I’m running for the LSB with the Justice & Unity Campaign (www.justiceunity.org) to help return WBAI to being a powerful ally of people in trouble. I’ve organized to help parents with children in foster care and still advocate for justice for the Central Park 5, including my son Yusef Salaam.
sharonne@justiceunity.org, 212-591-2111
I’m running for the WBAI Local Station Board with the Justice and Unity Campaign (www.justiceunity.org), because now more than ever the autonomy and the very mission of WBAI are at stake. You may know of me because my son Yusef was one of the five innocent boys who were wrongly arrested and convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park. During the struggle to defend this group of African American and Latino boys who were wrongly accused in this case – and ultimately clear them of all wrongdoing – WBAI was a powerful and indispensable ally, helping to get the truth out when other media were bent on joining in with the voices of accusation and refusing to hear the truth.
As a result of my son’s wrongful arrest, I embarked on a career of community activism serving children and families in and out of prison, with special attention to the foster-care system in New York City. My work has led to thousands of children being reunited with their biological parents, as well as policy changes in the child-welfare system. People United for Children, the organization I founded and of which I am now the Executive Director, is located in Harlem, but I have worked with people from all over the city and state, and have helped others in similar circumstances throughout the country. As a self-trained social worker, I have developed skills in negotiating, mediating, and assisting others in understanding their rights. I believe these skills will serve the board well. I also understand very well the difference between a governing board and actual management, and will not overstep the bounds of the LSB’s purview.
I look forward to working for more community oriented programming that is produced by local programmers and aids the communities in which we live.
I am also very concerned about the reduced level of contributions to WBAI and Pacifica and the imposition of a gag rule, which has placed limitations on what producers who oppose the recent changes at WBAI can say. We need to safeguard the freedom of producers to report the news and cover events in our communities, and to speak freely without fear of being removed from the airwaves based on arbitrary criteria.
I ask you to please vote for me and all of the Justice and Unity slate–endorsed by Nana Camille Yarbrough, Esperanza Martell, and the Long Island Troops Out Coalition, among others–in the order shown below. Each candidate must have a different number next to their name to increase the possibility that your chosen candidates will become your LSB representatives.
We are all dedicated to the principle that WBAI’s autonomy must be maintained by the people it serves, so that it can fulfill its vital mission.
1. Bernard White
2. Suzanne Adely
3. John Brinkley
4. Father Lawrence Lucas
5. Ray Laforest
6. Wellington Echegaray
7. Sharonne Salaam
8. Linda Bergnes
9. Myriam Decime
10. Carlos Canales
11. Sarah Klepner
12. Henry Hagins
13. Eugene Hamond
sharonne@justiceunity.org, 212-591-2111
1. Why do you want to be on the Local Station Board (LSB)?
I’ve worked on many issues related to the surrounding communities in the WBAI listening area and am familiar with the needs of these communities. I understand the potential of a strong WBAI and want to work on the WBAI Local Station Board to help re-forge WBAI’s links to the communities it has historically served, and restore the station to its forward-thinking approach.
2. How do you envision the LSB working with the Pacifica Foundation, WBAI staff and listener members?
The issue of local autonomy is key to WBAI’s ability to serve its community. I believe that the Local Station Board should be able to find a way to work in harmony with the Pacifica Foundation to maintain the health of the network, without compromising WBAI’s crucial role as a voice for the many communities in the New York area that would not otherwise be heard. My experience as a community organizer will be, I believe, particularly valuable for reaching out to the many groups and individuals that rely on WBAI as both a voice and a source of information that they cannot do without.
3. How can WBAI better serve the community? Please define community.
WBAI could better serve its listeners by bringing in more grassroots material, more educational material, more material that reaches across generations, and by helping people to come together around common issues. Even with regard to matters that people might feel they experience differently, we all share the same concern for survival and all have the goal of helping our children and our communities grow on a solid foundation.
A community in this day and age consists of groups of interacting people sharing an environment. Intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions affect the identity of a community, its participants, and the degree to which communities work together. WBAI-Pacifica is itself a community, with its broadcasts disseminating information and bringing people together throughout the world.
4. Describe some actions you would take to increase the influence of the station in underrepresented communities and to increase the diversity of the listening
audience.
I am most eager to expand outreach to local communities and increase the level of training that is offered to younger people who might be interested in broadcasting, to get them ready to move the station forward. I would be very interested in working with board colleagues who have connections in communities other than the ones in which I already work, as I have a willingness both to collaborate and share information that I have acquired in my work as a community organizer that might be helpful to others and to learn from their experiences.
5. What sources of funding, other than listener donations, do you feel WBAI should solicit? Do you have any ideas with respect to improving the current funding mechanisms?
I feel that grant proposals, especially for training programs, should be pursued. I believe that expanding community events would be helpful both for raising some income and for increasing the station’s visibility throughout the signal area. I do not believe that we should seek corporate underwriting under any circumstances.
6. Please state briefly the skills, experience, educational background, work history, organizational affiliations, areas of community service, areas of interest and expertise that you would bring to the Pacifica network as a member of the Local Station Board.
I am a founder of People United for Children (PUC), and am now its Executive Director. I received my B.A. from Empire State College and an A.A.S. from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and worked in the fashion industry for fifteen years before the wrongful arrest of my son Yusef led to a new career in activism, which I have been pursuing for almost 20 years.
PUC works with volunteers from around New York City serving hundreds of children in five facilities. PUC volunteers have provided home-cooked meals, entertainment, educational lectures, and support for children and youth preparing for life after prison. In addition, I worked on a campaign against the abusive prison practice of locking children in isolation for more than twenty-four hours. When I learned that only five percent of the children received visits, that many were homeless and had nowhere to go upon their release, and seventy-five percent had a history with foster care, I worked on a campaign to get parents and other family members to visit their children, and then looked to see what was going wrong in foster care and began to work to reunite children in foster care with their biological parents.
By 1996, PUC had become the Harlem community’s best-informed advocates for foster-care children, providing support for parents of children in foster care. It then began working with latchkey children in our community to get them off the streets. My work has led to thousands of children being reunited with their biological parents; in 1998, PUC initiated a class-action lawsuit against the City of New York to challenge the removal of African American children from their parents without investigating their circumstances. This class-action lawsuit was settled in 2007 and among other things forced the NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to mandate a series of conferences intended to provide consideration and review of the needs of the child and family, as well as visitation and notice of court appearances, etc.
In addition to my work reuniting biological families, I am working diligently on attaining justice for the Central Park 5. These youth – 14 to 16 years old at the time – were wrongfully arrested and convicted. Tried as adults, they spent a combined 44 years incarcerated. One of those wrongfully convicted was my son Yusef Salaam. After the 5 were exonerated, the matter was treated as if all those years of sorrow would just be erased – as though nothing had happened – but I cannot forget what happened, and I will not rest until the 5 have received recompense for the stolen years.
I have been the recipient of numerous awards for my work and my commitment to community service. I have served on Community Board 10 in Central Harlem and have been a Revson Fellow at Columbia University, where I focused on marketing, management, and media in order to further develop PUC’s outreach programs and expand its capacity to serve the community and New York City.
One thing that keeps me grounded is being the proud mother of Aisha, Yusef, and Shaf.
7. On which Local Station Board committees are you interested in actively serving? If you are a current Local Station Board member, on which committees do you currently serve?
I am most interested in serving on the Management Search Committee.
8. If you are currently on the Board and wish to be re-elected please describe your 3 year experience on the LSB. What did you accomplish? What were the obstacles you faced? Do you envision any change in the next three years if you are re-elected?
I am not currently on the LSB.
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