FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20



FCC RESPONDS TO MICROPOWER BROADCASTING
COURT VICTORY WITH A SWAT TEAM

Contact: Stephen Dunifer--(510) 549-0732/644-3779

One week after Federal Judge Claudia Wilken refused to grant the FCC
a permanent injunction to shut down Free Radio Berkeley and ordered
the FCC to respond to specific Constitutional questions, the
response came not in the form of legal briefs, as requested, but in
the form of a SWAT team busting down the door of Tampa, Florida
micropower broadcaster Doug Brewer.

At 6 a.m. Wednesday, November 19, Doug Brewer and his wife were
visited in their home by a 20-person Multi-Jurisdictional Task Force
(comprised of Federal Marshals, a SWAT team, local police, customs,
and a self-identified CIA agent) led by the FCC. With automatic
weapons trained on them they were ordered to the floor where they
were handcuffed face down with gun muzzles at their head.

For the next 12 hours they were detained in their own home, not even
allowed to go to the bathroom alone, while agents stripped their
home of anything remotely related to radio transmission equipment.
Police cordoned off the block around their home, the site of the
micropower broadcasting station, and brought in a crane to dismantle
his broadcasting tower.

At the same time other members of the same task force were busy
shutting down two more micropower broadcasting stations in the Tampa
area. One man, Loni Kobres, was taken to jail and not released until
he signed papers agreeing not to take any action to recover
equipment which had been seized. Radio X had its equipment seized as
well with one of its members spending a brief time in jail.

Commenting on this latest development, Stephen Dunifer, of Free
Radio Berkeley, said: "This certainly shows that the FCC has nothing
but contempt for due process and the Bill of Rights. It is clear
that the FCC is carrying out its marching orders given to it earlier
this year by the National Association of Broadcasters who have begun
a search and destroy campaign against micropower broadcasting.

"Speaking for SF Liberation Radio, Richard Edmondson stated: "The
raid against Doug Brewer and other microbroadcasters in Florida,
coming as it has just a week after the Federal Court ruling in
California, is a display of lawless thuggery which demonstrates to
me more clearly than ever that the U.S. Government does not care
about its own courts, its own laws, or its own Constitution." In
response to this latest attack on micropower broadcasting Bay Area
micropower broadcasters will be holding a press conference and Free
Speech support demonstration at the Oakland Federal Building on
Tuesday, November 25 at 5 p.m.

Background material on the legal case and micropower broadcasting is
available on the following WEB sites: http://www.surf.com/~graham;
http://www.freeradio.org; http://www.radio4all.org.

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