Broadcasters of Truth

Each Monday morning, I get up early and walk over to the student center at Keene State College. My destination is WKNH, the college radio station on the third floor. Once there, I unlock the studio door, dump my coat on a chair, and write my name in the FCC log. I then check the transmitter, start up the computer to download the Pacifica Radio Network’s satellite signal, and get the latest weather report up on another window.

At about three minutes to eight, I click the mic’s on button, and say, “Good morning. I’m Steve Chase, one of the community volunteers bringing you Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! news program with award-winning journalist Amy Goodman every weekday morning from 8 to 9 am.” I then read a list of the local underwriters of the broadcast, which includes the words I most love to read: “Democracy Now! and other Pacifica Radio programs are brought to WKNH by . . . Putney Friends Meeting, a Quaker congregation in nearby Vermont committed to listening deeply to the Spirit of God and living lives dedicated to peace, social justice, and environmental stewardship.” I then invite listeners to join us for meeting for worship and give out the meeting’s phone number. Finally, right at 8 am, I cue up the satellite feed on the soundboard, and hear Amy say to the people of Keene, New Hampshire: “From Pacifica, this is Democracy Now!”

Each of local folks who volunteer to broadcast Democracy Now! have their own reasons. For me, it is one of the main ways I make a public witness to the moral vision at the heart of my Quaker faith. At its very root, the way of Jesus is a challenge to the way of empire, greed, lies, and violence. It is a prophetic conversion call to the way of peace, justice, truth-telling, and ecological stewardship. As Paul wrote to Jesus’ followers who lived in the very belly of the Roman Empire, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable, and perfect.” What I love about Democracy Now! and the other Pacifica programs is that they break ranks with the corporate media and refuse to conform to wars of aggression, military occupation, torture, secret police, corporate rule, social injustice, the death penalty, gross inequality, and ecological degradation. Like all good muckraking journalists, the producers of these programs seek to uncover the truth as a means to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”— something the early Friends were also well-known for as they waged their own nonviolent “Lamb’s War” in the mid-sixteenth century. I also like the historical connection of Friends and Pacifica, as the Pacifica Radio Network was founded in 1948 by a handful of Quakers and World War II draft resisters.

Supporting the local broadcast of Democracy Now! is also a very easy form of outreach and witness for a meeting. Whereas Amy Goodman was attacked and almost killed by the US-backed Indonesian military for covering the Indonesian genocide against the East Timorese people for the Pacifica Radio Network, I only volunteer four hours a week at a college radio station and kick in 100 bucks a year to help my meeting underwrite the annual Pacifica satellite fee that brings Pacifica programming to our local radio dial.

This effort is not at all heroic, but I believe it is still meaningful. There are hundreds of community and college radio stations that do not yet carry Democracy Now!—or any of the other programs available through the Pacifica Radio Network. What if Quaker meetings near such stations helped raise money for the stations to get connected to the Pacifica Radio Network satellite, or helped recruit and train the community volunteer DJs needed to broadcast Democracy Now!, or wrote letters to the editor and put up posters to promote Democracy Now! and other Pacifica programs in their communities? What if meetings close to the stations that carry Democracy Now! also put their name forward as public supporters of independent media in a time of war and empire—and used their underwriter tag line to invite people to join them in worship and service?

Imagine the closed eyes that could be opened and the hardened hearts that could be melted. That’s what gets me up early every Monday morning. And, now that it is available through the Pacifica Radio Network, I’m also thinking of broadcasting Mark Helpmeet’s excellent Quaker radio program Spirit in Action for an extra hour every Monday at noon. Once we were known as the Publishers of Truth —perhaps now Quakers can also become Broadcasters of Truth.

Steve Chase is a member of Putney Friends Meeting and the coordinator of the WKNH Pacifica Programming Committee. Besides serving on his meeting’s Peace and Social Concerns Committee, Steve is also the director of Antioch University New England’s graduate activist training program in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing.