This week on From the Vault we listen to highlights from a 1993 program titled An Honorable Tradition, A Proud Record: A History of Homosexual Service in the Military, produced by Veterans for Peace. Recorded at Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles, this is the captivating story of gay veterans sharing their experiences in the military and how their sexual orientation led to their dismissal from service. First, however, we check in with the international gay and lesbian radio program This Way Out for their weekly news report, as Congress mulls over repealing the 1994 Pentagon policy of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

Special thanks to This Way Out producer Lucia Chappelle for providing audio for this episode.

From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project.

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.

This week on From the Vault, we revisit the Summer of 2003, when the Pacifica Radio Archives was in full production mode gathering classic audio from our extensive collection in preparation for our very first National Broadcast and fundraiser, which would air later that year. One of the original productions was a special sound collaboration called Say It Loud: New Songs for Peace. Original music and hip hop beats were written for specially selected voices of Peace, Justice, Equality and Freedom from the vast programs in the Pacifica Radio Archives:

“We did Not Authorize” featuring Dennis Kucinich

“I want all of My Daughters to be Like Maxine Waters” featuring Maxine Waters

“Bin Bush” featuring Michael Moore

“Silence of the Media Lambs” featuring Greg Palast

“The Problems Have A History” featuring Tariq Ali

“The Gift” featuring Thich Nhat Hanh

“Afrodiva” featuring Angela Davis

“Father Knows Best” featuring Gore Vidal

Say It Loud: New Songs For Peace was a collaboration between the Pacifica Radio Archives and The Polemic Consortium, consisting of two Los Angeles based musicians Gomez and Frank Aragon, and Pacifica Radio Archive Senior Producer Mark Torres. Say It Loud New Songs for Peace an original production ONLY available from the Pacifica Radio Archives.

From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project.

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.

This week we mourn the loss of our friend and legendary Pacifica program host Reverend Ambrose I. Lane, Sr., who passed from this realm on Wednesday, September 15th, 2010.

This special episode of From the Vault remembers Ambrose Lane with a rebroadcast of his stunning 1993 interview with Dr. Cornel West, author of Race Matters. Dr. West and Ambrose discuss how racial attitudes are eroding what is left of democracy in the United States. West examines issues such as the continuing concentration of wealth into the hands of the few, the growth of corporate power, the unequal tax system, Black Nationalism in its various forms, the need for a multiracial movement to promote real change, the universal struggle against oppression, the economic crisis among the poor and working poor, and the need for community in cities. The program concludes with listener call-ins answered by West and Lane.

From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project.

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.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. This marked an important moment in United States History as a religious leader spearheaded the Civil Rights Movement that would lead to the Civil Rights Act the following year. Ever since the success of Dr. King’s speech, religious conservatives have been trying to capture some of the zeal for their own causes.

Today on From the Vault we found two programs that give us a glimpse of the contrasting roles that religion plays in shaping the political landscape and social movements. We begin with a speech by famed Presbyterian minister and long time peace activist William Sloan Coffin, speaking in 1968 on the destabilizing effect of the United States military buildup on dynamics of world politics, at the New School for Social Research in New York. Then, we explore actuality from a Christian fundamentalist march on Washington on April 29th, 1980 in a Pacifica recording titled Washington for Jesus, produced by Tim Frasca and Adi Gevins, and restored thanks to a grant from the American Archive.

From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project.

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.

In this episode of From the Vault, we explore how May Day celebrations manifest themselves in different ways here at home and around the world, using historic audio from Pacifica Radio Archives.

We begin with excerpts from an original Pacifica Radio Archives series called Club Evolution. We compiled archive material which captures the essence of May Day as it evolved from the commemoration of the struggles of the Labor Movement to include the fight for peace, equality, and justice. Author and activist Sabina Virgo weaves together these common threads in this inaugural program called May Day and the American Labor Movement.

Next, we look at how May Day is celebrated around the world as Pacifica correspondents Daniel Singer, Alan Snitow, and others report from Mexico City, Italy, Mozambique and Angola, in a program called May Day 1977.

