It was a busy day for us at Ujima Radio. Paulette was occupied with a bunch of young lads who were doing some sort of community involvement training. She spent the first half of each hour talking to some of them. I had them in my segments as well, but given that I was talking about feminism and Bristol Pride rather than football they didn’t have a lot to say, and who can blame them.
In the second half of the first hour I talked to local writer, Lucienne Boyce, about suffragette militancy. That was a trailer for this event at M-Shed on Saturday. Given discussions online, I asked Lucienne whether British suffragettes had been as racist as we are learning American ones were. She says she has seen no evidence for it, and that there are records of Indian women being involved, which is encouraging. The main point, however, is that those ladies were seriously militant. If they did stuff like that these days they would be shipped off for extraordinary rendition faster than you can say “terrorist”. Take a listen and see. I was also amused to discover that (male) Bristol MPs engaged in trolling and victim politics in a bid to thwart the suffragettes.
The second half of hour two was given over to discussion of Bristol Pride. Daryn Carter joined me in the studio. We took a look through some of the many events that will be taking place during the rest of the week, and especially on Saturday. Then we talked a little bit about the marriage equality bill and other current LGBT rights issues.
Saturday is the main Pride Day for Bristol, and my pals at Shout Out will be taking over the Bristol Community Radio airwaves for the whole day. Some of the content will be broadcast on Ujima as well. I’ll be spending much of the day wandering around Castle Park looking for victims volunteers to interview. Also, between 3:00pm and 4:00pm I will be in the field studio with Paul Davis doing the Sports Show live from Pride. Given what went on today, it looks like we might be discussing the early end of the Test Match rather than following scores. If you want to follow the day’s broadcasts, you can do so on 93.2fm in Bristol, or streamed over the BCFM website. The shows will also eventually appear on Shout Out’s Listen Again pages.