KKFI is community radio. Community radio is just that – radio broadcasting that comes from the community rather than corporate America. Community in this sense is Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri, in the middle of which is KKFI 90.1 FM. This is an important media outlet for us to hear the “the truth” from programs such as Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! (8:00 AM, Monday through Friday), and FAIR’s Counterspin (9:00 AM, Monday).
Democracy Now! is produced in New York’s Chinatown in a Downtown Community Television Center. This program includes the type of open discussions of foreign policy, war, economics/social justice, and other issues that you won’t hear on corporate-sponsored media.
Counterspin, hosted by Janine Jackson, Steve Rendall, and Peter Hart, provides an exposure of the mainstream media’s biases, inaccuracies, and witting and un-witting spin of issues that affect the lives of everyday citizens.
KKFI focuses on local issues also. On Saturday at 3:00 PM, Sharon Lockhart’s hosts EVERY WOMAN – a show about women making a difference and the men by their side. As 52% of humanity, women are not a ‘special interest’ group and EVERY WOMAN should work for nothing less than full participation in the social, political and economic arena.
The KKFI program schedule can be found at: http://www.kkfi.org/programschedule.php. Check it out!
You can make a donation to this community effort at: http://www.kkfi.org/donate.php.
Call me a curmudgeon, but the programming on this station is much more often than not amateurishly produced, numbingly boring and pedantic. While the radical right uses radio to change minds — with obvious effectiveness — absolutely no one who’s not a leftist true believer listens to Democracy Now and the similar prolonged whining that KKFI airs. These programs have microscopic audiences compared to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, and it’s no wonder. Jon Stewart has done more to change the political landscape for the better than 1000 Amy Goodmans ever could. But he understands how to get people to listen.
I say to my good friend Richard that citizen cooperatives and community initiatives such as KKFI in communications and the Community Mercantile in the distribution and sale of food are crown jewels of the progressive movement. These are entities that truly come from “the people.” I may not always agree with Merc management, but I love the place. I feel the same way about KKFI. Rather than give my money to Whole Foods or support the propaganda coming from mainstream media, I would rather work to strengthen progressive alternatives.
We are locked in a titantic struggle in this country. The oligarchs are about the business of turning everything – education, media, health, etc., etc., etc. and etc. – into a commodity to be bought and sold without regard to the public interest. They have the appartus in place to coopt every human activity in a fashion that suits their interests. The Tallgrass Activist will be posting a considerable amount about the increasing control over all manner of information and communication in the days ahead. Suffice it to say, KKFI is a forum for people to come together for the purpose of resisting the kind of mind enslavement that is under way.
The strength of KKFI is in bringing under-represented voices to the air with stories and messages (and music) not typically heard. By nature this approach is not going to generate large audiences; it allows for calm, reasoned discussion of topics important to marginalized communities in the Kansas City area. If Richard K wants to hear screaming and derision, then Limbaugh and Beck may very well be appropriate programs for him.