On Thursday, July 10th KAOS Program Director Jerry Drummond informed me that Radio8Ball was being replaced immediately by a “women’s show.” The reason given was that now that Radio8Ball is a “successful show in Seattle it no longer fits the KAOS mission statement to provide under-represented programming.”

There was no other reason given. The next day I was informed by campus police that Jerry Drummond had filed a criminal trespass order against me which forbade me from entering the CAB Building or KAOS. This hurts deeply since my father was a founding faculty member at Evergreen and it is a place which I consider to be as much my home as anyplace.

You may be asking yourself what I could have done to deserve this treatment. I am curious about that myself.

Ever since I informed my ex-co-host Tammy Tillinghast that I would be doing Radio8Ball without her I have been the target of a slander and harassment campaign led by Tammy and her boyfriend Merwyn Haskell. She partially documents this campaign in a 78 page blog about how much she loves me and hates me so much that she just has to lash out at me but then she can’t understand why I don’t want her around the show. These postings led to a wash of hateful phone calls and e-mails, some of them anonymous, all in response to the things Tammy was saying about me. Fans of the show will note that all during this campaign I have kept it off the air and never spoken a public word against Tammy or Merwyn but now that Radio8Ball is in exile silence is not an option.

When Tammy’s public rantings against me came to my attention I informed KAOS management and asked for them to step in and help. I was mocked in an e-mail from station manager Ruth Brownstein for asking for help and told that I should take it up personally with my stalker and her jealous boyfriend.

This only emboldened Tammy and her efforts continued, which led to the work environment at KAOS becoming increasingly hostile toward me and Radio8Ball.

Before the Radio8Ball broadcast on June 24th, Jerry Drummond accosted me in the hall at KAOS. He told me that Ruth was “building quite a list” on me and that if I didn’t know how to run a test of the Emergency Broadcast System I would be fired. When I told him that was a “GREAT” (read sarcastic) way to treat a popular show Jerry said he “begged to differ” that Radio8Ball was “pathetic” and that it had “gone in the tank” ever since I went solo. He called me a “shithead” and an “asshole.” It was a heated conversation but I knew that I was being baited and I kept my actual words clean, although I did hurl the word “manager” at him like an insult, as in, “Why don’t you do your job and manage this? Manager!”

When Jerry left the station I wrote down what I could remember of the encounter in my journal and then had a great Radio8Ball show without ever mentioning the altercation with Jerry on the air. That night I sent an e-mail to station management, once again, asking for someone to step in and get this situation under control, and again I was mocked and dismissed as Ruth Brownstein wrote, “your words remind me of 'running to Mom when Dad chews you out.”

So, if Jerry was the one “chewing me out” how come I’m the one getting slapped with a criminal trespass order? And if I need to have a criminal trespass order against me, why was the reason for canceling the show given as its popularity? These questions should be asked and answered.

It is a disservice to the KAOS listeners who enjoy Radio8Ball to remove it from the airwaves, and the manner in which they are doing so is personally and professionally damaging to me and, I think, a clear violation of free speech. I will be responsible for seeing that I am taken care of but I invite the listeners to take a stand for themselves. We are entering the summer of ’08. The Obama presidency beckons, but if we can’t even hold our local broadcasting accountable to keep the airwaves open, how can we build a movement to support all of this hope and change? Radio8Ball is a two hour open forum in which all community members young and old are invited to share themselves intimately, and KAOS is saying that we cannot have this anymore. Well, if you love it you are going to have to fight for it.

These are the people responsible for Radio8Ball being taken off the air:

Jerry Drummond (Tuesday Blues – Tuesdays at 3pm)

John Ford (Free and Fair – Thursdays at 8pm & John’s Place – Fridays at 6pm)

Ruth Brownstein (???)

Tammy Tillinghast (Pining For the Fiords – Thursdays at 1pm & Think Tank – Sundays at 10 AM)

Merwyn Haskell (Think Tank – Sundays at 10 AM)

The number at the station is 360 867 5267.

I have listed the shows that these people host so that you may contact them in a professional capacity and communicate your feelings to them, maybe even on the air.

Take back the KAOS airwave my friends. It is our station but “the radio is in the hands of such a bunch of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel.”

Elvis Costello sang those words in 1978 and, on this sad and portentous day which begins the era of The Radio8Ball in diaspora, they couldn’t be more true.