Audio Interference

“We knew it was illegal, and we knew the FCC would probably come after us at some point, and they did.”

This episode focuses on two New York pirate radio stations--Steal This Radio and WBAD--both of which were active in the 1990s. We interview Arrow Chrome, one of the founders of Steal This Radio, a pirate station that grew out of a Lower East Side community of squatters and activists. The episode also includes some audio from an event at Interference Archive featuring David Goren, creator of the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map, and DJ Cintronics, the founder of the unlicensed hip hop station WBAD, which became known for playing music you couldn’t hear on mainstream hip hop radio.

Two New York Times articles on Steal This Radio from the 1990s:

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/19/nyregion/neighborhood-report-villages-east-and-west-fm-mouse-roars-at-fcc.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/27/arts/pirate-radio-in-touch-with-the-village-not-the-fcc.html

DJ Arrow Chrome: https://www.facebook.com/DJ-Arrow-Chrome-276743467947/

About Charas El Bohio: https://www.placematters.net/node/1432

http://thevillager.com/2018/04/29/the-story-of-chino-and-charas-activist-hopeful-for-old-p-s-64s-return/

Dj Cintronics: https://www.facebook.com/DJ-CINTRONICS-211556268893/

https://www.mixcloud.com/djcintronicspodcast/

David Goren’s audio documentary on WBAD, “Outlaws of the Airwaves:” https://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/lost-notes/outlaws-of-the-airwaves-the-rise-of-pirate-radio-station-wbad

Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map: https://www.pirateradiomap.com/

Music: “Version City Lady” by Rocker T and the Version City Rockers, a recording made at a benefit show for Steal This Radio in 1998.

Produced by Interference Archive.

"There's only a certain amount of time that a person can languish in prison while they prepare for a trial."

To kick off our fall season of Audio Interference, we're speaking with folks from the criminal justice reform organization Just Leadership USA about their work to cut the US correctional population in half by 2030. Just Leadership USA empowers people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform. In this first episode, we interview Marvin Mayfield, Nishan “Prince” Jackson, and Shanequa Charles, three of the folks who are spearheading a city and state wide campaign to end mass incarceration in New York.

To learn more about Just Leadership USA, visit www.justleadershipusa.org. There you will find more information about #FreeNewYork as well as their other campaigns. www.justleadershipusa.org/freenewyork

The bills that Shanequa, Prince, and Marvin worked for and lobbied on behalf of during the 2018 legislative session did not pass. The following is a statement from Just Leadership USA aboutthe state of the bills: https://www.justleadershipusa.org/freenewyork-campaign-responds-to-new-york-states-failure-to-overhaul-bail-discovery-speedy-trial-law-in-2018-legislative-session-statement-from-erin-l-george-new-york-state-campaign-coo/

And here are links to the bail reform and discovery reform bills: Senate Bill S3579A: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2017/s3579/amendment/a

And Senate bills S7722: https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2017/s7722

Information about how to support the bills can be found at the links above. If you are interested in learning more about criminal justice reform, you can also checkout our episode from last season of Audio Interference about the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, which pays bail for people who can’t afford it in NYC, and the Close Rikers campaign fighting to close the jails on Rikers Island: http://interferencearchive.org/audio-interference-28-brooklyn-bail-fund-and-close-rikers/

A huge thank you to folks at Just Leadership USA for collaborating with us on this episode.

Produced by Interference Archive.

Music: "The Garden State" by Audiobinger.

"They saw this region as affected by a kind of colonial influence from the larger urban areas, sort of extracting resources from Central Appalachia historically, for over a hundred years, and not giving anything back."

In this episode of Audio Interference, we’re looking into Appalachian Movement Press, an offset print shop and publishing house that was based in Huntington, West Virginia, from 1969 - 1979. We speak with Shaun Slifer, artist, writer, self-taught historian, and Creative Director & Curator at the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, about his research into Appalachian Movement Press and about the identity movement in Appalachia in the 70s.

To learn more about the article Shaun wrote for Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture: https://justseeds.org/product/signal06/

You can read an excerpt of Shaun's article in the Signal:06 issue here: https://justseeds.org/appalachian-movement-press-an-excerpt-from-signal06/

And to learn more about Shaun's research process, see: https://justseeds.org/underground-publishing-in-west-virginia-during-the-1970s-researching-appalachian-movement-press/

Music in this episode is from the album They'll Never Keep Us Down: Women's Coal Mining Songs. A copy of the album is available at the archive. Song credits (listed in order):

"Dream of a Miner's Child" (adapted by Phyllis Boyens, Hazel Dickens and Ken Irwin) sung by Phyllis Boyens

"Hello Coal Miner" (Sarah Ogan Gunning) sung by Sarah Gunning

"Coal Mining Woman" (Hazel Dickens) sung by Hazel Dickens

Produced by Interference Archive.

"We were exploding and we were asking women all over to explode with us."

SisterSerpents was a radical feminist art collective founded in Chicago in 1989. In this episode, we speak with Jeramy Turner, one of the group's founders. She explains the history of SisterSerpents and how they used art as their weapon in the fight against women's oppression.

