http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/144053/1/4536

Global Radio Marathon Spotlights Immigrants' Issues
Aaron Glantz
OneWorld US
Tue., Dec. 19, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 19 (OneWorld) - A Brussels-based non-profit has launched what it describes as the first ever "global radio show connecting migrant communities worldwide to highlight their concerns and achievements."

The station, Radio18-12, is the creation of the group December 18, which is named after the United Nation's recognized International Migrants Day.

"It's been a smashing success," the project's coordinator Myriam Horngren told OneWorld. "We've had material coming in from places as different as Taiwan, Kyrgyzstan, Argentina, and the UK."

The UN estimates 195 million people around the world have left their homelands in search of better lives.

"Life for migrants, particularly undocumented migrants, is becoming more and more difficult in a world that's supposed to be a global village," former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said on the broadcast.

Countries "haven't taken seriously that their commitments are to all persons," she added.

Among the larger stations to participate were Radio Canada International and the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation, which contributed a program on ratification of a UN Convention, with prospective and returned migrants, and a magazine program featuring traditional music.

Throughout the day, the broadcast alternated between English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian.

The only U.S. station to participate was WORT-FM, a well-respected community radio station in Madison, Wisconsin, which contributed a 50 minute program to the effort.

"We decided to participate because we think it's a good thing to support and encourage international collaborative projects," the station's Norm Stockwell told OneWorld. "We want to share our experiences with people with similar issues in other parts of the globe.

"What you find," he said, "is that even though people from different places have extremely different experiences, many of the issues faced by immigrant peoples are the same: the difficulties establishing in a new place [and] being different or 'the other'. There are legal and economic hurdles. So what listeners get is a window into how similar we all are in different parts of the world despite different conditions."

WORT's contribution focused on a 20,000-strong march on the Wisconsin state capital protesting the Iraq war and harsh immigrant rights measures that were being considered in Congress at the time.

The Madison demonstration was part of a wave of protests across the United States this Spring where millions marched in dozens of cities to demand immigrant rights.

"People are tired of having no voice," Shiva Pidar, who manages the interpreters service at a local hospital, says in the WORT broadcast.

Pidar is an immigrant from Spain who became a naturalized U.S. citizen five years ago.

"I came here first with a green card and was never illegal and yet it took me 13 years before I finally got American citizenship because it's a really difficult, unfriendly system," she said.

Census figures show that there are 25,000 immigrants in the Madison area, with 15,000 limited English speakers.

"Immigration policy is really labor policy," Patrick Hickey of a local workers justice center said in the WORT broadcast. "By letting lots and lots of undocumented workers into this country wages get really low and employers like it that way. But it just can't continue and so people are rising up to demand that they get the same treatment as everyone else."

The Madison broadcast also included music. "We mold the steel," exclaimed one song. "We sell the goods/We pave the way/We do the work/This is our day."