Dear Sonali Kolhatkar,

I appreciate and applaud your programs and support your efforts, having been a regular listener for the 7 am on KPFA as well as on-line via KPFK archives.  Regarding the placement by fiat of Uprising 5 days/week 8-9 am, in lieu of the Morning Mix, I appeal for you to stand up, decline and refuse to allow your program to be used to supplant the Five great local Morning mix programs at KPFA. The Morning Mix programs have played a vital role in energizing the Bay Area community with a signal which extends to more than 5 counties. These programs have changed the spectrum and participation in many areas and covering many issues which would never have been known by the people affected. These are the unique opportunities and resources for all of our community, which are not available anywhere else for direct and real time airing of issues affecting communities and issues which do not have voices.

The implanting of your program will silence all of this multidimensional communication and activity. I could give so many examples of ideas, issues, causes, struggles, celebrations, arts creations, understanding, bringing together of people, which never would have occurred in the absence of these programs, which represent so many different faces of people. There is no other place where varied communities of color and working persons can have and find platforms to be heard and the possibility of others to listen in hours when they can heard over the airwaves, particularly where this is more important than the digital realms and especially at this time when the basis of life is so disrupted by the increased economic stratification, gentrification and domination of the media by the powerful and anything which rubs against dominant paradigms even in “progressive liberal” realms which may touch upon race, class and corporate trajectory. There are many events where the cause of justice or heart in a community different from my own or in my own community have struck my own interest resulting in my lending a hand (along with many others I encountered, who had been informed via KPFA Morning Mix programs), participating, deepening my understanding, telling others whats going on or just knowing whats happening.

In accordance with the ethos and principles which you express in your programs, you will recognize that the step to refuse and not offer your support and not to countenance this move, (which was done without any input communication, discussion of any kind with people who create and produce programming, the volunteers and the member community, much as the US generals Bremmer, Garner and the proconsuls of the recent occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, who sent out memos noticing curfews and communication edicts, shocking the populace, upon “liberating'” the countries ), you will gain. By your action of deferring and resisting based on an ethic of greater good goodness , you will be heroic for many and importantly to your own soul and this will go far and do more for the forwarding of your future (and that of many others.) All this has major import in the daily lives and future of our community.

The elimination of the multiple diverse persons and the group efforts who put together each of the well produced highly popular Morning Mix programs to bring in Uprising, is surely not just one of those breaks or vagaries, just/unjust, well considered or illogical in other venues such as non-profit organizations, corporations, commercial radio stations or sports team line-ups, where one could say “it wasn’t me, but whatever the tumult, I am still floating, as the river moves along”.  This is not that. It is not out of your hands.

However noble, connected, well though, engaging with all the peace social-economic justice focuses etc of Uprising , the credos of motivating of listeners to take an active role in their communities and connecting global issues with local ones, the reality thatyour program, with one principal person, is based in Southern California, flies in the face of the contrasting large group of programs with large and growing audiences local to the Bay Region, which develop multiple specific issues and stories present with continuity, connected to and affecting the listeners and where they and multiple communities engage to bring authority to account, work together and help make positive change with their efforts. KPFA and the Bay Area would be diminished rather than enhanced by this change. Regarding your judgement in this matter, I wish to express that whatever transcendent faith guides you, I retain hopes in the basic goodness that we have agency to act on our better nature, as creatures of limited means who can sometimes form beliefs on the basis of evidence and act rationally upon them, along with our sympathetic and empathetic impulses and that this be honored and encouraged. I certainly wish you well in your endeavors with the syndicating of your successful KPFK program (for which many outlets and portals will develop) as well as continued work on the 7 am mornings at KPFA and the blooming of your family.

Yours truly,

Peter Whittlesey

Mill Valley, California