Jerry Landay (JL): Why are you on the air?
Mbanna Kantako (MK): Our most important concern is human rights. So we're on the air to
stress the idea that people are born with rights, and they come before any government, any judge,
anybody on earth. Nobody has a right to write a rule that comes before the rights that you're born
with.
JL: What's the point of using radio to do this?
MK: In our community there is serious literacy problem. Plus African people are an oral people.
We communicate orally. There needs to be a back and forth conversation.
JL: So you're reading books to people? What books are you reading?
MK: Right now, my wife Dia is reading Jeremy Rifkin's book called The End of Work.
JL: Why are you reading that one?
MK: People tend to think that we're on the air because I'm black and I come out of the projects,
and that this is a white/black thing. It's a human being thing. It's about the survival of everybody
and Rifkin's book talks about the plans of the so-called ruling elite, and how they are going to
impact upon everybody. We want to try to share that kind of information with people. It's like a
Black Panther political education class on the radio. That's all we're doing. That's where the
whole concept came from, but we recognize how the government used those classes as
opportunities to attack the Panthers and attack the people that were coming to the meetings. So
this is the perfect meeting room right here where people can just hear it on their own. We call our
station 'The Peoples' Choice.' When you listen, you choose to listen. We're not dragging you,
making you listen. You listen when you're ready to listen. It's just a perfect way of sharing
information.
JL: What else has your family read to them besides Rifkin?
MK: My daughter is reading Jonathan Kozal's book Savage Inequality. My son is reading a
book that is full of folk-tales and fables. We've read Ward Churchill's book Agents of
Repression: the Cointelpro Papers; Seize the Time by Bobby Seale. We've read Nat Turner.
Right now my youngest daughter, is reading a book called, My Trip to Africa. We try to read a
variety of books. I try to submit books that are age appropriate for our children and at the same
time books that are going to help speak to some of the conditions that people see going on
around them.
Last night my wife Dia was going over some newspaper articles getting ready for the
radio. She said, 'Man if you don't read you won't know nothing will you?' That's it. What we're
trying to do is use these books and articles to show people how the information is laying right
there. People talk about conspiracy. It ain't no damn conspiracy what this government is up to.
It's right there in print. A conspiracy is something done in secret. It's no conspiracy at all. All
people have to do is pick it up and be able to analyze.
JL: What's the government up to?
MK: There is a problem. There is a surplus population as they call it. It's threatening the ability
of those who have everything to keep everything. Those in power feel the solution is some kind
of extermination program, and it's going to manifest itself in different ways. A lot of times when
we say this stuff people say, 'Well, that's impossible.' Yet there were people on this land when
this government came to these shores, and we saw what they did to them. We weren't here when
this government came, but we saw what they did to us. So, we know this government is fully
capable of anything. You see now that they've moved from the Industrial Age to the Information
Age, they don't need all those workers no more. The only reason that this government says you
have a right to exist is that you have a use for them. Well, they don't need you at the job no
more, but they know that you're not going to sit around and let them kill you off. So, there's
been several things enacted to try and put the population in a real vulnerable position. One is
what your witnessing in this neighborhood here, this massive relocation program in which the
apartment that this radio station is presently located in will be demolished by the Housing and
Urban Development agency.
JL: It's not a relocation program. It's a taking apart program, a dismemberment program.
MK: There you go! We can't just sit around and blame other people for this massive dispersal
program. We were trying to come up with a solution. We thought the problem was that people
were not communicating, so the solution was what we are doing here -- the radio.
JL: Why did they kick Napoleon Williams off the air and confiscate his equipment and haven't
done that to you?
MK: It's hard to say. I know this, we've not made it easy for them to leave us alone. They've
shown remarkable restraint. [Laughter]
JL: What do you mean, what have you done? You're saying to me that you provoke them?
MK: Well, being alive and being in opposition to what they're saying is provocation enough on
our part as far as they're concerned.
JL: What if the Dunifer case gets to the Supreme Court and the Justices who caused most of the
problems we're now trying to solve suddenly say, 'OK, you're going to have to reserve a portion
of the band for community radio.' And that includes you, and they give you a license, and they
say, 'Fine, but you have to stay on this frequency, and you have to operate at five watts or
whatever it's going to be, and you're going to have to go and apply for a license every three
years.' Would you do that?
MK: No.
JL: Why wouldn't you do that?
MK: 'Cause we're on the air right now and we ain't got none of that stuff. The question is, are
there some things that you just have a right to do? We think the right to communicate is a human
right. So, I'm not interested in the government authorizing us or giving us permission to do what
we have a natural right to do. OK?
JL: OK. Now let's suppose that I go on the air and ten other people do it, and fifty other people
do it, a hundred other people do it, including people on the right wing that simply want to come
in and interfere with you, and there's no order at all. What do you do then if there's no FCC?
