Why We Must Clear the Airwaves
By Kwabena Rasuli
(l-r) Bernard Creamer and Kwabena Rasuli protesting at iHeart Radio station WGCI.
There we were on July 18, 2020, on an 85+ degree late morning outside the downtown headquarters of iHeart, formerly known as Clear Channel. A corporation that obviously includes a group of grown violent audio pedophiles who push dangerous pornographic music on the masses of Afrikan children and youth in Chicagoland via their ratchet killer radio station WGCI 107.5 FM.
We sent a youngster inside to get batteries for the bullhorn and to buy water on this day.
Flashback over seven years ago at the same location. A comrade went inside the same store to buy instant hand warmers on that frigid 14 degrees Saturday morning, February 16, 2013. Lupe Fiasco was there that day. It was his birthday. He grabbed a sign to take up to their studio where he was a guest host. What happened to that sign? What happened to Lupe? Recognized as one of the greatest lyricists in Hip-hop and from Chicago. We never hear him on these stations.
This was the weekend that the Clear The Airwaves Project was formed.
Two days earlier at the broadcast headquarters of Power 92.3 (WPWX) a Crawford Broadcasting/Dontron Station, the Concerned Citizens Against Violence in Gary, founded by Chicago born activist Dwight Kojo Taylor held a protest on Valentine’s Day exclaiming that “We Love our Children Too Much To Allow This Radio Station To Continue Their Audio Assault/Rape of Them.”
Leading up to that cold February Saturday in Chicago, Thursday was in the 20s and only a few of us braved the elements to protest. We found out during the Power 92.3 protest that a group of sisters and brothers in Chicago were going to be downtown to protest WGCI, due to their lyrical promotion of violent behavior and the recent senseless killing of Hadiyah Pendleton.
A 15-year-old high school student at Martin Luther King Academy in Chicago, Hadiyah had just returned from performing with a choir at the inauguration ceremony for the second term of President Barack Obama. She was shot down after school while walking with her classmates. In the weeks and months following the protest, many from our group met consistently every Sunday morning at the What’s Up Coffee shop calling ourselves the Culture Freedom Group. We eventually agreed that we must stop these radio stations from using our Culture as a weapon against us. We called the initiative the Clear The Airwaves Project.
One of the first courses of action we agreed upon was to engage the sponsors. One of the biggest sponsors was McDonald’s. The fast-food restaurant had ads running on practically every commercial break on both killer radio stations.
Menards was another target. After months of protest at Menards, they announce that they were discontinuing their ads with these stations. McDonald’s however did not budge. Even the Black McDonalds Operators Association was hostile to our demands.
We launched a weekly protest at the 1st Black owned McDonald’s in the country, on Stony Island and Marquette, in the late Fall of 2013 which lasted for over a year. During this time we asked McDonald’s: “Would you buy commercials on a radio station that played music that bragged about shooting and killing dogs?” Their answer was of course, NOT! We then asked, “Why do you buy commercials on radio stations that play music about killing Black People?”
Silence!
Our main focus has been to hold these radio stations, their financiers/advertisers and the Federal Communications Commission accountable for supporting and/or ignoring the devastating impact that this on-going and purposeful audio assault is having on the masses of our community. The lyrics have an influence on children and youth.
The mission of the Clear The Airwaves Project (CTAP) is simple: Immediately end the broadcasting of vile, vulgar, and violent music on radio stations that specifically target Afrikan children and youth.
We have, or are currently, working with organizations such as the Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People (CEMOTAP), National Black Leadership Alliance, National Congress of Black Women, Black Star Project, Nubian Leadership Circle, Black Lives Matter NWI-Gary, Rage Against The Ratchet, Black Talk Radio Project.
CTAP has held actions in Chicago, Gary, Washington, DC, New York, Philly, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Boston, Detroit, and Dallas.
We must protect our children.
Our children are children, they cannot fend for themselves. They look for us to protect them. They count on us to protect them.