To build a community, you have to go where no one is willing to go. You have to give value to people to whom
no one is willing to give value. You have to be willing to be the voice in the dark, and still sing.
Sometimes I look at the internet and find it sick with greed. "I will stand up for ideals!" I scream. And then comes the brick wall. The cost
of owning a network. RFM runs on its own local area network, independent -- and expensive as hell. Why? So no one from the outside
of our community can tell us what to say. I was talking to one of our members on the phone the other night and he said, "There is
no free speech in broadcasting. There is only how much money each organization has for lawyers." He is right. But by being independent and owning
the network, as small as it may be, we have a little more power to be creative than we would otherwise.
And as RFM defines itself
financially, we have chosen to become a non-profit organization because we give technological and creative opportunity to those
who never had it before, and because we are not in this to make millions of dollars. We just want to live the life of feeling
the warmth of our community. We want to stand for something original in a world full of conformists.
I will not accept money from anyone who is not in comfortable financial circumstances. If you give us money, and we know you,
and we know you are not making a lot, we'll give it back. But if you are able to make a donation, I thought it would be
fun to make membership levels based upon the characters of RFM.