MK: I'm not going to worry about that. I don't think everybody is going to do it. Hey, I've been
here ten years. I doubt it. You'll have a few air jocks that come on just for a little ego trip or
whatever, but in terms of being there ongoing for a long time, you're never going have that many
people. Not that many people are committed enough to do it.
JL: When did you first go on the air here?
MK: November 25th, 1987.
JL: And before that you did some deejaying?
MK: Well, I did some freelance street deejaying.
JL: OK, so how have you changed during that period of time? You're still here. You've been on
the air since '87. How have you grown?
MK: Well, I know there is a Creator now ... Back then, I wasn't certain. That's basically how I
changed, and that's to me the big change.
JL: Sitting here on the air you had your epiphany?
MK: Well, you know when you get through the things that we've gotten through and you endure
for the time we've endured, you just know that being able to maintain this long behind enemy
lines is concrete proof that we're not alone.
JL: You ever get disappointed that in all that time the essential problem, the human rights
problem, that you're addressing, hasn't been solved?
MK: Well, I haven't been here for over five hundred years, so I can't really complain personally.
You do want to be on the scene when it happens because you know it's going to be a beautiful
time. But, at the same time, once you grow in the knowledge of who and what you are, you
recognize that the goal is when we get there, not me get there.
JL: I find that doing what I do educates me. Every time I write, I write to find out what it is I'm
thinking. Do you find that this activity has educated you?
MK: Yeah, it's rehumanized us. My people have been ground into the dirt. I mean just as low as
you can get them. Well, there had to be a recovery time. And, the radio has served as a good
therapy for me and my family. We have also developed a sense of community. Just the other
night, for example, we was playing the eviction tape at 4:45 in the morning.
JL: Playing the eviction tape?
MK: Well, last week we recorded when they threw me out of the apartment I was using for our
youth programs, and we made a program out of it. We're here to educate the people. So we just
take encounters, and we educate the people by letting them hear the encounter and see what
solutions we brung.
JL: Called eye witness news. . . [Laughter]
MK: But the power of that night has to do with a little brother, he's about thirty years old. At
4:45 in the morning this program was playing, and he come all the way up here in these housing
projects which are about to be demolished to ask us if everything was OK. So that's the power of
it. I mean here's a midget coming into these projects that are now empty except for me and my
family. He thought the eviction was happening right then. If he was listening to the program he
would have to think there are hundreds of police and everything over here, but he came at 4:45 in
the morning. Reminded me of that song 'Stand' by Sly and the Family Stone where there is
midget standing tall and a giant beside him about to fall. That's the satisfaction I get from this
station. When I talk with people they tell me that they feel us inside of them. It's not just that
they listen to us on the radio. They feel us inside. That's the satisfaction. Knowing that we're a
part of the restoration process of our people. And, that's what we're about, the business of
restoration. We've been blessed to accumulate a wealth of information and knowledge, but not so
we just sit around and pump ourselves up. It's so that we can share it with the people.
JL: What do you call the station now?
MK: Human Rights Radio. Over the years we have gone through a lot of changes and all the
name changes reflected our developing consciousness. At the time we started we thought the
solution to the problem was tenants' rights. So, the first name of the station was
W-Tenants-Rights-Association.
JL: WTRA.
MK: That's right. By '89 though we got really disenchanted with the system. We came more to
our senses you could say. We didn't want anything to do with any of the things that would
indicate that we were in compliance with the system. So, we dropped the call letters and we took
up something called Zoom Black Magic. We were basically just looking for something different.
Then we became Zoom Black Magic Liberation Radio. In 1990, we said, 'Well, we need to be
more specific about the nature of the problem.' So we called it Black Liberation Radio. At the
time we thought all the black people in the world came from Africa and all the whites came from
Europe, and that all the white people were bad and all the black people were good. It took us
about three or four years to realize that it wasn't necessarily that way. Then we moved to African
Liberation Radio, but you can just take the differences between the Sahara and the Serengeti and
you know that there is going to be some differences in African people. So, we thought, 'We still
need to be more specific.' And we ultimately ended up saying Human Rights Radio because we
thought that before we can get people to start talking about what kind of person they are, they
have to appear to themselves as worthy of being a person. So in the name of human rights we
hope to challenge this whole concept of getting permission as opposed to being born with rights.
Human rights simply represent the right to be a human being. Civil rights are just basically
permission.
JL: How does your family contribute to the station?
MK: They are absolutely essential. Because by me being blind, there are a lot of things I don't
have access to. At the same time Dia helps me get to material and uses our research to educate
our children. You know we teach our own children at home, and just the whole process of
running a radio station and keeping up on information, keeps our children aware.
JL: So, are you ever scared?
MK: I go a day at a time. As far as being afraid, what's there to be afraid of when the Creator
that made everything in the universe has got your back?
-- February 28, 1997*
* This interview was conducted at the radio station/apartment of Mbanna and Dia Kantako at
Springfield's John Hay Homes Housing Project on the eve of its demolition by HUD.
