Hegemonic Seam

Waiting For Redemption. Somewhere. With an iPhone.

2012-03-05T05:38:00.002-08:00

Waiting For Redemption.

Somewhere.

With An iPhone.

Lisa Barr

Please tune in to a livestream from Montrose, PA, tonight. It’s important.

In the future, other journalists who want to actually cover that god-awful place should be able to do so in peace. I really wasn’t interested so much in what they are doing. I was, however, enraged to see them manhandle a citizen journalist’s equipment and send her to the back of the room with her inconspicuous, small tripod. And her person. Members of the audience had falsely claimed that she blocked their view of their insipid borough council members as a pretext to harass her.

And it worked.

For a time.

Then my sister, a Pennsylvania attorney, filed an injunction against their enforcement of a draconian list of rules for public hearings consistent with the fact that goons openly spied upon and tried intimidating people attending the premier of Josh Fox’s GASLAND at the theatre down the street from the courthouse nearly 2 years earlier. I could sense the repression there on President’s Day (Monday, February 20).

It was dark.

There were no fewer than 5 cops seemingly waiting to arrest me had I walked in, rolling (not on drugs, but on an iPhone 4GS), to videotape a ‘government gone mad’ story thread I’ve documented since December: local government indifference to the Dimock residents on Carter Road whose water was damaged by gas wells. The people were profiled first by Josh Fox in Gasland but they make the rounds enough , and are abused so frequently as to offer unique angles that need explaining by many, many, citizen journalists. And we need more people to tell the story of how plutocracy peters out in this twilight of our ‘democracy’; in this last exploitation of the Iroquois Confederacy’s colonized land, and, yes, in this last gasp of our planet lest we stop this carbon-fueled insanity.

I could not afford, on many levels, to have another criminal charge lodged against me.

So I stayed outside.

I looked in the front window and saw cameras on tripods in the back of the room.

I’ve already been delayed by about one month in producing my documentary trailer so as to try fundraising to sustain me while I market the documentary, enter it in contests. I also was delayed in fundraising for my anti-frack CSA. I was delayed in sprouting my organic seeds, and in doing the necessary paperwork for organic certification this season. That’s because I was attacked while covering a meeting regarding a moratorium on fracking on January 25th and then charged by NY State Police who seemed to feel that whomever ‘got to them first’ was the victim.

Let that sink in, please.

So, on President’s Day, in Montrose, PA, I stood outside the meeting, or sat in my car with my dog while cops smirked. Or lurked behind another car while I interviewed a man outside. Or came up to my window and knocked on it.

“What’s your name?” asked a sergeant who should have been on patrol but had attended the meeting “In case they need me,” he said, grinning.

“What does it matter what my name is? You’re denying me my First Amendment rights--that’s all you need to know,” I said. And I know he knew who I was.

Well, he said, “If we can be of further assistance, let us know. You’re welcome to come inside the (police) station around the back and get warm.”

Fake niceness. The American Way.

So, of course, I missed the story--got zero video of the citizens and indy journalists being harassed inside.

But, once there, I discovered there was a good story--as there always is in the town hall meetings woefully neglected the past 35 years of deregulated radio news (as goes radio--so goes the rest of the newsrooms).

I wanted to know not only whether Montrose Borough officials would stop the sale of water to Craig Sauntner for delivery to the 11 Dimock families not receiving water from the EPA. Only 4 families--including the Sauntners--are getting EPA water. I wanted to hear Borough officials cut off sales to all but the gas companies. I wanted to videotape the ‘give and take’--you know, the trappings of ‘democracy’.

I couldn’t do that.

Forgive the alliteration, but, the Valentine’s Day media massacre in Montrose means that journalists must:

*Use a tripod;

*Stand ONLY in the back of the room;

* Not move for a better (or a different)angle;

*Leave their equipment on the tripod and let it roll without adjustment;

*Not ask any questions (seriously!);

*Not videotape any “private” conversations during the public hearing;

Yes.

WTF?

You get it.

The next day, Tuesday, February 21, my sister was granted a Monday, February 27th hearing for injunctive relief on my behalf that will feature the testimony of other regional journalists.

I suspect there is a concerted effort led by a pro-drilling outfit to promote such assholery against the fifth estate. And I’d like to get a posse of people together to FOIA all regional public officials, big fish and small, regarding any contacts they’ve had with industry.

We’ll need help.

And a sense of humor.

My life the past 30 days is a good example of how big a sense of humor we’ll need.

On January 25, I was assaulted by a member of a group that doesn’t want to be covered as it tries to interrupt reasoned discussion regarding how to safeguard our commons from fracking. As it tries to intimidate members of local town boards recently elected/re-elected largely to oppose plans to frack Upstate New York and further defile Northeastern Pennsylvania.

They’re planning to build a huge network of pipelines to carry shale gas for liquification--and to send ‘natural’ gas to places they had never ever piped it before. And it reeks of shady deals that may not qualify technically for the title of ‘corruption’ but don’t seem to be done in a very forthright manner.

I’m not alone in being targeted by this gangland mentality that sends videocamera-wielding grandmothers like Vera Scroggins to the back of the meeting room bus, that sends sent bigger-city television news crews like WBRE-TV from Wilkes Barre reeling across parking lots--all at the hands of elected officials, with possible strategizing help from the gas industry?

Time, and the FOIA, will tell.

But the clock’s ticking madly on this giant pyramid scheme masquerading as ‘energy policy’ and the drill and pipeline supporters (some of them elected officials!) are facing massive unpopularity in these parts. They’re getting desperate enough to verbally and physically assault journalists. So, I’m wondering: Why didn’t WBRE-TV’s attorneys sue on behalf of their pummeled news crew? Why is the station’s response a website that allows trolls to suggest that pointing a camera toward a newsmaker is putting it ‘in his face‘ and that assaulted journalists “(bring) this on themselves,”? Journalist Joe Holden wins my support with this online retort (if he actually wrote it):

“...Samantha S. - I've been doing this for a long time. No one is allowed to place his/her hands on

another. And I'll be [censored] if I'm going to take this kind of [censored] from elected officials no less. And

just because my photographer didn't catch me getting body-checked, another affiliate's camera will show it.

Oh, and about us telling both sides of the story, perhaps you could encourage your councilmen to return

phone calls. We've been trying to get their side for a week now. Absolutely pathetic...?

I had’t met Joe Holden before our injunction hearing February 27th. I wanted to hear the Scranton television reporter tell the judge his story. I secretly hoped he would cuss in what I considered a lovely “I’m a JOURNALIST, dammit!” phrase:

“AND I’LL BE [CENSORED] IF I’M GOING TO

TAKE THIS KIND OF [CENSORED] FROM

ELECTED OFFICIALS NO LESS.”

