Ramon Ramirez of PCUN (Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United) describes their new low power FM radio station!
Sue Supriano's Steppin' Out of Babylon is a radio interview series covering a broad range of important issues in today's world: peace and war, human and civil rights, communication, the media, the environment, food security, racism, globalization, immigration and matters of the spirit.
http://www.suesupriano.com
Ramon Ramirez, president of PCUN (Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United) discusses his plans for the new multilingual, low-power FM radio station (KPCN) which PCUN members have erected in the town of Woodburn, Oregon. Ramirez gave this interview at PCUN's "barnraising"-- a gathering of union members and their families and and people who came from far and wide in the United States, from Mexico and Venezuela to work with the Prometheus Radio Project (http://prometheusradio.org) and PCUN to build this low power FM radio station, train people and get it on the air in one weekend in mid-August, 2006.
The PCUN community radio station (KPCN-LP: 96.3FM) is offering music, culture and information in several languages of the indigenous people of the area, Spanish and English. One of PCUN's goals is to use low power FM radio to educate listeners to influence US Foreign and domestic policies, particulary US mmigration policy which directly affects many of the members of PCUN who are immigrant workers from Mexico, especially the state of Oaxaca. Ramirez talks about the enormous negative economic effects of NAFTA (eg- under-selling locally grown corn with genetically modified corn grown by agribusiness in the United States) on Mexico and other countries, causing workers to migrate to the US to literally survive. He also mentions how differently Mexican and Chinese immigrants are treated from Europeans immigrants. The radio station will also be used to provide information concerning domestic violence, women's leadership and sexual reproduction rights, to help people release some of their cultural and religious conditioning which leads to sexual repression and violence, and to create allies within the social justice movement, such as from African American communities, gay and lesbian organizations, and to help educate and organize against the widespread war and violence. PCUN needs help and support to get this wonderful community station fully operating.