We obey the law. We don't allow, we don't countenance, we don't countenance agents who handle informants and allow them to commit crimes against them.
On Monday, February 4th, beginning with wake up call at 6am, WBAI begins its winter fundraising drive.
During the last year, the station has gone through some difficult times, but there are bigger and better times ahead.
We need you to become listener sponsors of this unique radio station to keep WBAI as a sanctuary for free speech.
To volunteer for the marathon, you can call Richard Anton at area code 212-209-2827. That's 212-209-2827.
And a final note, due to increased security at 120 Wall Street after 9-11, you'll need a picture ID to enter the building, but not WBAI.
And it's just about 8 o'clock, you are listening to Newly Liberated WBAI in New York, where it's time once again for a fundraising edition of Off The Hook.
And a very good evening to one and all, the program is Off The Hook, Emmanuel Goldstein with you for the next hour this week as we update you on things going on in the world, in the world in general this week.
And also try to keep this place going, try to keep this place afloat.
And you know, I don't think I ever realized, well of course I realized how important this place was, but I haven't realized so dramatically over the past few days.
I think it's something that maybe a lot of us New Yorkers, a lot of people in New York, if you weren't in New York you'll have to bear with me tonight because this is pretty much a New York show because of the things that happened here over the past few days.
I think if you were in New York you would have kind of felt the gap, certainly in the mass media that WBAI filled here at 99.5 FM.
I'm talking of course about the World Economic Forum which came into town last week.
In fact after the radio show we ventured up to where the World Economic Forum is taking place because you know as hackers you always want to see just what's going on.
And see how they're preparing and look for all kinds of interesting things that you can talk about if you're lucky enough to have a radio show to talk about them on.
And this is last Tuesday night, last Tuesday.
I mean it's pretty early on.
The conference wasn't even supposed to really kick off until Friday.
Lexington Avenue, the whole midtown part was having all those concrete barriers installed and policemen every place and it looked like an armed camp.
It really did and I was stunned.
I was flabbergasted by it.
What were they expecting?
What were they expecting people to do?
I've been to many protests in my life and I've never seen anything quite like this.
I've never seen this level of paranoia.
And somewhere, somewhere along the lines the terrorist paranoia has crossed over into the fear of activism community which I think is most of America right now.
Where they somehow think that activists are the real threat to society.
And in fact it's just the opposite.
Activists are the hope of society.
This is something I found out this weekend.
I didn't find it out.
It was reaffirmed.
And if you were there, we'll try to take phone calls later.
I'd like to know if people were around for that.
Certainly if you listen to WBAI you actually heard something that you might not have heard in a while.
And that was live coverage of an historic event taking place in the streets of New York.
Now actually Mike, I don't know where Mike is.
He has a few experiences to relate.
He's not here so I don't know how he's going to relate them.
But he was caught up in the midst of it as was I.
And you know I didn't really mean to be.
Didn't really mean to be caught right in the midst of things.
To a degree yes.
To a degree I meant to be but to another degree I didn't.
And let me explain what that means.
Basically as I said people in the hacker world like to learn things.
They like to I guess infiltrate is a not too dangerous word to use.
And of course when you see something like this going on.
Remember Tuesday, Tuesday night the arm camp was going up.
I just had to know more.
I had to become part of what was going on here.
Learn more about just what kinds of security measures were taking place.
And much to my surprise, much to my surprise I was able to secure a hotel room.
Not in the Walter Festoria where the World Economic Forum was taking place.
But across the street in the Marriott on Lexington Avenue.
It was expensive as hell but it was in the frozen zone.
The frozen zone.
I mean a city with a frozen zone.
Basically what a frozen zone is it means you can't walk down a street.
You can't walk into a particular neighborhood.
You can't cross the street or walk across an avenue.
All these things we take for granted.
Nope sorry unless you have proper ID you can't come down here.
Why?
Because a bunch of billionaires are meeting in a building.
Okay.
A bunch of billionaires can meet in a building.
Why does that mean everybody else in the world has to stay away?
You know I thought we kind of like commingled in the city in America.
That kind of thing.
But apparently those days are over.
So yeah the whole city was sealed in that particular part in the frozen zone.
But because I was able to register a room they had to let me in.
They had to let me in.
And it was great too because a shapeshifter from Philadelphia came up.
If you might recall he was held after the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia by the Philadelphia police.
In fact they held him on the court of a million dollars bail because he was so dangerous.
And in fact later it turned out that there was no basis for those charges at all.
And all the charges were found to be without merit.
And currently there is a lawsuit going on against the city of Philadelphia to get some justice as far as that goes.
And we'll be following that case certainly.
Shapeshifter also is our layout artist for 2600 Magazine.
And really what was interesting was the fact that he were two I guess people that show up on the radar screen of various governmental agencies.
Yet they had to let us into the frozen zone because we had those reservations.
It's the same trick that we pulled during the New Year celebrations in 2001 and 2000.
Basically you get a hotel reservation right there and they have to let you into the frozen zone.
Or the zone where all the people are and you can kind of maneuver your way into a better spot.
Well this was cool because we were able to maneuver our way into the place where we belonged.
Even though they really treated us like we didn't belong there.
They searched our bags.
They did all kinds of things when we walked into our own hotel.
But it was all part of the learning experience.
So we didn't get mad.
We didn't get angry.
We didn't get vengeful.
We thought it was funny.
We thought it was hilarious.
It was weird though because we stuck a big do not disturb sign on our doors.
Because we didn't want anybody going through there and going through our stuff or messing anything up.
We went out for coffee at one point.
And then came back in about 20 minutes later.
And everything was all cleaned.
Everything was all clean.
That tells me that somebody was out there watching.
Seeing exactly when we left.
I mean you don't do it through ESP.
Somehow you know when people are in the room and when they're not.
And when there's a do not disturb sign on the door.
There was some wacky stuff going on there.
But that's not the whole story.
It gets even better.
Do you know that the Waldorf...
Mike's here.
Hey Mike.
Hang on.
Let me turn your mic on.
I'll try that one.
Okay.
There you go.
Did you get beaten up by cops on the way over?
No, I didn't get beat up by cops.
