(Published in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Newsletter, (7.5.89), after several members of the steering committee of WBAI’s Listeners’ Action on Homelessness and Housing, were honoured by CPB for a series of live, organizing thousands of NYers, over several weeks, to distribute information on homelessness and housing issues, work together constructing squats and marching by the thousands, finally sitting down at Manhattan’s 57th St and Fifth Ave, chosen for its proximity to Trump Tower.)
By David Mendelsohn, producer
As I accepted the Golden Reel Award in May on behalf of WBAI-FM, which was cited in the “special event” category, visions passed through my mind of the country’s largest homelessness and housing demonstration, with 15,000 participants marching across Manhattan’s 57thStreet. At this National Federation of Community Broadcasters conference I remembered how a wonderful expression of hope and anger – but most of all unity – had begun five years ago.
Paul Gorman, free-form host of WBAI’s Lunchpailprogram, was winding up a discussion of the individual’s responsibility toward social evils. For example, the many Allied leaders who knew of the Holocaust as it was carried out, but did little or nothing to stop it, were condemned by a caller who said, “It’s no different with us right now. We have all heard that a holocaust through starvation is about to occur in Africa, and what are we as individuals doing?”
The caller raised that question nine months before the Live-Aid benefit concert.
With two minutes remaining in Lunchpail, Gorman, feeling something significant in his “air” said, “You’re right…I don’t know what we can do…but…if anyone listening has access to a place where we could meet, call us now.” The next day 30 people met and a month later, during Hanukkah and on the last Sunday before Christmas 1984 we distributed 2,000 cards pledging money for African famine relief, “instead of another present for the holidays.”
GETTING TO WORK
That first year fewer than 50 “Listeners’ Action” volunteers worked out the plan, donated the card stock and printing, got the street permits, delivered the cards, created the posters and leaflets and staffed the tables. Only four Lunchpailprograms supported the “action,” offering information about the famine, giving the place and time of the next meeting and reporting on it and raising the question of our personal responsibility toward others – particularly children.
Participants talked of their feelings as they offered the cards or relayed what passers by said. Cab drivers called for site locations and were immediately put on the air to say why they cared.
The effort that first year was modest, but the happy sounds of a radio station’s community coming “out of the air” to defy apathy and do some good was stirring.
The following fall word went out that homelessness would be our focus and finding a way to help began again. Food and clothing were collected, housing policy literature was distributed. I was site coordinator at a shanty town where “Listeners’ Action” volunteers built two wooden units of plastic insulated shelter. By the end of our day’s work two homeless men who preferred the autonomy of a shanty dwelling to the dangers of a public shelter moved in, bringing smiles and tears all around.
In the next two years housing and homeless activists came into our little do-gooding band. The focus of “Listeners” Action” extended beyond charity; we began to work with our hands, helping to renovate vacant buildings and, using our communications skills, to apply political pressure to restore public funding for low-income housing. We had candle-light vigils, led by members of the clergy who reminded us of our duty toward those in need and by the homeless and their advocates showing what needed to be done.
In the first year 1,500 people came out of the air to bear witness to their concern and 5,000 came the next year. Each year more food was collected and distributed. WBAI’s “Listeners’ Action” had touched a nerve. People had heard enough about the suffering and were ready to do something once a way was offered.
GIVING GOVERNEMENT A PUSH
In 1989, “Listeners’ Action” was the most successful means of motivating and organizing people for social action in the New York City metropolitan area. Last December’s Housing Action Week, the brainchild of “Listeners’ Action,” involved 175 community groups; churches; unions; other homelessness groups and housing organizations; 1,000 volunteers at 100 food-collection sites; Bill Moyers; Garrison Keillor; rock stars; movie stars; Jesse Jackson; and 15,000 marchers. The city government received a needed push to close down the welfare hotels and build permanent housing.
Accomplishments aside, as a public television and radio producer and audience member, the pleasure of “Listeners’ Action” has been to meet fellow listeners to my station. It was New York’s version of the open egalitarian atmosphere of a New England town meeting combined with the can-do optimism of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland when they’ve decided to “put on a show,” and all of that backed by wind ensembles, gospel singing and rap oratory.
All the diversity, refined sophistication and raw soul of a New York public radio station had come out of the air in a rich synergy.
I’ve told some of the story of WBAI’s “Listeners’ Action” in New York. But as such listener action spreads, each station will find its own heart, style and purpose in its unique body of listeners as they come together to address the moral challenge of homelessness, racism and drugs in their communities.
WBAI has found that doing good does well. The station has increased its audience and contributions, received good press, networked with other community organizations, and has now received an award for powerful, innovative radio. “Listeners’ Action” is an extension of the community broadcasting mission.
The station sets aside time with the right host, and the listeners meet, set the agenda and go to work as they see fit, putting into action what their hearts and minds demand.
If our NFCB conference workshop is an indication, next year we will see “Listeners’ Action” groups discussing race relations, drugs, gangs and homelessness and housing, as people come out of the air to make a difference.
David Mendelsohn is a producer at WBAI-FM in New York.
