[cr-india][Fwd: Re: [creative-radio] CKUT Radio: Tent City Montreal]

[George Lessard]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [creative-radio] CKUT Radio: Tent City Montreal
From:    "Vickram Crishna" <vvcrishna at mac.com>
Date:    Sat, July 12, 2003 4:05
To:      creative-radio at yahoogroups.com
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At 10:53 PM -0400 11/07/2003, Stefan Christoff wrote:
>The interviews also look at the growing movement of anti-poverty &
housing activists throughout the country who are fighting for an end of
the criminalization of poverty & homelessness and the right for
communities to squat empty buildings. The interviews took place during
the day on July 5th at Tent City in Parc Lafontaine and also during the
riot police eviction of Tent City.

Very interesting. An American journalist is currently in India,
living in a major slum in Mumbai, talking to slumdwellers (legally, 
squatters), the last leg of a four city research worldwide on the  right
of communities to land. Robert Neuwirth's forthcoming book, for  which he
received a grant from the Macarthur Foundation, will be
published in 2004 by Routledge.

What particularly struck me in a conversation with him was the fact  that
in slums from Brazil to Kenya to Turkey, he never saw any real  interest
in communities to build their own information services,
neither press (too expensive) nor radio (didn't seem to be part of  the
perceived available media mix).

My immediate conclusion from this observation is that community radio  has
a long way to go in establishing itself as a viable media for the  truly
oppressed (the criminalized poor). We need a stronger voice for 
liberalizing low power radio internationally from the clutches of 
industry and government dominated regulation and international
agreements. Curiously, no one disagrees that at very low power,
frequency reuse ensures that bandwidth is not a scarce resource. Yet 
regulators insist on maintaining their stranglehold on centralised 
control of licensing.

Curiously enough (given that democracy as commonly understood is
arguably not a driver for this change), some African countries are 
beginning to relax this attitude. This is particularly in the area of  the
so-called 'free' bands at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, used for WiFi. At  very low
power, FM radio transmission and reception is far cheaper  and more
affordable  for community ownership than microprocessor
based WiFi, and deserves at least an equal chance at empowering
communities.

More curious is the fact that the 'advanced' country South Africa has 
shut down and is planning to prosecute a WISP (wireless internet
service provider) for violation of regulations on unlicensed radio 
transmission. At AMARC8 in Kathmandu earlier this year, I had a short  but
heated public debate with an ICASA (South African) regulator,  which ended
up with AMARC finally endorsing a resolution asking for  action on this
front

<quote>
• We call for regulation of frequency spectra for community radio  such
that it favors the development of this medium for the use of  local
communities.
<unquote>

ICASA argued strongly against equating 'low power' and 'local',
citing possible anarchy and violence, apparently the sort of thing  that
local communities are known to encourage. Hopefully Robert
Neuwirth's book will add a new dimension to this argument.
-- 
Vickram

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