I ran into subway trains that just stopped.
I took an evil number two today.
Yeah, I'm sorry to hear it.
The evil twos.
Just to get off track for a second.
By the way, we are trying to raise money tonight.
We're going to get into that in a second.
Big time.
Because it's very important.
Basically, what we did was we wrote on a number two going downtown.
As you mentioned, after World Trade Center, they make the twos run local now.
Now, these are the new automated trains.
The new highly sophisticated technical trains that don't need humans to read the stations to you
and are able to function perfectly.
Well, it's been a catastrophe.
A total catastrophe.
Because not only are they giving out the wrong information on those recordings
because there's new trains like the V train and the W train
and trains that don't exist anymore like the 9 train.
They can't replace the signs, apparently, in every car, two in every car,
that tell you what trains to transfer to.
But the two has become a local for some reason.
Although the announcement still calls it the 7th Avenue Express
even though it stops at every stop.
They say this is a Brooklyn-bound two express train.
Yeah.
Well, except our train didn't do that.
They turned that off.
But it was flashing last stop on every single car.
It was flashing last stop.
And the little dot was flashing over 241st Street.
So that train was being told that it was at 241st Street.
And God knows what was going on inside its logic boards.
But it just goes to show that the human touch for something like this is extremely important.
You know, you can't just automate things without some kind of flexibility, a plan.
I mean, this is the sort of mistake that no human would ever make.
I mean, it's totally impossible to call a local train an express train.
You could make it once but somebody would correct you.
Right.
But if you're a subway driver, you presumably know these things.
Yeah, yeah.
But if you're a computer, you apparently just cannot be told.
Let me get back to the World Economic Forum
which also had some wacky subway things going on.
In fact, at the 2600 meeting last Friday, all kinds of things were closed off.
And you had to walk all the way around to get into subways and all kinds of other things.
But there were businesses inside the Waldorf Astoria.
The Waldorf Astoria is where the actual conference was taking place.
Very expensive hotel.
I couldn't get a room in there.
If I could, I would have tried.
You know, it would have been fun to say the least.
But what I was able to do through some inside information, I guess,
just people telling me various facts that were very handy,
I decided that this was a good day to get my eyebrows waxed.
And there's a place inside where you can do that.
You can get your eyebrows.
Look how nice my eyebrows are.
You can get them waxed.
And I decided, well, 12.30 p.m. on that Saturday would be a good time for me to do this.
And so I called, made that appointment, and they had to let me in.
They had to let me into the Waldorf Astoria in the middle of the World Economic Forum.
There was nothing they could do.
The Secret Service took our IDs and went somewhere to look us up.
I'm surprised they didn't find anything.
But they came back, and they said,
Hey, you're going to be escorted by the policemen with the blue jacket.
They took us into the entrance where we had to.
And here's the thing.
We had to put our bags and, you know, phones and things through the metal detector.
Although the phones we put in this ice bucket.
Hotels have ice buckets in every room.
Well, they used an ice bucket instead of one of those, like, airline trays.
And so we put our phones in there.
And you know what?
These people didn't even check my Altoid box again.
They stuck the Altoid box into the ice bucket.
And they didn't pass it through the metal detector.
They just put it onto the other side.
So who knows what could have been in that Altoid box.
Of course, there were Altoids in there.
But that's because it was me.
So anyway, after our appointment was done and we left,
we, of course, decided to go out the Park Avenue exit rather than the Lexington Avenue exit
so we could walk through the entire hotel to get there.
And we actually passed the entrance to the WEF conference.
And we saw WEF people.
And they looked very uneasy.
They looked very unhappy.
They were just, you know, they didn't look like they were having that much fun.
I'm sorry.
What does a WEF delegate look like?
They look like just uneasy people.
I mean, you know, they were wearing suits and little WEF labels on their jackets.
And, you know, there were computer terminals set up in various places.
And I actually walked around and milled a little bit.
But that only lasted about 20 seconds before they realized that we didn't have a badge.
We didn't look like we belonged there.
But I did ask the Secret Service guy if I could take a picture.
And he said, sure, go ahead.
And I took a picture.
And then one of the WEF coordinators yelled at him and said,
why did you let him take a picture?
That's unauthorized.
And so apparently that caused great damage to WEF allowing me to take a picture.
But everybody was pretty nice, you know.
Of course, we had UZIs surrounding us all the time, which, I don't know,
that really made things very nice.
But certainly felt secure against what was going on outside.
Now, what was going on outside?
Well, you may ask.
Because it certainly wasn't represented in the media.
When we walked outside, we saw that there were demonstrators across the street.
They were being pinned in.
You know, I remember demonstrations.
You used to be able to demonstrate outside places.
But these days, you have to be corralled into this little, like, you know,
farmyard area where there are fences around you.
And there's barely enough room to breathe.
And you get one per block.
And then, you know, the groups are separated by the street.
So that went up for about eight blocks.
People demonstrating.
And then there was a rally that was taking place on 59th Street and Columbus,
not Columbus Circle, 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, right?
Right.
And those people marched down, I think it was a third of Lexington Avenue
because they needed the rest of Lexington Avenue, I guess, for the cops to stand.
So they crowded everybody into this little tiny part of Lexington Avenue.
But still, everybody walked down and, you know, seemed happy and peaceful
and that kind of thing.
And I joined the march after a while.
I saw so many people there.
So many BAI supporters as well.
And after a while, they made us march to this really circuitous route.
It wasn't like you could march straight down Lexington Avenue.
How did it go?
Well, the route was close to, although not exactly,
what the organizers had requested on their permit.
The original permit asked for 42nd Street, which didn't happen.
But the circuitousness of it was to prolong the length of the march.
Okay.
Well, it certainly was a long march.
It lasted a few hours.
And somehow, and again, this is what I don't understand,
how I always seem to wind up in these situations.
But somehow, I wound up in a pen, a pen of people,
which is basically a block surrounded by fences,
on Park Avenue and 47th Street, I believe.
This was on Saturday.
And all of a sudden, we had the pens closed around us.
There was a building on one side.
There was a pen facing the street.
And there was a pen, a fence, rather, facing the street.
