ABOUT MICHAEL SLATE 

Michael Slate, is a revolutionary communist and the host of The Michael Slate Show, a weekly public affairs show on KPFK FM, the Pacifica Network station in Los Angeles. The show airs every Friday at 10 AM Pacific Time and is rebroadcast on other stations around the country throughout the week. Slate has hosted this show since 2002.

Michael Slate has also been a correspondent for RevCom.us/ Revolution for over three decades. In 2004 and 2012, Slate had the honor and privilege of conducting two extensive and unique interviews with Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the architect of a new communism. http://thebobavakianinstitute.org/bob-avakian-a-radically-different-leader/ These rare historic interviews were aired as two special series on his radio show. As a revolutionary thinker, Slate approaches the world from the perspective of the emancipation of humanity. Slate is akin to the John Reed of our time – who wrote the decisive book Ten Days that Shook the World documenting the historic 1917 Russian Revolution led by V.I. Lenin.

Slate traveled to South Africa as the only revolutionary journalist from the US to report from inside the townships of South Africa during the uprisings of the 1980s. He covered the Chiapas Rebellion in 1994, from the mountain towns and villages of southern Mexico. In 2005 he traveled to Sri Lanka to report on the aftermath of the tsunami in South Asia. Inside the US, Slate reported on many of the urban rebellions of the 1990s, including unparalleled reporting on the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion (“Shockwaves: Report from the Los Angeles Rebellion” https://themichaelslateshow.com/shockwaves-the-1992-la-rebellion/).

Since 1995, Slate has written articles on film, music, theater and visual arts, including in-depth interviews with Oliver Stone, Oscar Brown, Jr, Horace Tapscott and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In addition to RevCom.us/Revolution, Slate's writing was included in the anthology American Protest Literature (Zoe Trodd, Harvard University Press). His articles have appeared in The Black American, the San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, the Long Beach Press Telegram, The Rocky Mountain News and Pacific News Service. Slate also wrote the widely praised booklet on the criminalization of the hip-hop generation that accompanied the Unbound Project, a hip-hop compilation CD inspired by Mumia Abu Jamal. He was one of the producers of the groundbreaking ArtSpeaks concerts in Los Angeles in the late 1990s. From 1999 to 2000 Slate worked as Music Supervisor for the 13 part PBS Television series Senior Year, directed by David Zeiger. Slate was also an Associate Producer and Music Supervisor for the award winning documentary Sir! No Sir!, the story of GI resistance during the Vietnam War, also directed by David Zeiger.

Comment from a donor to The Michael Slate Show on KPFK:

Michael brings to us a perspective and voices that we need to hear and know about and we will not get anywhere else.  We hear the works of Bob Avakian and his analysis of this system and how it operates and about the need for revolution and how this is possible.  WE are pressed to “get woke” by the activists in the Refuse Fascism movement, because fascism has come to America and we must understand what it means if it consolidates and how it is our moral obligation to stop it.  We meet the courageous members of the Revolution Clubs bringing forward the “Get Organized for an Actual Revolution tour”, and they take us to the streets as they march into the hoods giving people hope to stand up and fight to change the world.  We learn about climate disruption and what this means for the survival of the planet.  Michael introduces us to scientists; musicians and playwrights who give us a unique social commentary.  Michael pushes his listeners to engage with science and to think analytically about the world.  He is deeply passionate and projects a love for humanity with deep personal conviction.  He gives us hope, through science and we cannot get much better than that!