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WHEREAS, Pittsburgh radio station WAMO has been a staple of gospel, jazz, blues, hip hop, and R&B music for decades; and
WHEREAS, WAMO started in the 1940s under the call letters WHOD (nicknamed the "Station of Nations") and was very popular with Pittsburgh's German, Polish, Italian, Greek, Croatian, Jewish, and African American communities, offering a diverse playlist of traditional music from around the world; and
WHEREAS, in the mid-1950s the station took on the call letters WAMO - an acronym for the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers - and begun transitioning to a playlist of gospel, jazz, blues, and R&B; and
WHEREAS, in its early years WAMO boasted the most powerful signal in all of Western Pennsylvania, at more than 150,000 watts and was also the first African American owned radio station; and
WHEREAS, WAMO played an incredibly important role during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, giving voice to an African American population that had few opportunities to shape their own message in the media; and
WHEREAS, WAMO went off the air on September 8, 2009 but was later revived in the spring of 2011 on a different frequency, bringing a 24/7 hip hop station back to the Pittsburgh air waves after nearly two years; and
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NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Council of the City of Pittsburgh does hereby join WAMO's directors, staff, on-air personalities, and listeners in celebrating their long history of bringing arts and culture to Pittsburgh; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Council of the City of Pittsburgh does hereby declare August 3 through 5, 2012 to be "WAMO Reunion Weekend" in the City of Pittsburgh.