From our friends at Prometheus Radio Project, "Freeing the Airwaves from Corporate Control"

Community groups, progressive churches, labor organizations, farmworkers, schools, and more use a wonderful community radio service -- called low power FM radio -- to build their own local radio stations, and broadcast to their local communities. Congress limited low power FM, keeping it from cities all across the country. Our diverse neighborhoods need their own media, and now we have a chance to get it.

Low power FM (LPFM) radio stations save lives when disaster strikes. For example, during and after Hurricane Katrina, of the 41 stations that lined the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast, only 4 of them stayed on the air – and two of these were LPFM stations. In Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, the volunteers at WQRZ kept their station on the air by carrying generator batteries across the floodwaters. The station was so essential to FEMA and other groups working to save lives that the Emergency Operations Center of the entirety of Hancock County set up shop with WQRZ. You can read more about WQRZ here:
http://risingfromruin.msnbc.com/2005/11/an_endangered_b_1.html

And just last night, Gerardo Reyes Chavez, an organizer from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and from Radio Consciencia, a groundbreaking farmworker radio station, spoke to the entire FCC on how their station kept in touch with indigenous farmworkers who spoke Mam, Creole, and Q'anjob'al, during Hurricane Wilma (read the full testimony. By broadcasting local information, building trust, and acting as an organizing powerhouse for a diverse local community, WCTI-LP -- Radio Consciencia -- becomes the go-to station for information in times of crisis.

Senators John McCain and Maria Cantwell are getting ready to introduce a bill in the next few weeks, designed to expand low power FM. We need all our Senators to support this essential service -- and all our Congressmembers to get excited about introducing a companion bill that will bring community radio home.

You can ask your Congressmember to introduce an LPFM companion bill by signing this petition today --
http://www.petitiononline.com/LPFM2007/petition.html -- make sure you publish your city and state so your Congressmember knows you are a constituent! We'll deliver these petitions to Congress soon, so they can hear your voices loud and clear.

You can also find out who your Congressmember is at http://www.congress.org,
or by calling the operator for the House of Representatives directly at 202-224-3121. When you reach your Congressmember, tell their staff that you'd like your representative to introduce a bill to expand low power FM
radio to your city and beyond.