Radio and the Art of Resistance: A Public Pedagogy of the Airwaves

The politics of the airwaves should be of vital concern to critical democracy, given the expanding realm of neoliberalism and its deeply homogenizing impact on social, political and economic relations everywhere. In light of the privatizing forces that control the media today, the article considers the manner in which community radio can provide public pedagogical spaces for often marginalized community voices to challenge the official public transcript of social life dictated, more times than not, by the powerful and wealthy leaders who shape public discourse. Here independent radio production is discussed as an important tool for building community relationships and as a viable alternative for supporting civic participation and critical forms of public engagement. The time has come for educators to develop more engaged systematic political projects in which power, history, and social movements can play an active role in constructing the multiple and shifting political relations and cultural practices necessary for connecting the construction of diverse political constituencies to the revitalization of democratic public life. (Henry Giroux, 2003, p. 13) The revitalization of public democratic life, as articulated in these words by Henry Giroux, speaks to the heart of all critical pedagogical efforts within and outside classroom life. In contrast, it is through both the silencing and the dismantling of democratic participatory rights that we are rendered most vulnerable to the destructive impact of neoliberal forces in the world today. At a time when public mainstream discourse touts its self-congratulatory 'post-racial' declarations, the policies and practices of the State continue to harshly impact the lives of poor African Americans and Latinos, as well as other working-class people in the United States and abroad. Moreover, their disempowering impact within the public sphere is particularly felt among those who can find little relief from the poverty, surveillance, and injustice that thwart their community participation. In Champaign-Urbana, the twin-city Midwest university town where I live and teach, community participation is further complicated by the rhetoric of corporate interests which effectively shrouds the neoliberal objectives of small university town governance. Within this context, calls for institutional change and municipal reform must be made by community residents who depend on nomadic, albeit progressive, student and faculty participation. This aspect unfortunately serves as a double-edged sword, in that there is a transient quality to public life and the body politic of this Midwest community. Such a politically unstable context requires creative pedagogical interventions by those who will eventually move on, in concert with those who call these twin cities home. In an effort to support the tenuous nature of community relationships within the confines of a neoliberal university agenda, public pedagogical projects can serve as alternative venues for supporting civic participation and a critical form of public engagement. Critical public interventions are of particular importance within an increasingly conservative culture of scholarship, where neoliberal interests are neatly concealed within an academic rhetoric