By Maricela Lechuga
“Three strong-ass womyn of color” is how the DJs of KZSC’s new radio show describe themselves.
Equipped with three microphones and euphonious tracks from various women artists of color, student activists Leticia Miranda, Tannia Esparza and Kas Ocasio-Pare host “Third Eye View.” They launched their first broadcast of the quarter Jan. 27.
Although KZSC has transmitted similar shows in the past, such as “Third World Collective” in the 80s, “Third Eye View” is unique as an all-women of color broadcast.
The hosts use their own identities as a platform for political discussion, consciously making the personal political.
Miranda, a fourth-year double majoring in Latin American/Latino Studies and feminist studies, began “Third Eye View” fall quarter of last year.
As someone who has been involved in radio and has worked at KZSC for quite some time, Miranda said she still felt marginalized by the negativity in mainstream radio.
“I needed a space where I could fully be myself,” she said.”[It was my response to] the racist and homophobic hate speech which is transmitted through the airwaves.”
Since then, “Third Eye View” has grown to include Esparza and Ocasio-Pare.
Esparza, also a fourth-year Latin American/Latino Studies and feminist studies double major, said that she felt misrepresented by the media’s tendency to portray women of color as a stereotype that she does not identify with.
According to Esparza, “Third Eye View” seeks to be an alternative to this misrepresentation.
One way in which they do this is through playing music by all-female artists of color, such as Sarah Jones, Cihuatl Tonali, Goapele, Amel Larrieux and Destani Wolf.
“[We are] dedicated to talking about national and transnational issues from our perspective, challenging the white male perspective,” Esparza said. Through these mediums they hope to challenge binary ways of thinking about identity and also raise issues of race, gender, class and sexual orientation.
As the freshest face to the show, Ocasio-Pare, a second-year community studies major from Porter, said that the show has helped her feel at home in the UCSC community.
“‘Third Eye View’ is the space I have been looking for on this campus [because] I can meld my queer identity with my identity as a person of color,” Ocasio-Pare said. “It’s an essential space where I can express my identity through art.”
This quarter they hope to push the envelope by interviewing radical women of color who are critical, inspirational and who speak without reservation.
They plan on featuring various female activists, artists, students, graduate students, professors, and community members through whom they hope to get a large community response.
This makes it, as Ocasio-Pare said, “an effort from both sides of the microphone.”
For these three women, “Third Eye View” is a direct and powerful form of activism. It is perhaps best expressed by the Third World Radio Collective’s 1984 motto, which they have appropriated for their own show: “A revolutionary with a microphone is as strong as a hundred with guns.”
_“Third Eye View” airs every Sunday night from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on KZSC 88.1 FM. The show broadcasts live in three counties: Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz._
