Participate in keeping Local Control of Media

The following issues and net neutrality (not corporate controlled) are critical. At present the majority of Americans are getting Orwellian news fabricated by the media corporations who also own weapons production corporations and thus profit from war. These "news" fabrications are then picked up and spread. Keep communicating with the FCC on these issues as it will not go away until corporations no longer own the White House and Congress.
At present the internet is one of the few places where uncensored news and views can be found. Fight for net neutrality at every opportunity and let your Represenatives and Senators know that you know several hundred folks (or more) who feel and vote the same as you do. The Democrats (beholding to Corporations for funding their elections) are on probation because of our voter turn out, we must take this window of opportunity to make sure they are educated.
I got a law made, making October 2, 1988 a National Day of Recoginition for Mahatma Gandhi by talking with every legislator's office on the Hill. I had to get 51% of Congress and 51% of the Senate to co-sponsor the bill before it could come up for a vote. I was on the phone for six months talking with the person in the Senators and Represenatives office that handled that type of legislation. What worked was when I said I knew of 60,000 people in their constituency that wanted the same as I did and just specifically how many did they need to 1) show up in their office; 2) call; 3) write; and 4) vote against them if they didn't support it. The last threat I never brought up but it was implied.
The other part of my team at the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation (GIMF) was Santanam Chary. He would communicate to the East Indian communities across America to contact Senators to co-sponsor Senate Joint Resolution 169 and Representatives to co-sponsor House Joint Resolution 330, especially those that needed to recieve requests to do so. We discovered after going to Washington, D.C. that we got better access from using the pay telephones in the hallway than we did showing up and trying to speak with someone in the office. After the President signed the approved Joint Resolutions into law we went to the Oval Office for a photo opportunity.
This experience added to the three months I spent on the Hill, lobbying for First Aid to be required of all Forest Service and National Park employees, after Mt. St. Helens blew I learned that: a hand written letter has the most weight; then individually typed letters (I witnessed these being tallied up); faxes; short to the point e-mails and telephone calls.
The Forest Service did not want the First Aid law and I was the only one speaking for it (an Agriculture Committe member told me this). It was voted out of Committee and on to the Floor for a vote. (Most legislation dies in Committee.) I split my time between looking for work in the Senate, showing what I could do and I volunteered at Democratic National Headquarters. I'd known in January 1980 that President Carter would lose and I wanted to do everything I could to make my knowing not be so.
Several issues in addition to Corporate Control of Media and the Internet will come up in the next two years that will be critical. Please, participate in the legislative process, especially in Olympia where the fate of the Puget Sound Partnership will have a chance of being successful or not.
Speaking Truth to Power, TmkG

Chairman Kevin J. Martin
cc: Commissioners:
Michael J. Copps; Jonathan S. Adelstein; Deborah Taylor Tate; Robert McDowell
Federal Communication Commission, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20554
October 9, 2006

Comments Re: Expansion of Corporate Media Ownership

Honorable Chairman and Commissioners:

This is a submission of my comments to the record on expanding ownership of Corporate Media. Corporate Media already has too much control and it should be broken up to allow more local ownership of television, radio and newspapers. To give mega corporations more would be anti-democratic and an insult to the air waves that are supposed to be where community dialogue could take place. If there had not been such an expansion Fox’s Orwellian War is Peace would not have had such a huge advantage in repeating the misrepresentations coming out of the Bush administration to take us to war.
Los Angeles is an example. The Los Angeles Times decided to charge multiple times the going rate and limit the content of an ad announcing an opportunity to testify on this issue at your recent meeting.
My own experience in 1998 as one of two running the only radio station for 100 miles in any direction in Rawlins, Wyoming is an example. We were live in the morning with local weather, school information, a swap and shop segment and covered on location promotions for local business. The Going Fishing song was the most requested. We did tests on the Emergency Channel and if anything happened the phone would ring off the hook wanting to know, “what was that explosion or questions on whatever happened”. We would find out and let the community know. We covered election night and had the office seekers on to discuss, “why we should vote for them”. On Friday nights the high school got to produce their show. On Sundays local residents produced a Spanish show. In the afternoon we would switch it to the satellite. We always knew that it was 3:47 PM because Spirit in the Sky would play out of Denver with the same music every day. As long as Jolene could sell $15,000.00 in ads the owners were fine with us having a local community radio. The engineer for the owners was stationed 250 miles away. He showed me a new station; it was a continuous CD player in a closet. Community radio has died in Rawlins and with it a sense of community.
I came back to the west coast for family and in 1999 had a radio show in Bremerton, Washington. It really creates a sense of community to have community radio. More and more that possibility has been diminished by your rulings.
Please do not expand Corporate Media’s ownership. You would better be serving “we the people” by revoking your previous expansion and or open the analog frequencies to community ownership as the big guys have gone digital.

Respectfully submitted,
Theresa Marie K. Gandhi