From July 8-10, engineer Jim Derks and I attended the Alliance for Community Media Conference in Tampa, Florida. The humid air in Tampa was hard to breathe and the average heat index was 105 degrees, but I returned to MTN feeling refreshed. Although the air conditioning helped, it was really the time I spent with peers from all over the country that encouraged and revitalized me. The organizing energy of the Tampa, Florida area thrilled me. Their Public, Educational and Government Access entities are flourishing. Tampa's community radio station is also completing a capital campaign to triple its size. The public in Tampa is truly demanding locally-controlled media. The last few months have been difficult for me. The City is studying ways to change public access and there are many unknowns in our franchise renewal process. To meet with my peers and see that community television is thriving in large cities as well as small villages across our country was wonderful. Public, Educational and Government Access television is truly a non-partisan phenomenon with Republican as well as Democrat-controlled cities equally allowing for and valuing the benefit of locally-produced television. When Michael Powell's FCC allowed further media consolidation last year, a coalition of groups across the political spectrum came together to ask Congress to override this decision.  The coalition included both the NRA and the ACLU. Unprecedented numbers of Americans wrote letters, attended hearings, and demanded that the FCC had gone too far. Congress agreed and overturned the FCC’s decision. It is this energy and interest in Media Democracy that we must harness in Minneapolis as we prepare to go up against a true giant, Time Warner Cable, in our franchise renewal. I witnessed firsthand at the Alliance Conference that cable companies do provide favorably for Public, Educational and Government Access in cities where it is a high priority. Time Warner is doing very well financially in Minneapolis. Its monopoly on Video on Demand and cable Internet access has been especially lucrative. Time Warner’s financial profits are enhanced because we as citizens are giving them the right to place their cables in our public spaces. A recent survey of the residents of Minneapolis showed that the Public, Educational and Government channels are watched and valued by cable subscribers, and that they add valuable programming to Time Warner’s program lineup. Providing for public access is a win/win situation for Time Warner. - Pam Colby