Over here at the Prometheus Radio Project,
we are lucky enough to have an amazing team of interns, volunteers,
staff, and allies who have been working to tell as many folks as
possible about their last chance to get a big, noncommercial radio station
for their communities. One room of our three room office was converted
into a call center -- just in time for hundreds of calls, from Florida
to Maine to Kansas to Alabama to Wyoming and beyond, to pour into our
basement office.

The full power team is waiting, now, for the moment where the FCC opens
up their website to receive the painstakingly-filled-out applications,
from social justice coalitions working for community rights in
Mississippi -- to ACORN affiliates in Connecticut -- to symphony
orchestras without an outlet
for classical music in towns across the nation. Now that the Commission
has decided to limit the number of applications that any one group can
file, strong, local groups have a much better chance of getting that
construction permit from the Commission -- their ticket to begin
putting up a tower, assembling a studio, and finally going on the air.

But as focused as the full power team is right now on the details of
getting these applications together, one by one, with groups across the
nation -- the largest part of our movement's work to build strong local
radio is just beginning. As Zane Ibrahim, founder of South Africa's legendary grassroots radio station, Bush Radio, likes to say -- community radio is 10 percent radio -- and 90 percent community.

"Why do people want community radio stations?" I get asked that all the
time -- usually by guys with Bluetooth cell-phone adapters in their
ears, and personal electronic devices in each hand. "Can't people
connect online? On blogs? On MySpace?" People do connect online,
and we have to make sure that people's power over the internet grows,
rather than declines in the face of big broadcasters. But while these
technologies are more and more available across the nation and around
the world, we've found that a bricks-and-mortar community radio station
makes different people come together to share a resource -- kids and
grandparents, immigrants and politicians, Christians,
80's hair metal enthusiasts, science-fiction hip hop connosieurs, and
your local superintendent of schools. Community radio builds community,
in our cities and towns -- at least, that's the idea.

For every full power FM radio station that goes to radical infoshops in Kentucky and youth music collectives in Michigan,
there are dozens, if not hundreds, more groups that lost out this time
around -- possibly the last time that the FCC will ever give out full
power FM radio stations for free to regular people with something to
say in their local area. In many cases, their city had too many
stations on the dial for them to be able to apply for a 5000 or 50,000
watt frequency. Other groups deliberated over the cost of hiring an
engineer to fill out their application -- a few thousand dollars --
money that's hard to come by for a collective just starting out --
radio a twinkle in their eye.

For all these groups that won't get a radio station as a result of this
rare, full power FM window -- and for all the thousands of other
organizations that have been waiting for years and decades to build
their own radio stations -- we have to turn to the next phase of the
fight to expand community media -- low power FM radio (LPFM).

Back in 2000, groups like the ones I named, and scores of other people
across the country, organized at the FCC untill they started the low
power FM radio service -- an inexpensive, local way for community
groups to build their own radio stations. Broadcasting at 100 watts,
these stations were meant to serve small communities in America's
biggest cities -- and thousands of smaller suburbs and towns across the
nation.

However, our country's biggest broadcasters did what they usually do
when real people want to use a resource reserved for the American
people -- they cried 'interference' -- pretending like there would be a
technical problem if thousands of churches, municipalities, and other
non profits took to their own airwaves. They said that if you put a
small station on the air -- at 100 watts or less -- next to a big
station in a big city -- that the little station would cause 'oceans of
interference' -- making the Clear Channels and NPR's of the world
unlistenable for thousands of people in the area.

The FCC thought that that the claims of the big broadcasters were
unfounded, to put it politely, and fought to keep the service the way
it was. Still, our legislators thought that there was enough concern
about LPFM to limit it to places like Opelousas, Louisiana -- rather than New Orleans -- Chanute, Kansas,
rather than Kansas City -- and so on. Because of the Congressional
restriction on how we could use our own airwaves, over 70 percent of
the potential licenses were lost -- thousands of new community voices
were silenced.

Congress ordered the FCC to study what potential interference LPFMs
might cause if they were allowed to be licensed closer on the dial to
big stations. They commissioned an independent firm, the MITRE
corporation, to determine whether or not LPFMs would cause interference
-- once and for all. Their study came back crystal clear -- there was
plenty of room for LPFMs all over the country -- and now was the time
to expand this service all across the nation.

We've been waiting since 2003 for bills to pass in Congress, but now,
because of the media organizing people like you are doing around the
nation, we have a real shot. Congressmembers Mike Doyle, the Democrat
from Pittsburgh and Lee Terry, the Republican from Nebraska, introduced
a bill this summer which is poised to expand LPFM to your community and
across the nation. Their bill, the Local Community Radio Act of 2007, House Bill 2802,
would take the MITRE study's findings into account, and allow thousands
more groups to get a small slice of the airwaves that they own.

The Senate is acting on this too -- Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has
joined with Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) to introduce their companion
bill in the Senate -- Senate Bill 1675.

The House bill has over 50 cosponsors, and the Senate bill is due to
move fast -- but, just like we've been doing at the FCC, we need to
keep pushing our legislators to cosponsor these vital pieces of
legislation. No big lobbying groups are going to win more community
radio for us -- we need to come together to ask our legislators to
bring radio stations to us.

Believe me -- your letter or phonecall to your legislator is 100 times
more powerful than anything that a lobbyist in Washington, DC can do.
Let's win more community radio stations for all of us -- today -- by asking our Senators and Congressmembers to cosponsor the Local Community Radio Act of 2007!