Spirit in Action

Peace On The Airwaves: Pacifica Radio

Ursula Ruedenberg is Affiliate Network Manager of Pacifica, doing the great work of bringing together the energies and voices of grassroots activists all over the country. Founded by peace activists, with 5 anchor stations and hundreds of affiliates, Pacifica has played a pivotal role in forming the radio and news landscape of the USA, and Ursula has played her own pivotal role over the last decade and a half.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 27 Apr 2014
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along I want to start today with a bit of an apology last week, which included Earth Day. I featured interviews with several musicians who've written songs for the environmental issues of our times And I promised that there would be more coming this week. Well, I'm pushing part two of that broadcast back a couple of weeks, so I apologize for that. But I do have something very special for this week. First, a little bit of history about this show. It all began back in 1999, when I declared to myself that I would change jobs and find the work of my heart's fulfillment, and that I do that within a year. Well, I failed, and I also flailed around a bit in the search. By 2005, with the guidance of my dear wife, Sandra, I requested a Quaker Clearness Committee, which is a group of people who sat with me, asking questions of me to draw forth my inner knowledge and guidance and to help me find the answers I was looking for. While in that clearness process, the opening came to me. As we say amongst Quakers, "Way will open, and did it ever." I was contacted by Paul Wiegner, telling me that I was the perfect person to do a Sunday religious spiritual activism show on the soon-to-be-on-the-air, low-power FM community radio station, WHIS Eau Claire. I sat some more, with my cleanest committee, found that Way had opened, Way opened, in fact, and I have been producing Spirit and Action in Song of the Soul ever since. I tell you that bit of history, because today's Spirit and Action guest is intrinsically linked to this opening, though from a different direction. Ursula Ruggenberg is the affiliate network manager of Pacifica, with which our local community radio station is affiliated. You'll learn much more about it in just a moment, but in short, Pacifica and Ursula's work with Pacifica connect together community radio stations, which is its own species of radio, providing invaluable resources that make community radio the incredible education, and activism, and musical tool it is. I've gotten to know Ursula over the past three years or so, and have grown to welcome her calm, compassionate, and dependable help in the work of bringing together the energies of grassroots workers across the country. We go now to the phone to connect with Ursula Ruggenberg in Ames, Iowa. Ursula, I'm super excited to have you here today for Spirit and Action. I'm excited too. We're neighbors, kind of. I'm in Wisconsin, you're living in Iowa. Did you move to Iowa because of Pacifica? No, although most people in Iowa think I did, but I did not. I moved to Iowa indirectly because of Pacifica. I'm the affiliate coordinator for Pacifica Radio Network, and so my job is to work with community radio stations all over the country and some outside of the country. And as part of my work, I network with other people that are interested in media democracy and community radio. There's a number of other organizations that concern themselves with community radio and its future. And so in 2007, there was a filing window that opened up with the FCC, where the FCC allowed people to apply for non-commercial radio frequency. This was a historic event. It had not really been possible for almost 20 years to really successfully apply for a non-commercial radio license, and there's a reason for all that. But in any case, it was clear that this was going to be a big event in non-commercial radio. So I formed a coalition with a number of other people representing other media organizations or lawyers or engineers who concern themselves with community radio. We formed a coalition called the Radio for People Coalition, and our goal was to do outreach so that some of these radio frequencies could be successfully applied for by community groups, as opposed to religious conservative broadcasters who were also vying for these frequencies. So we were looking to make sure that some of these frequencies went to community radio. So when we did that, the first thing we did was hire an engineer to make a map of the United States showing where community radio frequencies were still open that could be applied for. This is what's called a protected band. It's the left part of the radio dial, so it's a limited amount of space, which has been available for more than 40 years, so there wasn't huge amounts of radio space left in that area, in that part of the radio band. So we did a map to find out where they were available. I live in New York City normally for the last 30 years, but my hometown is in Iowa. Like many people that come from Ames, I have an endearing love for the community. So one of the first things I did when we got this map was to check and see if Ames had any frequencies available where a radio license could be applied because I wanted to apply for a radio license in Ames, Iowa. It was kind of like a situation where you go out into the world and then you bring back to your hometown the best thing you found out there. And that's kind of what I did. I could not think of anything better that I found out in the world at large than community radio, and I wanted to bring it back and give it to my hometown. So it did turn out that there was two frequencies available in Ames, one of them kind of went away. So there was space in Ames to apply, and so through the work with radio for people, we were preparing packages of information and protocols and helping community groups all over the country apply for community radio frequencies. And so as part of that, I made sure that Ames got the information they needed, and because I was from this town, I had personal connections. I had to offer to help get people together to make a successful application and through the work of