On Wednesday, Sept, 29, Federal Marshals aiding the Federal
Communications Commission raided and shut down long-standing free radio
station, Freak Radio Santa
Cruz. As word of the raid spread around 150 listeners and
supporters came to the station to protest the raid and express
solidarity.
There’s good coverage of the raid in a feature at
Global Indymedia and at Sa
nta Cruz IMC.
Like San Francisco
Liberation Radio and Radio Free
Brattleboro, Freak Radio had also received endorsement from their
local city council. In San Francisco the board of supervisor even went
so far as to ask that the city police not aid any federal raid on
Liberation Radio, a request which, unfortunately, the SFPD ignored when
the
station was shut down in Oct., 2003.
However, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Santa Cruz
police offered no help to the Marhals or FCC agents conducting the raid,
although they did respond when the tires on the feds’ vehicles were
slashed.
Station volunteers have vowed to go back on the air and have already
restored their webstream, which, according to
DIYmedia.net, is apparently being rebroadcast in solidarity by
other pirate stations around the country.
The FCC made its last of many unarmed visits to Freak Radio back in May, just after the station moved to its current location. I talked to V-Man and Skidmark Bob on the radioshow in a live dual-simulcast broadcast live on WEFT and Freak Radio. You can listen to that program in mp3 and ogg vorbis.