How Internet Radio Can Change the World

The Wobblies taught the labour movement to sing. I was reminded of this a couple of years ago in the city of Inchon, South Korea. I was part of an international delegation of people from metal workers’ unions and we were paying a courtesy call on the leaders of the Daewoo car workers. At the time, they were holed up in the city’s cathedral, where they had sought asylum from the police.
Each of us was asked to say a few words to the hundreds of Daewoo workers who were encamped on the cathedral grounds. One of those who spoke was a UAW official (and a Wobbly) who grabbed the microphone with a courage which I could never muster and sang “Solidarity Forever”. I’m not sure how much the Korean auto workers understood of the song’s lyrics, or if they knew its history, but I, for one, was deeply touched.
Maybe it was at that moment that the idea for Radio LabourStart gelled in my mind.


I have long been convinced that we should be using the Internet for more than just the creation of text and still images on websites. In fact, in my 1996 book on the subject of unions and the Internet, I had a chapter on streaming multimedia and its potential uses by trade unions. More than seven years have passed since I wrote that, and unfortunately, little progress has been made.
Perhaps the most ambitious step so far was the launch of the Workers Independent News Service (WINS), which can be found on the web at http://www.laborradio.org. WINS is a great idea, but they’ve limited themselves to producing a daily three minute news summary and some features, and these are made available to “real” radio stations to be played to a large audience. A great idea — but not the kind of online labour radio station I was dreaming of.
A great labour radio station would start out on the web, but also be available for re-broadcast via FM and AM stations, via satellite and through whatever other means become available. It should be multi-lingual, reaching out to the workers of the world in their own languages. It should include news, features, interviews, and music — lots of music.
The idea is radical and it is subversive to its core. Imagine, if you will, workers in any modern workplace who are chained to desks instead of machines, and on whose desks sit computers with high-speed Internet connections. There are millions of such workers, the vast majority of them not union members, often working in environments which are extremely hostile to unions.
Studies show that millions of such workers listen to Internet radio stations during their workday. Some of those stations are Internet versions of existing, conventional stations while others are Internet-only. Millions of people sit at their desks, in their offices and schools, doing their jobs, listening to music.
Now, imagine that more and more of them discover Radio LabourStart (http://radio.labourstart.org), which was launched at the beginning of February. Instead of hearing the latest top tunes from MTV, they begin to discover songs like “Solidarity Forever”. Imagine a workplace where always seems to be hearing bits of song by people like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Utah Phillips. At first the bosses may not notice. And people will listen because it’s just one of those subversive little things one does in one’s workplace.
People will listen to Radio LabourStart because they’re told not to. They’ll listen because when they discover the half-forgotten world of workers’ songs, they’re going to find the experience liberating and wonderful. They’ll listen too because they want to hear union news and they want to hear telephone interviews with workers on picket lines and with trade unionists in jail.
Never underestimate the effect of radio as a subversive tool — 1989 would never have been possible without Radio Free Europe, with all its flaws. For millions of people living under one-party regimes, the BBC World Service today, as during the dark days of the second world war, is a vital source of information.
A trade union radio station, broadcasting 24/7 to a global audience, will play no less a subversive and liberating role.
Radio LabourStart isn’t yet that station. It is already playing a nice mix of labour songs and songs of protest and social justice. It’s airing the daily WINS news and some news stories of its own, taken off the LabourStart website. It broadcast a couple of interviews in its first two weeks on air.
But we have a long way to go. I’m delighted to be announcing the launch of this station in my own union’s newspaper because as I said at the beginning — the Wobblies taught the labor movement to sing. I look forward to working with you on this exciting project, and to use Internet radio, as we have already used websites and email, to change the world.

9 Comments on "How Internet Radio Can Change the World"

  1. enri mac aodha | 16/02/2004 at 06:19 |

    When I heard you were in contact with the workers in Korea, I was right behind you, Eric. I still can’t listen to the radio yet but I’m sure I will be able to very soon! In Solidarity from Japan. Enri.

  2. Wanda Ballentine | 16/02/2004 at 22:35 |

    This is not a comment about this article – you recently sent out info on a global labour survey at http://gls.law.harvard.edu/ – but all one gets is a ‘page not accessible.’ Then I checked the other URL given in that email – http://radio.labourstart.org – didn’t mention it and gave no way to contact you. So I had to nose around to find this as a possible means.
    The survey’s over?

  3. Charley Conrod | 17/02/2004 at 14:55 |

    I think this is a great idea, and I have some contributions to make.
    While I was a graduate student in Chicago (Northwestern University, Ph.D., economics, 1976)I borrowed and Xeroxed a copy of “The Bloodstained Trail,” the history of the IWW written by them. The IWW international headquarters was in Chicago, but they had only one copy left of TBT which they would not sell to me.
    This is a great history of militant labour, and I probably have the only copy extant. It would make for great readings on the radio station. If you are interested in it I will scan it and send it to you. It may be copywrited, and you might like to check with the IWW to see if it is OK to use it, but in any case you are welcome to access mine.

