Tell Somebody

This week on Tell Somebody, Ira Harrit, Program Director of American Friends Service Committee - Kansas City and co-chair of the KC Iraq Task Force talks about a rally on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, followed by "Breaking Bread" a dinner benefit with Iraqi refugees and Iraq War veterans on the weekend before the 6th anniversary of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Then we'll talk with media activist Alice Kitchen and journalist Bruce Rodgers about a petition effort to convince KCPT, Kansas City's PBS affiliate, to stop pre-empting  Now and Bill Moyers Journal every time they have a pledge drive.  This effort resulted in an invitation from the television station for would-be media reformers to man the phone banks during a pledge drive to try to demonstrate that quality public affairs programming really can make the station money.  We'll talk about how that effort fared, and about the state of the media generally. And finally, Eyewitness to the Russian Revolution, February, 1917, Part 3.  H

March 16th marks the sixth anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death in Gaza after being run over by an American-supplied Israeli bulldozer.  The play My Name is Rachel Corrie opens at the Unicorn Theater in Kansas City on March 19th.  On this edition of Tell Somebody, you'll hear some comments former CIA analyst Ray McGovern made about Rachel while he was here in Kansas City in October, 2008, and then an interview with Rachel's parents, Craig and Cindy Corrie, that I recorded when they were here in October 2006. After that, hear the words of Hugo Hakk, young officer in the Army of Czar Nicholas, in part two of the multi-part Eyewitness to the February Revolution.  Hakk is on leave from the Eastern front in February, 1917, and finds himself in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in the days leading up to the revolution.

The cold war ended years ago.  With economic, energy,  and climate crises front and center, are superpower nuclear arsenals still a major concern?  Dr. Ira Helfand of Physicians for Social Responsibilty gives his views. Last October FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein sent a message to media reformers in Kansas City, and it is still relevant today. And finally, the first installment of a never before published eyewitness account of the February 1917 Revolution in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) opens with 19 year old machine gun officer/trainer Hugo Hakk heading home from the Eastern front for a month's leave.

This week on Tell Somebody we'll hear the audio from "Fight for the Land", a runner up in You Tube's "Project: Report - Telling the Untold Stories" a national video competition held in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.  "Fight for the Land" was produced by Rhonda LeValdo, host of Native Spirit Radio, Kansas City's only Native American Radio show, airing on 90.1 FM KKFI/www.kkfi.org on Sundays at 6pm Central Time. After that, most of this week's show deals with the Homelessness Marathon, an annual 14 hour broadcast being heard on KKFI and over one hundred other stations around the country starting Monday evening February 23rd.  This segment features an interview with Homelessness Marathon director Jeremy Weir Alderson

R. Crosby Kemper III quit his post as chairman and CEO of one of the biggest banking companies in the Midwest to become head of the Kansas City, MO library system.  Kemper will talk about why he took the job, the history of the library in Kansas City, library services and programs, and the upcoming "Big Read", an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture.  This year the "Big Read" selection is Tobias Wolff's Old School, which will be read daily on the air on 90.1 FM KKFI this April. To save a copy of this show to your computer, right click on the .mp3 filename below and choose "save target as."

KKFI co-founder Tom Crane is in the studio telling some of the history of Kansas City's community radio station, as we look to past editions of Tell Somebody including Liia Hakk, who lived under German and Soviet occupations in World War II recalling the importance of radio to her family during the war, Jumana Musa, Amnesty International USA Advocacy Director for Human Rights and International Justice talking about her trips to Guantanamo Bay, Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice on the importance of alternative media, and Iraq Veteran Against the War Tomas Young on the music of "Body of War", the Ellen Spiro/Phil Donahue film - all on this pledge drive edition of Tell Somebody.

An interview with the author of Killing for Coal, America's Deadliest Labor War, comments on media reform by Michael Copps, the new interim chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and an excerpt from a speech on single payer healthcare by medical studtent Tim Lyon.    

Mohammed Atwa is a Kansas City resident with Palestinian family members in Gaza. Mr. Atwa’s mother works for the UN and lives in Gaza, while his brother is a journalist for Ramattan, the only news organization reporting live on events in the Gaza Strip during the recent crisis. Mr. Atwa stated on the program "my house [in Gaza] was bombed. This is the second time actually that my house was bombed." Listen online:

This week's Tell Somebody radio program features a continuation of a conversation with Ray McGovern, former CIA official and now political activist.

During the Obama transition, 27 year veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern appeared weekly on Tell Somebody to comment on appointments and other goings-on.  On this edition, Ray talks about reports of Leon Panetta as prospective head of CIA and Admiral Blair as Director of National Intelligence.

Last week, so-called 'moderate' Democratic senators moved to drop "card check" from the Employee Free Choice Act.  The right-wing nutcakes have successfully spun a fairy tale about the loss of secret ballots, and the "moderate" Democrats have caved. I thought this would be a good time to post an edition of Tell Somebody from last December where we heard about EFCA in some detail from the Kansas City-based Institute for Labor Studies director, Judy Ancel. The second segment of the show has former CIA analyst Ray McGovern talking about U.S. torture policy, one of a series of weekly appearances by McGovern during the Obama transition last winter. Tom Klammer www.tellsomebody.us mail@tellsomebody.us