April 6, 2006

SHORT TAKES

Citizens: don’t cut SCAN

At last week’s hearing on Seattle’s cable franchise renewal and the budget cut it would bring to the area’s only public-access TV channel, Robert Hill made a critical point in a roundabout way.

“ George Bush,” he said, “is a punk-ass bitch.” The audience at the Seattle Center roared with laughter.

Love or hate it, Seattle’s Community Access Network is the only place a message like that can be broadcast today — a free-speech argument that Hill and other SCAN supporters drove home to City Council members in three hours of testimony.

Nearly 300 activists, artists, and producers showed up at the event, the vast majority pleading to restore funding for SCAN, which is facing a 25 percent cut. The speakers ranged from the teenage videography group Reel Grrls to Hispanic, Filipino, Ethiopian, Somali, and Russian producers. Most stressed that SCAN promotes free expression and provides vital information that connects their communities.

“ This kind of help from the city should not be cut at any cost,” Oriyon Abraha said through an interpreter. Abraha produces the program Ethiopian Community Affairs.

Under the proposed 10-year agreement with Comcast Cable, the city would increase its franchise fee on cable bills from 3.5 to 4 percent, providing SCAN with $500,000 a year — a drop of $160,000 that many said would deal SCAN a death blow. At the same time, the city would get $4.2 million from Comcast to produce new arts programming on its own Seattle Channel.

SCAN board President Daniel Hannah and others urged the council to increase the franchise fee to 4.2 percent. The additional two-tenths, Hannah said, would fully fund SCAN at $700,000 a year.

The City Council’s Energy and Technology Committee will take its final public testimony on the Comcast renewal at City Hall on April 12 at 9:30 a.m. Comments can also be phoned or e-mailed to (206)684-8807 or jean.godden@seattle.gov.

— Cydney Gillis

Santos honored

Bob Santos is retiring, and the King County Council is recognizing his four decades of community leadership and social activism by declaring Saturday, April 22 Bob Santos Day.

The son of a Filipino immigrant who earned renown in the local boxing circuit, “Uncle Bob” Santos spent much of his childhood in the gritty Chinatown neighborhood. He acted as a key negotiator during the planning of the Kingdome, which shouldered up against the International District / Chinatown neighborhood when it was built in 1968. As the Clinton-appointed director of HUD’s Northwest regional office, Santos opened up the federal office’s basement as a shelter for homeless people. In a 2002 interview with Real Change, Santos remembered how fellow activists responding to Kingdome construction plans would storm out of meetings and “threaten to burn down concrete buildings” while he stayed behind to learn how to get money for affordable housing. In time, he said, he got allies into positions of power at the city — into places where they could find out about unused sources of funds. “We’d get [money for the community] because we had the folks who could tell us about it. That was learning the political system, and using the hell out of it.”

— Adam Hyla