Joe Steinberger: Rebuilding America from the Bottom Up An invitation to save the world - and to dinner!
/By Joe Steinberger
At WRFR we are not trying to get national attention; we are trying to get local attention and to serve as a means of communication for the people of our Rockland area.
The fundamental problem of our nation is the slide from equality and democracy to inequality and plutocracy. It is a downward spiral: money begets power begets money begets power - a brewing disaster
Finding ways to restore equality and democracy is a huge challenge. Our only hope of success is to put our heads and hearts together: we must care for, trust and respect each other, converse with open minds, and strive to find the popular unity that we need to take back our country.
Two hundred years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, an aristocrat whose family had suffered in the French Revolution, visited the US and wrote “Democracy in America.” For him, America was leading the way to equality and democracy in the world, and he found the foundation of our stability and competence in our tradition of local self-government - and in the local conversation through which we become competent to govern ourselves.
Today, as the spiral of growing inequality deepens, our institutions of local conversation are weakening. Here in Rockland we have lost our local commercial radio stations, our Rockland newspaper of 178 years, and our local chamber of commerce. All gone! All that is left is WRFR’s 100 watts at 93.3 fm, this newsletter, our great volunteer team, and our determination to stem the tide.
Please join us any way you can. Your help is essential for the success of our mission.
And you are invited to dinner! Come to the station at 20 Gay Street any Wednesday evening at 6 for our weekly pot-luck round-table dinner and conversation. Please bring some food or drink to share, park on Gay Street (or walk if you can), and join a convivial conversation among people of diverse backgrounds and political perspectives. Our goal is to have fun (a necessary ingredient) and to learn from each other. The subject of our conversation is open, but always with the goal of finding common ground on solutions to the problems that we face here in Rockland, in our nation, and in our world.
