[Peace-discuss] Urbana City Council meeting last night

[Marti Wilkinson]

Karen wrote: *

Durl Kruse was the next to last to speak. He mentioned that no tax money is
involved, that it comes from the cable agreement

*By cable agreement I'm assuming you mean the franchise agreement. Back in
1995 when the cable company re-negotiated their cable franchise public
access was transferred from the hands of the cable company in exchange for
the communities to have their own channel. I haven't read the hard copy of
the current franchise agreement, but it may be that the City of Urbana is
required to follow specific public access guidelines and that includes
running offensive programming.  If the city refuses to run specific programs
then it's possible for the person who is refused to file a complaint with
the FCC.

Prior to the 1995 agreement Cablevision, later Time Warner, had a public
access channel and, under their rules they had to run programming submitted
by members of the community.  During that time frame a member of a local
white supremacist group submitted shows that were very racist in nature. I
forget the name of the guy, but he is the one who got into a tussle with
Giraldo Rivera.

Now if companies like Time Warner and Comcast end up getting their way - we
may end up seeing franchise packages being taken out of the hands of cities
and transferred to states. In which case then you can kiss your public
access television goodbye.


*
*
On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 8:45 AM, Karen Medina <kmedina at uiuc.edu> wrote:

> The Urbana City Council met Monday night. The meeting was about UPTV and
> Mr. Dunleve's hate speech dvds from David Duke. The meeting went on for
> 4-1/2 hours (7pm-11:33pm).
>
> UPTV was #8 on the agenda, so people stood through the long presentation
> about the plan for the Boneyard. They stood through a public arts report and
> proposal. They stood through the combining of the conflicting revisions of
> the arts proposal. And literally dozens of people spoke on the hate speech
> vs. free speech issue (they were given 5 minutes apiece). The other points
> made were: hate speech leads to violence possibly of some unstable person
> who watches and then decides that the Jews are to blame for everything, that
> vandolism and grafiti have already been a problem for years, that Dunleve
> did not have copyright permission for a long time and that he had removed
> the titles and credits on the shows so that nobody could tell where he was
> getting the stuff for a long time, that the city could be sued, that tax
> money should not go toward this, and how horrible it was to know that
> someone out there wanted to kill them.
>
> Around 10:45, the Council paused the UPTV discussion and rushed through
> the remaining 7 items on the agenda. Then returned to the UPTV discussion
> again, giving the last 6 people who wanted to talk about 2 minutes apiece.
> Durl Kruse was the next to last to speak. He mentioned that no tax money is
> involved, that it comes from the cable agreement. He also mentioned that the
> issue was not really hate speech vs. free speech, but I forget what he did
> say it was (forgive me). Durl did well to show compassion and understanding
> to entire community.
>
> The public discussion was not acted on, but will pick up again in 2 weeks.
> The council members were all too tired. The lawyer for the city was asked to
> look in to a few issues and prepare a report. I think it was Charlie Smythe
> who asked "Could a group of people sue Mr. Dunleve". The lawyer said "I can
> give you a quick answer right now." But they decided that it would be best
> to wait on that issue as well.
>
> The media was there. Channel 15's camera left around the time the open
> topics finished. The News-Gazette and WILL stayed throughout. And a few TV
> people stayed, but I don't think there was a camera with them (there might
> have been).
>
> It had been grueling. The Urbana City Council Chambers were  packed.
> Standing room only at the beginning, then large pockets of people stood in
> the hallway for a long time. Dwindling over the extended time, there were
> finally enough seats for anyone who wanted one.
>
> After the meeting was adjourned, on the way out the door, one man told
> Durl that since the City Council Chambers were used for some of the filming
> of UPTV content, that tax money was involved. A parking lot discussion with
> Durl and some of the community involved may have led to some other ideas.
>
> -karen medina
>
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