And fences facing each block, 46th Street and 47th Street.
So we were stuck in there.
Things started to get kind of weird because the police surrounded it
and started acting as if they were going to rush us for some reason.
We were standing there inside this pen that we didn't make.
We were just forced into the pen.
And I wasn't there to do any civil disobedience.
I don't think you were.
We were just there to talk to people,
march, and have a nice day out.
It got really weird when they started looking really hostile.
They took their nightsticks out.
They started advancing towards us.
And it just seemed like something bad was really, really imminent.
And how did that go?
It lasted for a good half hour, I think,
where basically it was a face-off of some sort.
It was a weird face-off.
It was a very strange face-off because the cops were assuming
that we were going to do something.
And we had no intention of doing anything.
All we wanted to do was be there, standing on a sidewalk.
And that was it.
Everybody was waiting for someone to make the next move.
After about a half hour of tenseness, all of a sudden they opened up the gate.
And everybody cheered.
They were very friendly, thanking the cops, that kind of thing.
And we were able to walk up.
But then we found out that all they had done was open up the gate to a bigger pen
so that we now had up to 48th Street, but we still couldn't get out.
So we were still kind of pinned in there and trapped.
It took quite a while, but eventually we were able to get out.
But it was an experience that did not have to happen.
And the cops were kind of frustrated because I think they were expecting trouble
and there was no trouble coming their way.
And that kind of was the theme of the whole weekend
because if you notice, if you're in New York City,
you might have noticed every single Starbucks had at least one cop in front of it.
Every single Starbucks.
Now, let's explore the logic of this for a second.
Now, in Seattle in 1999, there were demonstrations against the World Trade Organization.
Now, how many Starbucks windows got smashed?
One.
One?
Maybe two, I don't know.
All right, so somebody had smashed a window in Seattle,
home of Starbucks, where Starbucks came from.
So there's bound to be a little bit of animosity.
That somehow got translated to every single Starbucks needing 24-hour protection
from these hordes of people who had never said that they were going to do something like this.
Actually, no, not 24-hour protection.
Which I find the odd thing.
When I pass by some Starbucks late at night,
because if you're out late at night, it's impossible not to pass by a Starbucks,
the police were gone.
Really?
Yeah.
Now, if I were going to smash a window, which I have no intention of doing,
I would do it late at night when there's no one there to see me.
See, I saw something completely opposite.
I saw them there at 4 or 5 in the morning.
So maybe they just went somewhere else for coffee.
But that's the kind of tension that we had to face in this city,
of overreaction, of being...
And the media ate it all up and regurgitated it to the masses.
So if you weren't listening to WBAI,
anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world probably,
you probably heard that a really nasty situation was averted by the police.
That's not true at all.
That's not what happened.
Ask somebody who was there.
It was a peaceful rally, a peaceful march,
as is our democratic right to do.
Yet somehow, these days, we're told that we have to be pinned in like animals.
We have to have a really fearsome police presence.
And it's not good.
It's not something.
It's a bad movement that we're facing here.
It got worse on Sunday.
Sunday was when there were some civil disobedience actions scheduled.
And again, somehow, I wound up in the middle of it.
This was because I was down on...
Was it 12th Street and 3rd Avenue?
Or was it 13th Street?
One of those.
It was 12th Street.
It was 12th Street because the cars were going eastbound.
But there were...
There were actions all over the place.
But this particular intersection...
Just to clarify, on 12th Street,
there were two separate sort of blocks or protesters.
One on 2nd Avenue and one on 3rd.
I can't speak to what was happening on 2nd Ave.
But as someone who was there on 3rd Ave.,
I can say that all the protesters were on the sidewalk,
obeying traffic laws, not even jaywalking.
Well, okay.
Let's go over what happened here.
Basically, it started with about maybe eight people
dancing in a circle in the street.
Okay?
Okay, you know, these things happen.
And in any other country, almost any other country,
eight people dancing around in a circle inside a street,
it would be a pain in the ass maybe.
And maybe it would block traffic for a little while.
But that would be it.
We had four helicopters.
We had hundreds of police cars and trucks and buses
and all kinds of things like that.
It was as if we were being invaded.
And then finally, the funny thing is,
the police were able to push those people onto the sidewalk.
So it wasn't like they were even trying to stay in the street.
They pushed them onto the sidewalk.
And again, the whole pen thing started.
So we were all corralled into these little tiny pens.
And that's when things got kind of weird.
Because there wasn't enough room for us to stand.
And I was in the front.
I was taking pictures.
And I kept falling into the street.
And every time I fell into the street,
the cop would yell at me like, you know,
I was doing it intentionally.
But there was no way to stay there.
And finally, in the sickest part of it all,
they just charged us.
They just charged into the crowd.
Like we were standing there.
Standing there, taking pictures.
Not even chanting.
Just standing, watching.
They charge into the crowd.
And I got kicked.
I think I got kicked or I got hit by a nightstick.
I don't know.
Because I got bruises on both my feet.
But if I had done that to a cop,
that cop would, of course, be on the front page of all the papers
and listed as injured and a hero and that kind of thing.
Well, what the hell happens to people
when they're just standing on a street?
And then finally, after about an hour of this mayhem,
well, they started arresting people for, I guess,
because they looked like they were agitators or something.
Really, they were just standing on the sidewalk.
They weren't even in the street.
They came up to us with a big megaphone,
which wasn't necessary because we could hear what they were saying.
And they told us that we were blocking pedestrian traffic
and if we didn't move, we would be arrested.
And I said to the guy,
where are we supposed to move to?
Where are we supposed to go?
You have it blocked here, here, here, and here.
And then, in typical totalitarian fashion,
they said, no, you're free to go anytime.
It's like, wow, I'm free to go anytime
with all these barricades and cops with nightsticks.
Okay, thank you.
And I just walked right through them,
right through the line of cops.
I was expecting to get whacked in the head or something,
but to my surprise, I didn't.
I just basically used their logic against them
and just walked through the line, across the street.
And I think a few other people followed,
but some people got arrested and back
for not following fast enough.
In truly Orwellian fashion,
any protester who got beat up and injured by the police
was charged with assault.