one particular individual, named Roger Parmenter, who did really the majority of the work and paid for the majority of the professional fees. We did get a frequency. We got what's called a permit to construct here in Ames, which means that the FCC gives you a frequency, and you have three years to get on the air. And if you're not on the air, within three years to the second, you will lose your frequency. I tried to help out from New York for two years, and at the end of two years, it became obvious for a number of reasons that the group here in Ames was not going to successfully get on the air. And at that point, they began to ask me to come to Ames and help. And at first, I resisted, but I found that I was spending more time worried about this than I was not in New York. There was one other factor. I have a father who is 93 years old who's living alone here in Ames. The combination between worrying about my father, not being sure what the situation was with him, and worrying about whether the station would fail, became a bigger incentive than to stay in New York. And so I said, "Okay, I'll come to Ames and help get the station on the air." And so that's why I came here. And it had the added benefit of my being able to check in with my dad and stay with him here for a while. So that's what's happening. I don't know when it will stop. I think a lot of people are under the opinion that I might have moved to Ames. I'm not sure that's true, but the truth is you don't just get a station on the air. I'm living in my father's house. I still have an apartment in New York, and I go there regularly for various reasons. But you don't just put a station on the air. That's only half of the process. And the truth is that I do have a personal investment in making sure that this station becomes stable, successful organization, and truly is a community radio station. So it's really about bringing a vision here to Ames that didn't exist before. People did not know what I was talking about. There's not enough community radio in the Midwest, as you know. It's not like Colorado or California where you know other community radio stations and you go, "Oh, I want one of those." When I came here, the project was two years in, one year away from failure, and basically everybody in town told me that they were not willing to invest in what they thought was a pointless project. So it was kind of an interesting experience because it was really a ground zero, so to speak. Nobody wanted it here, nobody thought it had value. So it was an excellent test case to figure out whether community radio does have value intrinsically on its own because there was no prejudice here for community radio. We did go on the air, and we're about a year and a half into being a broadcast entity now into regular broadcast operations, and I have to say that people want it now. It's been to become a source of great happiness and community building, and I think a case has been effectively made for community radio by watching this process. In fact, it is something that is basic to human nature, this desire to communicate. I really think all of that cynicism that I encountered when I came here was the fear of hoping for something so big and so open-hearted, the fear that that was not possible. Well, I say that they're lucky to have you at K-H-O-I coming in to help get them on the path to adulthood. I mean, I think, you know, before you try kiwi fruit, you don't know if you like it. And a lot of kids are like that. You know, I'm not going to try that. It looks strange to me. If they once get a taste of it, it's like, wow, this is the best thing since spaghetti. So how many community radio stations are there now in Iowa? I think there's four. There's Ames, Oceola, Postville, and Fairfield. I am not aware of any others. Iowa City was applying for a low-power frequency, but very unfortunately, the person who we all adored, Brett Gordon, who was leading that project, died suddenly about a month ago, so I don't know if that project will be followed through. It was in a historic community center building in the community center in Iowa City. Well, let's step one step back. You're part of Pacifica. You're the affiliate network manager for Pacifica. Would you tell folks what Pacifica is? Pacifica is a nonprofit organization, which was founded in 1949. It essentially is the first non-commercial listener-sponsored radio network in the world, really. It kind of was the founder of the concept of community radio. Now, it wasn't the only founder because simultaneously, you know, how sometimes great ideas bring up in multiple places. Actually, in South America, community radio was kind of founded also by a bunch of minors who were on strike, so it was kind of a parallel thing that happened. But Pacifica is a network of five independently operated and non-commercial, listening-supported radio stations. It began with one station, KPFA in Berkeley, with a distinct philosophy to create a place for public discourse and to allow for great ideas to come through individuals if they were given a freedom of speech. On the air, it was founded by a man named Lewis Hill, who, together with a number of other people, that he's kind of officially considered the founder. Lewis Hill and his friends were conscientious objectors during World War II. They were pacifists, so they ended up in a detention facility during the war. During that time, they had a book club where they discussed ideas. And between them, they came to the conclusion that they wanted to create an organization that would foster peace. They kind of looked around and tried to figure out what to do. And this was, coincidentally, right at the time when radio was a little bit at the juncture that the Internet is at now, the military basically developed the radio. But the concept of broadcasting was a concept that came from everyday people, like you and me. Because of that, it's really our entitlement. And for many years, that's kind of how it existed through colleges and individuals. And then in the beginning, in the '30s and into the '40s, all of a sudden commercial interest realized the enormous financial potential of radio. And began very quickly to dominate the radio dial and essentially push