More FCC testimony examples

Hi all,

You asked me to provide you with more examples to help you shape your own public testimony at the FCC hearing this Friday (4pm-11pm at Town Hall, get there as early as you can!).

Click here to see a bunch of transcribed testimonies from the last FCC hearing at the Seattle Public Library November 30th. And here to listen to a one-hour audio special that KBCS put together after this same hearing collecting many (not all) of the testimonies.

My testimony is somewhere in the middle of this radio special, but since you asked I've also transcribed it below for you. I don't think it's perfect, and I haven't yet figured out exactly what I'll say this time, but if you do need a hand shaping your own testimony or want me to look over a draft that you've written I am totally available.

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Lila's testimony at the FCC Hearing November 30th, 2006

"Hello, my name is Lila Kitaeff and I’m here today to speak as a media maker. I work with Reel Grrls, a filmmaking and media literacy program for teenage girls. Our youth are bombarded by corporate media every single day, giving them the same, often harmful, messages over and over. We teach them how to make their own media because we think it’s so important that everybody have a voice and a right to communicate and those independent platforms must stay open.

I also work with PepperSpray Productions, an all-volunteer activist video collective. Our work plays on Seattle Cable Access Network and ten other stations nationwide. We cover events where, more often than not, the corporate media outlets don’t even bother to show up.

I want to speak very briefly about an event that we covered this past summer; a Radio Barnraising in Woodburn, Oregon, a town with a majory latino population. The farmworkers’ union there, PCUN, had been buying airtime on a local commercial radio station. But when the station found out that they were organizing farmworkers on the air, they kicked them off before their contract was up. So with the help of the Prometheus Radio Project and hundreds of volunteers, PCUN built their own low-power FM radio station. Big media had closed the door in their faces. How incredible that this was the only way they could make their voices heard.

We demand more low power FM licenses and no elimination and de-funding of public access. Thank you."