ALTcast – crowdsourcing an Alternative Media Directory
We just registered the domain ALTcast.us to help us go from “dark ages” into the light of a brighter future. The center of the image is a painting by our designer Margarete Koenen (DrRon’s wife) inspired by The Kite Runner, book and film, with a boy surrounded by darkness and light surrounding his kite.
The Problem
Afraid of Orange?
click to watch backstory
Cancel KKKulture
- PBS and NPR are being defunded
- The federal government is being dismantled
- Stephen Colbert is being canceled
- This list is too long to continue here
- Restore and protect democracy…(may take a long time).
- Post in person gatherings with our OddFridays tool.
- Create a Pod with five friends.
- Organize a Town Hall in your community.
- Help us crowdsource the creation of the ALTcast directory.
- Participate with listing submissions, preference voting, and reviews in our directory.
- Connect us with your friend, who has a friend that knows Stephen Colbert.
- Engage in Mutual Aid with Group Members to model Pacifica Radio’s listener sponsorship.
The Solution
The Struggle for Democratic Media 100 Years Ago
Around 50% of Tampa’s workers were employed in the cigar industry during the early 1920s. My paternal grandmother, Corina Suarez used to jokingly tell me that she was a “stripper.” She stripped the tobacco leaves off the stems in the cigar factories. While she did not have a formal education, she would often talk to me about Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Marx and Engels. Her brother, Florentino Linares, Jr. lived in New York City and Tampa. He was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, an important volunteer group in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) mainly of American and Canadian volunteers who fought against fascism in Spain. My maternal great grandmother, who died when I was 16, was the daughter of the housekeeper for the Ybor family, who began the cigar industry in Tampa. She adopted my maternal grandfather, Rafael Garcia, who was orphaned as a baby. Going through my mom’s papers after she passed away in 2022 I found a letter from the brother of Lucinda, Rafael’s mother. I googled his name and discovered him listed on a page about Jews, who fought against fascism, with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. When I attended New York University, friends who met my mother suspected she was Jewish and now I know they were correct! I remember my mom telling me about “Los Niños Antifascistas,” who rolled cigars to sell and raise money for the fight against Franco.
Cigar Maker’s Strike of 1931
The Strike of 1931 is remembered as the final battle in which a tradition integral to cigar makers’ craft had for once and for all been removed by the growing corporate power in the United States. Moreover, the rights of minorities to engage in free speech and express their political opinions were overwhelmingly disregarded by an establishment feeling threatened by radical ideologies. Despite a traditional “loss,” the manner in which workers held together showed the power of people in the face of local, state and federal government.
Wikipedia
Workers voted to choose the lectors and the materials they read. At the end of the week, each worker tossed 25 cents into a pot for their lector’s pay. However, this tradition came under threat when factory owners accused lectors of spreading propaganda and stirring up unionization.
The lector, or reader, was an institution in Tampa cigar factories. Elected and paid by the workers, the lector read material of their choosing aloud as the workers assembled cigars. Lectores read newspapers, current affairs publications, and even novels, often translating into Spanish on the fly. The best lectores had booming voices and dramatic talent, sometimes acting out the scenes they described. The presence of the lector meant that despite widespread illiteracy, cigarmakers were often well-informed about events across the world. Lectores made factory owners uneasy, especially when they read radical publications to the workforce. Owners’ attempts to force out lectores often prompted workers to go on strike.
City University of New York
“Contrary to popular belief, lectors were not on a mission to instigate labor strife. It is worth remembering that workers were responsible for the material that the lectors read.“
Tampa Historical
Lynchings and Deportations
Tampa has people openly lynch men who dare to belong to a union. In former Tampa strikes, men–including a citizen of the United States–were banished from this country to the wilds of Honduras, but today men are hanged in the public streets of that lawless city. Contrary to popular belief, lectors were not on a mission to instigate labor strife. It is worth remembering that workers were responsible for the material that the lectors read.
The Masses
SHARE THIS
Responses