You must understand what we are facing: an ongoing hundred-years’ global war, the rising tide of fascism worldwide, the privatization of near-all aspects of human life, an ever-expanding surveillance state, cultural decay via mass consumerism and dissociation, and broad global and ecological collapse.

Our ways of communicating with one another have been eroded since the advent of the internet, once synonymous with information access without limits. Corporate interests and their political allies have transformed this tool into a weapon of division as tech companies hollow out centers of connection, instating instead biased algorithms and ceaseless advertisements designed to siphon our attention towards an endless scroll.

In the rising tide of crisis, we are interested in the utopian and anarchic potential of the first method of instantaneous mass communication: the radio. Utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum, radio transmission has provided the immediate dissemination of information for over a century. For nearly as long as the spectrum has been harnessed for telecommunications, agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, hand in glove with the National Association of Broadcasters, have treated the airwaves as property to be privatized. Licenses are given disproportionately to large corporations that flood the spectrum with commercialized nonsense, and public or community radio stations still face exorbitant fees to get on the air by the book. The pay-to-play model coupled with labyrinthine regulations are designed to keep the people out and the profits flowing in.

We reject the notion that the airwaves are a commodity to be bought and sold. We say No More! The time of asking for permission has long passed. Resistance now! The airwaves belong to the people: to communicate is to organize, to organize is to resist, and to resist is to reclaim our future. In the face of a worldwide rising tide of authoritarian fascism, we must arm ourselves with the most potent weapon of all: our own voices, amplified and broadcast into the heart of our communities.

We are facing a fundamental question of survival. Free radio passes the mic to the people in times of crisis and in times of peace, as a method of resistance and organization, to build solidarity and to communicate with one another in a world that seeks to isolate and divide us. We believe in the rhizomatic future of radio, in which the airwaves are filled with constellations of community broadcasting what they want to, when they want to.

Low-power broadcasting is the people’s technology. In the immortal words of Mbanna Kantako, Go on the air! Just go on the air!

Free Radio: Liberate the Commons. Amplify the Resistance. Now More Than Ever.

Write to us: info@freeradionow.org