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!

Environmental Medicine

Dr. David Buscher is a Medical Doctor in Environmental Science; the study of the interactions between the environment and human health.  He describes his experiences working with patients alongside Dr. Theron Randolph, the father of Environmental Medicine.

Producer: Yuko Kodama

Black Youth Mental Health

Michelle Williams-Clark is the Eastside Youth Coalition Founder and Executive Director.  The organization is committed to providing Black, Latinx, Youth Of Color with racially and culturally relevant programs, in a safe community where their lives are valued.  Williams-Clark describes how the pandemic has impacted communities she works with and what the youth in these communities need in this time. 

These excerpts are from an NAACP Health Committee webinar on Reducing Anxiety, Stress and Depression During the Pandemic

Producer: Yuko Kodama

Photo: Michelle Williams-Clark

Youth and Mental Health and the Need for Trusted Adults

Year-End Message From KBCS General Manager, Dana Buckingham

Happy Holidays from all your friends at KBCS! 

This has been a remarkable year of renewal and revitalization at KBCS. Thanks to the support from our listeners like you, KBCS is on more secure financial footing and moving forward on multiple fronts to bring you our unique blend of eclectic community radio programming that informs, educates, and entertains.

New programs like Balkana, featuring Slavic folk music and Brasilidade, highlighting popular music from Brazil, further advance our core mission of providing greater diversity in our program offerings and more opportunities for everyday people in our community to share their passion for music and life across the greater Puget Sound. And, thanks to the American Recovery Act funding received last year, along with your donations, we are undertaking a long delayed and major upgrade of our station’s broadcast infrastructure. 

Support from friends like you have made all the progress we have made over the past year possible, and I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your moral and financial support. As we look forward to a new year of opportunities with your continued support, we can accomplish even more. Please help us achieve our mission of keeping this cherished tradition of true community radio on the air by becoming a monthly sustaining donor to KBCS. By making a reoccurring monthly donation of $10, $20, or more to KBCS you can help provide us with a more stable and reliable source of funding to make more informed budgeting and planning decisions. If you would like to make a larger one-time donation to KBCS, don’t forget to make that tax deductible donation before midnight on December 31. 

With your generous financial support, we will have the funding we need to invest additional resources in our news department. That means more community volunteers, citizen journalists, and student interns, working alongside our experienced and highly respected News Director, Yuko Kodama, can bring you stories that you can’t hear anywhere else. Stories told by people from all economic and social backgrounds, many of whom have walked the walk and know what it is like being on the outside looking in. 

Your sustaining monthly gift to KBCS can help us recruit and train more local citizens, from all backgrounds and all walks of life to produce, edit, and host their own music shows on KBCS. At KBCS we are not a newcomer to promoting diversity and inclusion in our programming and our community; it is baked in our stations DNA and has been part of who we are since 1973. 

My friends, none of this is possible without your support. I want to thank you for your continued support of our mission and your commitment to community radio. 

Wishing you all peace and joy throughout the holiday season, 

Dana Lee Buckingham 
KBCS General Manager and Proud Sustaining Contributor to Community Radio KBCS 

Archived audio issues

We are in the midst of updating our playlist software. During the transition may find that some archived KBCS programs are not always available or may perform differently than in the past. We are working through the various interconnected issues. Thank you for being patient.

What To Do If You Lose Your Vaccination Card

Producers: Fadumo Ali and Yuko Kodama

Photo:  Marco Verch

Y K 0:00
91.3 KBCS community radio, I’m Yuko Kodama. There’s been a lot of talk about the vaccine mandate to show proof of vaccination to your employer and to enter businesses and events. But what happens when you get vaccinated and then misplace your card? I spoke with Gabriel Spitzer, spokesperson for Seattle and King County Public Health to see what options you have when you need to show proof of vaccination, but can’t find your card.

 0:30
When do you use a vaccination card, I mean, we hear about the need for proof of vaccination for if you’re a state worker. People might have been being asked when they go to a restaurant or something… but tell me of the other times that you might need it short.

Gabriel Spitzer 0:47
So in King County, we have a vaccine verification policy that’s in place for people who want to go out to eat at restaurants, at bars, and gyms, other kinds of recreational settings, as well as like some larger outdoor events. And so for those kinds of venues, you’re going to have to show some kind of evidence that you’ve been fully vaccinated. And that means that you have had, either the Johnson and Johnson shot or two shots of Moderna, or Pfizer, at least two weeks ago. You will be required to show proof of vaccination status. And if you don’t have that, you can also obtain a negative COVID test and present that as well.

Y K 1:28
Okay, so you can use a negative COVID test, and how long would a negative COVID test last for something like this?

Gabriel Spitzer 1:38
It is 72 hours, you have to have provided a negative PCR test within the past 72 hours, you can use a rapid test that’s administered on site by like an actual testing provider, but at home tests are not sufficient.

Unknown Speaker 1:54
Could you tell me the difference between the rapid test and the PCR test and the at home tests?

Gabriel Spitzer 2:00
Yeah, definitely. So a PCR test looks for the actual genetic material of the virus. It’s looking for the presence of the virus, and they’re extremely sensitive and extremely accurate. So those are the gold standard tests. That’s, you know, Plan A. The rapid tests look for a different piece of the virus, and they are a bit less sensitive, of course, but they’re quick, that’s the trade off. At home tests are usually rapid tests. So the time that you can get in a drugstore, that’s going to be considered an at home rapid test, and that won’t pass muster for the vaccine verification policy. However, you know, some large events might have, say, a clinic or a provider on site doing rapid tests. There might be a fee, so just be aware of that. Rapid tests given on site by a testing provider are okay. It’s if they’re not supervised by a testing provider, if you do them at home, that’s not good enough for this policy.