Joe Holden, WBRE-TV

Turns out it was just Catholic school cussing (‘crap’ and ‘damn’) that the website had bracketed in [Censored] --but it was something. Contrast Holden’s foul, seasoned outrage with the really likable documentary journalist Josh Fox’s lack of outrage as he was calmly arrested in the House Science, Space and Technology Committee by Harris-the-politician a week after my problem with Harris-the-car-dealer-who-advertises-a-lot-in-my-local-newspaper--the one that ignores my journalist and my academic credentials. When the local paper labeled me merely an ‘anti-drilling advocate’ the other day, I almost forgot my manners and forgot that they call themselves a newspaper. Yet, I relented and sent the press release and the case filing to them (Redemption and all that. More on that later in this article--you won’t have to wait through Lent).

Anyway.

I wish Fox had been louder, more combative, even more angry when he was arrested. He was, after all, in the relatively more civilized, highly capitalized, lawyer-populated environs of Washington, D.C.. Still, I liked his statement about whom, ideally, should be considered a journalist:

“...Anyone can wake up in the morning, declare themselves a journalist

and enjoy the protections of the First Amendment. In the era of instant media, (Y)ou(T)ube and

social networks, this becomes even more relevant and exciting; anyone with an i(P)hone can rock

the world. It was citizen journalists who first posted police pepper spraying peaceful protestors

in New York and California and it was citizen distribution that virally spread those horrific

videos of police brutality until the whole world was infected with the truth of what is happening

in the USA today. It was citizen journalists who first documented water catching on fire at the

kitchen sink as a result of gas fracking. It was citizen journalists who woke up one morning and

decided to show the water contamination and air pollution due to gas drilling in Texas, Wyoming,

Pennsylvania and in states across the nation....”

“...This year we have seen severe repression of journalism in America. Hundreds of

journalists have been arrested this year simply trying to do their jobs. Whether they were

covering oil and gas issues or issues of economic inequality during the OCCUPY demonstrations....”

“..."Recently, Reporters Without Borders released its 2011–2012 (G)lobal Press Freedom

Index. Due to journalist arrests and press suppression at Occupy Wall Street-inspired protests, the

United States has dropped significantly in the rankings of press freedom, from 27 to 47." Truthout

reports....”

I like Fox’s ‘Be The Media’ ethos--it seems a response to Michael Moore’s call at the end of “Capitalism:A Love Story” for others to try filling his agit-prop documentarian shoes. I also like that Josh speaks about OCCUPY as an ally of the anti-fracking movement--something not all of the ‘new-to-giving-a-shit-about-anything-but-my-property’ anti-frack movement needs to hear.

My experience covering opposition movements, and teaching journalism students to consider doing the same, or analyzing journalism the past 35 years means that I can still remember when a certain swagger was expected in the face of a bullying source:

* like Harris, who confronts our town supervisor by repeatedly interrupting our meetings as if he’s the local emperor, and then tells others to ‘be quiet’ even while accusing me of trying to ‘shut him up’ (as if I could?);

*like the Montrose Borough council majority;

*like EID Marcellus, who I called out (as is my right as a citizen, my dear colleagues at The Daily Star--

even if I am a journalist) at the Town of Oneonta public hearing February 13th,

and

*like Kimberly More, the woman who tried denying me a peek at a public document, and then misrepresented those moments in order to file what I consider a false claim against me--as she and my assailant had promised to do;

*like the anti-moratorium/pro-fracking crowd Harris and More sat among that challenged my very right to videotape the meeting and then made menacing gestures to me after the gavel holder told them they were wrong to challenge my presence videotaping the meeting.

I had remembered Harris as the man from the prior meeting when he had shoved me back as both of us had raised our hands to get the attention of the town supervisor convening that meeting. Since Harris has blabbed on line that I had asked “How’s your brother?” I can explain that I was not referring to his brother Cal, but to a brother “Jeff” I had heard he had beaten up at a Toyota dealership. I later learned he has no brother named “Jeff” but that a cousin of his named Geoff had purchased that business. But all three people told me the same story: Steve Harris had charged across town, angered at losing a sale to his brother (Cal, apparently) and had beaten him up (2 people said with a desk) such that there was blood everywhere, and then stood back and let the punch drunk brother get in a few blows so that mutual charges were filed. I later learned that Cal had received a restraining order against Steve Harris--and that Steve’s wife later provided testimony that sent Cal Harris to jail on murder charges. (I mention this, because Harris went ballistic after I posted the first produced video of that meeting on ShaleShock media pages. His rabid ranting about me remains up on that site.)

You never know who you’ll bump into at the local town meeting on fracking.

Regardless--Steve Harris was blocking my path as I tried completing meeting coverage. And grinning. So, I breezed by with a ‘you-don’t-bug-me-you’re-a-pimple-on-a-gnat’s-ass’ comment.

A few moments later he DID get an iPhone within inches of my face and ask me ‘How’s your SISTER?‘--and I momentarily wondered: “How did this guy know I have a sister?” Still, NOTHING I said to him could be seen to have merited his attack.

What happened to the right to be about to write, or about to edit, something ‘disagreeable’ to the dirty carbon industry? Harris called me that night, “one weird lady, you know that?”

I embrace that label.

As a television journalist, I used to travel in a pack. A surly pack, if need be. With a videographer who would have knocked my well-heeled assailant squarely on his ass. Righteously. With the support of newsroom management.

It’s the principle.

And it’s more dangerous now for independent ‘one-man-band journalists’ like myself. I watched the increased danger as the attrition to newsroom staff levels began in the 1980s. By the time I switched from the gutted radio journalism (5,000 local jobs lost nationwide thanks to Reagan’s deregulation of the FCC) of the 1980s to the still functioning (sort of) television journalism in 1982, the larger markets had already lost the three person crews (videocamera, sound/grip, and reporter). We were, by the time I was hired in New Orleans in 1984, already down to two-person crews (reporter as sound/grip and videographer). That meant one less person to watch the periphery or ‘blind side’ of the camera person.

AFTRA (representing journalists and producers and assignment desk and advertising production staff ) and IBEW (videographers and editors) at WVUE had suffered hard times. That was largely due to the failure of all U.S. unions to go out on general strike in support of the recently routed PATCO union. Remember the beleaguered Air Traffic Controllers Ronald Reagan fired? Had the nation’s unions gone out in solidarity with PATCO, Reagan’s actions might have been reversed. Our unions might have been emboldened.

Every savvy union person I’ve spoken to since then say the failure to stand up to Reagan’s threat was the beginning of the end for unions via ‘globalization’ and I think that’s correct. In fact, the only reason great WVUE (New Orleans ABC affiliate) videographers like the late John “Fritz” Fritzinger, Buddy Risotto, and retired videographers Barry Miller and Lloyd Edwards had any sort of an agreement covering them the year before I joined the newsroom in 1984 is that they were affiliated with the Teamsters. The year prior to the 1983 IBEW/WVUE union negotiations, someone had blown up “Channel 8’s” transmitting equipment near its tower at the edge of New Orleans. That was an expensive piece of equipment destroyed before I moved to New Orleans.

Blown to shitteree.

Now.

Let’s sit down and talk.

