KBOO and the Waterfront Blues Festival

evergreen_web_banner.png

KBOO is open to the public! To visit the station, contact your staff person or call 503-231-8032.


Authored by: 
Published date: 
Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - 7:20pm

July 3rd, 2018

 

Esteemed Community Members,

KBOO will be broadcasting the Waterfront Blues Festival this year. We are thankful for all the community input we have received concerning the changes taking place with the festival and the organizations participating. Our staff took some time to research and discuss the situation as soon as it was brought to our attention and though we found it hugely problematic that the police will be benefiting from the outreach provided by the Blues Festival and by KBOO’s broadcast, we did not find that we were in a position to pull out of the Festival this year all together.

KBOO believes it is impossible to achieve equity by using a force designed to maintain systems of oppression and inequality. Of all of the tools and resources that governments have to solve problems the police are the most coercive and the most punitive. When people come to see the police as the primary tool for solving problems, we are failing to take into account the historical legacy of policing and actually reproducing inequality especially on communities of color and poor people.

Though KBOO and our Oregon Community Media partners will be broadcasting the Festival this year, we intend to continue the conversation internally, with the community, and with the Festival organizers to inform the decision we will make about participating next year.

Thank you again for your feedback and your support of KBOO. We appreciate being in dialogue and in community with you all.

Best,

KBOO Community Radio