In a Dense City Landscape, Can Trees and Development Coexist?

Supporting Families Through the Pandemic

Gerald Donaldson is a Family Support Worker at Leschi Elementary School in the Seattle Public School System. He assists families who need help, so the children at Leschi can thrive in school.

Donaldson describes the challenges through the pandemic (from our interview with him last spring), and gives a more recent update of where many of his families are in their support needs now.

World Water Day: The One Minute Challenge

It’s the United Nations founded World Water Day today, March 22, 2022. 

Here’s a prompt for you to submit your own one-minute groundwater story.  Five story submissions will be picked to present to the United Nations.

KBCS Mourns the Loss of Doug Paterson

We are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Doug Paterson, our beloved host of The Music of Africa. He was 72 years old.

For 30 years at KBCS and Bellevue College, Doug volunteered his time to showcase the very best in African music. His dedication was an extraordinary act of service to his community and we are all better people and better listeners for having known him.

Doug grew up in Puget Sound and fell in love with the burgeoning PNW rock and roll scene at a young age often recording live shows off his radio using an Ampex reel-to-reel machine. Some of his tapes include early live performances of The Sonics!

Doug studied cultural anthropology and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in 1972. He was then invited into the graduate program at UW to study African languages and linguistics. He was awarded a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Washington in 1984. During a break from his studies in 1974 Doug traveled extensively throughout Eastern Africa where he became immersed in the African music scene and that was to become one of the great passions of his life. In Kenya he would also meet his wife Annah.

Doug’s love of music was of a giving sort. He was driven beyond spinning the albums of the music he loved and worked on many records and compilations, including Kenya Special and Nairobi Beat, to name just two. He also wrote extensively about East African music during his lifetime.

In 1991 he hosted his first radio show at KSER in Everett. In 1993 he came to KBCS and started The Music of Africa show, which he hosted twice a month every Thursday ever since. Doug was also a long time employee at KUOW where he engineered numerous recording sessions. 30 years is a long time to give to community radio, yet somehow as listeners and fans it wasn’t even close to being enough.

We send our love to Doug’s family, friends, and fans. We are forever grateful.

KBCS General Manager Notes – March 2022

Dear Friends and Supporters of KBCS,

Officially, the spring equinox occurs on March 20^th, but for me, nothing heralds the arrival of spring more than the impatient crocuses and daffodils that break through the cold ground in my front yard to brighten the landscape with their vibrant hues of lavender and yellow.

Another sure sign of spring is our annual spring fundraising campaign at KBCS, a time to renew your financial support for true community radio that provides entertaining and informative programming produced and hosted by local friends and neighbors that share their love of life and unique sense of place across our region.

With our troubled world on fire once again, this time with yet another horrific war raging in Eastern Europe, KBCS continues to offer an eclectic mix of programming hosted by everyday people from all walks of life celebrating the rich diversity and connectiveness of life across the Pacific Northwest. At every hour of the day and night we are always there when you need us, at the flick of switch or the click of a mouse, providing authentic local programming presented by familiar sounding voices and a music mix that sounds like home.

Now we need you to be there for us and donate what you can afford to help us pay the bills. Remember, no donation to KBCS is too small or too large, because added together our listener donations make up the largest source of our operations funding.

 As a self-supporting component of Bellevue College, KBCS must raise all the funding we need to operate this station without any supplemental funding by the college. That is why we truly need your generous support.

When the challenges of life in the twenty-first century begin to overwhelm us, you can depend on KBCS to be that trusted oasis on the air to help re-center our lives when we begin to feel dismayed and helpless by spiraling circumstances beyond our control.

Your generous donation of just $10, $20, $35 dollars or more each month as a sustaining contributor to KBCS goes a long way to ensuring that we have a dependable source of funding to keep the station on the air. Your one-time contribution in whatever amount fits your budget and circumstances is important too and those occasional larger donations from our friends and supporters is greatly appreciated and essential to reaching our important funding goal for the fiscal year.

Again, thank you for your continued support for KBCS and our unique mix of radio programming that is largely produced and hosted by over 50 talented, creative, and dedicated local volunteers who share their passion with you for both music and life across our beautiful little corner of the world.

Dana Lee Buckingham

General Manager and Proud Sustaining Contributor to Community Radio KBCS

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women – A Series of Six Stories

A report released by the Urban Indian Health Institute in 2018 shows that over 500 cases of missing or murdered indigenous women have been found throughout the United States – many since the year 2000. 70 women had gone missing or were murdered in Seattle and Tacoma. 6 were reported in Portland. How are indigenous families impacted by this and how are our communities coming together to help? (more…)

Honoring the Nikkei Farmers of Bellevue

Artist, Lauren Iida

Remember and Resist – Day of Remembrance

ICE and Detention

Antonio Guerrero, whose name is changed to protect their identity,  describes what it was like to be picked up by ICE and to live and work for roughly a dollar a day at the US ICE detention center in Tacoma.

Producer: Yuko Kodama

Photo: University of Washington

Day of Remembrance Remember and Resist Event 2/19/22

Saturday, February 19, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
At 10 am, meet at the Puyallup Fairgrounds (Blue Lot Parking, 311 10th Ave SE, Puyallup, WA 98372).
At 11 am, we will move to the Northwest Detention Center (1623 E J Street, Tacoma WA 98421) for a continuation of the program starting at 12 pm.

Weather permitting, there will be some outdoor programming. Masks and social distancing required.

February 19, 2022, will mark 80 years since the signing of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal and mass incarceration of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast and beyond. Most Japanese Americans in the Seattle area spent their first few months in detention at the Puyallup Fairgrounds (“Camp Harmony”) until their transfer to the concentration camps at Minidoka, ID, and Tule Lake, CA. The trauma of family separation, child imprisonment, poor sanitation, bad food, inadequate health care, and uncertain futures persists—and continues today at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma.
Gathering in the same location where barracks once housed incarcerees, survivors, their families, and community members will share the history of Camp Harmony and personal experiences there, before rallying at NWDC to remember and resist the injustices of the past and present. The program will also include a live taiko drumming performance by Fuji Taiko and a special ceremony to remember Japanese American concentration camps and incarcerates.
For RSVP or information: info@seattlejacl.org

Notes: Dress warmly. There will be one porta-potty facility available on the Puyallup site. Feel free to
bring signs, tsuru and noisemakers for the Tacoma portion of the program!