St. Petersburg, FL station “Black Power 96” WBPU-LP has sought to reinstate a lawsuit originally filed against Pinellas County in 2023 following the county’s decision to revoke $37,000 of approved funding. The station’s owner, the nonprofit African People’s Education and Defense Fund, alleged racial discrimination and a violation of First Amendment rights.
The county’s decision to reverse WBPU’s request for federal COVID-19 relief money, initially approved in 2022, came after a county commissioner denounced the station’s association with the Uhuru Movement or Black Freedom Movement, an initiative under the African People’s Socialist Party to unite African people for “liberation, social justice, self-reliance and economic development,” according to the group’s website.
Attorneys for the station appeared before an appellate court on Nov. 6 to argue the case, which a trial court had dismissed in 2024. “No one should be punished, no one should be penalized for associating even with a group considered to be disfavored,” Luke Lirot, one of the lawyers representing WBPU, tells Jacksonville Today, noting that the station’s appeal aims to show that “freedom of speech is not forgotten, it’s not lost.”…