Journalism was never tiddly winks. If done properly. But, the newsrooms of the late 1950s-to-present had become much less proletariat-leaning in nature--if it ever had been. Fawning after celebrities of a business or show-business nature, unfortunately, became the name of the game--particularly after the (first of many?) Red Scare. Even when the 99% should have known which side management was on, they often did not seem to make the right connections. For instance, I remember vehement disagreements with WVUE’s Chief Videographer, the late Ronald Monetelepre.

But even hardliners like him would not have tolerated a wealthy car dealer yanking the latest technological morph of the videocamera out of my hand. Ron would have given the guy a verbal blistering (perhaps with a shove or two) the next day at his dealership. “You leave our guys/girls alone!” he would have bellowed--as only a Pacific-Island-invading-Marine could have. And Monetelepre would have done it even though I’d gotten the best of him in various ideological discussions en route to news coverage. “Ask him he how got on those islands,” my late father grinned through the phone line from New Orleans to Michigan. I was telling my dad that Montelepre had doubted anyone in my gene pool was a VFW Post Commander, let alone a navy veteran of the Siragao Straits battle. Dad said to ask Ron, “Were you wearing your Jesus shoes?” I did. Ron Montelepre bellowed. I laughed.

He did not laugh.

Still, I am pretty certain Montelepre would have gone after Harris-the-car-dealer, because Montelepre went after former Mayor Earnest ‘Dutch’ Morial. In 1985, a 60-something white guy chastising New Orleans’ ‘First Black Mayor’ on behalf of a black male videographer and a white female reporter should have given Ron pause. Thankfully, it did not.

Ron went after Dutch. He did so the same day that the mayor’s driver had seemed to intentionally veer (with Dutch encouraging him in the back seat) at Lloyd Edwards, who was videotaping Morial running away from my questions about a campaign fund kerfuffle. Acting as Edwards’ grip, I threw down my notepad and bag, reached into his waistband by his spine (the videographers taught reporters to do this--I wasn’t being fresh), grabbed a hunk of his belt and jeans and sort of yanked him out of the car’s path. “You won’t pull that bullshit again!” Montelepre yelled at Dutch’s press aide. Lloyd and I were satisfied.

I wonder how poor Joe Holden of WBRE-TV feels--nobody from WBRE-TV seems to be bellowing in Montrose on his behalf.

So, here’s your chance, WBRE.

Get your corporate counsel to join our lawsuit against the Montrose Borough’s stupid rules. Josh Fox had foundation-funded indy media people on his side. He had national journalism groups on his side. We don’t have that kind of pull. And we don’t have much time. We have dirty houses that have suffered because we’re always skipping out to cover a meeting or a particularly heinous situation.

We rural citizen journalists are right smack in the middle of what seems to be a military style invasion sanctioned, apparently, by Republican and Democratic party governors and presidents. Obama’s state of the union was such a disappointment. But, not long after that, a call went out from Toxics Targeting and later was embraced by the fragmented ‘fractivist’ community which has been largely ignored, along with other really important news stories still waiting to be disseminated broadly:

*There seems to be a plan to turn the entire Northeastern portion of the U.S. into a sacrifice zone for the dying carbon-based energy companies;

*The plans put forth to create oases from the devastation really won’t protect anyone from radiation that tends to move north.

*The Southern Tier doesn’t need to be ‘test-fracked’ as per the plan being entertained by the Cuomo administration. These wells seem designed to obtain financing in order to connect to a series of pipelines that are coming as per the ‘liquify it and send it elsewhere’ ‘finance’ scheme.

*There’s a rumored third pipeline coming to the area, the ‘El Paso’ line.

*The cost of declaring eminent domain and giving people a fair price to vacate and relocate if this plan is ‘so good’ for the U.S. has never been calculated--or has it?

*Patrick McElligott’s vow to fast regarding ‘bigger’ targets than Senator Libous include Governor Cuomo, and his former brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy, who sits on the Cuomo 2016 exploratory presidential committee.

These are all stories sort of being covered by smaller upstate New York newspapers and citizen journalists before the ‘bigger’ ones latch onto them. Sometimes they get it, in their own timid way. Michael Moore has wisely pointed out that advertising as a model for Vera Scroggins, for instance, shoots a lot of meetings for Shale Shock Media collective. And she’s usually polite. That was her in the earlier video explaining, in polite, grandmotherly voice that she had a right to videotape in the front row in Montrose because she was polite and quiet. I would argue she had a right to the front row because she was breathing. And I would argue she would have the right to be anywhere but blocking an exit even if she were NOT breathing. Dead people continue to vote in Chicago, don’t they? (Well, probably, but the Chicago Tribune newsroom looks like this for the past 2 years now).

This is an important case. Not just because it’s me and my sis. It’s an important case because of what Chicago Mayor Rahm (Tiny Dancer) Emmanuel has declared the right to decide which pieces of recording equipment can be on the streets of the Windy City during the G-20 protests in May.

But we are under no obligation to be polite about this.

Our politicians need to understand this--even those who were elected in rural New York to stop fracking. One such politician told me that he sees no conflict of interest in a fellow politician’s presence on our local town board. Even the local newspaper, heavily dependent as it is on this man’s advertising sees the conflict of interest. I don’t think this politician is ‘dirty’ as some anti-frackers have suggested. I think it’s just really hard to stand up for principles without a vigorous media--and we’ve lacked the moral compass a properly staffed news media provides for about three decades now.

There is plenty of blame to go around. I wish the unions had gone on general strike despite Ronald Reagan’s belicose threats after the throttling of the PATCO union trying to protect the beleaguered Air Traffic Controllers. And right now, I wish what passes for an anti-fracking movement would give a whole-hearted, full throated support of the OCCUPY movement and start planning to go to D.C. and demand a sane energy and transportation policy.

And it’s not going to happen the way things are going. We’ve got a President who says this formerly illegal procedure is not only legal, but capable of being done ‘safely‘--said it in his big showbiz night: The State of The Union no less. We’ve got citizen activists banning from list-serves those who try defending OCCUPY Well Street as legitimate members of the anti-fracking community. The movement’s leaders are settling for small potato victories like our little win in Montrose. No one seems to want to say that those in power are planning on destroying over half of the country with this madness. All of our smart and ethical politicians seem to in a daze.

What we need is, frankly, a revolution.

Anyone who had been to Cuba would realize this.

Cindy Sheehan knows this. She’s not only been to Cuba, she’s been to Venezuela. And for her newly released “Revolution: A Love Story,” she translates President Hugo Chavez‘ response to this question: "Why do you think the Empire makes such a concerted effort to demonize you?":

"I think for different reasons. But I've gotten to the conclusion there is one particular strong reason, a big reason. They are afraid, the Empire is afraid. The Empire is afraid that the people of the United States might find out about the truth, they are afraid that something like that could erupt in their own territory -- a Bolivarian movement; or a Lincoln movement -- a movement of citizens, conscious citizens to transform the system. . . . So, why do they demonize us? They know -- those who direct the Empire -- they know the truth. But they fear the truth. They fear the contagious effect. They fear a revolution in the United States. They fear an awakening of the people in the United States. And so that's why they do everything they can. And they achieve it, relatively, that a lot of sectors in the United States see us as devils. No one wants to copy the devil."

