As KEPW turns 10, microbroadcasting has never been more crucial

Presenter: KEPW will celebrate its 10th anniversary in early 2027, and we’re talking with some of the media activists who helped create the station. Here are excerpts from Nan Cohen’s interview with former EPW staff person and coordinating council member, Lovebug: 

Lovebug: Almost immediately, like, almost to the day immediately upon arriving in Oregon, I dedicated a solid decade of my life to a bunch of nonprofits out of the Growers Market building, including (but not limited to) Eugene PeaceWorks, which is what the EPW of KEPW stands for, which some people new to the area might not know.

So a solid decade in my life, I was a staff person and a coordinating council member. The coordinating council is what other nonprofits might refer to as a board, but we operated more like a collective than any kind of hierarchy, and staff and board kind of had equal voice.

And it was also the norm that if you were going to get paid for anything you did with PeaceWorks, you were going to volunteer at least the same number of hours that you were paid for, so it was very fulfilling. And we had a bunch of different, sort of, task groups. The alternative media section of PeaceWorks was headed up by David and often brought Norman Solomon and other people.

We always, always, always had the focus on making sure that the narrative was shaped not only by dominant government forces and dominant corporate forces.

The discussion came around to, ‘Okay, well, why don’t we start doing our own media? What form are we going to take?’ And so we had all these roundtable discussions in the Growers Market building.

And I was there for all the early ones. We talked about the difference between a licensed broadcasting station, a licensed microbroadcasting station, and an unlicensed or pirate station, and what the benefits and risks were of each of those modalities and which would best fit Eugene PeaceWorks at the time.

We made, I believe, the correct decision by going the middle ground, where we do have some interaction with the FCC, but the FCC doesn’t control our content.

And, you know, under a fascist administration that is outright obliterating public broadcasting and children’s programming and Radio Free Europe and like everything, everywhere, there’s never been a time that microbroadcasting has been more crucial. 

The bottom line is KEPW is an absolutely essential resource to the community, because there is nothing else that is as completely free from any government or corporate exertion of control over content.

And it’s never been more important, in a time where we have to watch the backs of our community members and we have to build community solidarity doing that: one DJ at a time, one talk show at a time, one call-in show at a time, one opportunity for people who don’t otherwise have a voice to be guests on somebody else’s show at a time.

I can’t think of anything more important that PeaceWorks could be doing than providing this radio outlet at this time.

I think another important function of KEPW—and I want to really thank Echo (Sherman) for this—is that sometimes people from KEPW will go to shows or festivals and either live report or live stream so thank you for that opportunity.

Showcasing local musicians who may bring forth lyrics or sounds that are healing or empowering is another crucial role of microbroadcasting that I think KEPW excels at.

And especially if there is a wide age range among DJ’s and supporters and listeners, I think that’s really important for community solidarity for there not to be ageism in either direction.

I also think embracing a wide range of genres and a wide range of subjects for talk radio and call-in radio.

In my experience of Eugene PeaceWorks, there have always been people involved who have been at one point or another or currently unhoused or alternatively housed. So there’s always been a wide range of economic classes of people involved, by design.

KEPW is a very comfortable home for queer and gender-queer communities. I don’t know what we have in terms of bilingual programming in Spanish, but I think that this is a time where that would be very important to have native speakers and bilingual nonnative speakers combining efforts to keep people aware of risks—people should know about the whistle protocol and things like that.

Anything that helps promote community safety, like bringing to public awareness that in the first three days of this U of O semester, there were five documented sexual assaults, one of them in the dog park at Alton Baker Park adjacent to campus, four of them on campus, related to campus-based events.

Three days, five sexual assaults—and that’s compared to like 42 out of the entire year last year. Is it that more are occurring or that more people are feeling strengthened to come forward to report with everything that’s going on with Cornell?

So it’s hard to say, but the more that people have outlets to share what helps them feel safe, what helps them feel supported, what helps them feel empowered and not just feel, but actually become more safe, become more informed, become more empowered.

These are the functions of alternative media, more important now than ever in my lifetime.

Presenter: With a 10th anniversary toast to KEPW, here’s Lovebug.

Lovebug: Happy anniversary to KEPW. Here’s to another decade of brilliant, crucial empowerment, safety, support, and community building across all conceivable divides.

Presenter: We’ll play the complete interview with Nan and Lovebug as part of KEPW’s 10th anniversary celebration, coming in early 2027.