How to trash a B52 and influence people

Out of the blog loop for a few weeks, but our little community radio station is taking to podcasting like a kitten to a can of sardines, and getting the stuff out has been exciting, generating some good energy. (Damn, I'm starting to talk like a hippy already!). At the end of my last post I was wondering where this podcast thing was taking me. I'm starting to find out. So far it has taken me to people like David Suzuki and Cairain O'Reilly, who have both granted us extraordinary interviews for podcast and broadcast. Martin was able to line up an 'exclusive' with Suzuki (which we immediately put on the net, of course) before he recorded question time at Suzuki's public lecture at Byron Bay.

Reading Bicycle Mark's Blogs had me sharing his thirst for radical activism ( I know, I know, you brew your own ... ). Thoughts like these were trickling through my head the other day while wandering through the village on the way to the radio station. An aquaintance interrupted my revery when he called me over and asked if a friend of his could get a bit of air time . He would only be in town for an hour or so ... Before I blurted out (perhaps fortunately) that we would talk to anybody on air, he breathlessly explained that the guy was just over from Ireland, on his way up to Brisbane to visit his family. Then he would have to go back to Ireland to face charges of causing grievous bodily harm to a B52 Bomber at the Shannon airbase! I nodded sagely and said ' I dunno ... I think we might be able to accommodate him at short notice ... ' Meetyas at the Oasis? (you know ... that sidewalk coffee place where all the chess players, and poets, and musicians, and 2Nim FM community radio people hang out ... ). I rushed down there and found Marie, our staion coordinator and most experienced interviewer.

5 minutes later they turned up. And what an interview Cairain gave us! And an incredibly mature vision of the nature of activism and the directions he would like to see it go. Not on quite the same track that I follow (he was working more from the spiritual/religious traditions of Ghandi, and Martin Luther King), but based on half a lifetime of experience and commitment. ( - At one stage I thought of a fellow arrestee at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration back in 1968. I remember that when he was asked his occupation at the Police Station when we were being charged, he gave as his occupation "professional agitator"... but that would be a comparison unfair to Cairain).

No. Not going to tell you what he said. You have to hear it yourself. It's only 20 minutes and it won't hurt a bit. In fact, it made my day.