I wish I could visit Venezuela. But I’m bound for Montrose on Monday with my iPhone to stream all the stupid comments from the Borough meeting starting at 6:45 p.m. or so on Monday. I’d like to meet with Hugo Chavez, or Fidel Castro for that matter. But, first, I need to see Vera Scroggins sitting with dignity behind her little camera on its tripod in the front row.

That may be all the revolution I see in this lifetime.

Capitalism's Titanic Iceburg: We've Seen This Movie Before

2012-02-11T01:41:00.000-08:00

(A version of this appears in the weekend version of Counterpunch online at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/10/capitalisms-fracking-iceberg/ )

I’ve always hated Superbowl Sunday:

*the eating as anesthesia for the painful post- holiday spending spree;

*the guilt-free mindless enjoyment of a gladiator match;

*the circus-like way it distracts a dying empire’s masses from taking real action concerning the very real screwing they endure (apologies George Carlin).

It reminds me of the big foundation-funded movements against (insert your pick of: war, fracking, anti-choice assaninity). Lots of sound. Lots of fury. Lots of egos attacking everyone else’s efforts. Lots of losses.

So, it seemed fitting that Titanic was the entertainment offering for house-bound people trying to avoid the past weekend’s ritualized numbing. Particularly since frack-threatened areas are busily rearranging the deck chairs while sending out push messages to contact this bribed legislator, that compromised official.

Snobs go home. James Cameron’s screenplay appealed to tweens and then some because it speaks the language of teetering capitalism’s truth:

“...RUTH: Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they're not too

crowded--

ROSE: Oh, Mother shut up!

(Ruth freezes, mouth open)

ROSE: Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough

boats... not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die.

CAL: Not the better half.

PUSH IN ON ROSE'S FACE as it hits her like a thunderbolt....”

I’ve seen this movie before.

New Orleans.

1984.

For the ABC affiliate, I produced a mini-documentary series on oil-company engendered coastal erosion. That year the New Orleans Sierra Club rewarded me with a tin cup award (shared with Ron Ridenour of the Indy weekly Gambit) for telling a story that the other corporate media had been too timid to tell. I actually received a phone call from Garland Robinette telling me how brave I was. That was like getting a call from New Orleans television royalty. So, of course I spat at him, “You grew up here. Why didn’t you do this?” He stayed on the phone. I like Garland.

Aside from garnering the negative attention of the oil thugs, and playing at the Worlds Fair on a kiosk at the Fish and Wildlife service area, nobody paid much attention. Certainly not the policy makers. Big Easy people who counted were busily planning all the arsons that would bring ATF crews down multiple times and fuel a new real estate boom around the former fair site. While news crews focused on the crying, swearing old fire chief as each old warehouse burned, plans were afoot to recreate a new version of the warehouse district.

Who knew the New Orleans media would stay as lazy and fearful as ever? The dirty energy magnates did. The nation’s newsrooms, funded as they were by advertising revenues instead of performance, winnowed out virtually any vestige of journalism. So the cannibals looked northward after destroying the 50 + miles of marshland that could have absorbed 50 feet of flood surge. All those ruined refineries. All those jobs lost. Guess they’ll have to rebuild Southeast Texas/Southwest Louisiana someplace north. Hmmm. No wonder they’re planting visions of plastics factories in farmland relatively unscathed by the last time industry romped this continent unbridled by unions and regulations. No wonder they finance their malfeasance with an ‘energy plan’ too good to be true.

I’ve seen this movie before.

Already, tony environmentalists in Ithaca are saying that if they can’t defeat fracking, it will mean that everyone has to pay an extra bill--for ‘safe’ water. Water bills are a very political matter. As Tulane University Political Science Professor Oliver Houk once explained, “If you live Uptown (wealthy area) you get Kentwood (bottled water). If you live Downtown (poor area) you get cancer.” Already it is looking as if Cooperstown (the same village that sold their lake water for use in fracking Pennsylvania a few years back) is not above cutting deals to protect its well-heeled residents.

Why establish a land trust and then let anti-moratorium contributors disrupt meetings about such things? Read how the man who snatched my video camera from me (thus preventing me from completing my post-meeting cutaways and interviews)blames me for ‘provoking’ his admitted crime. Scroll down from the video on Shale Shock Media--and read his comments. After admitting that he snatched a video camera out of a journalist's hands, he then brags about how his ridiculous wealth makes it all okay. And watch a better version of that video that counts how the anti-moratorium thugs tried to bully their way in that meeting. Most of those people don’t even live in my town. But that didn’t keep the guy from filing what I consider retaliatory charges of harassment against me. Let’s hope I won’t be singing any Anne Feeney songs anytime soon (love ya Anne!).

Cooperstown (or Ithaca?) as New Orleans to the rest of the Southern Tier’s Chalmette, dawlin’?

It’s enough to make a less well-heeled Otsego County resident say, hmmm, well if they frack here, I say FRACK COOPERSTOWN FIRST! (It’s not like the residents defended Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins’ rights anyway.)

I’m joking. Because people driven insane like to laugh. And because there is a quiet mutiny underway among the grassroots environmentalists. I saw hints of it during two activist excursions I videotaped this winter in Albany, and a White House protest I covered this Fall that culminated in the Tar Sands pipeline ‘victory’ when Obama delayed approval.

Key members of the anti-fracking grassroots are not feeling listened to, respected, cherished for anything but numbers needed for the cover shots of top-down orchestrated actions.

*The Albany OCCUPY people who felt they were disrespected by the more well-heeled arrivals on the busses as they stood in the ‘free speech zone’ for the prom queens to parade past the tame chants about fracking en route to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State (wide auction).

*The failure to include other agricultural products (besides Ithaca area bread from area grains) in the attempted delivery of goods threatened by fracking to a foodbank of Emperor Exxon Frack Cuomo’s choosing.

*The hard-fought place on the ‘lobbying day’ dias for fasting activist Patrick McElligott.

*The failure to invite to the same dias "Frack Man" Abram Loeb, who was very instrumental in fighting the first ploy to turn central NY into a wasteland via the ‘Don’t WASTE NY’ campaign 3 decades ago.

*350.org’s Bill McKibbens’ entreaty to Sierra Club types not to give the stink eye to OCCUPY DC (McPherson Square only--Freedom Plaza was noticably absent).

*The strange looks from people wondering why I’m fundraising to start a CSA to promote the problems with fracking with each delivery I make to fracked or frack-threatened areas. How dare I ‘compete’ for funding when there are plenty of disgruntled former NYPIRG workers hanging out the collection cups for their own anti-fracking groups?

I’ve seen this movie before.

