In December, WLP was invited to provide commentary for KPFK 90.7 FM’s Wednesday evening Rebel Alliance News by producer/journalist Angela Birdsong. WLP youth leaders Ashantee Polk, Mariah Perkins, and Jadyn Taylor were the first commentators to be featured. They spoke on Black girls and sex trafficking, colorism, and skyrocketing rates of femicide in Black and Latinx communities across the globe.
A long time WLP community partner, Ms. Birdsong is a Los Angeles native who is shaking up the media space with her groundbreaking media production company, MTAS (More Than A Sparrow) Productions and her online podcast, Conversation Piece. Along with Conversation Piece, heard weekly on RadioJustice.org (now on hiatus) and select segments on Pacifica’s award-winning Liberated Sisters, Ms. Birdsong brings over a decade of multimedia experience. Her portfolio includes news writing, news production and editing, anchoring, scriptwriting and her signature, syndicated Weekly Community Calendar for programs on Pacifica Network Los Angeles’ 90.7 FM-KPFK Radio. She has also been published in the national press and California Black Media and Ethnic Media Services for her news reporting on the United States Census, Hunger in America, and Health Impacts of Climate Change in the USA and Worldwide, to name a few print and broadcast news reports.
We spoke to Ms. Birdsong about her decision to invite WLP on and the direction of Rebel Alliance News:
Why was it important to include WLP on KPFK’s Evening News?
With an opportunity to bring in topics and voices that are not heard on mainstream media nor on community radio locally, nationally or globally, I knew without a doubt Women’s Leadership Project (WLP) would and could deliver based on the training and education WLP provides to its students, the serious subject matter of their blogs and reports, and the grassroot’s community organizing they consistently do, along with the fierce leadership of Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson and her staff. WLP talks it and walks it! It is time for this generation, for WLP to be heard on a larger platform like KPFK Rebel Alliance News.
KPFK Rebel Alliance News is excited to bring back progressive news to Southern California and connect with the local community! Hour-long evening newscasts produced locally with international, national and state inputs but a strong dose of the beats that are shaping life in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, with periodic reports from Orange County, Long Beach, the Inland Empire, Ventura/Santa Barbara and San Diego. This is an all volunteer news-gathering, editing and broadcast operation, Monday through Friday at 6 PM, complete with commentaries and cultural coverage and your audio letters to the editors.