Isn't that something?
Yeah.
Because if you get beat up by the police,
well, then you must have done something to deserve it.
Yeah, of course.
You know, this is something,
you have to ask people who were there.
Nothing annoys me more than people who sit at home
watching mass media, you know, consuming
and asking, what do these protesters want?
Why don't you find out?
Why don't you talk to them?
Why don't you come down?
Why don't you witness it firsthand?
And don't judge based on what the mass media tells you,
because I've never seen such lies.
I mean, CNN, cable news network,
estimated the crowd on Saturday at nearly 2,000.
Now, even the police estimated it at 15,000 plus.
And many people are saying it was over 20,000.
And, you know, you just can't have that many people
filling that kind of area and have it be such a low number.
And later, later the next day,
they had revised their figure to 1,000.
So they're just telling complete lies.
And how are you going to check that?
How are you ever going to say,
oh, no, you're wrong, I can prove it?
Nobody does.
Nobody is interested in doing that.
It's really a sad situation.
The media has really not done its job
and has taken sides.
I mean, you know, the media basically
just bought into the whole violent protester thing.
And it's a really sad thing.
I think we've seen a lot of parallels to this in our world,
you know, when we're talking about computer hackers
and we're talking about how they just don't get it
and how they don't want to get it.
Same thing.
It's the same basic thing.
They get their script from the people up above
and they read it word for word.
While we're talking about the evils of the corporate mass media,
the way many of these actions are planned
is through what's called a spokes council meeting,
where each little group of protesters
sends a representative.
And the media and the police are explicitly disinvited.
It's a private internal meeting.
But what happened was at least two newspapers,
the Post and the Independent of London,
infiltrated the meetings.
They lied when asked,
is any media here?
They kept quiet.
If I were to sneak into an internal meeting of the Post,
I would be charged with trespassing God knows what else.
But they can do it.
Or imagine if you trespassed onto the World Economic Forum.
If you managed to get into one of them,
you'd probably be shot on the spot.
It's insane.
And the only way to counter this kind of thing
is to become the media yourself
and report on these things
and support places like WBAI.
And what a great segue
into what we're supposed to be talking about tonight,
which is supporting this place.
I was very proud to hear the snippets from WBAI
this past weekend,
where we combined forces with the Indy Media Center and WBAI-X
and told people what was going on firsthand
and basically got information out
that nobody else was getting out.
Now, as you know,
we've been through hell over the past,
I guess, 14 months now.
But the light is here.
The light has come from the end of the tunnel
and we have the place back.
You have the place back.
But we are facing crippling financial problems
as a result of the shenanigans that went on,
all the wasted money.
And of course, people say this is not fair.
This is not something that we should have to cover
because of some corrupt person
who was taking over radio stations,
taking over radio networks.
True. It is very true.
And we do intend to fight that here.
We do intend to bring people to justice.
But in the interim, we have to pay the bills.
There's just no way around that.
So that's where we need your help.
Now, our number is 212-209-2950 to make a pledge.
This is probably the most important fund drive
that I've been part of
because it's the first one since the station has come back.
And for those people who have been boycotting,
and again, I expressed reservations about the boycott over the year,
but I totally understand why people did it.
But for those of you who did boycott
and didn't support the station with your donations,
well, hopefully you saved that money
and you're willing to do it now.
I mean, there's no better time than now
to show your support for our newly liberated WBAI, 212-209-2950.
Now, we got $25 while I was talking, which is nice.
But we sure need a lot more than that.
We're only on for an hour tonight.
Not sure if we're on next week.
We'll see what happens.
There are different levels, different pledge levels.
There's the $50 basic membership,
and there's the $25 for people who can afford to make a donation
but can't afford to make a big donation.
And that's for people in that category.
And then $75 is a membership.
You get a WBAI cap or tote bag or T-shirt or coffee mug.
You can choose any one of those.
And what we're going to do is, in our own little way here,
and maybe this is something that we should tell the tally people
so they don't get angry at us,
but basically we'll throw in a 2600 T-shirt, a brand-new one,
that they're being made right now.
In fact, those of you who have pledged over the last two pledge drives, yes,
we mentioned those T-shirts then as well.
It took us a long time to design them.
But I can tell you right now they are almost ready
because I saw the check go out for paying for them.
So I know they're being printed right now,
and that should be done in about a week.
They're going to go out to everybody.
So anybody who calls up with a pledge at any of those levels,
$25, $50, $75, we'll throw that in as well, or above.
We could really use some very high pledges as well
just to get this place back on its feet.
I've seen a lot of spirit here that has come back,
seen a lot of happiness.
We need to share that.
We need to bring people back into our family.
We have about three phone calls on the line,
so we have room for about 10.
We have a lot of volunteers down there.
That's another thing.
There's a lot of people in the tally room
as opposed to the last few fund drives
where I think there were like three people there.
Now there's 10, 12.
So it's a big difference, and we are making that difference.
We can all join together.
202-209-2950.
Again, $50 basic membership, $25 senior student,
or if you're laid off, victim of the economy,
$75 membership with a cap, tote bag, or a T-shirt, coffee mug,
and $150 membership with all those items,
and of course we'll throw in our T-shirt as well.
In fact, how about you?
Would you like to run in there
and just let them know that in the tally room
so they don't get angry
when people start inquiring about the T-shirts?
I should have done that earlier.
I'm sorry.
202-209-2950.
I see we have about eight calls on the line.
That's great.
That really is great.
I want to thank all the people that I saw over the weekend
who expressed support for the station in words
and the people who have sent letters as well.
It makes such a big difference
just to attach faces to names or just to hear voices
and to know that they're out there
and listening and supporting.
It's a miracle that this place is actually here.
It really is.
Minimum is about $25.
Any of these pledges, $25, $50.
So any pledge $25 or over, we'll throw in a T-shirt
at great cost to us, I might point out.
We're not selling these to the station.
We're giving them to the station.
And in fact, we're going to be donating ourselves
just to keep this place going
because we believe in it so much.
AutoJack is here from California.
How are you doing?
Good evening.
You've been following the BAI shenanigans for the past year.
I know because I've been sharing some of these MP3s with you.
