Don Palabraz

The “Subversive Historian” series on Uprising started two summers ago with the stated intent of bringing “daily reminders to the people of their history in rebellion.” Now at the onset of starting a third year cycle of new material, I’ve decided to stop writing, researching and recording the historical commentaries. This past year proved much more of an effort to find, when possible, newer and rarer instances of “back in the day” happenings that highlight racial, social, and class cleavages throughout the epochs of our experience. With an eye trained towards 2010-2011, the degree of difficulty would be raised beyond the threshold that is available to me to produce them. Simply stated, there isn’t enough people’s history to go around because at some point there would be an exhaustion of material. This lends itself to the date specificity of the task where every event must be multiply attested to have occurred on the day and year stated before research and analysis could even commence. Without the time needed to keep climbing upward, I feared the series would suffer in terms of scholastic integrity and quality.

The Subversive Historian had proven to be an odd paradox where the dates of history most often associated with the rogue memorization taught in our nation’s schools met with the social perspectives that are generally not. It is my hope that listeners enjoyed and learned from the one-minute radio spots that conveyed a wide-ranging field of topics and on occasion, when appropriate, cheap Nixon impersonations! I learned as much as anyone else over the past two years. Whether it was the story of Irene Morgan giving a swift kick to the nuts of an arresting officer after being removed from trying to desegregate a racially segregated bus or the uplifting courage of Oliver Law and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, the richness of the story of resistance was always rewarding and illuminating. One Subversive Day in History about the Black Panthers in Orange County even turned into a cover story for the OC Weekly – which I hope gets nominated for the Orange County Press Club’s ‘Real OC’ Award this summer! – with the help of my colleague Gustavo Arellano who also has run Subversive Historian on his once-a-week KPFK radio show.  I still have future plans for the work I’ve compiled. Perhaps Subversive Historian could be transferred into a book or maybe even a calendar. There would be a few dates to fill in but mostly everything is there for the taking. Who knows!

With this, Uprising Radio is currently in the process of cultivating new features for the program in the interest of keeping things fresh for our listeners ears. Subversive Historian, Empire Notes and possibly “Who Said That?” are on the outs. Coming in is a weekly look at the machinations of the right-wing, the tea party movement, and the extremists who permeate them by Chris Bennett aptly titled “The Right Hook.” Also in the mix is informing our listeners on the art of “coming up” in these difficult economic times with the soon to be debuted “People’s Marketplace” series by Martina Steiner. My own next move has yet to be determined. I’ve always wanted to do some comedic writing, news skits and off-handle impersonations surrounding leftism. We aren’t always known as the barrel of laughs bunch! Let’s see what the future brings. In the meantime, for Uprising, this has been your truth professa’ always saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history!