RadioActive 12/18/08

Producers/Hosts: Amy Browne and Meredith DeFrancesco

Topic: Military Intimidation in El Salvador

We talk by phone with Francisco Martinez and Michelle Anderson in El Salvador for breaking news from Suchito where the right-wing ARENA party government military showed up in town this week, apparently to intimidate the people in the area where the left FMLN party is far ahead in the polls leading up to elections in January and March.

Francisco Martinez is with the PROGRESO “Directiva Regional” or regional coordinating board in the Suchitoto region.   PROGRESO is the regional branch of CRIPDES.  CRIPDES started under the name Christian Committee for the Displaced of El Salvador. After the end of the Salvadoran Civil War, the CRIPDES communities changed the name to The Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador, the Spanish acronym for which is CRIPDES

Michelle Anderson is the Co-Coordinator for the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities network, linking 16 cities across the U.S. as a movement in solidarity with the Salvadoran organized communities.  In addition to participating in this interview, she provides translation as well.

FMI: www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 12/18/08

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Technology is moving very fast, and promises to change important parts of our lives in the not too distant future. IBM has recently described five technologies that will change our lives within five years. Here’s a peek at several and their implications for our daily lives – both good and perhaps not so good.

Common Health 12/17/08

Producer/Host: Jim Fisher

Studio Engineer: Amy Browne

Topic: Society & Disability

What is a disability?  What obstacles most affect disabled people?  What is the public response?

Guests: Josephine Cooper, Director of Faith in Action: Community Connections working to assist elderly and disabled people in Hancock County;  Tom Stipe,  Community Advocate who turned his disability into a community accesibility initiative

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Voices 12/16/08

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

The stage is set in El Salvador for the FMLN party to defeat the right wing ARENA party in the upcoming elections. The groups that eventually became the FMLN and ARENA parties, fought on opposite sides in the war in El Salvador in the 1980s.  The right had ties to the small number of wealthy families that had long controlled the country, and included paramilitaries who committed widespread massacres and other crimes against humanity, and assassinated Archbishop Romero. They received funding from the U.S. government, which labeled the uprising of the poor rural people against that right wing regime “communism”.
Since the peace accords that ended the war nearly 17 years ago, former paramilitaries—who have gone unpunished—-have been active in the right-wing ARENA party, and many of those involved in the people’s uprising are associated with FMLN.
The ARENA party has been in office and has had a close relationship with the Bush regime.  Now that polls indicate that the FMLN will likely win in next year’s elections, many in El Salvador believe that the U.S. will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening.
We spoke by phone yesterday to a community organizer in El Salvador, and a member of the Sister Cities organization that helps coordinate WERU’s relationship with our sister station Radio Sumpul, as well as the sistering relationships between Maine Organic Farmers and Gardener’s Assoc and the rural communities of El Salvador, and PICA and Bangor’s Sister City relationship with Carasque.

Guests: Bernardo Belloso is a National Directive Council Member of the Association of Rural Communities for the Development of El Salvador,CRIPDES*.* CRIPDES is the largest rural grassroots movement in El Salvador which coordinates the organizing, education and mobilization of over 300 rural communities spread through seven provinces of El Salvador
Michelle Anderson is the Co-Coordinator for the U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities network, linking 16 cities across the U.S. as a movement in solidarity with the Salvadoran organized communities.  In this interview Michelle is translating Bernado’s comments to English

FMI: www.elsalvadorsolidarity.org

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