Carlos Canales

Listener Candidate for the WBAI Local Station Board Statement

I am running for the WBAI Local Station Board with the Justice and Unity Campaign (www.justiceunity.org). Like many of you, as an organizer in the struggle for social justice, I am a member of the army of dreamers who still have hope and faith that a more humane, egalitarian, and just world is possible, if we devote ourselves to the struggle to transform those dreams into reality.

In 1986 I was forced to leave El Salvador (where I was a teacher and rural organizer) and moved to Long Island. Since 1999, I have worked with the Workplace Project, helping day laborers in Nassau and Suffolk organize to get the wages owed them. I was FMLN-NYS Coordinator and am now a steering committee member of the May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights, and a national comittee member of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, among other organizations. I have experience in grassroots campaigns, strategic planning, and knowledge of immigrant populations.

I have come to believe that in the utopian dream for social justice, the role of WBAI is to be the voice of the voiceless, serving the struggle of the working class – and everyone – for a just society. WBAI needs to fully become the natural ally of workers in their various battles for basic human rights.

In every conflict, whether armed or nonviolent, the psychological element – individual morale – is decisive in the outcome. Information conveyed to the struggle’s participants largely determines their morale and commitment to continuing. Radio is one of the most powerful instruments for imparting information. Experience from conflicts in Latin America has shown that radio managed by workers can be a key factor in winning. This was true in Nicaragua, and in El Salvador, “Radio Venceremos” played the role of a psychological ally.

In the U.S., working-class people are cut off from media that could serve to build their morale in the struggle. WBAI does that now in some ways, but it should become the “Radio Venceremos” that, from someplace in the mountains of concrete and from inside the belly of the beast, encourages the dispossessed on their road to victory. To assume this role, WBAI might include more programs that promote building a movement to fulfill the just claims of the dispossessed.

But before this can happen, we need to dedicate ourselves to rescuing WBAI, which is on the verge of being lost to those who value fundraising at-any-cost over voices of struggle. We need to build a new WBAI, dedicated to being the voice of the voiceless – the instrument and voice serving the working class.

Without this, WBAI will not exist for workers, and the struggle will be much harder.

The Justice and Unity slate shares this vision, and I ask you to vote for me and for all my colleagues on that slate:

Lynne Stewart
Nia Bediako
Russell Dale
Sister Betty Dopson
Wellington Echegaray
Nana Camille Yarbrough
Myriam Decime
John Brinkley
Berta Silva
Sharonne Salaam
Carlos Canales
Terrence Podolsky