Prometheus Radio Project managed to make the establishment of more low power FM stations a matter of national policy, most recently on crowded urban radio dials; and it also has its name on a landmark broadcast ownership case. It sees similarities between its own reason for being and that of the economic activists that make up the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Prometheus said that just as OWS points out that the economic wealth of America is concentrated in the top 1%, so too is the communications power in the US, which it says is concentrated in the hands of just six big media conglomerates.
The organization wrote, “Our struggle for participatory community radio puts the tools of communication into the hands of poor and working communities. Media justice plays an important role in all other social and political causes because there is a battle of stories. Through corporate media conglomerates, the 1% decides which issues will be visible and which will be invisible. When we control the media, we decide.”
Prometheus is actually looking for organizations to build stations on the coattails of the Occupy Wall Street movement. “The passage of the Local Community Radio Act provides a window of opportunity for the 99% to acquire one of the most powerful tools in the struggle for social justice – media ownership. Next year we could see the largest expansion of community radio in U.S. history. Our movements have a unique opportunity to occupy the airwaves and build our power for the long haul. What would you do with your own radio station? What could our movements do with thousands of them?”
It then asks interested readers to start learning how to start up an LPFM.
RBR-TVBR observation: There are obvious similarities between a lot of the LPFMers and OWS. However, we would bet that fans of LPFM are not at all limited to those who agree with OWS. In fact, we’d bet that quite a few local Tea Party organizations have or would like to have an LPFM, along with small organizations of almost any philosophy one can think of.
