From the Office of Mary Ratcliff, San Francisco Bayview Newspaper

May 9, 2012

***Feel free to spread far and wide***

If you like the Bay View, tell somebody

And if you like hearing our own - and the People's - Minister of Information JR Valrey on KPFA at 8:00 every Wednesday morning, donate tomorrow at 8-9 a.m. by calling (800) 439-5732 or pledging online at KPFA.org. I guarantee you'll love his Block Report. JR talks with his friends - some world famous, some with street cred, some behind enemy lines - and gives away piles of tickets to great concerts and other cultural and political events.

KPFA is no little backwoods radio station. KPFA's 59,000 watts reach most of Northern and Central California - a potential audience of many millions - and in JR's brief stint on prime morning drive time, he's pulled in lots of new listeners and proven his fundraising prowess, hauling in $3,700 last Wednesday to the station that founded listener sponsorship 66 years ago. Let's make it $5,000 tomorrow!

When you support JR's Block Report Wednesday morning, you're supporting the embodiment of KPFA's radical founding mission to strengthen understanding among "all nations, races, creeds and colors" - a mission that can get sidetracked in these strange, repressive times when the mosquito you're trying to swat could be a surveillance drone.

Speaking in the proud Oakland tradition of the Black Panthers and the mass movement for justice for Oscar Grant that inspired the Occupy and Trayvon Martin movements, JR's voice of the voiceless provokes fear in some longtime paid staff at KPFA. Your contribution tomorrow morning allays those fears, verifying the public's hunger for truth from a Black radical perspective.

Only with the power of the people - only when we win our case for liberty and justice for all in the court of public opinion - can we begin to throw off the fascist re-enslavement of our minds and, in this lock-'em-up world, even of our bodies. For that WE NEED KPFA; its 59,000-watt signal is one of the most powerful media in the country. And WE NEED JR's radical Black voice on KPFA! So please give him your vote tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8-9 a.m. by calling (800) 439-5732 or pledging online at KPFA.org.

If you like the Bay View, tell somebody

My heartfelt thanks to all who responded to my appeal for volunteers to post stories to sfbayview.com. The backlog remains large, though, so if you have a little time, your help will be greatly appreciated by me and by readers far and wide who will jump on those stories the minute they're available.

To increase our readership - we all know many who are hungry for liberating news and views but haven't discovered us yet - tell somebody what you like about the Bay View. If that person decides to advertise, you'll be speeding the day when we can resume printing weekly. Imagine how powerful an antidote a well-staffed weekly paper - in print and online - could be to stop the current backslide into slavery propelled by the big corporate media!

UPCOMING EVENTS

Support the Black arts - and Bay View arts editor Wanda Sabir! Wanda's Picks, events she promotes and reviews as the only Black arts critic in the Bay Area, are an addiction for thousands. Join them! Wanda's Picks will nourish your soul and empower your spirit.

A quick glance at the Bay View Calendar of Events shows that both Black-owned theaters in the Bay Area are launching new shows this weekend: "A Raisin in the Sun" in San Francisco and "The Wiz" at the Black Repertory Group Theater in Berkeley - can you ask for more? Support Black cultural institutions!