In fact, people all over the country have been listening
through our server.
I've been doing the best I can.
Yeah.
Trying to keep myself updated.
So what do you make of all this?
You've come here for the first time, I think, since last year.
Yeah, last year it seemed like a completely different place.
Look at those phone lines.
Look at all those phone calls.
That's so great.
The phone keeps ringing.
Please just hang on.
Somebody will get to you.
We have 15 phones ringing right now.
I can't tell you how that makes me feel,
knowing people are out there.
I went to a party on Saturday night
being held by some of the activists on a boat.
And a bunch of us got up on stage just to give our experiences,
and I talked about the whole mess that happened on Saturday.
And when I mentioned that we were from WBAI,
the newly liberated WBAI,
that cheer, like you would not believe, broke out.
People are so happy to have this place here for them.
And the reason it stays here for them
is because the people are there to support us.
You're the sponsors.
You're the people that replace the commercials that you don't hear.
Yeah, it's a pain in the ass having to hear us beg for money.
But unlike other places that beg for money,
we don't have underwriting.
We don't have commercials.
We don't have this corporate sponsorship.
We do it from the heart.
We came really close to losing the place.
We came so close, and it was really hard.
Now, Artur Jack, you heard not only BAI,
you heard other stations as well on the Pacifica Network.
Yeah, I was listening to, I think it was KPFK in Los Angeles.
And I don't know, like a few days before
the whole liberation thing started to happen,
there was quite a bit of, I don't want to say drama
because that word gets used a lot.
Mellow drama.
Mellow drama, yeah.
It wasn't very mellow either.
It was just people basically crying on the radio.
I don't know.
I'm glad it's getting better around here.
It seems a lot more free and interesting.
When you come in here, just to give you an example
of one of the first weeks back.
There have been several weeks now,
and every week has been great.
I'm looking through.
The stupid video monitor is still here,
but the door is propped open.
I think that's kind of a symbol of WBAI.
The idiots who took over the place,
they insisted on buying this heavy-duty security system.
It's the same mentality that has a cop guarding every Starbucks
because we have to protect the place against the evil,
the evil horrors outside that want to destroy us.
Well, the evil horrors are now inside,
and this place sounds better than ever.
So you can take that attitude and take it somewhere else
because it does not apply here.
But something that happened in the first couple of weeks
when people were just getting settled in,
we had the station meeting, the local advisory board,
the one that was shut out last year.
In fact, we had the cops called and people were arrested
and we broadcast it live.
A couple of weeks ago, we had a successful meeting
here at the radio station,
and Valerie, the general manager who has returned to her job
after being ousted in December 2000,
saw the box of paper holding open the door,
and she said,
we can't have a box of paper holding open the door.
I was getting a little worried.
She said, no, we've got to use the paper.
Let's put a microphone. Stand there instead.
So it wasn't a closed-door policy.
It's not a closed-door policy. It's an open-door policy.
Yes, to get into the building, because of all the 911 shenanigans,
they request ID. That's just to get into the building.
To get into the station, you know, it's free and open,
and it's something that we want people to participate in.
209-2950. We still have a lot of phone calls on the line,
but we could certainly use more.
Again, you told them about the shirts.
They're not angry or anything?
No, they're thrilled.
Okay, great, great. That's wonderful.
Yeah, we want to throw in as much as we can.
How can I get one?
How can you get one? We'll talk after the show.
How can anyone get one?
Well, they'll be on the website once they're actually released,
but these people, the people who are pledging,
the people who pledged to the previous fundraiser
for these same shirts that we were designing then,
they're designed, they're made up,
and I can tell you something about them, too.
They will get them as soon as we get the names
of the people that pledged,
and if you pay by credit card, that's instant,
and if you pay by check, it's as soon as your check clears.
These shirts are kind of a history of all the legal problems
that 2600 has had.
It's kind of like a corporate road tour
of all the lawsuits that we've had to endure.
So it's an unusual shirt,
kind of different than what we've usually done,
and I think it's going to open up quite a few eyes.
And, of course, it has to be changed in years to come,
because I'm sure we'll get more lawsuits,
but for now, for now it's accurate and on target,
and that's something that you will get with your pledge,
in addition to all the other nice things, nice BAI things.
But, you know, that's not the reason to call
if you're calling just for that.
That's not the reason.
The reason is because you have to invest in this place
to keep it going.
You know, it's unlike anything else anywhere near this place.
Unlike anything else.
Just tune around and you'll find out.
Listen to some of the audio on the internet
to what this place sounded like during the dark period
and see what almost happened to us.
202-209-2950.
Again, $25 basic membership.
Senior citizens, students,
or generally poor people that can afford to send us something,
but, you know, aren't so poor
that we don't want people to, you know,
send their food money to us.
You know, we wouldn't want that.
$50 is the basic membership.
$75 you get a BAI cap or tote bag or T-shirt or coffee mug.
And for $150 you get all those things.
And everybody who pledges $25 or more
gets the $27 T-shirt thrown in.
Sara Fitz here.
How you doing?
Yes, hello, how you doing?
Pretty good.
What's new with you?
Not too much, but, you know,
this is the first time I've come to this station
in a very, very long time
and seen that door propped open
with a paper or a mic stand or anything at all.
Yeah, isn't that great?
It's fantastic.
I'm looking at it right now.
I mean, I want this monitor out of here.
We're still looking for somebody to buy the security system,
but what a waste that was.
That kind of thing is not going to be happening anymore.
We're going to actually be investing in programming,
in equipment, getting things fixed,
and keeping the place,
providing you with information like we did this past weekend.
If you tuned in at all over this past weekend,
you know what we mean.
Great coverage Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
of what was going on.
The only place where you could really hear the sounds.
I mean, I watched so much mass media,
and it got me so angry.
Basically, it averaged about 20 seconds,
and of course all of it focused on the police
keeping the city safe.
And I'm not putting down the police.
There's very nice people there,
and some of them are very polite,
but there's a problem.
There's a problem with the whole organization,
and I saw this on Sunday.
When we were standing there peacefully on the street
just watching,
the cops were nice people.
They were talking amongst themselves,
patting themselves on the back,
exchanging small talk with some of the protesters.
