Beneath The Surface Tuesdays
Tuesday, 5:00-6:00 PMHost: Michael Slate
Producer: Michael Slate
Director: Christine Blosdale
Press Contact: Michael Slate – mslate@kpfk.org
Michael Slate
Michael Slate is a revolutionary journalist. He began writing for the Revolutionary Worker in 1979. Slate has covered most of the major urban rebellions in the U.S. since the mid 1980s including the 1989 uprising in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami, the police attack on Black students and youth in Virginia Beach in 1989 and the 1991 uprising of Latino immigrants in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC. Slate has also written extensively about Africa since 1980. He provided unique coverage of the South African township uprisings that began in 1984 and eventually brought down the white minority regime. Slate made extended visits to South Africa twice during these uprisings, traveling with activists from the Black Consciousness Movement founded by the Azanian revolutionary leader Steve Biko who was murdered in prison by the apartheid police in 1977. Slate brought back the voices of the people in the townships and the countryside, voices that were not heard anywhere else. His series on South Africa War Stories and War Stories: Return to South Africa‘ appeared in the Revolutionary Worker and were called a "remarkable feat of reportage" by the late Donald Woods, the South African journalist about whom the film Cry Freedom was made. In early 1994 Slate traveled to Chiapas, Mexico, immediately after the indigenous campesino uprising and spent 3 months talking with the people about their lives, their hopes and aspirations and their New Year's Rebellion. The 9 part series Campesinos With Guns was written as a result of this trip.
Since 1992 Slate has lived and worked in Los Angeles, covering the 1992 Rebellion and writing about the oppressed people in LA and the conditions they face from police brutality to welfare cuts. His unparalleled coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion is available in the pamphlets Shockwaves and Aftershocks , a series bringing together a revolutionary analysis of the rebellion and intimate interviews with the people who rose up. Since 1995 Slate has frequently written articles exploring the culture of resistance in film, music, theater and visual arts. Slate's writing appears regularly in the Revolutionary Worker and has also appeared in The Black American, the San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, the Long Beach Press Telegram, Pacific News Service and Heads magazine. Slate also wrote the widely praised booklet on the criminalization of the hip-hop generation that accompanied the Unbound Project, a hip-hop compilation CD inspired by Mumia Abu Jamal.
Slate is a founding member of the Artists Network of Refuse and Resist and one of the producers of the groundbreaking ArtSpeaks concerts in Los Angeles. From 1999 to 2000 Slate worked as Music Supervisor for the 13 part PBS Television series Senior Year, directed by David Zeiger whose other films include Night of Ferocious Joy, a film based on the May 2002 ArtSpeaks concert, the first major concert against the War on the World. Slate is currently working with the legendary jazz lyricist and singer Oscar Brown Jr. to write the story of Oscar's life and is actively involved in training a new generation of revolutionary writers.