After being fragged out of NOLA’s ABC affiliate for reorganizing the AFTRA chapter, I became PR Director at New Orleans City Park. “Who’s your mama?” is not a friendly inquiry, I learned. It’s a push back into your caste. I could do the organizing for the fundraising, but it would be an oil executive’s wife who took the credit for saving the antique wooden carousel there. I don’t mind obscurity so long as my goals are met. But grassroots activists aren’t having their goals met. And they’re watching the big enviros blow the chance they’ve sought for decades to make the conversion Cuba did off dirty energy.

Cuba’s seen this movie, too.

Only they learned its lesson. Because, unlike former U.S. elected leaders, Fidel Castro doesn’t kowtow to the dictums of the Powell memoranda that shackled free thought in U.S. higher learning.

That is why Fidel (can I call him Fidel?) bravely summarize the work of leading scholars at Duke and Cornell Universities honestly, directly, on January 4th in Granma:

"...These results bring into question the energy industry's reasoning that shale gas could replace coal in electricity generation

and lower greenhouse gas emissions, to help mitigate climate change.

It is too premature and too risky a venture.

In April 2010 the U.S. Department of State set up the Global Shale Gas Initiative (GSGI) to help countries identify and

develop their unconventional gas resources safely and economically, with a view to furthering U.S. economic and commercial

interests, including those of U.S. multinational corporations. I have inevitably been extensive; I didn’t have any other option. I

am composing these lines for the Cubadebate website and Telesur, one of the most serious and honest broadcasters in our

suffering world....”

Fidel’s pronouncement on hydrofracking was part of a brilliant article entitled “Marching Toward the Abyss.” He wrote it New Year’s Eve. I can imagine that each New Year’s eve for him is an amazing moment. This time, he realized this was the 50th anniversary year of the October Missile Crisis of 1962. In two long sentences, he evoked the dignity of the revolutionary people of not just Cuba, but the grassroots people in various movements including OCCUPY. Castro placing his article in contemporary context by honoring the grassroots players in a manner U.S. leaders of all sort should emulate:

“My words would have no sense if their objective was to impute some of the blame on the American people, or those of

any other country allied to the United States in this unprecedented adventure; they, like other peoples of the world, would be the inevitable victims of the tragedy. Recent events in Europe and at other points demonstrate the mass indignation of those for

whom unemployment, scarcity, income reduction, debts, discrimination, lies and politicking are leading to protests and brutal

repression by the guardians of the established order....”

Imagine if the big enviros would stop hemming and hawing about OCCUPY-like actions--stop qualifying their RIGHT to be part of any action? It might happen. Outside an election year. If you ever get a chance to join the Cuba Caravan of Pastors for Peace, you’ll hear some variation of this phrase: U.S. citizens will need to change the way they think before we can ever see human needs truly met.

What a script that would be!

It hasn’t yet been written.

But can’t you see it already?

If we’re really going to become a democratic country, we need to change the way we think. The well-funded national environmental movement must change the way it thinks about such events. Those planning functions and inviting us to gather round, listen, carry bread, signs, and help lead chants have to start expanding the discussion. Don’t get me wrong, there were great strides made by all parts of the anti-fracking movement. But, in the words of the late Dr. Mickie Edwardson, a U.F. a graduate media professor relaying the results of her first test: “I love you all. You need to do better.’

And the big enviros could do no better right now than to listen to seasoned, battle-scarred activists like Patrick McElligott and his friend Abram Loeb. Patrick has some history with fighting big money interests who want to despoil New York ecology and culture. Some fights he won. Some he lost. Both have developed a comedic sense for the absurd that is sorely missing from the earnestly organized pleading with politicians. Patrick McElligott is used to having his cause ignored by the likes of the Cuomos--but not Robert F. Kennedy, Jr..

In the 1980s, Governor Mario Cuomo’s administration might have sent NY State Police to block a local gravel company from stealing despoiling an Indian mound in his home town of Sidney. Agents associated with Clark Stone Products, a key player in the local Marcellus fracking play now, did this in the middle of a court trial over the legality of shredding ancient remains for spreading to cap a superfund site. Obscene, right? It gets worse. The superfund site was created by Amphenol (nee Bendix--corporations are people, after all) , a weapons manufacturer.

Back then, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was instrumental in getting a deleted page of a key report to McElligott. Now, Kennedy seems to have signed off on letting the less capitalized areas of New York state be ‘test-fracked’. It’s as if we haven’t learned what happened in the fracked areas Josh Fox’s GASLAND exposed--or read any newspaper attempting to cover the sell-out and devastation since in Bradford County, PA and elsewhere.

Let’s hope we won’t have to wait for a new movie before our Cuba-esque awakening.

It Shouldn't Be This Hard: Chasing Senator Libous

2012-01-18T15:13:00.000-08:00

FASTING AGAINST FRACKING

(And Phone Mail)

By Lisa Barr

It shouldn't be this hard.

Patrick McElligott phoned and wrote his Senator, Tom Libous, an ardent hydrofracking proponent. He wanted a meeting. He wasn’t going to try to get Libous to change his mind. He just wanted to sit down ‘like gentlemen’, and he was persistent. He was told ‘no meeting’ on the phone and in writing. And found this inappropriate.

So, McElligott decided to use the time-honored tradition associated chiefly with Indian and Irish activists (think Ghandi, think Bobby Sands) who wished to embarrass public officials into proper behavior. He would fast until a meeting was scheduled. He had the backing of about 30 friends who drove many miles to meet with him outside Libous’ office, in the cold, on Martin Luther King, Jr. day.

And yet, the local newspaper began its coverage of McElligott's start of the fast with the skeptical verb "Claiming"--here's the 'lede' used: "Claiming to be following in the footsteps of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, anti-fracking activist PatrickMcelligott launched a hunger strike Monday in an effort to pressure a pro-drilling state lawmaker to speak to him about his concerns."

http://thedailystar.com/localnews/x1467875498/Man-goes-on-hunger-strike-to-meet-with-official

I left a comment on the Daily Star online 'peanut gallery section, defending McElligott's stalwart public service re:

*activism of years past when town officials allowed an ANCIENT Native People's burial mound to be reduced to gravel for 'capping' a local superfund site created by a polluting arms factory.

*activism defending Muslims from a threatened disinterment from a local cemetery;

*scholarship and advocacy as to proper practice for archaeological digs/reburials of antiquities including bodies;

*innovative social work getting troubled kids out on mountain tops and stream beds for archaeological digs--an environment McElligott said was a better place to get a troubled kid to open up.

You get the picture. Here's what I said (with links):

“Patrick McElligott has been quoted by the Daily Star many times over the years. I believe an examination of the Star’s morgue would show a lot of interesting articles. Maybe not. It’s clear to me that we are in the presence of greatness. And that greatness is being ignored--even trivialized. After his accident, his children wrote a book about his life. I recommend buying it and reading it. It’s clear to me that Mr. McElligott knows his stuff about archeological site preservation and surveying. And he knows how to peacefully stand up to an industry that engages in bullying, that gets public servants to ignore their obligation to the commons.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/can-animals-save-us/tolerance-in-a-small-town

http://www.truth-out.org/clearing-stands-boxer-one-mans-fight-against-fracking/1326401455

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/H2O%20Man/795

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ4LGk5YXDE

...”

