[IMC-DC] Indyemdia importance and Brad Will, Indymedia Journalist Killed in Oaxaca

[WBIX media training]

FYI---http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4295144.html
   
  Oct. 28, 2006, 11:20PM
Friends say death illustrates role of independent media
Slain journalist Will was covering underreported story, they say

  By SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle 
                
  -->    In his final story, independent journalist Brad Will eulogized a Mexican man killed in political violence in Oaxaca, filing a dispatch that mixed poetry with stream-of-consciousness prose. He had great passion, friends said, but wasn't big on punctuation, a quirk fitting for someone known for spontaneously breaking into song.
  "went walking with angry folk on their way to the morgue — went inside and saw him," Will wrote. "havent seen too many bodies in my life — eats you up — a stack of nameless corpses in the corner — about the number who had died — no refrigeration — the smell"
    try{OAS_AD('Middle');}catch(e){}      document.write(''); 

  Will's story on the shooting of Alejandro Garcia Hernandez was posted Oct. 17 on www.nyc.indymedia.org, a global alternative media cooperative that publishes on the Internet.
  Less than two weeks later, Will, 36, was taken to the same morgue, killed in a conflict that has escalated in recent days, resulting in at least two other deaths.
  Mexican media and the New York City Independent Media Center reported that Will was shot Friday in the stomach at a barricade and died on the way to a medical clinic.
  Will's colleagues and like-minded activists were calling for a full investigation into his death and planned vigils outside the Mexican consulate in New York. On Saturday, Mexican authorities had detained at least four people for questioning in the killing, Mexico City's Reforma newspaper reported.
  Will's friends described him as a fearless and dedicated journalist and activist who worked 60 hours a week as a stagehand in New York to support his work as an independent journalist.
  On alternative Web sites and blogs, journalists who had never met Will said his death shows the important role of independent media, a growing number of nonprofit, grass-roots organizations that post news stories from people around the globe. The organization that Will wrote for in New York openly advocates social change, a practice typically shunned by reporters for mainstream newspapers and television.
  "We are dedicated to addressing issues that the mainstream media neglects and we do not conceal our ideals behind a false objectivity," the group said on its Web site, reporting that there are 130 Indymedia chapters around the world. "We hope to empower people to 'become the media' by providing democratic access to available technologies and information."
  Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, said the growth of independent media is "a natural result of the tools for media production being distributed to the public at large."
    Independent media's drawThe movement emerged on a national level with the World Trade Organization protests in 1999, he said, when mainstream media seemed astonished at the massing of protesters in Seattle, something anticipated by independent journalists.   
  Will, whose given name was William Bradley Roland, was drawn to independent journalism and filed first-hand accounts from Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil and Bolivia.
  About three weeks ago, he headed to Oaxaca to document protests by striking school teachers and activists calling for the ouster of state governor Ulises Ruiz.
  "what can you say about this movement — this revolutionary moment — you know it is building, growing, shaping — you can feel it — trying desperately for a direct democracy," he wrote in the October article.
  "As an independent journalist, he wasn't afraid to put himself in harm's way to amplify the voices of people whose stories go underreported," said Beka Economopoulos, a New York activist and friend of Will's for about 10 years.
    'Pay more attention'Brandon Jourdan, who counted Will among his best friends, said he talked to him the night before he was killed. He was excited to be in Oaxaca, Jourdan said, and was already making plans for when he would be able to return.   
  In a way, Jourdan said, Will was protecting people by documenting the conflict in Oaxaca.
   
  "People in the U.S. need to pay more attention to what's going on in Oaxaca," said Jourdan, 27, an independent journalist who recently returned from Lebanon. That is what Will "would have really wanted."
   
  Will's last story ended with a reflection on the killing of Garcia, the activist, and the body in the morgue.
   
  "one more death — one more martyr in a dirty war — one more time to cry and hurt — one more time to know power and its ugly head — one more bullet cracks the night — one more night at the barricades — some keep the fires — others curl up and sleep — but all of them are with him as he rests one last night at his watch."
  susan.carroll at chron.com 

  

WBIX media training <wbixclass at yahoo.com> wrote:
    Please let us make this call a global IMC call, calling for a stop to state sponsored violence, from Oaxaca, to Palestine, Iraq, Sudan... and I for one call a vote of the imc-dc to join this call, and feature it n a razorwire.
   
  Ryme

old school <seizetv at yahoo.com> wrote:
  THE NEW YORK CITY INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER RESPONDS TO
THE DEATH OF BRAD WILL
October 29, 2006
New York City
Brad Will was killed on October 27, 2006, in Oaxaca,
Mexico, while working as a journalist for the global
Indymedia network. He was shot in the torso while
documenting an armed, paramilitary assault on the
Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, a fusion of
striking local teachers and other community
organizations demanding democracy in Mexico.

The members of the New York City Independent Media
Center mourn the loss of this inspiring colleague and
friend. We want to thank everyone who has sent
condolences to our office and posted remembrances to
www.nyc.indymedia.org. We share our grief with the
people of our city and beyond who lived, worked, and
struggled with Brad over the course of his dynamic but
short life. We can only imagine the pain of the people
of Oaxaca who have lost seven of their neighbors to
this fight, including Emilio Alonso Fabian, a teacher,
and who now face an invasion by federal troops.

All we want in compensation for his death is the only
thing Brad ever wanted to see in this world: justice.

* We, along with all of Brad's friends, reject the
use of further state-sponsored violence in Oaxaca.
* The New York City Independent Media Center
supports the demand of Reporters Without Borders for a
full and complete investigation by Mexican authorities
into Oaxaca State Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz's
continued use of plain-clothed municipal police as a
political paramilitary force. The arrest of his
assailants is not enough.
* The NYC IMC also supports the call of Zapatista
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos "to compañeros and
compañeras in other countries to unite and to demand
justice for this dead compañero." Marcos issued this
call "especially to all of the alternative media, and
free media here in Mexico and in all the world."

Indymedia was born from the Zapatista vision of a
global network of alternative communication against
neoliberalism and for humanity. To believe in
Indymedia is to believe that journalism is either in
the service of justice or it is a cause of injustice.
We speak and listen, resist and struggle. In that
spirit, Brad Will was both a journalist and a human
rights activist.

He was a part of this movement of independent
journalists who go where the corporate media do not or
stay long after they are gone.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/77958.html

NYC Indymedia:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/index.html

In His Own Words:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/30/1535244

Last Video from Oaxaca:
http://salonchingon.com/cinema/brad.php?city=ny

Oaxaca Solidarity Action in DC
Monday, October 30, 5:00 PM
Mexican Embassy, 1911 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/136424/index.php



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Ryme Katkhouda
cell 917-681-7228 wbixclass at yahoo.com

co-founder of the dcradiocoop.org and wbix.org
Executive Producer of "Voices With Vision", Th 11am on WPFW 89.3FM in DC 
Senior Producer and trainer at WPFW 89.3FM for 2 1/2 years
National Correspondent with Free Speech Radio News FSRN.org

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Ryme Katkhouda
cell 917-681-7228  wbixclass at yahoo.com

co-founder of the dcradiocoop.org and wbix.org
Executive Producer of "Voices With Vision", Th 11am on WPFW 89.3FM in DC 
Senior Producer and trainer at WPFW 89.3FM for 2 1/2 years
National Correspondent with Free Speech Radio News FSRN.org

****
Be a realist: Dream the incredible: you will accomplish the impossible!
 
---------------------------------
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