Gorilla Radio FundingDrive 2021 with Chris Cook, Ingmar Lee March 18, 2021

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s Home Edition, recorded on the dates, March 10th, 2021. And welcome to FundingDrive 2021.

Well, 2020’s FundingDrive was dissected by the Covid-19 outbreak, the station literally shuttering the studios to the two hundred-odd community and campus volunteers that keep the shows going. The small staff innovated, improvised, ducked and weaved, and managed to keep the signal open, and programming getting out.

I don’t believe anyone thought, a year later we’d still be doing shows remotely. But, here we are, recording not live but live to Skype, or Zoom, or with field apparatus. And we still need our community to help us; yes, help us help you.

The changes mean we’ve dipped into the funds to provide remote recording capability to more programmers, expanding online programming and production classes so our producers can all know how to edit and enhance programs, while navigated a frantically evolving new mediascape.

And that takes money of course; not a lot if everyone pitches in a little. But you can help too by letting us know you’re still out there listening, and taking heart.

Staff are here in the studio, man, woman, and non-binary gendering the phones to take your pledges at 1-250-721-8700. And you can go online to CFUVFriends.ca to donate as well.

For my part; this is the 24th FundDrive, or now “FundingDrive” program I’ve participated in. The first for me was answering phones for Sharon and Odain’s Sunshine Breakfast in 1998. Since then, I’ve done 22 episodes for Gorilla Radio. For those new to the show; Gorilla Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in corporate/state media. I’ve been banging hour-long, two interview segments since 1999. And, today’s show is no exception. I’ll be back after the music and features with Episode 11-19, (or so) and my most esteemed and frequent guest over this long run, environmental defender and all-round iconoclast, Ingmar Lee.

One of the great benefits of doing this show has been meeting great people, dedicated to making the World better. One of my earliest guests, going back to the year 2000, exemplifies that. Ingmar Lee is a long-time BC-based environment defender, who describes himself as a “rotten, belligerent, iconoclastic, ungrateful, unrepentant, and unpleasant treehugger.” Besides these qualities, Lee has spent a life-time investigating truth, questioning accepted wisdom, and making enemies of greedhead political fraudsters, money-grubbing business leaders, spinmeisters and journalistic hacks at the CBC, CTV, and in the yellow press, who have in turn described his years of dedication and accomplishments as “environmental zealotry”, “eco-terrorism”, and the deeds of “a raving nutcase.” Just the man for GR!

Ingmar has appeared many, many times on Gorilla Radio over the past twenty years, covering the issues those same critics chose to willfully ignore, making of them sacrifices on the alter of personal careerism. Ingmar now lives along colonial British Columbia’s mid-coast, making an honest living in the territory, and with the blessings, of the Heiltsuk First Nation.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: https://cfuv.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com