But then they got the order.
This is the thing that makes them different.
They got the order to advance,
and to just start whacking people with their nightsticks,
or kicking people,
whatever else it is that they felt they had the right to do.
Now, the people I know,
the individual people,
everybody sitting in this room,
would think before doing something like that.
I told all these people to advance
and start kicking somebody.
I think most of them would tell me what I could do,
and most of them would at least think for themselves.
The way the organization is structured
prohibits that.
It makes it impossible for somebody to actually think
and do something more humane,
and that's the problem I have.
That's what makes it different.
Yes, they're human beings.
Yes, they're nice people,
but they have this code,
this code that they must follow,
and that's where the problem is.
Unfortunately, the media just reinforces this.
There is no way,
there's no way that the demonstrators over this weekend
will get the credit for things going good.
Things going good, that means that the police
prevented them from doing something bad,
and if things went bad,
it's because the protesters did something bad.
Why don't you hold that bag up to the microphone
so we can hear it better.
It's basically,
people are doing what they have always done.
If you look back,
I wasn't around during the anti-war demonstrations
of the 60s,
but I imagine that it was a lot more open
and a lot more free.
We're not talking about terrorists here,
but we're acting as if we are,
and that's something that,
it's not right.
People need to see this.
People need to speak out,
and the only way to do that
is to listen to alternative viewpoints
and to participate.
You don't have to agree.
You don't have to agree with what people are saying,
but damn, you need to defend the right
for people to stand up and say things.
Nobody would defend the right of anybody
who threw a rock through a window.
Nobody that I know certainly would defend that.
Yet, that is how it's been portrayed.
We covered the WTO shenanigans
back in November 1999,
and it did not happen
the way it was reported in the mass media.
However, history has been rewritten.
History has been rewritten so that it did.
It's sad.
Mike, did you see anything interesting in the media?
A bunch of lies.
You had firsthand contact, obviously,
the people infiltrating.
Right.
I mean, I searched through the media
for anything interesting
and didn't really find it.
A bunch of repetition of the police line.
Really, I can't trust the media anymore.
It's sad because the media is there for us,
but it's not being run for us.
It's being run for...
I don't want to sound like I'm reciting
party lines or anything like this,
but they are being run for corporate interest.
There is no question about that.
Whenever anyone in the media
tries to do something nice for people,
they're generally shut down.
There was a New York Times reporter
who asked permission,
and so we allowed to come to one of our meetings.
There was no problem there,
to write a story about anarchism
and what it actually is.
So he wrote the story,
and it got cut, basically.
They cut out all the stuff
about what anarchists think
and put in more about how they wear bandanas.
What they want to reinforce.
Right.
Not actually what they're saying.
It's sad. It really is very sad.
It's entertainment.
Yeah.
People want to be scared.
They want to think
that there's some evil threat out there,
but you know what?
The threat ain't coming from these people.
I was never so proud
to be in a crowd of people like this.
At the party I mentioned on Saturday,
more of the same.
It's funny.
We were at the door.
In fact, you were handling admissions.
Somehow I became a bouncer for about an hour,
which was kind of fun.
Didn't really need to be a bouncer,
but it's kind of cool
to stand at the entrance to a club
and fold your arms and look mean.
How many people showed up?
You were counting.
A lot of people.
Well over 1,000.
I don't have an exact count.
I think it was over 1,200.
Yeah.
That's over 1,000.
Yeah.
That's a better number, though.
According to CNN,
that was the total march
that was in that boat
where the club was.
It's just not right.
There was something like 20,000 people there.
Have the cops left Starbucks yet?
Are they still standing outside every store?
Do you know how much money that costs?
Right.
I live up 114th Street,
and there's a Starbucks, of course,
right across the street from me.
And yesterday there were still cops standing there.
Yeah.
Well, yesterday technically.
Actually, was the conference still going on Monday?
I don't know.
There was a demonstration yesterday against Enron.
A lot of people were arrested.
I don't know a lot about it.
Well, I just wonder how much that actually costs
and whose bright idea it was
to put somebody outside all these places
and make it so that they were being threatened somehow.
I mean, I just think their abilities
could have been used in such a better way.
The fact that not a single one
was threatened in any particular way
I think underlines that.
Yeah, they'll say that it's because they were standing there.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think it would have been a good idea
to keep police presence to a minimum
and just let our goodwill, dissent, all that mesh together
and go back to democracy,
kind of like what we've done here.
You don't have to lock people out.
You don't have to have these barriers and borders and guards
where basically you let people speak.
And sometimes it gets messy,
and sometimes cars get blocked,
and you don't get what you need to get immediately.
But that's the price of freedom.
That's the real price of freedom.
And it just really annoys me
when people feel they have to give up so much
to keep their definition of freedom,
which I just don't see as free anymore.
212-209-2950.
Phone lines are empty now, and we need to add more.
We're up to about $1,000.
Here's what we're going to do.
2600 Enterprises, the people who put out 2600 Magazine,
who we're affiliated with,
will pledge a matching fund of $1,000,
which must be met between now and the end of the show.
In other words, if we get $1,000 from our listeners
from this point on, then we will donate $1,000.
And that's $2,000 for the radio station.
That's how matching funds work.
But if we don't reach $1,000,
well, that means we don't get the matching fund.
It's the way it works, sorry.
So that's the way it has to be.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be a matching fund.
So those of you who are out there now,
want to support the place,
make your dollars count twice as much by pledging.
So if you pledge $50,
you're actually giving $100 to the station
because we'll match that with another $50.
212-209-2950.
And that didn't work.
We didn't get a single phone call yet.
There's a phone call.
Okay, let's light up those phone lines.
212-209-2950, particularly those people
from around the country, around the world,
who now listen to WBAI over the internet
and hear things coming out of here
like you never heard before.
We have different levels, $25, $50, $75, $150.
You can ask the tally people who pick up the phone
exactly what it is that you can get for those.
And help support the radio station.
Keep us going.
Four calls on the line.
Let's make that eight
because that'll get us closer to the 1,000 mark
and 2,000 for the radio station.
We all have to pull together now.
This is a crisis.
