Ramon Ramirez; A farmworker organizer from Oregon talks about producing radio in indigenous languages and fighting anti-immigrant policies.(Interview)

The treeplanters and farmworkers union you helped found in 1985 -- Pineros y Camesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN)-is the first in Oregon with its own radio station, Radio Movimiento: La Voz del Pueblo (KPCN-LP 96.3 FM). How are you using radio to organize people? To give you an example, we had hearings [about] driver's licenses in January. Normally, we would have at best for a particular hearing on an issue around 100 to 200 people. At the first hearing we had on driver's licenses, we had 3,000 people show up. We asked people how they got there, and they said through Radio Movimiento. Then [at]] the second hearing, we had 6,000, and that just blew us away. Not only was our radio station able to mobilize those folks, but because now we're part of the medium, we got other radio stations to join us. We're the only radio station that is broadcasting in three indigenous languages [from Mexico]-Mixtoco, Triqui and Purepscha. Trique and Mixteco are from Oaxaca, Mexico and Perepecha is from Michoacan. Seventy percent of the migrant farmworkers in Oregon are indigenous.

What are the most popular shows? We have a show specifically for farmworkers' rights to [provide] education around pesticides, minimum wage and sexual harassment in the workplace. We have a program that's dedicated to immigrant rights. And then we do a lot of youth programming--youth talking about issues like the Dream Act, immigration raids, getting an education, drugs, gangs. Besides our indigenous programming, the most popular is the youth programming because it's for youth, by youth.

What we're doing is we're giving the community a say. They're hearing their own voices. When the community hears itself, when they hear their issues, when they're involved in the programming, there's this organic bond with the community. We're giving a voice to those people who have never had a voice, like indigenous people and youth. When people who have never been empowered before are given the opportunity and the skills to build and develop programs that address their needs, it's nourishing. They use creative ways to communicate and really talk about the issues without being censored or edited because of commercial interests.

PCUN does both organizing and service work. How do the two work hand-in-hand? We don't do services just to do services, but we use it as a way to educate people so that people are involved in resolving their own issues. We teach people how to do income taxes--we're trying to get people to understand that the taxes they're paying are going to pay ...