out all of the other efforts to do radio that wasn't connected to money. And Lewis Hill and his friends were responding to that. They were feeling that there needed to be a place on the radio dial that was for developing understanding and communication among people. And this was their goal. And so they found a radio frequency in Berkeley, California that they felt suited to the bill. At that time, people weren't listening to FM radio. They were only listening to AM radio, so they were pushed onto the FM dial because there was no space on the AM dial. And they literally handed out radios to people to get them to listen to it. And so it was an organization that had an express mission to foster peace through communication. They became a little bit too small for everybody. And so you had two things happening. You had a lot of people from KPFA branching out and heading out into other areas of the country to develop radio stations that emulated KPFA. And these were called community radio stations. And then you also had four other groups in other cities that decided to get a radio frequency and build a station like KPFA and then give it to Pacifica. I think the next one was Los Angeles. And then I'm not sure of the exact order, but then you had Houston, New York, and eventually Washington, DC. So Pacifica became a nonprofit organization that owned five radio frequencies. So it became a national network. And then it had all of these, you know, this was a world onto itself. And so a lot of the people that had gone off and created community radio stations in Atlanta and Seattle. There was a number, you know, all over the country that these people then, of course, kept in communication with Pacifica, developed relations with Pacifica around doing news with Pacifica, covering presidential conventions. And also Pacifica eventually had access to the NPR satellite. And so other stations would want to use the Pacifica satellite to get programs on satellites to distribute them. So it was a very organic relationship between like-minded people who basically had all caught the bug of this vision of a new type of radio, which was community radio. So a lot of the things today that you hear on national public radio or public radio really comes from Pacifica, the concept of listener sponsorship, the concept of talk radio. These things were developed by Lou Hill and his cohorts in Berkeley, and they became a standard for what would later become public radio. This was in 1948, so this all predated public radio by many years. So it was in a way a model for public radio, but it was not, you know, it was an independent effort on the part of people who owned these radio stations. So that's basically what Pacifica is today. It's an organization which owns five radio stations and then using the resources that we've built up to be a network of five stations, we now share those resources with almost 200 other community radio stations who have developed a relationship with Pacifica. So the Pacifica network itself is almost 200 stations strong. I think we're maybe 10 stations short of that right now. That's awesome. About Lewis Hill, Lou Hill, I just looked him up while you were speaking and found a couple things I didn't know about him. Of course, my eyes left to him because his pacifism, when you mentioned conscience subjector, I said, "Oh, is he one of those people like me, one of those nefarious people called Quakers?" And it looks like he was. Was there a religious or a moral core to the starting up of Pacifica? There was a moral core. It was not defined as religious, no, but there was a moral ideal of pacifism. And I think that there were aspects to this that were not codified into the radio's articles and corporation. And so I think they played a role that have their influence have faded. It was really interesting. I don't know if you want to include this in the interview or not because it's a sidebar. But when I was in New York, I was involved for a while with an organization called Subud, which comes out of Indonesia. And it's not a religion. It's a mystical practice of connecting to kind of higher power. And it's a worldwide movement. It was interesting. I found out that a lot of the people who were involved with creating KPFA actually were in Subud. But that has never been mentioned anywhere within the official history of Pacifica. But there may have been more spiritual activities and religious activity than we know. But it was not codified into the organization. I think atheism became a welcome. Atheist shows our tradition at Pacifica. But yes, moral, absolutely. It had an express goal, which was pacifism and appealing to the higher forces and humans by engendering communication. It was a real understanding that communication is a basic need and that when that need is fulfilled, humans tune into their higher self. That was really the core of the genius, what they had. And then also, there was the insight that great ideas come through individuals, and that was the justification for allowing freedom of speech on Pacifica, the uncensored policy. At Pacifica, you don't ask people what they're going to say on the air as long as it remains legal because there's this tradition. You never know where great ideas are going to appear. They come through the voice of various individuals. Well, I think you maybe just answered one of the questions I had. You said that the frequencies that they were handing out, at least currently, are on the left part of the radio dial. Does that imply a political stance as well that it has to be on the left part? That's the sort of accident of history. Actually, in reality, the New York station is a phenomenon because it was a commercial station that was donated to Pacifica by a man named Mr. Schweitzer. It stands squarely at 99.5, which is about the most desirable commercial real estate property on the dial. And in fact, until he had to call Pacifica several times before they even took him seriously, he got hung up on a few times because nobody thought that he actually was serious. It's a little bit like getting the email from the Nigerian prince, right? Exactly. So that station is WBAI, I believe. They have a couple times run my programs, and when they do, I hear about