choir, to people that already agree with us? This seems to be a
major problem.
First of all, as we’ve discussed a couple of times already, a large
majority already does agree with these ideas. The question is, how
to turn those general attitudes into real understanding and
constructive actions. The answer is, by organizing to do so.
Whenever I—or anybody—gives a talk, it’s because some group
has set it up. I can’t just show up in Kansas City and say, I’m going to
give a talk—nobody would come. But if a group there organizes it,
people will come from all over the place, and maybe that will help
the organizers, and others, to get together and to proceed more
effectively.
This all goes back to the same thing: If people dedicate
themselves to organizing and activism, we’ll gain access to broader
and broader audiences.
As you know, I do a one-hour radio program every week. It’s pretty
effectively locked out of the Boston-to-Miami corridor, but in the
West—in Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, and places like that—it’s
much easier to get it on the air.
It doesn’t matter much to the power centers what people are
talking about in Laramie, Wyoming. The East Coast is where most of
the decisions get made, so that’s what has to be kept under tight
doctrinal control.
But we can’t just blame the people in power. We aren’t making
use of the possibilities we have.
Take Cambridge, where we’re sitting now. Like other towns, it
has a community cable television station (the Communications Act
requires that cable companies provide them). I’ve been there. I’m
not much of a techie, but even I could see that it has pretty good
equipment. It’s available to the public, but is it used by anyone?
The one time I was on that station, the program was so crazy I
almost walked off. What would happen if you had lively, quality local
cable TV? The commercial channels would have to respond to that.
They might try to stop it or undercut it or co-opt it, but they’d have
to do something if there got to be enough of it. So would NPR. They
can’t completely disregard what’s happening in their communities.