Interference Archive houses some of SisterSerpents material. Additional material may be found in Loyola University of Chicago's Women and Leadership Archives.

Music: "Buzz Chant" by U.S. Girls and "That Breed" by Weyes Blood, courtesy of Free Music Archive.

Produced by Interference Archive.

Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear from Annette Farrell, a contributor to Survived and Punished's Inside-Outside Newsletter about her experiences as an incarcerated person and her thoughts on justice and abolition.

This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived and Punished, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.

Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from their comrades on the inside as well as a longer interview with two Survived and Punished Members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work.

A huge thank you to Annette Farrel for sharing your stories. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.

To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org

Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/

Music from this episode (in order of appearance):

“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18

Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear from Andrea Benson, a contributor to Survived and Punished's Inside-Outside Newsletter about her experiences as an incarcerated person and her thoughts on justice and abolition.

This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived and Punished, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.

Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from their comrades on the inside as well as a longer interview with two Survived and Punished Members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.

To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org

Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/

Music from this episode (in order of appearance):

“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18

Letters from Comrades on the Inside: In this episode, we hear from Andrea Benson, a contributor to Survived and Punished's Inside-Outside Newsletter about her experiences as an incarcerated person and her thoughts on justice and abolition.

This episode of Audio Interference is part of a series in collaboration with Survived and Punished, a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and the culture of violence that contributes to it.

Visit audiointerference.org to listen to more letters from their comrades on the inside as well as a longer interview with two Survived and Punished Members. Visit www.survivedandpunishedny.org to read Survived & Punished NY’s newsletters and explore their work. We'd also like to thank Lae Sway, Yves Tong Nguyen, Heena, Zoe Vongtau, Red Schulte, Mariah Hill, and Martina Ilunga, along with everyone else at Survived & Punished, for working with us on this episode.

To learn more about Survived and Punished NY, visit survivedandpunishedny.org

Read the latest edition of Survived and Punished’s newsletter, Free : Survivors: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/

Music from this episode (in order of appearance):

“Divide” by Six Time Users, from the album, Live at WFMU for Janky Ray’s Radio Riot 6/16/18

"Adjunctification is really this process of replacing full time academic positions with part time academic positions at lower wages and usually inferior, if any, benefits as a cost saving measure."

In this episode, we speak with Carly Smith and Susan DiRaimo, two adjunct professors at the City University of New York, the public university system of New York City and the largest urban university system in the country. They tell us about the daily reality for adjuncts and how their union, the Professional Staff Congress, helps them fight for better wages and working conditions. Their current battle is for a minimum salary of $7K per course that they teach, a radical demand that could finally bring many adjuncts out of poverty and change the national conversation about funding for public education.

Music: "Better World," by Woody Guthrie.

Produced by Interference Archive.

"It’s like we’re always reinventing the wheel, but some of these posters tell you what worked and what didn’t work a generation ago or more." - Carol Wells

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics, based in Los Angeles, is home to a collection of over 90,000 protest graphics and the largest collection of post World War II posters in the United States. In this episode, Carol Wells, Founder and Executive Director of CSPG, gives a tour of the archive to Kevin Caplicki, one of the co-founders of Interference Archive and a member of Justseeds Artist Collective.

For more information about CSPG, visit: http://www.politicalgraphics.org/

Music: "Favorite Secrets" by Waylon Thornton, courtesy of Free Music Archive.

Produced by Interference Archive.

"All the messages from pop culture present Asian American as an apolitical thing. It was really shocking and liberating to find out that actually, Asian American politics was rooted in radical organizing and rooted in grassroots arts movements." -- Ryan Wong

This episode of Audio Interference focuses on Basement Workshop (active 1970-1986), an arts and political organization based in New York City's Chinatown that served as a hub for the developing Asian American movement. Elena Levi speaks to curator and writer Ryan Wong, whose exhibition, Serve the People: The Asian American Movement in New York was presented at Interference Archive in 2013-2014. The episode also includes portions of Ryan's talk at an event celebrating the release of the latest issue of Signal (http://s1gnal.org/), a journal of international political graphics and culture.

Ryan's article on Hyperallergic includes more information on Basement Workshop and other Chinatown arts organizations:

https://hyperallergic.com/330442/a-brief-history-of-the-art-collectives-of-nycs-chinatown/

More on Serve the People:

http://interferencearchive.org/serve-the-people-the-asian-american-movement-in-new-york/

Issue #6 of Signal:

https://justseeds.org/product/signal06/

This episode features the song "Yellow Pearl" by Chris Kando Iijima, Joanne Nobuko Miyamoto, "Charlie" Chin from the recording entitled A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle by Asians in America, PAR01020, courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. (p) (c) 1973. Used by permission.

Link: https://folkways.si.edu/chris-kando-iijima-joanne-nobuko-miyamoto-charlie-chin/a-grain-of-sand-music-for-the-struggle-by-asians-in-america/american-folk-protest/music/album/smithsonian

Other music used includes "Artifical Intelligence" and "One and Only" by Ryan Andersen, courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Produced by Interference Archive.