In this episode of From the Vault, we listen back twenty years to the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, and uncover the true extent of Pacifica Radio’s role as an alternative news outlet for Angelinos amidst mainstream media’s sensationalized 24/7 news barrage. The following selections from recordings made during and after the uprising highlight the importance of an independent and competent media advocate for the public – like KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. Voices include Congresswoman Maxine Waters, President George H.W. Bush, City of Quartz author Mike Davis, journalist Norman Soloman, former SCLCSC president Joe Hicks, poet June Jordan, professor and commentator Saul Landau, artists and poets from the Soul to Seoul collective, and numerous Pacifica staffers and reporters.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

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This week on From the Vault, we continue our celebration of National Poetry Month with the earliest known recordings of poet and cult icon Charles Bukowski and British-born American poet Denise Levertov.
We’ll start with our Charles Bukowski recording, from a late-night KPFK broadcast on August 5, 1962 – where he gave his Los Angeles audience an earful in true Bukowski tradition. Then we’ll hear selections from a recording of Denise Levertov, who frequently framed her poetry to express her personal politics, at a Speech Department poetry reading at the University of California, Berkeley on November 10, 1961.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

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Adrienne Cecile Rich – May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012

This week on From the Vault, we celebrate National Poetry Month by paying tribute to the life and work of award-winning poet, essayist, feminist and intellectual Adrienne Rich, who influenced generation of women throughout The Feminist Movement. Pacifica Radio is proud of its solid collection of Adrienne Rich recordings – the earliest from 1969 and the latest from 1992: sampling these recordings, we’ll hear Rich read from her collections Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963) and Necessities of Life (1966) during an appearance on the series Talk with a New Bedford Whaler in 1972 at WBAI in New York. In 1973, again at WBAI with producer Mimi Wiesbord Anderson, Rich reads selections from The Will to Change (1971), and a decade later in 1983 at KPFK in Los Angeles, Rich speaks with poet Eloise Klein Healey about her life’s work in a wonderful recording called Women’s Words.

Our guides for this tribute to Adrienne Rich are veteran Pacifica programmer and journalist Helene Rosenbluth, who recorded Rich at the 1978 Feminist Perspective on Pornography Conference in San Francisco, and poet-author-artist Grace Cavalieri, host of The Poet and the Poem, a weekly series that originated from WPFW in Washington, DC from 1977-1997 and presented over 2000 poets to the nation during its radio syndication.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

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This week on From the Vault we feature recordings of one of the great women’s advocates and social thinkers of our time, Selma James. Well known for her landmark 1952 publication A Woman’s Place, James was an early leader of the second wave of the Women’s Movement, founder of the International Wages for Housework Campaign, and remains today one of the great intellectual leaders standing up against injustices to women, the poor, and the segregated in our society. First, in this 1974 interview with Selma James by Pacifica Radio-WBAI producer Nanette Rainone, we’re drawn to the intellectual clarity of James as she discusses how housework is undervalued by society. Then, almost 40 years later on March 26, 2012 – her focus sharp as ever – James speaks with KPFK producer Margaret Prescod about her latest anthology, Sex, Race and Class—The Perspective of Winning; A Selection of Writings 1952-2011.

From the Vault is presented through the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, past grants from the Grammy Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the American Archive funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with the generous support of Pacifica Radio listeners.

PURCHASE a copy of this program or learn more about the historic archival recordings used within this episode. To purchase a CD copy of this program by phone, please call Pacifica Radio Archives at 800.735.0230 x 262.

Click here to send an email to From the Vault.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download