New MIM & RAIL Radio program releases! Help meet goals for expansion! by the MIM Radio project Since our last report, the MIM and RAIL project has suffered some delays, but organized a number of people into participation and produced a number of different types of programs. In addition, the donation of new computer equipment has increased the number of CDs we can produce by a factor of about 10. This article reports the growth of the Radio project since our last report in the summer of 1999. Under Lock and Key program leaps forward After a lapse of more than four months, the Under Lock and Key: News and Commentary on Prisons program is back on track with a new 4-program CD release in March. We announced in the summer of 1999 that the program would soon credit the leadership of both MIM and RAIL to accurately credit MIM's role in producing the program. The CD released in March contains the first programs to be entirely produced since that decision and to carry the correct credits. As part of our efforts to not fall behind and to keep DJs with one new program per week, we currently have 10 programs in production for release over the next month. Mumia commentaries released In November, the radio project released a series of Mumia Abu Jamal commentaries recorded by a RAIL comrade. Mumia Abu Jamal is a former Black Panther and radio journalist on death row in Pennsylvania. Framed for a murder he did not commit, Mumia has continued to raise the political consciousness of untold thousands of people around the world through articles and a series of recorded radio commentaries. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections responded to Mumia's effective work by refusing him permission to record commentaries like those he recorded in the early 1990s. This denies Mumia a valuable means of spreading his revolutionary analysis. To bring the Mumia essays to a wider audience, the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League recorded a series of recent articles by Mumia and put them together with stories about Mumia from the Under Lock and Key program. In November, the first CD was released, and a second CD awaits the recording of just 2 more essays. The CDs are $5 each, and the RealAudio files are available for free on the MIM & RAIL Radio project website Stalin lecture put online Periodically MIM holds public forums on a variety of topics. Some of these forums are easily adaptable to distribution on the radio. Others can merely be given a broader audience through distribution on the internet or on CD. For that reason, we have begun putting events online. The first part of this effort was the posting in the Fall of 1999 of the 1 hour lecture portion of a MIM presentation on "The Legacy of Stalin." The second hour of the event was a discussion and will be made available in the coming months. For those who wish to order the program on CD, the first hour is available now for $10. Old MIM Program made available again In 1991 and 1992, MIM had a short-lived radio program entitled "MIM Notes and Commentary". The weekly program consisted of 3-5 minute news spots loosely based on MIM Notes stories. Because of the stories chosen and the method used, most are still very useful today for their agitational, educational or historical value (or all 3). MIM currently has no plans to produce more of these programs, but we have transferred the old shows on to CDs (2 volumes, $10 each) and placed RealAudio files on the internet. MIM thanks all the individuals who helped transfer the programs from old reel-to-reel tape onto a digital format where it can be more easily preserved and distributed. We have found this program to be especially useful for discussion when we have organized long car trips to political events. Longer MIM & RAIL programs foreseen; your help is needed For some time, MIM and RAIL has been trying to get the air time to produce longer programs. Starting soon, we will have a program in Boston, MA at 1580AM between 9 and 10pm. Donations of political music or spoken word pieces would help this program expand. With the acquisition of a Macintosh CD-Recorder drive, the comrades responsible for this program could take their show and easily produce "customized" versions for other radio stations willing to play the program. Sometimes we have people willing to play a longer radio program, but they are required to make it appear that it is produced locally, or include lots of station Ids, or whatever the local rules are. Ideally, we could pre-record and insert all of the local requirements into the program, making its playback significantly easier on whoever gives us the airtime. For this to be an option, we need to raise $200-$300 to pay for the CD-R drive. The MIM & RAIL Radio Project can be found online at http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/ma/radio.html. Under Lock and Key programs can also be downloaded in the higher quality mp3 format at Radio4All (http://www.radio4all.net/). You can email the MIM & RAIL radio project at radio@mim.org.