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FEBRUARY 2014 e-Newsletter
This Newsletter was made with 100% recycled electrons! No trees were destroyed and no animals were harmed. |
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- Monday, February 3, 6:30pm-mixer, 8pm - show, MONDAY NIGHT COMEDY, TOO RAW FOR RADIO: Our monthly pro show has drawn RAVE REVIEWS from enthusiasts and critics alike. Join Brooklyn's own Dave Lester (TV1, Freakonomics) as he hosts a night of hilarious irreverent funny folks waaaay too raw for radio, proceeded by a reception with drinks and vegetarian fare provided by Powerful Pioneers Catering to loosen up the old gears. The best, healthiest happy hour in town!
This month's line up:
Hadiyah Robinson (BET ComicView)
Cory Fckn Fernandez ("Cop Out" and Comedy Central Stand-Up)
Subhah Agarwal (Irreverently funny Femme Fatale)
Mike Cannon (MTV)
Tickets: $25 at the door - proceeds to benefit WBAI
At The Commons, 388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
- February 14, Friday, 6pm-9pm: Live Broadcast of A Homecoming of Love and Liberation for Lynne Stewart - A fundraiser for immediate medical needs, an evening of song and celebration. Attend the event at St. Peter's Church - The Jazz Church- at 619 Lexington Ave (54th St & Lexington Ave), admission is free, donations are suggested. More info here.
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Lynne Stewart is welcomed by family and friends at LaGuardia Airport
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WBAI 2014 Silent Art Auction
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WBAI is proud to announce that Robert Curcio of Curcio Projects has been named curator of the 2014 Silent Art Auction that will take place in early April.
We are calling on our artist friends to donate works for a silent auction that will take place both online and at a live gallery event. Artists, please send photos and contact information to auction@wbai.org and join artists like Tom Otterness, Richard Avedon, and Kiki Smith who have contributed to make the event both a well respected and well attended fundraiser for WBAI. |
From February 3rd to February 28th WBAI will be airing our annual WINTER FUND DRIVE.
But not to worry - few of your favorite shows will be preempted.
The management at WBAI has heard you.
We are cutting down on pre-emptions, cutting down on premium thank you gifts and instead, we are asking you to support the shows that are your favorites. The premium is the program!
What we cannot cut out are fund drives - it's how we keep the programs, the topics, the issues you want to hear on the air free of any influence by commercial or government interests.
- CALL 212.209.2950 TO GIVE IN THE NAME OF YOUR FAVORITE SHOW OR ALL WBAI SHOWS -
DONATE ONLINE AT: give2wbai.org
During the month of February, listen to hear:
- New perks when you donate
- Ticket give aways
- Call - ins to let us know what you are thinking about
MORE: 
BAI BUDDY MONDAYS - to show our appreciation, anyone signing up to be a BAI Buddy will be included in a chance for a giveaway of an iPod Nano, loaded with 'The BEST of WBAI' audio, on each Monday of the month: 2/3, 2/10, 2/17, 2/24. Notifications of the recipients will be made on Tuesday of each week.
Become a BAI BUDDY HERE
MORNING MUSIC GUEST HOSTING:
Listeners making donations to the Morning Music shows, airing  from 10am to noon Monday to Friday, will be included in a chance to be a guest host on the show to which they donate. Donations will be taken over the first three weeks of February and the hosting experience will take place during the 4th week: Feb 24-28. Notifications will be made during the third week, 2/17-21.
The Morning Music shows include:
All Mixed Up
Thump + Growl
No Questions Asked
Turn It Up, Tecla
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 Attorney and author Michael Smith is a co-host of WBAI's "Law + Disorder", heard on Monday mornings at 9 o'clock a.m. Along with WBAI hosts Richard Wolff, Michael Ratner, Harriet Fraad, and Democracy Now's co- host Juan Gonzalez, Michael is a contributor to a new book, Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA.
The collection of essays, edited by Francis Goldin, Debby Smith, and Michael Steven Smith, is at once an indictment of American capitalism as the root cause of our spreading dystopia and a cri de coeur for what life could be like in the United States if we had economic as well as a real political democracy. This anthology features essays by revolutionary thinkers, activists, and artists-including Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, civil rights activist Angela Davis, incarcerated journalist Mumia Abu Jamal - addressing various aspects of a new society and, crucially, how to get from where we are now to where we want to be, living in a society that is truly fair and just. The book is included in a package offered during our WINTER FUND DRIVE here. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Michael Smith. The interview in its entirety can be accessed here.
WBAI: How did you meet your two co-hosts, Michael Ratner and Heidi Boghosian?
SMITH: Michael lived around the corner from me in the Village. This is 25 years ago.
He got elected as President of the National Lawyers Guild and came over to ask me to
work on their magazine, "Guild Notes." We've been friends and comrades ever since. Heidi was hired as Executive Director of the Guild a dozen years ago. We started doing "Free Mumia" work together.
WBAI: Are the three of you practicing law?
SMITH: When I got out of law school I thought, well, I wasn't going to practice law just to make rich people richer. Michael and Heidi thought the same. I dodged the Vietnam draft by getting into the domestic peace corp. They sent me to Detroit's inner-city to do poverty law. I did tenant organizing and was active in the anti-war movement and I got the book "Malcolm X Speaks" into the city's bookstores. When I got out of the program I was too old to be drafted and I helped start up a movement law firm.
WBAI: What kind of work did you do?
SMITH: We advised DRUM, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and we represented people resisting the draft and organizing against the war in the military. I went down to Fort Jackson in South Carolina on a case called The Fort Jackson 8. The extraordinary Leonard Boudin was the main lawyer. We won and extended lst amendment rights for soldiers to march in protests and to publish anti-war newspapers and keep them in their lockers.
When the GI's started turning against the war it was all over. Then I moved to New York City in l97l, worked for Pathfinder Press, a socialist publishing house, and then got a job at Harlem Legal Services and moved on to represent indigent merchant mariners at The Center for Seafarers' Rights. I ran their legal aid program. Lately I have been suing insurance companies on behalf of injured persons.
WBAI: What about Michael and Heidi?
SMITH: Michael clerked for Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley when he got out of law school, practiced criminal law briefly and then joined the staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which came out of the civil rights movement of the sixties. The day after he took the job they sent him up to Attica to deal with the rebellion. Bill Kunstler, a founder of the CCR, was already up there. Michael became Litigation Director and then President. He did a lot of work representing Cuba and the Sandinista revolutionaries in Nicaragua. Now he is representing Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Hard to believe, but he has been at the CCR for forty years. He is now President Emeritus.
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During the 2014 WINTER FUND DRIVE, Feb 3-28, only the following shows will be pre-empted:
- Monday to Friday in the 6-7am time slot: Law + Disorder, Project Censored, Against the Grain, Economic Update, Guns + Butter
- Monday to Friday in the 3-5pm time slot: Letters + Politics, Sojourner Truth
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