It's a good crisis, though, because there's hope.
The crisis we faced over the last year,
I gotta tell you, it was kind of hopeless at points
because you just thought there was no light.
Claude, you're here.
Finished with the bag?
Well, no, I just stopped tormenting it.
Uh-huh.
So you've been around for the past,
well, you've been around forever,
but you haven't been around as much the last year.
That's right.
Why is that?
Why did you feel that this station
was not welcoming you with open arms?
It certainly wasn't.
It certainly wasn't.
And it feels, to see the door propped open,
it's a welcome relief.
Oh, yeah.
Five calls, 212-209-2950.
And to see familiar faces that I hadn't seen in a while.
Since the events of December 2000,
I think I've been here a handful of times,
and even then, only briefly,
the atmosphere was deadly.
And I hope that the air sound, which you're hearing now,
may reflect some of the more buoyant spirits
that prevail over here.
Yeah, it's kind of like a work environment
where really nasty,
and I'm sure a lot of people out there
who work for a living,
which is most of our listeners,
know this.
When nasty people take over,
they kill the environment.
They make it so that you can't express yourself
without fear of retribution of some sort.
And I almost got an ulcer doing this radio show
because of the things I'd say,
and wondering what's going to happen to me.
It's not something that I depend on for a living,
because none of us get paid to do this.
But it is a channel, a vital channel,
to get the word out about things like Kevin Mitnick,
Bernie Ass, fiber optic,
and all the things in the future.
All the things about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
and the horrible stuff that's going to be happening down the road.
We need this outlet.
We need to be able to reach people,
not only in New York City,
but throughout the entire world.
And this radio station provides that.
And to lose that,
especially because we're standing up for freedom of speech,
would have been ironic, but it would have hurt.
It would have hurt a lot.
And it was a real touchy situation
for almost the entire time.
And I don't think there was a week that went by
where I didn't feel worried about that.
It's just great to be back and not worry about that.
We can actually think about the station,
about where we're going.
Programs like we did this past weekend,
where we can cover things and teach people
and have people contribute
and provide their own diverse opinions.
That's what it's all about.
212-209-2950.
We have eight calls, so we're on the way.
There's a ton of volunteers in there,
so keep them busy.
Yeah.
And that's a good thing to see, too.
It's a good thing to see the station filled with people
as it's been the last few weeks.
212-209-2950 is our phone number.
Again, the pledged levels are 25, 50, 75, 150,
or thousands, tens of thousands,
whatever you want to contribute.
I'm sure there's rich people out there
that can appreciate the thing we do,
even if you don't agree.
I don't think rich people are evil, necessarily.
They tend to buy into things,
which I think are misguided,
but they say the same thing about us.
If we can learn to communicate,
what better way to communicate than a radio station?
And what other radio station
permits the back-and-forth dialogue
that we have here at this place?
212-209-2950.
This is the second day of the Fund Drive,
the Spring 2002 Fund Drive,
which is going to be an historic one.
We need to do better here than we've done before.
And there's a big emphasis on programming as usual
in this particular Fund Drive
because we want people to support the station,
not because they're getting a book,
not because they're getting a coffee mug,
but because they want the radio station here.
They want to invest in it.
They want to become one of our sponsors.
We don't have commercials.
If you tune around,
oh, God, the crap you hear on radio everywhere.
It got me so angry just listening
to the non-coverage of events,
important events that are taking place,
or just the same word-for-word reporting
of things that are going on around the world
or just simply the lack of things
going on around the world.
You go to other countries, and you hear this.
You go here, and you hear music and commercials,
corporate sponsorship.
And you grow up with that,
and you think that's all there is,
and your world becomes kind of dead.
You know, in terms of the radio competition for BAI,
there were two big hits over the last year or two.
I'm not sure when the two events happened.
One was WEVD just turned into another sports station.
Well, we need three sports stations.
Alternative sports.
Can't have too much sports, right?
And the other is that the BBC stopped broadcasting
to North America by shortwave.
I mean, if you want to listen to them
at 3 in the morning,
then you can tune in on an FM station.
Actually, on two FM stations now,
which is something I don't understand.
WNYE and WNYC now simulcast,
even though they both reach
about the same audience signal-wise.
NYC lost its transmitter
in the World Trade Center, obviously,
but their backup reaches, at least on my radio,
reaches as far as WNYE.
So a lot of the programming at WNYE has been canceled
to make way for NPR programming,
which I don't think is right.
I don't think they should cancel local programmers ever
for that kind of a thing.
I think that part of that had to do
with the World Trade Center bombing.
I'm not quite clear.
Yeah, obviously, because they lost a transmitter
and I guess they feel that they need to reach more people,
but they're reaching the same people.
One transmitter's in Brooklyn,
one transmitter's in New Jersey.
It's not that much of a difference.
And this is a trend.
Here in New York, of course, it's a trend nationwide
where most radio stations tend to be owned
by the same corporations in the same cities,
but here in New York,
we've seen other stations go away
that provided alternatives.
We seem to be NWK,
which used to be a great station for alternative music,
on the FM dial.
Well, that turned into a commercial,
a super-commercial station,
and all the people there got moved
to a low-power AM station,
and nobody can hear them anymore.
And, of course, that's probably going to go away
sometime soon as well.
Radio is dying.
It really is.
And this is the one spark of life.
So if you're going to contribute anywhere,
this is the place to contribute.
This is the time to contribute.
212-209-2950.
We have the $1,000 2600 matching fund,
and we're up to $2,070,
so it looks like it's a good shot that we made that.
I want to thank people who are calling in.
It makes a big difference.
It really makes a big difference.
I mean, you're not one of a small...
You're not a small part of a huge number.
We're a family.
We're a bunch of people
that pull our resources together,
and every bit matters.
When we started, we had, I think, $25,
and now we're way up there.
And by the end of the day,
the station total will be even higher than that.
By the end of the week, even higher,
because people as individuals are calling up.
We're not taking corporate sponsorships.
We're not taking grants from IBM or Microsoft
or anything like that.
We wouldn't do that.
That's not what we're about.
We're about individual contributions.
Every single one counts.