it back here. I had a teacher there, an economics teacher who heard the program said, "I need to take this into my high school students. I need to listen to this." Yes, it's a great, great tradition. I mean, Pacifica came to play a very important role in America's media history because it's actually in the bigger scheme of things. It's a very, very small organization and represents a very small voice, but it's a pivotal voice because it's uncensored. And so what has happened throughout history is that the reporters who could not bring their stories to commercial real media or to NPR would bring it to Pacifica, and Pacifica would then break stories. And once the story is broken, it's broken. Then the media in some ways is forced to follow because it becomes public knowledge. And that is one of the important roles that Pacifica played. Likewise, they discovered many talents, many great artists, for the same reason that there was this freedom of speech. And quite frankly, in community radio all over the country, is well known by musicians and artists as being a great place to get your first break. And so Pacifica has played an important role. It has stood for the First Amendment principle that it is our right to communicate and to speak up, and it has done so historically. One of their most dramatic examples was the whole media frenzy that ended up contributing to people's perception of the Vietnam War was really started by Pacifica when a reporter from WBAI went illegally to North Vietnam and started covering the war from the perspective of North Vietnamese that changed the whole formula of how the war was spoken about. And those of us who lived through the war remember what happened next. I mean, it became really what you would call media frenzy. We all saw things that they never have seen that Pacifica had not done what it did. And so Pacifica has played that role in American history. It has stood for freedom of media. The name Pacifica, because it started right there by the Pacific Ocean, it could be that I happen to be a lover of puns. So Pacifica also, I assume, could refer to the peace routes of the station. Yeah, that's actually what it is. Pacifica is a reference to peace, not through the ocean. So is that in some way embodied in the whole structure? I mean, if you had a military base that wanted to have a Pacifica become a Pacifica affiliate, would they be okay? It would be part of Pacifica? A military base? I'm not sure what... Yeah, if they had a radio station on a military base, could they become an affiliate? Yeah, sure. If they want to hear what we have to say, I mean, we advocate, Pacifica essentially advocates against war. Is that written into the guidelines somewhere? There's no prohibition against having a military station being an affiliate. You know, even there was a time when the John Verst Society had a show on Pacifica. So there is a tradition of conservative having a voice on Pacifica. But I think it would be pretty hard for a show to advocate for war very long on Pacifica because it really would go contrary to our mission. Advocating for peace is part of our mission. And kind of by default, even though I don't think this was as expressly discussed by Lou Hill, the advocating for community as opposed to corporate culture is also a very inherent part of Pacifica. People call it a leftist organization. I don't think that's accurate, but I think what is accurate that it is... The bias is not left or right, really. The bias is against corporate culture. Pacifica very decidedly sides and wants the voices of the person on the street, the person who represents community, the everyday person, the people who are affected by power, not the people who necessarily have the power. That's the bias that Pacifica has. And that's good bias to have. We're speaking today for Spirit in Action with Ursula Rittenberg. She is affiliate network manager for Pacifica Network, the website PacificaNetwork.org. And she's one of the folks who are instrumental in getting this program shared nationally via Pacifica Network. This is Spirit in Action. We are part of an effort called Northern Spirit Radio. On the web at northernspiritradio.org, where you can find more than eight and a half years of our programming for free listening and download, you can also leave comments and we love to have two-way communication. There's also links to our guests, so if you can't remember Pacifica Network or Spell Ursula Rittenberg, you can come to my site and you'll find out. Also, there's a place to leave donations. Your donations is how we work. I want to especially remind you to support your local community radio station. As you can tell by this visit with Ursula, they bring you a slice of news and of music that you get nowhere else in this country. So please remember to support first your local community radio station and if you can, sport in Northern Spirit Radio. Again, Ursula Rittenberg, located currently or temporarily perhaps in Ames, Iowa with K-H-O-I radio, but you were living in New York for 30 years before that. And so I suppose you get fewer possibilities of eating falafel in Ames. [laughter] That's a few possibilities for a lot of things, Mark. [laughter] Which means your tension level has gone down a lot, right? Well, I don't know, building a radio station is pretty adrenaline based, but I'll tell you one thing that I don't get in New York. The other day I was in the kitchen here looking at the window and there's a post right outside the window here and there was a barred owl just sitting there looking at me and don't get that in New York. [laughter] It was pretty spectacular. So we were talking Ursula about Pacifica and the growth of community radio. It sounds to me like the community radio station movement started there from right in Berkeley, spread around five stations and up being part of the Pacifica network. Are a lot of community radio stations not a part of Pacifica or is Pacifica a major share of those community radio stations? No, that's a really good question. I don't think it's a major share, but a lot of them. I just figured you as affiliates manager that you probably have an idea, okay, well, the people who could be affiliates are this many. Do you have public radio