It’s not often that the FCC asks us how to do its job. But Sept. 6 is the deadline for the public to respond to a pretty exciting question: “Should we set aside channels for community radio in big and medium-sized cities?”

You don’t hear questions like that every day. In fact, media activists fought for more than a decade to put this idea on the table.

A bipartisan grassroots coalition that included the Prometheus Radio Project and Free Press worked to pass the Local Community Radio Act (“LCRA”), signed into law in January.

This historic law directs the FCC to expand Low Power FM (LPFM) radio, giving big and medium-sized cities their first chance at community radio in decades. LPFMs are small non-commercial stations, licensed only to local nonprofit organizations, schools, churches and government agencies.

But to expand LPFM the FCC must first clear out a backlog of thousands of pending applications for translators, radio transmitters that repeat programming from other stations. Translators are supposed to help local stations reach listeners in hilly terrain —and some do — but many are run by giant networks that use their translators to cheaply build media empires with no local content. The business model these networks use relies on repeating the same signal on hundreds, sometimes thousands, of translators.

In most cities, the dial is so crowded with corporate stations there’s not much room left. Without FCC action now, the few remaining spots will be flooded by translators before anyone can even apply for community radio licenses.

Thanks to the LCRA, however, the FCC is required to ensure that spectrum is available for low power radio. To comply with the law, the FCC must figure out how to dismiss some of the thousands of pending translator applications to save room for LPFM radio.

The FCC’s plan is to dismiss these translator applications in cities where there isn’t room for at least a few community radio stations, setting aside the few remaining spots on the public airwaves for us, the public. This will ensure that channels are available in big and medium-sized cities, which haven’t had new low power community radio stations in more than 30 years.

They’ve asked for public comment on this plan by Monday, Aug. 29. It’s a rare opportunity not only to tell the FCC how to do its job, but to remind the agency of who it works for.

We know the FCC will hear from translator applicants and big networks opposing the plan. With loud enough support for community radio from the rest of us, we just might get heard over the corporate static.

We can have radio that gives us more accountability journalism and less celebrity gossip. Community, not commercials. We can have radio that’s truly independent, from the artists and music labels it showcases to the small businesses that underwrite it to the pundits and perspectives it features.

But we have to ask for it.

Brandy Doyle is the policy director for the Prometheus Radio Project.