did you see this at the common ills?
LISTENING ALERT FOR LATER TODAY FROM RUTH
Ruth asked that a special broadcast of KPFK's Sojourner Truth be noted. Sojourner Truth, hosted my Margaret Prescod, regularly airs Monday through Friday from seven to eight in the morning, Pacific Time. There will be a special broadcast from four to five (Pacific time) this afternoon. Ruth listened this morning and thinks the reporting on New Orleans was "skilled and important and exploring the role of race in the aftermath" and advises members who are interested and able to tune in that they should catch this broadcast. (6-7 p.m. central time, 7-8 pm eastern) If you're in the Los Angeles area, 90.7 on the FM radio dial, and everyone can listen over the web by going to the KPFK home page.
i'm having no luck hearing this. the stream keeps stopping. they have a lot of options for listening and when it's dropped off, i've gone to another choice.
i think it's an amazing discussion but i'm going to bail because now i can't even get a stream to start. hopefully that means that a lot of people are trying to listen.
here's what i was able to hear so far. prescod has people on who saw it first hand. there's no point to pretty it up, they're just telling what they saw. of course, it's not part of the 'official record' because it's not printed in the new york times and it's not on cnn so i'm sure a lot of people won't hear it. i really wanted to note it for that reason because this is reality. and people can be blind to it and pretend like the program's not addressing what it is or like it's not a record of what has happened. they can pretend all they want but that won't change reality.
a man named curtis spoke of what he saw and this is a record. what prescod's doing is a record. it may not be the 1 that makes every 1 comfortable or feel good but that only makes it all the more important. the bits i heard (and sorry for not knowing curtis's last name) were very powerful as curtis spoke of how the boats would pass by with african-americans waiting for help, the boats would just pass by and head to another part of town, a white part of town.
i hope a number of people were listening because this is a dialogue we all need to be taking part in. if you're african-american, you probably grasp that more than i ever could. but for white's to put this off as a 'black thing' is for them to assume that the country is by them, for them and about them. we are a multi-cultured, multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation. we need to address issues of racism and not run from them. in the case of new orleans and other areas effected by hurricane katrina, when minorities (african-american in this case) are receiving substandard treatment it effects everyone because it effects the country.
the 'let's all pull together' spirit needs to be about us, all of us. not about supporting some bully boy. bully boy will be gone in 3 years (count the days with me) and he will have continued to do his best to rip our nation apart and to have turned us against 1 another.
instead of mocking the very real crisis that a group of people have found themselves (1 that seems planned or aided), we need to open our eyes and look at what's going on in our country.
is this okay with you? it's not okay with me. this doesn't represent what i want to stand for.
pull together, by all means, to understand and help each other. don't pull together in ignorance. don't pull together to dismiss tough questions or issues you don't want to acknowledge. ask yourself what kind of country you want to live in?
if, like me, you want this nation to be better, to be more, you're going to have start listening to others when they raise issues. and you need to be raising them yourself.