  4. Arieh Lebowitz | 21/02/2004 at 19:25 |

    FYI — http://www.abebooks.com has two two copies listed that are available for sale – one at $90, the other at $95. Delaney, Ed. and M.T. Rice The bloodstained trail; a history of militant labor in the United States. The Industrial Worker, Seattle. 1927, 172p., wraps, illus.

  5. Molly McGrath | 29/02/2004 at 20:28 |

    Thank you for your article about labor radio. I was a part-time staff person for WINS about two years ago, and I must point out a few factual errors. To say that WINS has “limited itself to three-minute headlines and some features” is false. To the contrary, those behind WINS continue to have high aspirations and ambition to make it into a full-fledged radio service for any radio station – internet or otherwise. We tried and failed to find enough support to start a Spanish version, 5-minute headline program, a college radio version, etc. And in failing to mention the unprecendented corporate consolidation within the radio media sector, and the fact that your article does not note such programs as these are not free, that workers are behind them, and those workers need to make a living; your opinion piece fails to come to the conclusion that it is the Clear Channel-ization of radio that makes expanding WINS or any other labor radio media nearly impossible to sustainably produce. In addition, WINS IS played on Pacifica and numerous alternative radio stations, these are the programs that are WINS’ base that probably continue to allow it to exist. It is not “made available to “real” radio stations” for free. WINS made a decision to take on the corporate sector to get labor news to the working class in this country – all of which do not listen to alternative media – and for that should be commended. The problem is not from within WINS, but from a fatally flawed corporate media system that inevitably censors such programming, and also failure on part of the left to themselves support and nurture programs such as WINS.

  6. Molly,
    Please don’t take what I wrote about WINS as a criticism — the opposite should be clear. I have the greatest respect for the project and am delighted to be working with WINS. I hope that the launch of Radio LabourStart and the accompanying publicity will attract new listeners to WINS, a perhaps, even financial support. I have no idea what the history of WINS is, nor what was attempted in the past. All I was reporting on was the situation as it stands right now.
    Eric

  7. Molly McGrath | 10/03/2004 at 18:02 |

    Eric-
    Likewise, please don’t take my defensive response as hostile. If you’re working with WINS at the moment, you know more the situation than me.
    Working for WINS was such a frustrating experience – trying to secure support for this non-profit endeavor among unions was almost impossible.
    Jeff Ballinger sent us an article about the future being “web feeds”. Perhaps putting such a service on WINS website, even for free, just to promote it, would be a good idea.
    Thanks for your response!
    Molly

  8. Eric, glad to find your piece, I’ve been
    advocating internet media since the late 80s
    and in the more modern form wrote The Revolution
    Will Be Webcast in 2000.
    Picking up on similar ideas as in your piece,
    the EconomicDemocracy.org website (a “radical
    think tank”) in the Webcast article also surveys
    why a qualitative advance is coming forward
    through wireless, on top of the quantitative small
    steps forward due to the ever expanding pool of
    people who have internet (respectively, broadband)
    access.
    The piece is overviewed here:
    http://economicdemocracy.org/intro.webcast.html
    or jump directly to it at
    http://economicdemocracy.org/webcast.html
    The piece also points out to the old
    adage, “be careful of what you wish for; you
    might get it” and the list of things-to-do
    that will remain on our plate when the
    techno-internet part is completely “done”
    (figuratively; it is obviously never fully done,
    and keeps changing).
    Among the issues surveyed as “the next obstacles”
    after internet radio are how to gain audience,
    how to keep audience, and financial stability.
    On this last item, there is a separate
    strategic vision (or in less lofty terms,
    “activist strategy”) piece, here:
    http://economicdemocracy.org/funding.html
    The projects are overviewed here (warning:
    this is a lot at once so perhaps best
    to first digest the above pieces;
    and each of them is already a 7 course
    meal…)
    http://economicdemocracy.org/projs-overview.html
    To avoid spam we do not write our full
    email but use m-a-i-l-m-a-i-l@economicdemocracy.org
    WITHOUT any of the dashes, to reach us. Harel
    for EconomicDemocracy.org

  9. Charly Wolfe II | 24/07/2004 at 17:14 |

    I have not had the chance to listen, but the idea is exelent. Should do rather well in making a difference in the way things are going for us now.
    If Mr. Eric Lee has a little time, I would like to contact him somehow. I think he and I would get a few things accomplished together. And really make a difference in todays progress, and regeresses.

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