The Feds and Chicago Radio Stations 107.5, 92.3 FM
Chicago–While the Feds are in town, we need this other federal agency to take iHeart’s 107.5 FM and Crawford Dontron’s 92.3 FM to task.
We assert that these stations are aiding and abetting street violence by broadcasting songs of public shootings and gang beef. We further assert that they glorify drug use, misogyny, prostitution, and more anti-Black messaging. We are demanding their broadcast licenses be revoked and we want them out of our city and off of our airwaves.
The Clear the Airwaves Project, a collective of individuals, business owners and tax-payers, filed a Class Action Complaint against these stations with the FCC’s Media Bureau and Radio Complaint Bureau.
A petition against these stations began on July 1, 2020. To date, over 1,700 people have signed on. We are asking everyone to see this crisis and to sign the petition immediately.
“I have a love of music. You have the most powerful force [music]…when it crossed the line in terms of lyrics, the message was, sorry, that doesn’t compute. It is also a signal to the companies, not just the talent, that you shouldn’t be marketing stuff that includes a message of hate.” —Rabbi Abraham Cooper on Cannon’s Class
Chicago radio stations 107.5 FM and 92.3 FM, and other similarly-formatted stations across the country, all think that silencing the words n*****, b****, and other racial and gender-based epithets in lyrics makes songs “clean” and suitable for broadcast. What they cannot silence is the message of anti-Black hate.
Meanwhile, they don’t even TRY to mute gang-speak, shoot, kill, Lean, Molly, or Percocet. They promote mass shootings, child murders, drug use, misogyny, pedophilia, and n*gger killings without any excuse whatsoever. Just think, if white people were saying these things against black people on commercial airwaves, you would swear it was a Klan rally.
If any station was promoting animal slayings as much as they promote Black murder, PETA would swoop in with a quickness. No one raises an eyebrow as long as the lyrics are coming out of Black mouths.
We are taking on this fight and will not stop until and unless the FCC enforces their rules or change them to reflect the times. You will not find this violent language or imagery on any other station format that targets a different audience (i.e., Pop stations)…only on stations that target the black audience age 12 and up.
Shootings:
This Draco (gun) undefeated, hit your block and then I bleed it, go long, these bullets, he receive it (instruction or description of a drive-by shooting)
My Glock told me to promise you gon squeeze me…soon as you up on that n***a, get to bustin’ (walk up to a rival, then shoot)
She [his mama] know what I do, she know before I run from a n***a, I’ma pull it out and shoot
My daughter a G, she saw me kill a n***a in front of her before the age of two and I’ll kill another n***a too
I put your face on the news, I put the p***y on the shirt after I murk, then make ’em go shoot up the hearse (murder victim covered in news stories, their grieving family and friends make t-shirts with their picture)
What’s your issue, if you got a trigger, squeeze it (bah, squeeze it), A whole block outside, its a street fest (directions on how and why to shoot into a crowd)
How many times you got shot? A lot. How many n****s you shot? A lot. How many times did you ride? A lot. How many n****s done died? A lot.
Gang beef:
Couple blue (Gangster Disciples) hunnids (AK47s) with the stones (Blackstones), it’s bleedin…(a shoot-out is in progress), ain’t no peace treaty, these stones around my Jesus, they ain’t treated, they got me heated, don’t play with the gang, they know that we undefeated
Drug use:
If I got a pint of lean, Ima sip, sip. (lean is a drink made with cough syrup for the codeine and/or promethazine)
I’m booted up off that molly, I cover my gun (molly is MDMA or ecstasy)
Got Promethazine (sedative) in my blood and Percocet (highly addictive, prescription pain killer)
Verbal Porn:
Shawty made that ass clap, she don’t need no applause (a stripper dance usually done naked)
She a bad b****, eat the p***y like a spinach, she’ll suck d*** on the way to the dentist
Sucking on d**k no hands with it
Put my c*m in her p***y, now it’s wet
I’on [I don’t] work jobs, bitch, I am a job, You don’t like it? Take a hike, Pay me for a suck and slob, I’m a rich ass bitch with a attitude–Jobs by City Girls
This song glorifies prostitution and can be heard on 92.3 and 107.5 at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
What about Free Speech?
The Manual published by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) states that each radio station licensee, “must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license.”
CTAP will prove that WGCI and Power 92 have not only done the exact opposite, but they have also refused numerous requests to stop airing content that promotes gang shootings, drug war, and illegal guns.
State of Emergency
The city of Chicago is experiencing gun violence at epidemic levels and that the Commission’s decision has to be based on the current state of emergency that exists in our city.
On July 22, 2020, President Donald J. Trump, John R. Lausch, Jr., United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Attorney General William P. Barr announced the expansion of Operation Legend to Chicago. [See press release dated July 22, 2020, by the Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Northern District of Illinois] Due to the high level of gun violence, the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, DEA, and ATF were directed to significantly increase resources into Chicago. Additionally, the Chicago City Council is currently debating whether or not to send in the National Guard to patrol Chicago’s streets because of the continuation and escalation of gun violence. This massive law enforcement effort coincides with the target audience, urban youth age 12+, of Dontron’s WPWX and iHeart’s WGCI, the alleged perpetrators of this gun violence.
Free speech is not applicable when there is a clear and present danger and iHeart’s and Dontron’s dangerous and violent content continue to jeopardize the lives of innocent children, residents, business owners, and law enforcement.
We are asking that the Commission acts immediately on behalf of all other federal and local emergency efforts to stop the high level of gun violence in Chicago. Both stations continue to be dangerous influencers in our city. The high rate of shootings and murder creates an enormous and lifelong mental, emotional, and financial burden to all of the victims of gun violence, their families, law enforcement, and businesses that operate in the city.
While lawyers quote the First Amendment and Section 326 on free speech, it is deceptive.
The Commission definitively states: “Expressions of views that do not involve a "clear and present danger of serious, substantive evil" come under the protection of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press and prevents suppression of these expressions by the FCC.”
However, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior on the First Amendment Schenck v. United States (1919): “The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.”
He later wrote in his dissent Abrams v. United States (1919): “we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions . . . unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purpose of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.”
The Supreme Court upholds restrictions on speech if it incites, or is likely to lead to, violence or illegal actions.
Justice Edward Terry Sanford in Gitlow v. New York (1925),: “utterances inimical to the public welfare, tending to corrupt public morals, incite to crime, or disturb the public peace. The state cannot reasonably be required to measure the danger from every such utterance in the nice balance of a jeweler’s scale. A single revolutionary spark may kindle a fire that, smouldering for a time, may burst into a sweeping and destructive conflagration.”
We have filed this complaint (not lawsuit) because we assert that Power 92 and WGCI’s programming contains speech that undermines the safety of the lawful and that incites and leads to violence during what has been categorized as an Inner City War, Gang War, Urban Conflict, Genocide, Epidemic, Homicide Rates, and other terms connotating anything except peacetime.
The matter is now before the FCC and each station’s lawyer is handling the process. In this proceeding, we continuously insist that the current state of emergency that exists in our city requires more vigilance on the part of the Commission and license holders. Broadcast licenses should only be granted to holders that truly serve the community. Dontron and iHeart serve nothing except the promotion of Black death and lining their pockets. They have had nearly ten years to prove otherwise.
Instead of being responsible city stakeholders, their programming has become the worse gutter trash you will hear on commercial airwaves. This dangerous trash is being fed to Black children and they will be influenced by it.
Sign the petition, file a complaint with the FCC, join us in this fight. Metropolis