Listen: 9 Hours of No Kings Day Coverage!

WBAI and its Pacifica Radio affiliates provided 9 hours of coverage during this past weekend’s No Kings Day rallies. Photo/Judith Sokoloff.

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By Bob Hennelly

For over nine hours, WBAI’s team of dozens of reporters and producers—including Work-Bites’ Steve Wishnia—brought you the soundtrack of the growing resistance to authoritarian rule from across our nation.

That’s right—from Maine to Hawaii—from Florida to Alaska—six time zones—one nation indivisible.

As it turns out—we the people, as in you and I, are the ONLY real guardrails for our democracy.

We always heard that in school, but it's been a really long time since we’ve all had to pour into the streets to demonstrate it.

Organizers of 2,700 local NO KINGS DAY events that drew seven million people to turn out to protest President Trump’s deployment of the U.S. military into American cities like Los Angeles and Chicago where crime is actually on the decline.

Yet, what we have heard from our increasingly unhinged President is that these war-like deployments over the objections of local and state officials are necessary to quell “the enemy within.” You ask just who is that “enemy within”? Why Democrats, anyone who opposes his use of masked ICE agents to abduct thousands of people off the street they suspect of being here in the United States illegally.

Who cares if, as ProPublica reports, 170 of the so-called suspects are actually US citizens.

On June 14th, the first No Kings Day, Pacifica broadcast the day’s events that saw five million Americans turn out at around 2,000 events in all 50 states.

Throughout the day and into the evening, we were guided by our regional co-anchors and our team of two dozen Pacifica reporters on the ground across the country.

From Noon to 2 PM we focused on the Eastern Time zone, starting with speakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Randi Weingarten, AFT president, who addressed the protest in Washington, DC, where a federal government shutdown headed into its third week.

From 2 PM until 4 PM Central Time, we were guided by Norm Stockwell, the publisher of the Progressive, who came to us from the studios of WORT, Pacifica’s affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin.

From 4 PM until 5 PM Eastern Time, we visited with Maeve Conran, Managing Editor of the Rocky Mountain Community Radio Coalition. Maeve came to us from the studios of KGNU, Pacifica’s Boulder, Colorado affiliate.

From 5 PM until 7 PM Eastern Time we pivoted to Althea Billings, News Director at KBOO, Pacifica’s Portland, Oregon affiliate.

We closed out the last broadcast hour from 7 PM to 8 PM with a national recap with compelling dispatches from Pacifica reporters in Alaska and Hawaii.

Six time zones—One Nation—One Radio Network—Indivisible.

Listen to the entire program here.