After 10 years of banishment, Bill returned to the airwaves in June, with only 60 minutes a month, and the Program Council might vote to take it away. We say NO WAY!

Bill Mandel is a rare person. Due to his life experience he has proven capable of explaining current events within an historical context. Because he had to face two U.S. Senate and one House of Representatives witch-hunt committees (as shown in 'Good Night and Good Luck,'), Bill can compare McCarthyism and the Patriot Act like very few people, as he can Iraq, Vietnam, and Korea. His knowledge and experience, gained from struggle and study, is a must for our free speech radio.

In the 1970s, people of color demanded a Third World Department at KPFA. White staff agreed, but stalled on finding the time. Bill broke the deadlock by offering to give up his prime-time spot and moved that Third World be given that time every weekday evening. It was adopted. Blacks and Latinos and Asians and American Indians now knew that they could hear voices of their own, and rapidly used this to promote affirmative action in society as a whole.

Today, Bill is a member of an underrepresented minority on KPFA's airwaves: seniors. With tens of millions of people over 70 in our rapidly aging population, Bill is one of only two broadcasters in that age group. And this is at a time when Social Security is under attack by the government; when retired workers are finding their pensions dissolved overnight; and when the skyrocketing cost of medicine forces people to choose between food and medication, causing needless pain and death among countless of our parents and grandparents.

Bill Mandel, Gerald Sanders and Jack Heyman

Bill's understanding that both major parties are responsible for the lack of universal health care in this country and that both put imperial empire and the war in Iraq above education and other necessary social services is grounded in decades of struggle going back to the 1930s. This understanding led him to vote Green in 2004, refusing to be swept up in the pro-war Kerry campaign. And his experiences fighting McCarthyism and HUAC allowed him to caution many in the left not to mistake the Republican regime for fascism and to note that Kerry struck opposition to the Patriot Act from the Democratic national platform. Despite the massive rightward and racist pressures in this country post Sept. 11, Bill's consistent defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal led to a personal letter of acknowledgment from Pam Africa.

Bill's voice and experience have much to teach us in the struggles ahead. Those who mistakenly want him replaced by younger people of whatever color disregard the old adage that "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Too much is at stake both for the American people and the people of the world to discard the accumulated knowledge that Bill Mandel still so tellingly conveys.

Please join us in our show of support for his continued participation at KPFA.