On Wednesday, Sept, 29, Federal Marshals aiding the Federal Communications Commission raided and shut down long-standing free radio station, Freak Radio Santa Cruz. As word of the raid spread around 150 listeners and supporters came to the station to protest the raid and express solidarity.

There's good coverage of the raid in a feature at Global Indymedia and at Sa nta Cruz IMC.

Like San Francisco Liberation Radio and Radio Free Brattleboro, Freak Radio had also received endorsement from their local city council. In San Francisco the board of supervisor even went so far as to ask that the city police not aid any federal raid on Liberation Radio, a request which, unfortunately, the SFPD ignored when the station was shut down in Oct., 2003.

However, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Santa Cruz police offered no help to the Marhals or FCC agents conducting the raid, although they did respond when the tires on the feds' vehicles were slashed.

Station volunteers have vowed to go back on the air and have already restored their webstream, which, according to DIYmedia.net, is apparently being rebroadcast in solidarity by other pirate stations around the country.

The FCC made its last of many unarmed visits to Freak Radio back in May, just after the station moved to its current location. I talked to V-Man and Skidmark Bob on the radioshow in a live dual-simulcast broadcast live on WEFT and Freak Radio. You can listen to that program in mp3 and ogg vorbis. Posted by paul at October 01, 2004 04:46 PM | TrackBack