TRA founder M'banna Kantako established WTRA as a one watt radio station, with a broadcast radius of between 1 and 2 miles, which covered 70% of Springfield's African American community. Part of WTRA's broadcast included "airing personal testimonies of police brutality... and broadcasting local police communications live from the police scanner he [Kantako] had set up in his apartment to monitor the police." WTRA was symbolically linked to Zoom Black Magic Radio in Fresno, CA for approximately one year before dissociating due to Zoom's "more radical" nature, and ultimately changing it's name from WTRA to Black Liberation Radio.
"The FCC's broadcast licensing rationale is based on scarcity. Asserting that the electromagnetic spectrum is finite, the FCC 'benignly' agrees to act in the public interest as the 'impartial' gatekeeper for access to the airwaves."
Ultimately this gap, a space more and more frequently used for community radio, creates a situation wherein the FCC has the option to take action against illegal broadcasters or look the other way. In the case of BLR, the FCC initiated attempts to terminate Kantako's broadcasts only after police brutality became a feature topic.
"Interested in the educational value of the publicity associated with requesting an international forum for discussing radio censorship in the USA, the National Lawyers Guild has been researching his international rights." Though the international arena may not be utilized until domestic channels have been tapped, "the basis for this discussion is Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which specifies the right to receive and impart information through any media... Other possible international fora include the Commission on Human Rights, constituted under the UN Economic and Social Council; its Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities; or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an off-shoot of the Organisation of American Black States, whose American Convention on Human Rights bans government restrictions on news media."
Source: Index On Censorship - 2/93