KBOO Community Radio

A huge thanks to the volunteers who helped with the Winter Membership Drive!

It was a pleasure to meet many new volunteers, who jumped right in to lend a hand. I very much enjoyed introducing new people to KBOO and to the dynamic community of volunteers who make KBOO what it is.

During the nine day drive, your great help made the fundraising fun--- which near as I can figure, is most important within a community.  Your participation exemplified the addage: many hands make light work.

If you started volunteering during this drive, and would like to continue exploring the opportunities that KBOO has to offer, please attend the next volunteer orientation-- which is Saturday, February 20th, 10am - noon-- or talk with me for more information.

Firefly hosts the Africa O-Ye! program from 2 PM to 4 PM every Thursday. The program has broadcast a range of music from the African continent for the last 13 years.

Firefly, also known as Tony Alabi, came to the US from Nigeria where his parents were from ethnic groups with significantly different cultures. His father is Yoruba and his mother Ibo. He spent much of his childhood in the predominantly Muslim Northern Nigeria, where his parents lived and worked, and vacationed with his maternal grandfather, a tribal Chief in the Christian/Animist Eastern Nigeria. As a teenager, Firefly attended school in Christian/Muslim Yorubaland in Western Nigeria. Perhaps this diverse background predestined Firefly to create the bridge between KBOO listeners and the wealth of African musical styles.

Just a little while ago, we crossed the $50,000 goal for our 2010 Winter membership drive!  Thanks very much to every one who made a donation!  We're all very gratified that you appreciate the work we do.

If you didn't pay on the phone with the volunteer you spoke with, or entered a card # on the webform, please send us your payment or start your monthly deduction in February.  These donations will help pay our bills through the Spring.

Keep in mind also, that we accept donations anytime right here.  And donations outside of membership drives can shorten the drives themselves.

If you requested a thank you gift during the drive, we'll begin sending those out (that are in station) the second week of February.  The rest will be ordered at that time and will arrive at KBOO  soon (I  hope).

Thanks very much once again to all our fantastic members!

Click here for a list of upcoming benefits for Haiti in Portland | Click here for KBOO audio reports on the situation

Haiti relief efforts:
We have done some research, and are recommending these groups, which have a track record of working with the community on the ground in Haiti, and are either Haitian-led or take their lead from Haitian ground staff, to empower the community with solidarity, not charity.

Konbit pou Aiti (Working together for Haiti)
Our Soil
Honor and Respect Foundation
Partners in Health
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (Haiti Action)
Doctors without Borders

Dear The Punks:
We have decided to do a weekly show listing HERE on Our Blog... and then You will add shows by Commenting on what we've forgotten! How's that sound? Great!

Thursday Jan 21

Walls, Raw Nerves, Cower, None (Van,WA!) and Lee Corey Oswald play at NE 22nd and Holman. All Ages. Over by 10. Pack it in, Pack it out. No damn dogs.

Okay, now your turn!

A briefer audio version of this was broadcast on the Old Mole Variety Hour January 18, 2010.

The Well-read Red has been reading up on Haiti. As many in the progressive press have noted, last week's earthquake was a natural disaster made much more disastrous by the political and economic context in which it occurred.

Of course, Pat Robertson and David Brooks are wrong to suggest that Haiti's suffering is the result of a pact with the devil, or of a lack of paternalism. It is instead the result of hundreds of years of exploitation.