If you see this column and recognize my name, there’s a good chance you are part of -- OR, perhaps, an adversary of -- the Low Power Radio movement. I have fought many a good fight over the years, for many a good cause, but Low Power Radio seems to be my claim to fame. So far …

IF you are already involved in the Low Power Radio movement, please either bear with me as I discuss it OR jump ahead 5 paragraphs. On The Other Hand, IF you do NOT recognize the term, I will explain it now as briefly as I can.

Low Power Radio is a simple idea -- with sweeping implications AND powerful enemies. These enemies include the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in general, its largest and most acquisitive members in particular and a handful of strategically placed Congressional legislators. Most notable in the latter group is Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who is running for President as a "reformer" while he tries to kill RADIO reform "behind the scenes".

The idea of Low Power Radio is this:

During an era when conventional radio stations run at 50,000 or even 100,000 watts, cover entire metropolitan areas (or more) and are licensed to the highest bidder in an auction, we should license SOME radio stations at 100 watts or less. (Perhaps this could go to 250 watts in small cities and rural areas, where the population density is lower and the audience more scattered.) That is, there should be a Low Power Radio Service -- sized to serve specific communities or even specific neighborhoods, sized to be affordable for everyday Americans AND protected from being acquired by either Big Business Radio (Disney, Fox and a few others) OR Big Government Radio (mostly National Public Radio, or NPR). 

Such stations were legal until 1978, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stopped issuing new licenses for stations in this size range. Since then, huge institutions -- principally, NPR and several ravenous megacorporations -- have absorbed between them hundreds of "slots on the radio spectrum" that once were used by individuals, high schools and colleges.

The corporate members of this piranha pack have gobbled up competitors to the point that just 4 companies -- FOUR -- receive 90% of the dollars spent on radio advertising in America. With NPR, they control most of the information you hear on radio. Further, in some areas, THE SAME MEGACORPORATIONS also control the local newspaper and the largest local TV station.

How free do you feel after hearing THAT news?

If a healthy, representative democracy depends upon strong local communities AND a fairly free flow of information and ideas, then the fight for Low Power Radio is also partly -- if not PRIMARILY -- a battle for freedom.

Battles for freedom are, of course, nothing new.

120 miles from where I am in space, and 225 years from where I am in time, lies the City of Boston -- in the years before the Revolutionary War.

This time and place gave birth to a citizens’ group that stood for preserving -- and, where necessary, restoring -- the rights of American colonists. Some of these rights had already been usurped by King George III, the British monarch, while other rights appeared to be in jeopardy. The group in question -- part of a broader movement for freedom throughout the Colonies -- called itself The Sons Of Liberty. You can read all about this group in the novel JOHNNY TREMAIN by Esther Forbes -- and you will also find it mentioned in Howard Fast’s novel APRIL MORNING. (Both novels later inspired movies.)

While focused on a broader range of issues than the Low Power Radio movement, The Sons Of Liberty were spiritual kin in the sense of having -- AND being willing to act upon -- a passion for freedom, both national and individual. Today, of course, we would select a gender-neutral name for the group -- The Defenders of Liberty? The Guardians Of Liberty? The CHILDREN Of Liberty? -- and encourage participation by all kindred souls, regardless of gender or race.  

Apart from this major difference, however, the spirit of The Sons Of Liberty might seem familiar to many in the Low Power Radio movement of our day.

As in the modern movement for Low Power Radio, SOME members of The Sons Of Liberty were more radical and/or confrontational than others.

ALL members of The Sons Of Liberty sought to restore those rights which The Crown had usurped -- AND to block The Crown from usurping any more. Still, some in The Sons Of Liberty felt this could be done through protests and negotiations "within The System". Others felt, however, that only an open break from Great Britain would be sufficient to assure freedom in America.

In this split between reformers and revolutionaries, the revolutionaries were proven right. Revolution, and thereafter complete independence from The British Empire, DID prove necessary for the preservation of American freedom. However, the British may well have guaranteed this result -- by responding with silence, or outright retaliation, to the honest grievances of law-abiding citizens. The British tendency to ignore or escalate may have made revolution inevitable.

