I posted about this yesterday. We really need to help with this. We know what its like to benefit from unfiltered, REAL news. We need to help foster efforts to provide this to Hurricane survivors.
From Prometheus Radio Project:
With FCC Go-Ahead, Only Astrodome Bureacracy Keeps Technicians from Saving Lives
Relief volunteers and Independent Media organizers in Houston, Texas, in
collaboration with residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina, have gotten
permission from the Federal Communications Commission and the City of
Houston, Texas to build a 30 watt radio station to serve the people and
families currently living at the Houston Astrodome and adjacent
buildings. But a lack of final permission from officials at the
Astrodome is keeping the station -- set to launch at 95.3 FM -- from
going on the air.
The radio volunteers, led by a community media publishing group called
Houston Indymedia, are working with volunteer professional engineers and
technicians from all over the United States to get this station on the
air. The FCC acted on Saturday to approve the station, and quickly, the
City of Houston gave the project a letter of offical support. The
Prometheus Radio Project, a not-for-profit organization that builds Low
Power FM radio stations all around the United States, has worked
throughout the weekend to facilitate the legal and timely launch of this
radio station.
"Families are putting up notices on the walls to find lost parents and
children, and then crying themselves to sleep at night, as they start to
let the weight of the past week bear down on them," said Hannah
Sassaman, an organizer at Prometheus. "This station will provide
critical information for people putting their lives back together, as
well as the comfort and power of programming made by local Houston
volunteers and Astrodome residents. We need to cut through this red
tape and start delivering information to these families."
The Houston Indymedia volunteers, who produce a radio program on
Pacifica radio station KPFT, are moving their whole studio to the
Astrodome and working with volunteers from as far away as Portland,
Oregon to get the station, which they are calling Kristina Aftermath
Media Project, on the air right away. Besides official permission
from the Astrodome, they'll need more equipment -- radios for as many
potential listeners as possible -- to make this possible.
"The FCC, the City of Houston, and the people living at the Astrodome
want this station to go on the air," says Rice University professor and
Indymedia organizer Tish Stringer. "But the Astrodome staff won't let
the station launch until we have enough radios for all the families. We
have the radios ready to go, and all the equipment too. We're ready to
start delivering this essential service."
The telecommunications industry and the grassroots media justice
community are mobilizing to build communications infrastructure for the
displaced people of the Gulf. But some broadcasters wish there had been
more options for emergency relief before the storm and its aftermath hit.
Tom Hanlon, a volunteer with a property owners' association in Baton
Rouge that has been waiting 5 years for their Low Power FM radio license
to come through, said this about the exodus from New Orleans to Baton
Rouge: "A lack of accurate information, coupled with the time spent
tracking down false rumors, did more to delay the mobilization of Baton
Rouge than any hurricane. We need more LPFM stations in our cities to
help with these crises in the future."
To donate to the Houston project, please call the Prometheus Radio
Project at 215-727-9620, or visit them online at
http://www.prometheusradio.org, or visit http://houston.indymedia.org.