I particularly liked William Pitt's Truthout piece. I also liked Patrick's own writing for Democratic Underground (much of which I read in a book by his children). ‘Mac’ as Pitt refers to him, is an unassuming, yet no doubt very talented and innovative social worker--on disability now due to job related injuries.

You can read the locals (are they locals? Are they gas company PR types writing that stuff?) disparaging him for being disabled and retired. McElligott says his role of ‘wallet’ and ‘chauffeur’ must not be harmed by this fast. He's the proud father of teenaged athletes. He coaches JV Girls Basketball. He is not about to jeopardize his health. 'Mac' consulted with a physician first. He's having a cup of juice each day. Along with his water.

But, it's day three. And still no word from Senator Libous' office.

It shouldn't be this hard.

Here's what it sounded like to those of us trying to reach Senator Libous on Patrick's behalf on January 18. I put this together with my MacBook Pro and my iPhone and Garage Band. Be the media. Michael Moore is right: Apple is, basically, “a force for good.”

I posted this audio criticism of my government on my Facebook page. A New York FB friend suggested I contact the NY State Senate Majority leader to complain about Libous' behavior. http://soundcloud.com/anirondaisycsa-aol-com/libousdodgesconstituentsrepatr I'm glad we still have a relatively unfettered internet, despite the threat of SOPA.

I am well aware that the NDAA and a new proposed bill could mean trouble for me in the future for doing exactly what I am doing here--holding my government officials accountable.

Here's what I said in an email entitled: “Libous Office: Voice Mail Abuse/Failure to Respond to Constituents” that I sent to Dean Skelos:

"Please listen to this. I think it is a huge embarrassment to any

public servant that there is no one to answer the phone, and

that his office voice mail refers us to a fundraising office.

http://soundcloud.com/anirondaisycsa-aol-com/libousdodgesconstituentsrepatr

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa J. Barr"

Most of my sources (artists, farmers, lawyers, union reps, truckers, business owners, students) for my documentary, "MUTUAL AID: A Fracked Society" are angry that so much of their time is being consumed fighting what should be a no-brainer: Hydrofracking must be stopped. Sometimes we get on one another's nerves. It's nothing personal. We're a bunch of Davids fighting a well-funded Goliath.

The other day a fellow videographer said to me, in front of sources, "Your energy is heavy. You should watch that." I called him a "whacko." I joked later that I regretted that because I felt I should have called him a chauvanist pig.

After 2 and a half years of videotaping abuse in Bradford County and up and down the Susquehanna River with an eye toward the fractured social fabric, I am angry, too. I have other things I'd rather research and write about. But, none of our representatives and senators seem able to fight this. Even if they are willing to do so.

It shouldn't be this hard.

And so the anti-frack movement looks at one another with suspicion--which is entirely what the dirty energy corporations want. Remember the admission that those criticizing frack operations in Bradford County had been treated as insurgents by an industry employing ‘military psyops’ domestically. Propaganda, torture, war are all on the same coercion spectrum, right? Of course it would come home. (https://coloradoindependent.com/105456/oil-and-gas-industry-using-military-psyops-tactics-to-break-insurgency-against-fracking) .

And so, facing criticisms for being too ‘radical’ myself because of who I interview and the force of my arguments against fracking at public hearings, I signed “Occupy Well Street’s pledge (http://www.owsstopfracking.org/2011/12/priority-anti-fracking-pledge-of.html) today. It includes this key paragraph--something which would make the deeply green resistant Derrick Jensen smile, I believe:

“IV...I will refrain from public condemnations of others' employment of effective tactics and strategies. Any effective movement must include a broad spectrum of activities, and the movement against fracking should include all who wish to resist this destructive industrial process....”

I signed this just as other sources are organizing training in civil disobedience (CD) for the weekend in Binghamton. I don’t think it’s coincidental that the city council just banned overnight tents in public parks, thus making it more difficult to recreate OCCUPY Binghamton--one of the longer-running OCCUPY encampments. OCCUPY Binghamton was never OCCUPY Wall Street, but it did have anti-fracking signs posted. It did, like the other OCCUPY sites I visited this Fall, have drums from time to time that evoked the First Peoples--the people who had a much better relationship to the land.

Patrick McElligott is trying to save that land from fracking.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

It would be a lot easier if New York City anti-frackers would come visit us Southern Tier anti-frackers. (The place isn’t as backward as it was when Pete Seeger was nearly killed by an angry mob. C’mon down!) If Gotham has been hypnotized by Governor Cuomo’s SGEIS sleight of hand--then Gotham needs to wake up. Over a ridge from Patrick McElligott’s hometown of Sidney lies Delaware County and the NYC reservoirs. And, contrary to what the SGEIS implies--these are NOT safe due to the partial ban on fracking in Delaware County.

This fall, at the Tribeca Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) hearings, people testified about evidence available online concerning many thousands of old abandoned ‘ghost’ wells the DEC knows are out there. Approximately 70,000, by some estimates. DEC caps the ones they learn about from telltale leakage. Fifty percent of these caps need repair in five years. All these wells--ghost or discovered--go down vertically to the same level as the new ones proposed. Once the horizontal ‘frack’ is chemically induced--they will likely ‘speak’ to one another. Gasses, the secret-metal-dissolving-frack-sauce (courtesy of Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy meeting), and radioactivity could spew all over.

And who would know?

But already the industry’s representatives or sycophants are prowling around New York state’s small town board meetings disputing this point. At my own town board meeting last week, a landowner said “Lisa Barr’s wrong--its (just) hundreds” of abandoned wells not yet discovered. The local paper covered the meeting as a ‘he said/she said’ debate without going into details.

Then there is the problem with anti-frack attorneys and witnesses being threatened at town board meetings here in the hinterland. It’s sometimes hard to take this seriously, or maybe we’re just punch drunk. Josh Fox jokes that when he visits near his hometown in PA, it’s not uncommon for him to be addresed thusly: “(Are you) Josh Fox? (Well, then) FUCK YOU!” And still he laughs.

But, back to solutions. If New York City residents could hold their own Occupy Well Street style civil disobedience (or CD) training and plan on joining those doing these actions--even if nothing is ever really done--it could be persuasive. (I don’t say ‘non-violent’ civil disobedience training because it’s redundant, okay?). It wouldn’t hurt if all those retirement funds like T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, etc.. would stop investing in the shell-game that funds the frackers, as documented in “Drilling for Money: A look at the investors behind the Marcellus Shale gas boom” available at this link: (http://shadbushcollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Drilling-for-Money-1.pdf).