If you pledge $25, it adds up,
and that makes us get closer to our goal,
which I think is over a million dollars.
It sounds like a staggering figure.
It is a staggering figure,
but the fact that we're able to do it,
and we have in the past,
that means that people are out there,
and they're contributing.
212-209-2950.
And...
You surprised me.
You weren't around.
So many people are here.
I didn't know who was talking.
Scared me for a second.
That if you can hear these words,
you are, by definition, a listener,
and you might give some thought
and actually some action
to supporting the station
that you take the trouble to listen to.
That's right.
It's less and less worthy of being listened to.
Those of you who came to the demonstrations
and to help support the station,
Autojack, you were at two of the demonstrations,
weren't you?
Yeah, I believe I was.
Now, apart from me asking you to,
why would you come to a demonstration
to support a radio station
3,000 miles away from where you live?
I don't know.
Over time, I've begun to enjoy listening
to things that I hear on WBAI,
even listening to it over the internet.
For as long as I can remember,
there has been interesting programming.
It did get a little fuzzy for a while,
and that sucks,
but it's a lot better now,
especially after listening to it
the last weekend or two.
I'm really glad people like Mike Fader
and Bob Fast are now back on the air.
Yeah.
It's such a secure feeling
to be able to turn on the radio
and hear a friendly voice,
not being talked down to,
not being shouted at,
not having people be cut off,
not being told to say goodbye,
but instead to say hello.
That's what we need.
We have names.
Actually, Mike, I'm going to give you this story
because you might have some more information about it.
It concerns the guy who was running RaiseTheFist.com,
which we talked about last week.
If you hand me those names,
I'll thank those people.
While you interpret,
try to filter out the media crap
that's in that story
since it comes from a major newspaper.
If you want to add your name to the list
that he's about to read,
you can call 212-209-2950
and pledge any amount,
$25, $50, $75, $150.
You'll get all kinds of BAI goodies
in exchange for that,
and anybody pledging $25 or more
will get a 2600 t-shirt,
the new 2600 t-shirt,
which nobody has seen yet,
including me.
I haven't seen it.
I've seen the artwork.
I've seen the artwork,
and it's really cool.
We should have the shirts ready
in about a week,
and that's when they'll start going out.
Both the people who pledged
for the last couple of pledge drives
and these people
who were kind enough to pledge for us.
It's just one of the contributions
that we feel we have to make.
In addition to our $1,000 matching fund,
which I'm hoping that we're going to reach,
I'm going to go in there
and another indication,
not a very good indication,
but an indication of how vital people are
if we miss it by $5.
Sorry, guys.
That's how it works.
One person could have called up
and reached the matching fund for $1,000.
If it's $995,
one person...
A different kind of tipping point.
Yeah.
So, 212-209-2950.
The time is now...
Why are you putting on a mask?
I'm putting on a mask
because apparently it makes me violent and evil.
Yeah.
You were wearing a mask over the weekend,
but it was because it was cold, I think.
Right.
It was really cold outside.
Apparently, wearing this mask
makes me a violent anarchist.
Uh-huh.
Is that what the newspaper was saying?
Yeah.
They found a mask similar to the one I'm wearing now
in the home of Sherman Austin,
who's from California,
who used to run a website called raisethefist.com
until that website was shut down by the FBI.
Wait, they found a mask in his home in California?
Right.
Okay, fine.
I guess that's a real threat to people in New York.
Am I the only person that didn't bring a prop?
Also, an open bag of Miracle-Gro.
Well, you don't know what you're going to grow.
It could be all kinds of things.
Anyway, he's going to be in court Thursday at 2.30 p.m.
if people want to show up for that.
He's been charged with a felony,
which is criminal distribution of information
about explosives and weapons of mass destruction,
whatever that means.
So that court is where?
I'm not sure if it's in L.A. or New York.
It's a very poorly written article.
They fly him all the way into New York.
Well, he was in New York for the WEF protests.
Okay.
This article appeared in Newsday today.
All right.
Well, you can go to their website
and maybe translate what they're saying.
You can't go to their website.
It's been shut down.
Newsday.com?
Oh, Newsday.
Yeah, try to translate their story.
Let's quickly thank people
because we have to get out of here.
And again, this is the last chance to call for this program.
212-209-2950.
If you're outside the country,
country code is 1, of course.
212-209-2950.
Pledge what you can for the radio station.
Keep us going.
And it'll go twice as far at the moment.
That's right.
We have five calls on the line.
We're up to 2,070.
Hopefully there's more that hasn't been counted yet.
But we do need to reach that $1,000 in the past 20 minutes
for the matching fund to be effective.
I want to thank John from Brooklyn.
We want to thank Kurt from Richland, Washington.
Out of state pledge there.
Thanks so much.
We want to thank Heath.
Great name.
Heath from Edison, New Jersey.
And Gary from Bloomfield, New Jersey.
A lot of New Jersey listeners tonight.
Judy from San Francisco, California.
We want to thank Carol Ann from Brooklyn, I believe.
They didn't write Brooklyn.
I'm going to have to write that on this.
See, the Brooklyn are Queens.
But it looks like Brooklyn, the address.
We want to thank Daniel from Albany.
And Greg from Atlanta.
Joshua from Bayonne, New Jersey.
Jim from Paramus, New Jersey.
Jack from New Rochelle, New York.
We want to thank Patricia from New York, New York, for her contribution.
Paul from Stokesdale, North Carolina.
Thank you so much for your pledge.
Mark from Brooklyn, New York.
And Jeffrey from Brooklyn.
We also want to thank Tim from Greenlawn, out there on the island.
Bill from, okay, this, I can't read.
Glennett Springs, New York.
Somewhere around.
Thanks.
Sorry if we butchered the name.
And we want to thank Ann from New York for her generous pledge as well.
And if you didn't hear your names, because we didn't get the names quickly enough,
because, well, your calls are still coming in, which is great.
212-209-2950.
Thanks, everybody, for calling in and being a part of this.
It makes so much of a difference.
And hopefully we'll be able to prove that to you in the days, weeks, months, years ahead.
It makes an incredible difference.
Thanks again.
And we'll see you next week, hopefully.
Good night.