio@indypgh.org 412-923-3000 WRCT 88.3 FM
audio: ogg vorbis at 25.1 mebibytes
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