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In September 2024, Hurricane Helene blew in from the Gulf of Mexico to wreak destruction in an unlikely place: the mountains of western North Carolina. Thomas Witherspoon, who has lived in that area for years, told me on Techtonic this week how rare this event was. “Normally,” he said, “we have very boring weather.”

That changed when Helene rolled in, causing power outages, road closures, and widespread flooding. Whole neighborhoods were devastated. Witherspoon, who lives on a rural road, had no vehicular access to the nearby town, no power except through his home’s solar array, and no cell phone access: the towers were all offline. Not even 911 was working.

One thing that was working was his radio. Witherspoon is a licensed amateur radio operator (or “ham”) with years of experience connecting with other operators hundreds, even thousands of miles away via portable, low-power radios. (For any operators reading this: Witherspoon’s ham radio call sign is K4SWL – though he’s well known enough in the community that you might know that already!)

Witherspoon’s radio – along with the solar-power system and battery he happened to have installed not long before Helene – gave him the crucial ability to communicate with relief coordinators in undamaged parts of the state. (See the news video about the Mt. Mitchell repeater.)

At one point, Witherspoon used the radio to ask for a helicopter drop of supplies to his road. As he told me, his request was immediately approved. “He said, ‘Thomas, we’ll take care of that for you tomorrow.’ And that was it.”

That’s why Witherspoon calls amateur radio a “superpower.”

This episode of Techtonic has gotten more positive response than any recent show I can remember. Even if (or especially if) you know nothing about amateur radio, I’d recommend listening:

• You can listen on the episode page on the Techtonic website.

• Or if you prefer, here’s the podcast version.

There was a twist about halfway through our conversation. After talking about the starting kit that an amateur radio operator needs, and the process of getting licensed, Witherspoon mentioned that his radio was only part of how he and his family survived Helene. Something else, it turns out, was just as vital to his success.

It was community. When I suggested to Witherspoon that working together with his neighbors was the most important component of his survival post-Helene, he immediately agreed:

It was. It was. I’ve told people, don’t believe what you see in these doomsday prepper shows where in a disaster of some sort, you separate yourself from society and you get in a big bunker, you have your own supplies, and you rely only on yourself. If you do that, you’re just missing out on the efficiency and resilience that you get with community. It was everything for us.

Witherspoon described the varied skills among his neighbors. One is a mechanic, another is a trauma nurse, and others (including Witherspoon) are skilled at using chainsaws. His radio was just one of many resources. A person, or a family, acting alone would have had a much harder time.

One has to wonder what will happen to the tech oligarchs when cataclysm strikes. Let’s suppose everything goes exactly right and the billionaire is able to escape with his family to a bunker in New Zealand. What then? Holing up – literally, living in a hole – isolated from the rest of the world, with no community, and no possibility of helping, or being helped by, other people. It sounds like hell.

Community, neighbors helping neighbors, is diametrically opposed to the billionaire’s plan for isolation. Another revealing comparison has to do with technology: Witherspoon’s amateur radio vs. the billionaires’ AI-and-social-media slop platforms.

• Amateur radio is old, non-flashy, reliable technology. Big Tech offers flashy, hype-driven, untested AI platforms. (Think: which is likely to be available, at all, during a disaster?)

• Amateur radio is energy efficient – Witherspoon told me about communicating at “9,000 miles per watt” – while Big Tech platforms are the opposite. Read my column Don’t let the data center come to town (Oct 14, 2025).

• Amateur radio is decentralized, open, on a public protocol, available to everyone and owned by no one. Big Tech maintains a chokehold on centralized, closed, extractive surveillance platforms.

• Amateur radio exists to benefit people – both the operators and their communities. Big Tech exists to benefit the billionaires and the investors and executives aligned with them.

• Amateur radio is designed to foster better, more transparent communication. (As Witherspoon said during the interview, in the absence of communication, rumors immediately started spreading; all of this cleared up with radio connection.) Big Tech platforms, in contrast, are designed to amplify rumor, falsehood, outrage, and distrust – all in an attempt to maximize “engagement.”

Comparing these two technologies, it’s easy to see why Witherspoon’s community was so well served by amateur radio: it’s designed to benefit people. The Silicon Valley sludge factories, on the other hand, generate profit by pulling communities apart. In both cases, the technologies are working as designed.

My point is that we can make better choices if we first get clear on who the technology is designed to serve. Communities can benefit from technology, if we choose the right platforms to use. The challenge is to learn that lesson before the next disaster strikes.

Finally, I’ve posted links to more resources around disaster prep and recovery aid on the members-only Creative Good Forum. I hope you’ll join Creative Good to support my work and get access to all resources I’ve posted.

Until next time,

-mark

Mark Hurst, founder, Creative Good ← please join as a member
Email: mark@creativegood.com
Podcast/radio show: techtonic.fm
Follow me on Bluesky or Mastodon

Administrators at the University of Alabama shut down two student-led publications and claimed that a memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi required them to censor journalism. 