In OUR OWN time and place, I fervently hope and pray, the outcome may be different. The recent Proposed Rule for a Low Power Radio Service, issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Docket MM 99-25, suggests that at least SOME decisionmakers in the governmental Establishment are still listening to the American people.

In any event, whatever the future of today’s Low Power Radio movement, there are similarities enough to ponder the choice of a TREE as the symbol of The Sons Of Liberty. Perhaps a tree should also be a symbol for freedom-loving Americans today.

The Sons Of Liberty took as their symbol a tall, sturdy oak -- in the prime of its maturation. They called the oak "The Tree Of Liberty".

Part of the message behind the symbol is obvious. Clearly, the Colonists saw their cause as strong and enduring: a mighty essence grown from the acorn of a single profound idea.

On a deeper level, however, the tree’s ability to GROW is a message inside the message. The choice of a tree as their symbol suggests that The Sons Of Liberty saw liberty as ORGANIC, not FIXED. They did not represent freedom as a STRUCTURE, erected from inanimate building blocks. They represented freedom as A LIVING THING -- born of human dreams and nurtured by those humans who love it.

An erector set creation can be fixed -- "stable". It neither lives nor dies. It neither grows nor shrinks. It may require some maintenance, and (if located in an atmosphere) is inescapably subject to erosion, but otherwise it stands or falls without regard to those who built it and/or benefit from it.

A tree, On The Other Hand, NEEDS nurturing -- at least in its early years, and sometimes later -- in order to "Be All That It Can Be". To reach its full potential, and sometimes simply to remain alive, a tree needs to be watered, pruned and perhaps even fertilized. Far more than a structure that is not alive, a tree requires attention -- perhaps, at times, even devotion -- from those who would savor its fruit, enjoy its shade and/or drink in its beauty.

Take freedom for granted, for a long enough time, and it dies. Its seeds, planted eternally in the longings of the human soul, will survive -- but they MAY remain dormant for generations, or even centuries. Dormant they will stay until enough humans can be found, in a given time and place, to tend a sapling.

This basic imagery -- of a group, a movement or an institution as A LIVING THING -- is so old that it is becoming new again.

Today, at the dawn of the 21st century, the metaphor of The Corporate Pyramid is slowly slipping out of favor. Today, few people can truly imagine a viable institution which is built carefully and then expected to stay put.

Among those management theorists who still visualize human institutions as machines, the choice is increasingly not mechanical but electronic: fluid, flexible, interactive. A progressive minority of management theorists even go, in their imagery, BEYOND electronic -- to organic. These management theorists speak of "GROWING a business" or "GROWING an organization" -- rather than BUILDING one.

 We can, of course, pick whichever metaphors we choose. Nonetheless, the way we VISUALIZE something can have profound practical implications.

Take, for example, the stacked rows of boxes on an organization chart. These boxes -- visualized as inanimate components of a STRUCTURE -- have no will, no feelings, no ideas of their own, no need for encouragement or recognition or motivation. Move the boxes around in a "reorganization", or even toss some of them away in a "downsizing", and they feel nothing.

Now visualize the same organization as a TREE -- metaphorically organic, just as its human members are literally organic. Unlike inanimate boxes, the branches of a tree will REACT to the treatment they receive.

If a "reorganization" is not undertaken as a grafting of one branch onto another, requiring a LOVING touch and ADDED levels of nutrition, then BOTH branches could die. And if a "downsizing" is not a gentle, careful pruning but rather a brutal, indiscriminate hacking, then the entire tree might die.

Yes, leaders who see their group, movement or institution as organic have to do more work. They have to pay attention to what the roots are telling the treetop -- not just The Other Way Around. They also have to accept that STRUCTURES, like Egyptian Pyramids or Mayan Temples, may far outlive those who built them and/or benefit from them -- while LIVING THINGS require care.

Despite these drawbacks, however, living things can GROW -- and living things can CHANGE. Indeed, at times, they MUST change.

For most living things, long term survival requires some ability to adapt. Freedom is no exception. A revival of "The SPIRIT of ‘76" would surely serve the nation’s interest -- but a revival of the ECONOMICS of 1776, or the SOCIOECONOMIC HIERARCHY of 1776, would not. Like a physical tree shedding leaves, to conserve water in a drought, The Tree Of Liberty has shed the economics and sociology of 1776 for a reason: it has saved its LIFE by changing its FORM.