stations that are also Pacifica affiliates? Yeah, a lot of Pacifica affiliates are public radio stations. They're a particular kind of public radio station that expressly identified themselves as community stations. Community radio is a vision that is distinct onto itself and those public radio stations who want to have that are also Pacifica affiliates. This is just a wild guess, but I would guess that maybe half of the community radio stations in the country are Pacifica affiliates. Do we have any idea how many listeners we might be talking about? I know they have ways of measuring such things, but do you have any idea how many people are tuning in to free speech radio or to sprouts weekly or any of these? Oh, it's in to the hundreds of thousands. Actually, it's probably more than, it's probably in the millions because we have stations in large metropolitan areas. You know, you said very clearly that so much what has come to be the existence of media in this country was heavily influenced by really small number of stations, but such an alternative. Often the leading edge allows the rest of the space to form up. Can you point to specific actions, movements, policies, anything? I mean, maybe democracy now is one of them that are connected with starting with community radio stations or specifically Pacifica? Well, yes, there was a gentleman named Lorenzo Mylam who was kind of the Johnny Applespeed of community radio. He was at KPFA and then he moved up to, I think, Seattle first and started what they called the Crab Nebula because he started a station up there, KRAB. He really traveled around the country and started setting up community radio stations. And he's really seen as the father of the community radio movement outside of Pacifica, kind of the other community, the community radio, generically speaking. Lorenzo Mylam is kind of the father of that and he wrote a book called Sex and Broadcasting, which was essentially a manual for how to build a community radio station. And that was really where the vision of a larger community radio movement came out of. I think that to some degree, Pacifica remained a point of reference to many of the stations because of the resources that had represented and the kind of founding status that it had. But over time, the world has changed and we live in a much more diversified world now. So over time, the sense developed that a lot of these radio stations could communicate with each other, could generate their own great content. They matured into really mature entities onto themselves with their own vision that was locally based. And so when I became the Pacific affiliates coordinator in 2002, the affiliates program had existed prior to me, but it had collapsed in the few years prior to my beginning this work. And it was essentially nonexistent, but the connections were still all there and the tradition was there. And so when I began my work, I spoke with a lot of affiliates or ex-affiliates who considered themselves part of the family with Pacifica because of their shared history. They were clear with me that we had moved into an age where they were not looking for a vertical relationship where Pacifica dispensed content to them. They were looking for a horizontal relationship where everybody shared with each other, that there truly was a desire for a cooperative network where people exchanged resources, knowledge, and programming across the board with each other. So it was kind of like a circling of the wagon type of image, I don't know if that's politically correct image, but it was a network instead of a program service. Up until then, Pacifica had a satellite service, or still does, but you know, satellite services are like radio stations, they have limited time and space. The request was that we built a website where there was no hierarchy of time and space so that everybody could begin to communicate with each other independent of satellite technology with no gatekeeper and share programs with each other. In other words, affiliates wanted to syndicate their own work, they didn't want to just take work from Pacifica, and they wanted Pacifica to provide the infrastructure for that kind of activity. So we built a website called AudioPort, and that was really, in my mind, the founding of a genuine network where people began to communicate with each other independent of a middleman. And so centers of interest developed in many, many configurations, and it also spawned a whole new generation of community production, whether it was at the stations or independent of it, because there was an easy way to distribute the work. And so we have now, today, a situation where there's a lot of really great top-of-the-line activity like your show that is carrying on, and we know about it, and we connect with it because there is a website that allows people to do that. And so AudioPort, I think, really, within Pacifica network, had a very powerful influence, and I think it changed community radio in this country because of the opportunity provided. Now, there is a similar website put out by the public radio world called PRX, which is also a content distribution website, but it operates more like a store, whereas our website operates more like an in-house warehouse where people can just give each other things. So it's a little bit of a different dynamic. I think PRX has also dramatically changed the media landscape in making it possible for independent producers to distribute their work. So it has also played a big role, I have a lot of respect for that website. AudioPort is a little bit different because it's part of a network that has its own identity, and so it operates more like a program sharing facility, very, very successful in doing that. I think that has made a big difference in the world of media, and it also goes along with the whole way. We live now where, because of the internet, activities and initiatives have become very diversified and very self-regulated and self-driven instead of relying on publishers or satellite operations or, you know, instead of relying on the middleman. You bring up a very important question. Media is evolving so rapidly in our times. At one point, newspapers were a big deal, and, you know, you have to