On July 29, Bondi issued “non-binding suggestions” for “federal funding recipients to comply with antidiscrimination law.” The intent was to discourage diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, and Bondi specifically stated that “unlawful proxies” could jeopardize funding. 

Bondi also insisted that universities may not direct funds and other resources to organizations “primarily because of their racial or ethnic composition rather than other legitimate factors.”  

The magazines, Alice Magazine and Nineteen Fifty-Six, were suspended on December 1. Alice Magazine is a fashion and wellness magazine that primarily focuses on women. Nineteen Fifty-Six is a magazine largely focused on “Black culture, Black excellence and Black student experiences at the University of Alabama.”

As the university’s student newspaper The Crimson White reported, “Steven Hood, vice president of student life, told the staff of each magazine on Monday night that because the magazines target primarily specific groups, they are ‘unlawful proxies.’” 

Alex House, a university spokesperson, claimed Bondi’s memo required the university to “ensure all members of our community feel welcome to participate in programs that receive University funding from the Office of Student Media.” (Both magazines received university funds.)

The same spokesperson maintained that the university “will never restrict [their] students’ freedom of expression,” and the they were simply responding to the “compliance landscape.” However, no one enrolled or working at the university complained about the magazines. No one sued the university to force “compliance.”

It is difficult to understand why the university took action against students several months after the memo was issued by Bondi. 

Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel for the Student Press Law Center, stated, “The Supreme Court has made clear that viewpoint discrimination is off-limits, and it’s difficult to imagine a more straightforward example than a university openly acknowledging it. By shutting down only the magazines that primarily serve women and Black students — while leaving other publications alone—it looks a lot like they are targeting a particular point of view.”

The center urged the university to immediately “restore” the magazines. 

Similarly, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) sent a letter to university administrators. “No federal antidiscrimination law requires the university to silence these publications, and its choice to do so is a violation of their clearly established First Amendment rights.”

“The decisions about what to publish belong to the student editors of Alice Magazine and Nineteen Fifty-Six, and there can be no doubt that administrative action against student media in response to what they publish betrays UA’s obligation to protect free expression.”

Gabrielle Gunter, the editor-in-chief of Alice Magazine, told The Crimson White, "It is so disheartening to know that so many of us have put so much hard work into these magazines that are now being censored."

"Alice is what got me into journalism, and it breaks my heart that there will no longer be spaces like Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six where students can learn to create beautiful, diverse magazines that honor all types of identities."

Kendal Wright, editor-in-chief of Nineteen Fifty-Six, expressed her sadness. "This publication has cultivated incredibly talented and budding Black student journalists and brought our community on campus together in such a beautiful way."

The letter from FIRE clearly outlines the unlawful nature of the University of Alabama’s viewpoint-based discrimination: 

UA explicitly justified its punitive actions by pointing to the viewpoints expressed by the magazines, which the Supreme Court has called “an egregious form of content discrimination.” By suspending these magazines based on their target audiences—in other words, the magazines’ viewpoints—UA is “cast[ing] disapproval on particular viewpoints of its students[.] And, in doing so, UA “risks the suppression of free speech and creative inquiry in one of the vital centers for the Nation’s intellectual life, its college and university campuses.” Further, by leaving other student media untouched, UA has concretely demonstrated that it favors those viewpoints over those communicated by Alice Magazine and Nineteen Fifty-Six.

FIRE demanded that the university respond to their letter by December 10 and reverse this “brazen attack on the student press” by ending the suspensions against the two publications. 

“It has been an exceptionally tough year for universities and for student media—at Indiana University, Central Oklahoma University and so many others—and moments like this are precisely when educational institutions should be standing up for free speech and a free press,” Hiestand further emphasized. 

Back in October, The Dissenter covered the brazen censorship at Indiana University, where administrators shut down printing of the school’s student newspaper The Indiana Daily Student. (Three weeks later, administrators responded to alumni pulling funding and reinstated the print edition.) 

The same month the University of Central Oklahoma also halted printing of the school’s newspaper The Vista. It had been published for 122 years, yet the university interfered with the editorial independence of the newspaper and retaliated against students’ coverage of news on campus. Ultimately, students launched a new publication The Independent View.

Columbia University student journalists were threatened with disciplinary action, including suspension, for reporting on student demonstrations in support of Palestinians and against Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza.  

Plus, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have targeted noncitizen student journalists for deportation.

The student newspaper at Stanford University said this has resulted in a “dramatic decrease in the number of international students willing to speak” to reporters and a loss of international staff, who no longer wished to write articles about protests or political events on campus. (The Stanford Daily sued Rubio and Noem.)  

The right of students to report is under assault, and yet as Hiestand said, “[T]oo many administrators are using the moment to silence student speech they don’t like.”