Happy Birthday! Dissident Island Radio turns 3...

Icon_article Published: August 05, 2010 16:36 by imcista |

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Neighbourhoods: whitechapel
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London's best-known, best-loved, and best-looking autonomous radio crew was once again inside your computer on Friday night, pumping out your stereo from Whitechapel. 6 August 2010 marks three years of dissidence: COP15, the climate camps, and other eruptions have punctuated the steady bass-beat of a show every two weeks. Read on for a complete run-down of what this radical radio rabble have been up to, and download the 3rd birthday show here.

Grab a red stripe and raise a toast with IMC London to celebrate three years of radical radio from Dissident Island!

Dissident Island (D*I) Radio celebrates its 3rd birthday tonight on 6 August 2010 with their 63rd episode.

The regular D*I shows stream live every first and third Friday of the month, featuring interviews and discussion on grass roots organising, radical struggles, politics and so much more. Shows also includes music, banter, vegan recipes, prisoner support info, DIY guides and end with DJs spinning live IDM, electronic music, punk and more. (Check out some short 15 minute samples of various live DJ sets that have featured over the past three years...)

The islanders also do one-off special edition shows - such as the two G20 radio shows [part 1 | part 2] during the London G20 anti-summit protests, a special discussion on Direct Action inspired by David Graeber's ethnography, and a lively, diverse panel on 'Activist Realism' - which discusses the relationship between critical theory and street-level activism.

Taking the show on the road is a big part of the fun too. D*I has left familiar surroundings to venture out to grassy fields to produce radio shows from the Kingsnorth and the Blackheath Camps for Climate Action in the UK [Kingsnorth shows | Blackheath shows]. At the end of 2009, part of the D*I group went to Denmark to produce English language radio shows for COP15 Indymedia Radio - and even produced a (rather hilarious) 8 hour live stream during the 'Reclaim Power' day of action on 16 December 2009, giving live updates from the street of Copenhagen [edited version].

The London-based DIY radio crew enjoys hitting the streets too! You might have seen them around the city at the monthly London Critical Mass rides and other demonstrations [Rave Against the Machine| Burn Your Ballots demo] with a big, black mobile sound system in tow, blaring tunes and political propaganda. The sound system was constructed from the profits of one of their benefit gigs - constructed as a resource for the radical left protest movement in London, in an effort to put the 'party' back into 'protest'...and 'the Beast', as the sound system is affectionately referred to by the D*I crew, has made it to protests in Brighton with SmashEDO, to Heathrow for an anti-aviation demo, and other adventures around London with Rising Tide.

Did I just mention benefit gigs? Well, the D*I crew likes to throw a good party now and then - and has put together parties benefitting some quality groups in need of cold hard cash such as the Drax 29, the (much missed) Library House, and recently collaborated with London Indymedia for the fantastic '10 years of Indymedia in the UK' party. D*I and the WAG are continously collaborating to bring you the Red & Black club, an informal monthly drinking club at the London Action Resource Centre which is quickly becoming a hot bed of radical socialising.

D*I Radio is collaborating with other radio shows, old and new*, in hopes of creating a UK-wide radical radio network. It's about time that the radicals have something to listen other than BBC Radio 4, eh?

So check out D*I radio if you haven't already - their archive is pretty impressive after 3 busy years. You're bound to find something that tickles your fancy...if you like to RSS feeds and (low-volume) mailing lists, D*I Radio has those too, to help you keep up to date with their latest shows.

D*I is always on the look out for interesting political material and non-corporate, independent music for shows (and just out of interest too). They also like to organise skill-shares and workshops for folks interested in starting up their own internet radio show. So if you'd like to contact the group with ideas, or want to get involved with radio, try emailing them here. Remember that all of D*I Radio content is copy left for nonprofit purposes.