hurry to get your newspaper in the mail the next time if you lived in Ames, Iowa, but you wanted the New York Times. That's changed because we have the internet, and radio is also changing. Some people ask me, "Am I doing radio broadcasting or podcasting?" Well, the difference is that the recording is available via the internet. There's no physical difference between the program that I produce, only the way that it's disseminated. Do you see Pacifica changing a lot because of the internet? Well, I think yes and no. I mean, I think that the process that I just described where we move from being a content provider to being a content provider, but also a source of infrastructure for other people to provide their content. And that's a very substantial shift. And I think it's been to everybody's benefit. So whereas before, even among the Pacifica stations, if they wanted to share content, it had to be sent by, you know, in the mail or recited over the phone. All of that is gone, you know, all that difficulty is gone. Everything's being passed around on the internet now, easily. And so the whole way the network works is much more like a network because there's not these geographic divisions anymore. I think that everybody in community radio understands that the internet in some ways has taken away from community radio listenership because we're no longer the only authoritative source of information. The internet is easier than radio. And so a lot of people's, you know, need for connecting and getting information has shifted over. I mean, most of it has shifted over to the internet. It's made it more difficult for radio all around. I think there's no doubt about it. Radio has lost its status. And, you know, like Aims here is a college town. Most college students don't listen to the radio. They just don't. But I don't think that it's the end of radio. I personally don't. What the internet doesn't really provide the sense of community that radio provide. I mean, community radio is not just about technology. It's really about community. It's about a physical as well as an airspace where people come together and embark on a collaborative enterprise that's communication based. At heart, that's an activity that connects people to each other and builds a sense of community. And in some ways, it's a great antidote to the alienating effect of listening online where you're one person with a keyboard or a phone. A lot of the radio stations, I think, like to emphasize local content. I talk to different stations, Fairfield, Iowa. I talk to them because I thought they were, I had some folks locally who were hoping that my programs would be carried there. But they said, well, no, we prioritize local content. So what you share from Pacifica, from the larger base of work that is Pacifica, including what's on audio port, what are the most popular programs? Democracy Now is still the anchor program for Pacifica affiliation to daily news magazine that breaks stories. And so it has a high production value and has a lot of access to breaking stories. So that is still the show that a lot of stations around the country used to fulfill that need. We used to have a newscast that we distributed, free speech radio news. That was a very important show because it was a newscast. And currently, we're not distributing that through the financial problem. Strangely enough, I mean, you know, Sprouts actually has turned into a pretty highly branded show and has taken by a lot of stations around the country. It has a large audience. And that's a show which features productions at various community radio stations and independent production groups like yours. I think you've done some special. And it's just a, it's kind of a showcase show where every week a different station or production group will broadcast what they feel is production. They've done this of worthy of national attention. One of the other things that Pacifica distributes that is kind of a standard staple is that in times of war, elections, national elections, important congressional events, inauguration addresses, presidential addresses that are crucial. Anytime there is an event of national or international importance, Pacifica has traditionally done special live coverage of those events. And that's again, you know, a resource that individual community radio stations don't have the money to do. And so they use Pacifica to provide those resources. The rest of the programming is so diverse that I don't think I would be doing anybody any justice by pointing out any particular show. Your show is a popular show. We air both of your shows, Spirit and Action and Song of the Soul here in Ames. And there are so many shows that go anywhere from music shows to cultural shows, literary shows to public affairs shows, news and analysis, environmental issues. It's incredible, the variety, that now people are syndicating. And it is pretty spread across the board. I mean, people are taking all sorts of stuff from each other. There's a show coming out of WBAI called "Eflorations" with Michio Kaku, who's a scientist. That's kind of a very longstanding show that a lot of people take because of this stature as a scientist. I mean, I would be going on for hours if I started to describe all these shows. It's just that the main thing is that it's a tremendous diversity, and most of it is grassroots. And so even though they may be broadcasting nationally, it's radio that is expressly grassroots. So you sense when you listen to it that this is a real person in a real place like you or me, and there's a sense of connection to community in doing the broadcasting. There's very few productions that try to use the formats that commercial radio uses or to have that sense of detachment. One of the reasons why Democracy Now was so popular was because when the show was conceived by Pacifica in the 1990s, I think '95 was around then, it was basically in some ways seen as wanting to sound a little bit like morning edition, but flipping it upside down so that it was a grassroots approach to the news. And so I think Democracy Now has aspired to the highest production level, but even that, it still is a grassroots format. And I hear about it all the time from our public radio stations