Community Radio and Community

Recent experiences have strengthened my respect for what local people, with good ideas and energy, can accomplish with little money.

Southwest Environmental Center, La Semilla, and the Mountain View Market Co+op are all locally-created. None is the local office of any state or national group. Each fends for itself. 

Same for Friends of the Taylor Family Monument, The Beloved Community Project, Doña Ana Communities United (with its Timebank), and The Great Conversation. Neat ideas getting implemented on a shoestring. Dreams being realized. 

My own experience? More than two years of hard work and uncertainty, collaborating with a great group of people, grumbling over frustrations along the way, all to put a community radio station on air. Two years feeling like an idiot, wondering if it would ever happen.

Now I'm humbled and grateful to be listening to people do interesting local interviews and an astonishing variety of music shows on KTAL-LP, 101.5 FM. Some are pros. Others, with little experience, always kind of thought they could do radio – and they can! It's delightful.

Tuesday, Nan Rubin interviewed two local men doing some interesting local film-making. Doing it – not just talking about it. Wednesday, I was privileged to host the three municipal judgeship candidates, each sounding as if s/he would make a great judge; then the articulate District 6 City Council candidate Yvonne Flores, whose opponent declined to appear; then representatives of the Potters' Guild and El Caldito talking about the annual Empty Bowls event. (Potters make bowls, local restaurants donate soup, and folks like us contribute money to the soup kitchen and get in return a handmade bowl, tasty soup, and enjoyable conversations.) 

Thursday, Kari Bachman treated us to a wonderful hour with Florence Hamilton. At an age most folks don't reach, Ms. Hamilton spoke movingly about growing up in segregated Kansas City, Missourahh, struggling to find work in a world where young black women were meant to be domestics or elevator operators (“Light-skinned only,” read the newspaper ads), and later watching her kids experience the mixed bag that was school integration after the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education. Her comments were a welcome respite from the steady drumbeat of mostly white male pronouncements that all that racism stuff is past.

I'd stack those three morning shows up against the three morning shows most any other local radio station did this week in any comparable or much larger city. 

Our trials in getting “Que tal!” on air also enhanced my sympathy for the great group of people I watched working for months to make the recent SWEC gala the best ever; and for the folks who created and sustain the Timebank, where people contribute what they can do and get something done for them in return. Same with Beloved Community, now coping with a loss of funding, yet still committed to making young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities feel uniquely beloved. And too the Progressive Voters Alliance, where people confronting changing political realities gather to exchange ideas – with two minutes or less per speaker. Then there's El Caldito, community staple, feeding more needy people each year.

A recent radio interview also gave me insight into how hard folks work so that Las Cruces has a symphony of exceptional quality for our size.

With globalism all the rage, and Washington a playpen, these local efforts are truly heroic. And I could name many more! Fellow Las Crucens struggling to survive and do right. 

Add in a vibrant and generous arts community, and our desert home is rich in the stuff that really matters.

                                                                -30-

[The above column appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News this morning, Sunday, 22 October 2017, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air periodically on both KRWG and KTAL-LP.  (Speaking of which, at 9 a.m. this morning on KTAL - 101.5 FM - "The Sunday Show" features an interview with Roman Catholic Bishop Oscar Cantú.)]

[Mostly, I felt delighted by how the radio station is doing.  It desperately needs money; but people are getting a chance to host radio shows are doing so quite well.  I run into people who enjoy the station, for both its local programming and the acquired show, and tell me they listen to it all day.  It's strange.  I remember wondering more than once whether we'd ever even get on the air.  I still worry how we'll survive.

Meanwhile, I had recently watched friends go through intense planning for or work on successful events for non-profits.  (I think some folks are more active than ever because of distress over last fall's national election results.)  We have a pretty fine community of caring people here.  Some we're hearing from in radio interviews as well.]