How fares The Tree Of Liberty TODAY?

Let me tell you a story. 

Once Upon A Time -- in Fairfax, Virginia -- I had a wife and owned a house (though often it seemed that the house owned me). With the house came a backyard.

In a fashion tragically typical of "starter home" developments, the backyard had been largely denuded of vegetation by the developer. The bulldozers had rolled in, the bulldozers had rolled out -- and, in the end, only a few trees were left. One of the survivors, however, was a tall, sturdy oak -- much like The Tree Of Liberty, envisioned centuries ago.

I set out, with my usual obsessive intensity, to re-forest the lot. Over the next 2 years, I planted -- or, rather, TRANSplanted -- 28 young trees, spread over a seventh of an acre. As of my divorce, several years later, 23 of the trees had made it. This was not a bad "track record", given the dense clay hardpan in the soil and my tendency to "push the envelope" by planting white birches in a Southern climate.

Along the way, the life I was planting taught me lessons about the life I was living.

I learned, for example, that there is danger when a tree’s branches grow faster than the roots which nourish them. This is why CAREFUL pruning can help a tree -- or even save its life. I also learned that trees, when they die, usually die from the top down. This is useful information for someone involved with business or politics.

Then I learned a more painful lesson: that even mighty oaks are not invincible.

The oak that survived the developer had not, it turned out, really survived at all. Its root system had been "compacted" -- crushed and twisted -- under the weight of the developer’s bulldozers.

This became a death sentence. However, the blow, while fatal, had also been hidden. It had occurred beneath the surface, where I could not see it.

In time, I came to understand how a mighty oak’s size and strength can actually work against it. First, the tree sustained enough vitality to maintain AN APPEARANCE of health. I did not realize it was fighting for its life because it LOOKED so healthy -- on the surface -- for so long. Second, once the damage became visible, and I began to take corrective action, the medication and other remedies I applied could not reach enough of the massive tree in time. 

I had already known that it is easier to kill a sapling than a sturdy old oak. Now I realized that it is also easier to SAVE a sapling than a sturdy old oak. Yes, a sickness travels more slowly through a sturdy old oak, BUT so does the cure.

Were I fighting to save an oak today, I would do 3 THINGS differently:

(1) I would MONITOR THE TREE much more closely. Here and there

--- and especially in the upper branches, where death comes first -- I would gently peel away bits of bark to see what lies beneath.

(2) Alerted to a threat, I would prune its branches carefully but

aggressively. In the upper branches, I would prune away ALL the deadwood --

even if this meant lowering substantially the height of the tree. Farther down the tree, even where the branches were still alive, I would continue pruning -- more selectively, but still relentlessly -- in order to reduce the burden on whatever remained of the tree’s root system.

(3) I would vigorously fertilize the tree’s offshoots. Even in maturity,

trees often send up offshoots, popping out of the ground a few feet -- or more -- from the trunk. These offshoots are frequently mistaken for entirely new trees, but in truth they are new EXTENSIONS of the existing tree. When such a tree is in danger, it may actually send up more -- and/or more vigorous -- offshoots, as nutrients once claimed by dead parts of the tree are re-directed to places where the tree still lives. Encouraging this NEW LIFE in the tree is vital.

 THIS is how I would strive to save, and revive, a mighty oak -- were I charged with that duty today.

 In truth, I AM charged with this duty today -- and so, as a citizen, are YOU. If we truly wish to "secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity", we must nurture and defend The Tree Of Liberty in America.

Taking care of the tree’s offshoots -- such as the Low Power Radio movement -- is absolutely essential, but not in itself enough. Soon we must turn to the task of pruning away the deadwood at the top.

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 DON SCHELLHARDT is Co-Founder and National Coordinator of THE AMHERST ALLIANCE: a group which presses for Low Power Radio and other media reform. A writer and Government Relations attorney, he has worked on legislative and regulatory issues for a Member of Congress, a Congressional Committee, The American (Natural) Gas Association and the Global (Climate) Change Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.