because they would like a more regimented format, but they're used to with their other shows and it's just going to happen. It's just not going to happen. Sometimes I wish it would, but it won't. You know, community radio has a sound to it, and it's a really wonderful thing. I've relived that again. I've rediscovered it, so to speak, here names because, you know, for the first year when we went on the air here in Ames, I didn't try to introduce very many Pacifica programs because I respected that this is a local station and it's not here for me to distribute the work that I do in my job. I wanted people to get a sense of their own footing, and after about a year, folks started to say to me, "We really want more Pacifica programming or programming from Pacifica network. We want some syndicated community radio programming." And so I started putting some on, and people were beside themselves. They loved it. They said, "I have never heard any of this stuff anywhere in the media." I didn't know this. I didn't know that. And it kind of made me think back to times in my past when, you know, events would happen, and I would be with people, and I would know about them. I wouldn't be taken by surprise by things, and people would say to me, "How did you know that?" And I would go, "I don't know." And then I'd think about it and go, "I guess I know about that because I listened to community radio." And people are talking about all sorts of things, you know? I remember standing, you know, on 7th Avenue in front of the Wheel Trade Center with my mouth hanging over open, like everybody else, and thinking to myself, "Well, this, you know, certainly is a surprise, and this is certainly bizarre, but, you know, am I shocked? Not really." Because you've heard the backstory that led to this that hasn't got radio waves elsewhere. Yeah, I knew what kind of a world we were living in. You know, I knew how rough the U.S. and everybody else was playing. I mean, nobody expected to see that, I got to say, but still, I wasn't standing there like some people on the street going, "What the hell's going on? What's going on? What's going on? Why is, you know, my world wasn't that simple?" Well, one thing I did want to ask you about Ursula is some of your personal journey that led you to this work. Because Spirit and Action is really about finding the good work that's being done in the world, and Pacific is doing that, and specifically, your work within Pacifica is doing that. But I want to know what got you where you are, what supports you to do this work ongoing for years, even when it's a great struggle and sometimes a great annoyance. So can you give me a background of your spiritual or religious history, where you are now, and what makes a difference for you? Okay, that's a great question for your show. And by the way, it really is not annoying working in community radio. It's a wonderful, wonderful experience. I love doing this work. But okay, so it's a really good question for your show. What happened to me was, I'm actually a painter, an artist by profession. I have an MFA in painting, and I spent most of my life as a mural painter. I had been working for the city of New York for 15, 17 years, managing a community-based mural painting program where we painted murals with people in different neighborhoods in New York in the parks. I had come to the end of the line with wanting to be a mural painter. I had painted my last mural that I wanted to paint, and I was spending a lot of time asking myself, what was my community? I had been living in New York for 30 years and loved it, and had moved through a lot of different worlds. And some of them were a wonderful world and fascinating beyond description, but I never felt that they were my people. At that point, I was getting to an age where you start to ask yourself, what am I doing, you know? And I started asking myself pretty intensely, what community do I belong to? And as part of that process, I went to a workshop by a man named Rick Jarrell called the Advanced Manifestation Workshop. Because I was trying to figure out what did I want to do, and Rick is a teacher, and he's a healer, and he specializes in what he calls life alignment and manifestation, and he's kind of a pioneer in what he calls the anti-career movement. So Rick wrote a number of books about spirituality and spiritual journeys, but he did also write a book called Creating the Work You Love, Courage, Commitment, and Career, and it's about finding work that you really want to do and knowing how to manifest this. So I ended up going to a workshop of his and joining a class that he taught over a period of a year. And it was actually a very mystically based class. It wasn't one of these things where you get a bunch of career advice. It was a mystical process that he was initiating, so he kind of was acting as an initiator. And it was very interesting. It was kind of a wild experience. In the course of that process, I found myself, they were rituals involved with the workshops, and a bunch of people that were in the class once got together with my house in Brooklyn. The people that actually were in this workshop were all over the country, and we would get together once a month. It was pretty wild. But a bunch of people lived in the New York metropolitan area, so a bunch of them got together in my house one day. And we kind of made our own ritual, just kind of invented something. And as part of the ritual, I found myself expressing spontaneously the desire to find the warrior inside of myself. I had gotten that because I had heard a radio show on WBAI, which is the Pacifica station in New York, put out by a Native American who somehow was talking about finding the warrior inside of yourself. So I kind of had two things going on. I was a person who was looking for community. I also had this idea that somehow I wanted to connect to that part of me that was a warrior. So I was walking around all the time, asking myself, "What is my community? What is my community?" And one day it finally hit me that the whole time I was walking around asking this question, I was listening to WBAI, which was the community radio station in New York. It kind of was like remembering the nose in front of your face. I