Imagine hordes of people huddling in OCCUPY like meetings. Even a potluck can be an OCCUPY, folks--tents are optional. People possibly ready to do CD beneath the presently clean air on behalf of the presently (relatively) clean water would send a message. It could tell Governor “Exxon Frack” Cuomo that Gotham will not let him become President “Exxon Frack” Cuomo in 2016.

Lots of Gotham residents trained in OCCUPY Well Street-style CD would also feed those of us trying to battle the PR disinformation and distrust the frackers are spewing daily here in the Southern Tier.

They might also persuade Senator Libous to meet with Patrick McElligott. They might persuade Governor Cuomo to return those dirty Exxon campaign dollars.

It could happen. A gal’s gotta dream--and apologize for calling someone a ‘whacko’--and a man needs to eat.

Say a prayer for Patrick McElligott.

Say a prayer for us all.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

HELP THE 'DON'T FRACK MORE FARMS' PR CAMPAIGN

2012-01-08T03:59:00.000-08:00

A shorter version of this fund drive is explained here (WHAT's This?; WHY Do This?; WHERE Will the Money Go?; WHO is An Iron Daisy CSA?; and HOW To Help):
https://www.wepay.com/donations/184792

WHAT'S THIS?
Each of the TEN deliveries this summer to 501c3 food banks or their equivalent, is a chance to say 'Fracking KILLS' and must be stopped.
It's a chance to tell those in power their legacy will be the ruined agriculture and water of Upstate New York.
It's a chance to remind people that those in power already cannot and will not control floodwaters properly or repair the aftermath properly.
The subscriptions I'll deliver with your help, are worth $1500. If you can help support any of these subscriptions at any level it would be greatly appreciated.
New York towns served will include: Afton, Bainbridge, Binghamton (AND Food Not Bombs-Binghamton), Butternuts, Cooperstown, Franklin, Guilford, Ithaca, Maryland, Middlefield, Morris, New Berlin, Norwich, Oneonta, Otego, Schenevus, and Sidney.
There will also be runs into PA towns--one that GASLAND featured:
1. Dimock, PA's Carter Road folks will get 10 share deliveries this summer. They were denied a MUTUAL AID signature by their pro-gas town board that would have allowed FREE water deliveries from the town of Binghamton.
2. Towanda, PA will get 10 share deliveries this summer. The County seat of Bradford County (ground zero for gas fracking in the Northeast). This will help reming people that TOWANDA LOST ITS FARMERS MARKET because farmers and customers could no longer hear one another for the frack truck traffic.
The fundraiser will also make a point about the need to consider new strategies to get the attention of the powers that be. There will be deliveries to the two longest standing Occupies in the Northeast:
1. OCCUPY BUFFALO New York is STILL there, and STILL attending town meetings and working with its mayor to pressure Governor Andrew Cuomo to give a bigger share of state funds to that town.
2. OCCUPY WASHINGTON D.C., which has a large out of town community of which I am a part. This Occupy has a kitchen that recently received a 98% grade from the D.C. health officials and they serve and assist homeless in a manner that should be emulated nationwide.

WHY DO THIS?
We need to reach the LOCAL media that MOST of the people in fracked or frack-threatened areas READ. Most people don't read the 'left' journals on line. They read the local paper. If the issue is made tangible enough, the local papers can pick this up as a non-threatening feature. There is massive intimidation by the gas companies on local media.

WHERE WILL THE MONEY GO?
This will help reimburse me for seeds, labor redoing the farm beds this past year, seminars needed to get certified as OFFICIALLY organic (I could already pass as no chemical, no gmo), my time, gasoline, electric bills, mortgage, etc..
An Iron Daisy CSA houses my production company, ClusterFracked Productions. I normally cover the national movement for human rights and justice but fracking has overpowered nearly everything for me this past year. I say nearly everything, because I see great promise and example from the OCCUPY movement.

WHO IS THIS An Iron Daisy CSA?
My name is Lisa Barr. I began farming at age 11 in Michigan, picking strawberries in 1968 with Mexican migrant labor. I learned a little Spanish and a little worker rights (we struck so that the Mexican workers could use something other than a ditch for restroom breaks--it worked!). I began a career in journalism in 1977, and some of the work I'm now doing with consumer software using an iPhone is included below. A CSA shares the farm season bounty among subscribers. It's a way to help local farms. Usually, those of us doing a CSA also have other jobs. Mine right now is documentary work and print coverage of the human rights/ justice movements.
Later this year, I hope to get my documentary MUTUAL AID: A Fracked Society viewed privately for comments and later distribution.
If you'd like to see/hear some of my work:
AUDIO (a NY Fracking Activism update from January 3, 2012) http://soundcloud.com/anirondaisycsa-aol-com/2womentalkingonacouch
PRINT ( I am also a mass communication academic, and this journalism is the product of my
critical media scholarship as well as my movement journalism).
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/07/19/to-cuba-with-baggage-and-love/
VIDEO (I released this piece on Bradley Manning to youtube before learning that many awards contests do not allow you to have done so. But I am quite proud of this piece from March 2011).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1JRwpI-ZI

HOW TO HELP?
1. Send a donation to An Iron Daisy CSA, P.O. Box 1539, Oneonta, NY 13820.
It would be helpful, statistically, if you could indicate which town or organizations you wanted to particularly support:
NY: Afton, Bainbridge, Binghamton, Cooperstown, Franklin, Guilford, Ithaca, Maryland, Middlefield, Morris, New Berlin, Norwich, Oneonta, Otego, Schenevus, and Sidney.
PA: Dimock (Carter Road) and Towanda
FOOD NOT BOMBS Binghamton (also indicate whether you would want information on starting Food Not Bombs Chapters in YOUR town)
OCCUPIES in Buffalo, NY and Washington D.C./Freedom Plaza or its new houses.
And/or
2. Perhaps you are a friend with a website that reaches many people. If you could post a link to this I would greatly appreciate it.

HELP ANIRONDAISYCSA SAY NO FRACKING WAY SPRING THRU FALL 2012

2012-01-07T07:44:00.001-08:00

https://www.wepay.com/donations/https:www.wepay.comdonatemutualaidhttps://www.wepay.com/donations/https:www.wepay.comdonatemutualaid
WHAT IS THIS?

Each of the TEN deliveries this summer to 20 501c3 food banks or their equivalent, is a chance to say: "Fracking KILLS."
It's a chance to tell those in power "No Fracking Way" all summer.

Please help support any of these subscriptions anonymously with a receipt from us or let us thank you publicly in the credits of our documentary "MUTUAL AID: A Fracked Society."

Towns served will include:

Afton, Bainbridge, Binghamton, Butternuts, Cooperstown, Dimock, PA, Franklin, Ithaca, Maryland, Middlefield, Montrose, PA, Morris, New Berlin, Norwich, Oneonta, Otego, Schenevus, Sidney, Towanda, PA, and Food-Not-Bombs-Binghamton.

