This is me speaking at a rally protesting the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as a “distinguished visiting fellow” to the Hoover Institution in November in 2007.

My name is Adam Hudson and I am running for the KPFA Local Station Board. I am a senior at Stanford University majoring in International Relations with a minor in Middle Eastern Languages, Literatures and Cultures. I am involved in numerous campus activist organizations, including Stanford Says No to War, which I co-founded.

KPFA plays a critical role in presenting alternative perspectives to mainstream discourse and provides an important medium for disadvantaged communities to make their voices heard.  As a college student, I believe I can provide a fresh perspective to KPFA’s decision-making process. The main things I would like to achieve, while on the Board, are increasing KPFA’s outreach to young people and communities of color, integrating new media tools to broaden KPFA’s listener base, and support democratic decision-making within KPFA to help foster an organically-run community radio station.

On campus, I devote most of my time to two organizations: the Stanford NAACP and Stanford Says No to War. As Education Co-Chair of the Stanford NAACP, I tutor students in socio-economically disadvantaged East Palo Alto. As an African-American male who grew in a very similar community (Pittsburg, California), I am intimately familiar with the struggles these young students face and how their struggles connect to the broader sociopolitical system that perpetuates social inequality and continues their oppression. I tutor these students because I firmly believe that education is vital tool in uplifting disadvantaged communities.

In autumn of 2007, I, and a handful of committed student activists, organized a large demonstration against the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as a “distinguished visiting fellow” to the Hoover Institution, a neoconservative think-tank at Stanford. This demonstration managed to garner international attention via the Associated Press wire. Soon after that, Stanford Says No to War was formed as the hub of Stanford’s antiwar movement. Currently, our main campaign is to prosecute former Bush administration official and current member of the Stanford faculty and Hoover Fellow Condoleezza

Rice for war crimes, as they relate to approving the use of torture and waging aggressive war against Iraq. We have circulated a petition calling for the investigation and prosecution of her and other government officials for war crimes. So far, our petition has garnered over 1,200 signatures. During my current summer vacation, I am interning as an Executive Assistant at the Commonweal Institute, which is a progressive think-tank in the Bay Area.

As a young student of color at Stanford involved in uplifting disadvantaged communities, advocating peace during a time of war and devoting a lot of energy to progressive causes, I feel I can bring a lot to the KPFA Board.

I am endorsed by:

• Professor Todd Davies, Symbolic Systems Department, Stanford University
• Malihe Razazan, Co-host and Co-producer, Voices of the Middle East & North Africa; also, Co-producer of Your Call on KALW
• Shahram Aghamir, Co-producer, Voices of the Middle East and North Africa
• Independents for Community Radio (www.indyradio2009.org)
• Marc Sapir, MD, MPH, activist, KPFA listener and Stanford alumnus
• South Bay Mobilization
• Todd Chretien, Bay Area International Socialist Organization
• San Francisco Green Party