was like, "Oh, I'm trying to figure out all these different communities." And meanwhile, I'm listening to this station, and obviously this is my community. So I decided to go and volunteer there. I had closed down my mural painting operation, and I was actually planning to come for a limited period of time to Iowa because another had developed Alzheimer's was going to come and take care of her for a while. But I had a few months left where I hadn't left the city yet, and of course, nature of horse and vacuum. And so I decided, "Well, you know, I'm looking for community. I keep listening to this community radio station. Let me go down there and volunteer." So I went down and I volunteered in the pledge drive rooms, like most people do, and started talking to some people about how to get more involved with the station. And at the same time we had this ritual where I kind of put out there that I wanted to connect with a warrior image, with energy, whatever that was, you know, something in me that was like very strong. And I think that, you know, when you do that, the universe responds. I mean, when you put out an intention with real clarity and determination, I think that's what you get. And I think sometimes it can happen much faster than you ever dreamed it would. And that's what happened to me within the space of maybe, I don't know, less than 10 days. My whole world completely transformed. What happened was that somebody in the phone room said, "Well, you know, we're just having problems, political problems, and we're going to have a demonstration in front of the radio station tomorrow because Amy Goodman is having problems with the Pacifica National Management, and we're going to hold a demonstration. You know, trouble is afoot. So why don't you come to that and see what you think of that?" So I went the next day down to Wall Street. The radio station was on Wall Street right next to the East River. And there was this little demonstration in front of the building. Amy didn't speak, but a whole lot of people spoke on her behalf, and Amy was there. And I had this epiphany. I was standing in the crowd watching all this. I fell head over heels in love. I looked at these people, and it was like I had woken up from a dream. I knew from the bottom of my heart that this was the people that I belonged to. That I understood, you know, I was completely on the same wavelength, and I didn't know any of them, and it completely broke my heart. I hadn't felt longing like that in many, many, many years. So that made a huge impression on me. I was like, "Well, okay, that's the answer to my question about community." And I had no idea how to get involved, but then there was this ritual that had happened where I had put out that there was warrior energy. What happened was that right at the time when I was volunteering at Pacifica, there was a hostile takeover of the network, which is a very big historic event that doesn't get talked about a whole lot. It was talked about a lot at the time when it happened, that it is faded quickly into oblivion. But there was actually an attempt to destroy Pacifica network. I hope I don't get you mad listeners, but I'm going to cut in right now. Right as the future of Pacifica is tied up and laid across the train tracks. There's a train coming, and to know what happens, you have to come back next week as Ursula Rittenberg continues with her amazing saga and journey with Pacifica and its vital work with community radio. And because of the wonderful alternative news that we get through community radio and Pacifica, I'm going to end with a song by Charlie King and Karen Brando about the good news that we don't get from the mainstream news sources. It's called the news, the blues, and the people. Take two. We'll be back with Ursula Rittenberg next week for Spirit in Action. See you then, Charlie King and Karen Brando. Each morning on the road I read the paper. And with every line I feel my spirits sink. Unemployment increased, murder in the Middle East, homeland insecurity, suspending civil liberties, landmark legislation, and the nation makes a criminal to think. Each headline highlights one more crooked caper. And each byline boast of one horrid scheme. If Bush gets into one more war, I'm getting out of it. If Congress passes one more fascist act, I'm gonna scream. Feels like everything is falling apart at the seams. Do you know what I mean? But then it goes e-jually up in Milwaukee, a piece action devotee. Or Pat and Bernie, San Francisco, California, singing their hearts out for solidarity. I remember Tom Wilson and Ronny Denelson and the war tax, they refused. And I'm feeling so much better than I'm ready for the five o'clock news. Oh no! The anchor man resembles Father Dredford. His sidekick looks like Chelsea Clinton's mom. She reports compellingly on a local spelling beat. Tune in at 11, 'cause they're revving up for coverage of a prom. It's a sitcom. The weather meds, one liners make my head hurt. And the local team's been given up for dead. The bill reviewer interviews a chimp I'm getting out. The prom reporters voting for their queen. I'm going to bed. If you tuned in for the news, you've been badly misled. Now it's back to your Ted. I want to hear about Rebecca, Jeff, and Martha marching in and over. Mike and Sue tearing up Toledo. They don't cover Chris and Sarah. Press is going in it up. Ebb web no unito. A mustard oven cedar. Or Father Roy Buoys walk a lot. Miss Georgia, shutting down the S-O-A. If you believe the TV, you think democracy is slipping away. Yeah, that's something to say. Say it! Still God, watch. In cash, fill a posh. Canada, cash, fight for workers, safety and health. United for a fair economy is challenging monopoly. And Trump has spread around a little corporate wealth. There's a peace demonstration in every nation. Twenty million marches can't be wrong. So let's keep on fighting the good fight people. Let's keep singing our song. You won't read it in the paper won't see it on the news. But you just might hear it in a talking booth. Thanks for the energy keeping me singing these songs. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is spirit in action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. [MUSIC PLAYING]