County Funding Revoked For Uhuru-Affiliated Radio Station In St. Pete

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Pinellas County commissioners voted unanimously at their Tuesday meeting to revoke a grant awarded to the African People’s Education and Defense Fund and its radio station, WBPU 96.3 FM, known as Black Power Radio.

The $36,801 grant, funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act, was approved for the nonprofit, which is affiliated with the Uhuru Movement, in November. The organization was among 34 awarded grants through the initiative, documents from the Pinellas Community Foundation, which oversaw the process, show.

"We are outraged that the Pinellas County Board of Commissioners has revoked funding for the only nonprofit ARPA awardee that is focused on serving south St. Pete's Black community,” Eddie Maultsby, station manager, told Patch. "Our funding application ranked 4th out of over 50 applicants and met all requirements for the grant. The planned equipment purchases would allow our community radio station to continue providing emergency weather alerts, broadcast airtime to unsigned local artists and professional journalism training for our community.”

In its application, the APEDF said the money would be used to replace aging radio equipment, expand its free community audio production training program, and purchase a back-up transmitter and Emergency Alert System, a listener call-in system, and a remote mobile DJ kit.

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“All of these purchases will help to remedy the pandemic-caused negative economic impacts that our organization has suffered, in the form of reduced revenue, increased service demand and inflationary pressures,” the fund said.

The organization’s radio station broadcasts from the Uhuru House at 1245 18th S.

Their St. Petersburg house, as well as the Uhuru Movement’s home base in St. Louis, Missouri, were raided in July as part of an FBI investigation into a Russian national, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, accused of working for the Russian Federal Security Service to spread disinformation in the U.S. using social media and meddling in local elections.

Before Tuesday’s revocation of funds, which was first reported by the Tampa Bay Times, several commissioners expressed concerns at their Thursday work session about the African People’s Education and Defense Fund and the FBI investigation into the Uhurus’ Russian ties.

In addition to the FBI raid, Commissioner Chris Latvala referenced the Uhurus’ ties to antisemitic Black nationalist groups and a 1996 mock trial in which they sentenced city leaders to death.

The mock trial followed the fatal police shooting of TyRon Lewis, which inspired protests and riots throughout St. Petersburg, the Times reported. Uhuru members called for the death of then-police Chief Darrel Stephens, then-Mayor David Fischer and two officers.

“My question is how would a group that has ties to antisemitic nationalist groups get approved for funding?” Latvala asked.

Duggan Cooley, the chief executive officer of the Pinellas Community Foundation, told commissioners that the APEDF “went through the funding process” as other applicants.

He added, “We were concerned about some of the issues that have arisen because of the FBI investigation. We had some conversation with the county about this particular application and asked some questions as to whether or not some of that should be disqualifying for the organization and the feedback that we received was that if they are not on the list of organizations that can’t contract with the county or not on the list to be barred from receiving federal funds that they should go through and be scored in this process like every other organization.”

None of these concerns were mentioned when the APEDF’s were revoked Tuesday.

“I do not think that we should be funding a radio station with the amount of needs that are in our community,” Latvala said.

Commission Chair Janet Long, who didn’t attend the work session, said she found the decision to fund the APEDF over organizations like food pantries “staggering.”

“I know we can’t control the criteria… but somewhere in there, there has to be consideration for the needs of human beings, seems to me,” she said.

Latvala added, “I think prioritizing people over products and things is a good way to start.”

"The African People's Education and Defense Fund has provided a wide range of services — health and fitness, local licensed food production, youth sports, job training and more — for our black community for nearly 30 years. Once again, our local government officials are taking the tax funds that our Black residents pay into and diverting them to fund predominantly white programs and development,” Maultsby said. "We will continue to grow and thrive, relying primarily on the direct grassroots support and donations from our community.”