Sally O’Brien, a radio reporter for New York’s public radio WBAI FM, has given her final broadcast.
In 1988 she began her signature show Where We Live, often co-hosted with Black Liberationist Safia Bukhari, herself a former political prisoner, where the lives of political prisoners and/or prisoners of war were profiled and told. With a raspy, yet elegant voice, she told the story of rebellion, resistance, and yes, revolution. After Safia returned to her ancestors, Dequi Kioni Sadiki co-hosted the show with Sally.
Her career as a radio journalist began in 1980 with the WBAI News Department, where she went from a street reporter to Associate News Director to Interim Public Affairs Director, and finally Executive Producer of several programs including the Sunday News Show. And for several decades, she did that show working with journalist and educator Barbara Day.
In 2008, Sally O’Brien, working with Jennifer Wagner, produced and directed the documentary called Against the Silence: Families of the Cuban Five Speak, about five Cubans working against terror and attacks against their nation. Sally was an incessant and hard-working journalist, and not only on WBAI. She wrote pieces for The Nation, The National Guardian, The City Sun, and The Advocate, among others.
She worked as an audio engineer for UN Radio for eighteen years. She did radio work on my case and, through her broadcasts on WBAI, introduced a whole generation of people in New York to my case and others like The Jericho Movement for Amnesty and Recognition of U. S. Political Prisoners. She worked on reports of police brutality against Puerto Ricans by giving air time to the Justice Committee of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights.
In 2017, Sally O’Brien was honored with an award for excellence presented by Cuba’s UN Ambassador Anayanci Rodriguez Camejo, who granted her the Felix Elmuza Award for her fair and brave coverage of Cuba. Sally O’Brien fought on the fields of journalism for over 35 years, and according to a source, Sally O’Brien was actually born in Britain, and her grandmother, her beloved grandmother, was a journalist, and it inspired her. We send kudos, Sister Sally O’Brien for work well done. With love, not fear, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.