Y K 2:55
if someone loses their card, and they didn’t take a picture of it, and they don’t want to keep having to get the COVID test, frequently, what are some things that they can do?

Gabriel Spitzer 3:08
So the first thing I would advise people to do is to go to a website called myIR.com. It stands for my immunization records. This is a website that’s through the State Department of Health. And for most people, your records are going to be accessible through my IR. You can look up your record, and then you can get what’s called a documentation or certificate of immunization, for your COVID-19 vaccination. And so you can print it out, you can download it and screenshot it. And that is just as good as the CDC card for the purposes of, you know, going out to eat going to a bar, etc.

3:47
If that doesn’t work out for you, for whatever reason, there’s another website that the state is just getting underway called waverify.org. That should be able to provide you with a QR code that you can show on your phone when you go in and they can scan it and confirm that you’ve been vaccinated. If you don’t have your card, you can also go back to your health care provider or the vaccinator and ask them for your records. So if you got vaccinated at the doctor’s office, they have a record of that you can get a printout of it and bring that or take a picture of it on your phone and show that. That suffices is proof of vaccination. Or if you’ve got it at vaccination site, like a clinic, a pop up clinic or whatever. You just need to know who gave you the shot, and they should have a record that they would be able to share. And if you really run out of options, you can contact the State Department of Health at 833-fax-HELP, and they can advise you on next steps but there’s a lot of options for people. Even if you lose your card. There’s a lot of ways to still prove that you’ve had the COVID-19 vaccine.

4:50
for King County’s vaccine verification policy. We have like a landing page, that’s Kingcounty.gov/verify. And if you go to that page, you can click on the FAQs the frequently asked questions and there is a question under there about what happens if you can’t find your vaccination card.

5:08
You know, it’s a good idea if you have your card now and you haven’t taken a picture of it yet, do so. If you have a smartphone, you can usually favorite that picture or do something that will make it easy to find when you need to do so. Or email it to yourself or something like that. That’s definitely the best proactive thing you can do.

 5:27
Thank you so much. Appreciate your time, Gabriel.

5:30
You bet. Take care, Yuko

5:33
That was Seattle and King County Public Health spokesperson Gabriel Spitzer speaking with me about what to do if you can’t find your vaccination card. For more information and links on retrieving your last COVID vaccination card, you can go to kbcs.fm.

The Circle: A Film on the Experience of Being Incarcerated

The Social Justice Film Festival is featuring The Circle, a film representing the artistic expression of people who are incarcerated. Two artists involved in this film, Allen Burnett and Marlene McCurtis spoke with KBCS about the genesis of the film and the lived experience behind it. The Circle can be viewed virtually through October 17th during the Social Justice Film Festival (more…)

KBCS GM Update for October 2021

I freely admit that the fall season has always been my favorite time of the year.

October is the month when Mother Nature puts on her spectacular coat of many colors and the brisk autumn air is just perfect for a leisurely stroll along the waterfront or a longer hike along one of our region’s beautiful forest and mountain trails. This is the season for cool, rainy days, sipping hot chocolate by the fire, dining on stuffed acorn squash drizzled with maple syrup, comfy old sweaters, and high school football under the lights. And now, thanks to many of you, our annual KBCS Fall Fundraising campaign has been a success and set the stage for celebrating this season off on the right foot.

Your generous donation to KBCS along with donations from other loyal listeners, make the great mix of music and insightful news programming on KBCS possible. Even during these difficult and troubling times, KBCS listeners understand their critical role in preserving our nearly 50-year tradition of true community radio. We can’t do this without you. Now, more than ever, we need our cherished community radio station by our side to keep us informed, centered, and entertained with programming choices you can’t find anywhere else.

For those of you who have yet to contribute to KBCS this fall, there is still time to show your support by donating online at our safe and secure website at kbcs.fm. Please consider becoming a sustaining contributor to KBCS by contributing a set dollar amount each month to be charged to your credit card or deducted from your checking account. Sustaining contributors to KBCS can just set it and forget it and never have to worry about missing the chance to contribute to their favorite radio station. You can donate $5, $10, $25, $35 a month or more, it’s all up to you. And we have some nice KBCS branded gifts at various giving levels that we will send you as a token of our appreciation.

Thank you for your support throughout the year, and if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about our programming, I’d love to hear from you. Just drop me a note at dana@kbcs.fm.

Dana Lee Buckingham

KBCS General Manager and Proud Sustaining Contributor to Community Radio KBCS

David Griffith

We are deeply saddened by the passing of David Griffith, a volunteer journalist whose gentle presence and persistence is familiar to many KBCS listeners.

In the words of David’s spouse Pat, “David found his work at KBCS really fulfilling. He enjoyed digging into community issues. He was trained in engineering but he loved journalism.”

David’s engineering career brought him and Pat to Seattle in 1974 from Richmond, Virginia. He worked for Pacific Northwest Bell (Lumen), Boeing, and the Washington Utilities Commission.

In addition to his volunteer journalist work at KBCS, David served on the board of the ACLU of Washington for 12 years. (more…)