Finally, while May Day celebrations in the United States are relatively tame compared to other parts of the world, WBAI producer Bruce Soloway, armed with a tape recorder and a New York City Police Department-issued press badge, reports on an especially confrontational May Day demonstration in 1971 from Washington D.C.

From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project.

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.

August 29, 2010 marks the 40th Anniversary of what is now know as the Chicano Moratorium, where upwards of 30,000 protesters, mostly Mexican Americans or Chicanos, gathered in Laguna Park in East Los Angeles to peacefully protest the Vietnam War. By August of 1970, the mortality rate in the Vietnam War was disproportionately high within the Chicano demographic, while funding for schools, jobs, healthcare, housing, and other important areas of our daily infrastructure were grossly under-funded or non-existent. Activists, community leaders and students built a broad coalition of support and created a day of education, learning and music to help raise awareness of these discrepancies in the Chicano Community. The day would end tragically just as the rally was beginning in the park as Los Angeles County Sheriff’s attacked the non-violent crowd with tear gas and batons. The result was four dead, including Award Winning Los Angeles Times Journalist and News Director of KMEX Spanish Television, Ruben Salazar.

KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles covered the Chicano Moratorium, and on this episode of From the Vault, we’ll hear actuality from that fateful day in Laguna Park in East Los Angeles. Included in this program are comments from then KPFK La Raza Nueva host Moctezuma Esparza and Rosalio Munoz, event organizer and former UCLA student body President, the only speaker who spoke before the violence from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s broke out.

But first, we’ll check in with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali in 1968, as both would come out strongly against the war, and grow outspoken on America’s participation in the Vietnam War.

From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project.

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.

On Friday evening, August 13, 2010 celebrities, musicians, and activists gathered under the stars at the open air Greek Theatre in Los Angeles California to wish United Farmworker co-founder Dolores Huerta a happy 80th Birthday.

In an event called Weaving Movements Together… Carlos Santana, Rage Against the Machine frontman Zach de la Rocha, Lila Downs and longtime Santana percussionist Pete Escobedo all perform at this event, held to pay tribute to Dolores’s tireless commitment to organizing.

Also wishing Dolores Huerta a happy birthday are:

- Actor and Activist Danny Glover
- Actor and Activist Martin Sheen
- Code Pink Co-founder Jodie Evans
- President Barrack Obama
- Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva

…and of course we’ll hear from Dolores Huerta herself!

From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project.

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.

“What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it’s been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.”
~John Hersey, writing in “Hiroshima.”

August 6th is the anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Pacifica Radio Archives commemorates the anniversary every year with a live recording of the radio adaptation of John Hersey’s Hiroshima, arguably the most famous work of the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and reporter. An account of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 as told from the perspective of six survivors, it is written in a stark, objective voice that manages to be precise and all the more vivid for its understatement of events. A profoundly influential work, Hiroshima has long since been established as one of the classic accounts of the Second World War. This week, on From the Vault, we’ll here excerpts of Pacifica Radio Archives radio adaptation of John Hersey’s masterpiece.

The original radio adaptation of John Hersey’s Hiroshima stars Tyne Daly, Ruby Dee and Roscoe Lee Brown, Daniel Benzali, Roscoe Lee Browne, Esther K. Chae, Michael Chinyamurindi, Tony Plana, Jeanne Sakata, Chris Toshima and John Valentine. Produced by Brian DeShazor and Mark Torres, in association with Artists United and The Feminist Majority. Adapted for radio by John Valentine. Directed by Michael Haney. Music by Mark Snow.

But first we begin with an excerpt of a Boston University speech by Howard Zinn from November 11th, 2009 on American “Holy Wars.” In this talk, Zinn scours the American war record in search of a “good war” or “justifiable war.”

*The Pacifica Radio Archives’ recording of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” received a National Federation of Community Broadcasters Special Merit Award in the Radio Drama category.

Click here to purchase a copy of this program or learn more about and purchase copies of 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.