========

WHERE WILL THE MONEY GO?
Materials, seed, seminars needed to get certified as organic (I could pass right now as no-chemical, no GMO), CSA producers' time, gasoline, electrical bills, mortgage, travel for videotaping, and everything associated with a CSA and producing an anti-frack documentary, etc..
An Iron Daisy CSA houses ClusterFracked productions, my production company. I normally cover the national movement for human rights and justice. My siblings also live in frack-threatened areas (Michigan and Pennysylvania). So, she expanded her focus from the anti-war/human rights movement to fracking effects on the social fabric up and down the Susquehanna River.
My contacts as a movement journalist with longstanding human rights activists will enliven MUTUAL AID. I am trying to get the final edits done on "MUTUAL AID: A Fracked Social Fabric" to start showing privately for suggestions. Power to the people requires support for the media that covers the people. In this case, it will also help feed the people. Say Power to the People's Media! Say Power to the People's Farms! If you'd like to see (television), hear (radio), and read (print) some of my work, here are some links for similar topics: AUDIO http://soundcloud.com/anirondaisycsa-aol-com/2womentalkingonacouch PRINT http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/07/19/to-cuba-with-baggage-and-love/ VIDEO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1JRwpI-ZI
I am an award-winning broadcast journalist (since 1977) turned academic whose students win awards as well.
I hope you'll find my efforts worthy of your support. Call me with any questions at 607-267-9337.

Early January Frack Fighting Update New York State

2012-01-02T01:24:00.000-08:00

http://soundcloud.com/anirondaisycsa-aol-com/2womentalkingonacouch

What an interesting group of people are trying to protect the air, land, water and culture of New York state. I have met so many interesting and dedicated fractivistas the past two and a half years. I hope once we beat back the dirty energy companies we turn our sites to other states and other countries these corporate criminals are bludgeoning. I am only a decade into the digital revolution for radio and television. My law degree allowed me to escape teaching production courses for a time. I named the garage band project 2womentalkingonacouch and that's what the podcast appears to be name now! Anyway. Happy New Year! The three women interviewed here are brilliant: Linda Lavine(Dryden Town Supervisor); Irene Weisser (Caroline Town Supervisor) and Helen Slotje, Managing Attorney for Community Environmental Defense Council (Ithaca).
Feel free to post to any list serve of fractivists.
No Fracking Way will we have a bad 2012!
anirondaisycsa@aol.com

(STILL MORE) MUTINY IN CUOMO'S EMPIRE STATE: Hundreds at DEC say NO FRACKING WAY!

2011-12-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

I am surprised no other blogger or burgeoning documentarian has posted this yet. I am beginning the fundraising for Cluster-Fracked via my soon to be organic CSA (more on that later). But--isn't it curious we have not heard perhaps the most amazing piece of news to emerge from any of the DEC hearings on the one-stop polluting SGEIS permit for the Frackers? Public Employees Federation (PEF), speaking for the 1774 members of the professional, technical and scientific staff of DEC says NO FRACKING WAY! (They had to go to the city to do this, but they DID say this at the hearing November 29 in Manhattan!). They also said with the cuts they can't enforce the current regs on DEC's table either. Here's the text of what was said in the 3 minute haiku the DEC made us use:
Stephanie Low presented the statement:
=========
"I'm here to deliver a statement from an employee of the DEC, Environmental Program Specialist and Executive Board member of the DEC's union, the Public Employees Federation (PEF). His name is Wayne Bayer and he speaks for the 1774 members of the professional, technical and scientific staff of the DEC, those on the ground who may be assumed to know the issues of fracking and the rdSGEIS best. His statement follows:
Three minutes is not an adequate amount of time to fully convey the concerns of Division 169 of the New York State PEF, or PEF/encon, who represent the rapidly declining professional, technical and scientific staff of DEC.
Therefore, we will be submitting more extensive comments for the public record before the public comment period is over.
Almost everyone agrees that public regulatory involvement and oversight is necessary to protect the public, vital natural resources, and wildlife, as well as the natural gas industry itself from unjustified allegations of mis-and/or malfeasance with gas extraction activities. The point PEF/encon wishes to make loud and clear today is that the 25% reduction in existing staff at DEC has crippled our ability to carry out all existing regulatory and statutory responsibilities assigned to our agency.
There is NO FRACKING WAY we can presently, honestly, and adequately add any new responsibility as labor-intensive as regulating, monitoring and inspection activities related to high volume hydraulic fracturing of natural gas. DEC would also be hard pressed to adequately provide emergency remedial response in cleanup assistance for a major accident of any kind. Til there are adequate staffing resources available, the moratorium should be extended."
END OF STATEMENT.
========
IN CLOSING:
The other day, a man and his wife lamented that their daughter's husband was thrilled that their 100 acres could be signed. They plan on traveling in Europe, Italy, etc.. I reminded them--you can travel NOW cheaply--sign up for couchsurfing.com "Making the World a Friendlier Place One Couch at a Time." They said the daughter is a retired teacher. They already have enough money to travel.
Perhaps they could get their daughter and similar lease-holders or lease-holder wanna be's, perhaps, to listen to David Rovics' advice on what to tell Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, et al..
David came to Oneonta and Binghamton this Fall before the anti-frack fever kicked in here [I'm always just a little bit too ahead of the curve (sigh)] and I lost my shirt on that concert. I also spent a bit of money on this ad highlighting the need to vote and referring people to sources for learning about anti-fracking candidates this Fall.
http://hegemonicseam.blogspot.com/2011/11/clusterfrackeds-election-guide-for.html
If you'd like to help me get Cluster Fracked, my documentary, off the ground, the best way to help is by donating to the first year of An Iron Daisy CSA by the end of this month.
I will be delivering fresh produce bi-weekly (Mid-May through Mid-September) from my soon-to-be-certified organic farm to food banks in Oneonta, Cooperstown, Binghamton, Bradford County PA (Including Towanda and the Carter Road folks in Dimmock) and 5 other towns (say where, say when on those others) in the test run of the new improved garden beds.
My farm was not plowed for about 40 years. I've owned it since 2001 and never used any insectides, etc.. Certified organic seeds (no GMO!). I need donations by the end of December 31st to go to the CSA, please. I'm not good at raising money for myself. I'm usually good at writing grants for others.
To donate:
An Iron Daisy CSA
P.O. Box 1539
Oneonta, NY 13820
and make the check out to An Iron Daisy CSA, please.
It's important. Thank you for supporting this. Any questions--call me at 607-267-9337, and remember to say (and sing with David Rovics!)
NO FRACKING WAY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4qledBpbig
=======

TWO WEEKS LATER--OCCUPY DEFENSE LETTER APPEARS

2011-11-16T02:24:00.000-08:00

well--they did get the headline 'wrong'--but then my local newspaper does own the printing press. Click on the newspaper opinion page http://thedailystar.com/opinion/x1022081317/Letters-to-the-Editor-Nov-16-2011 if you'd care to give it a little love. I'm sure it will get some folks (probably more academic liberal types) in a lather.

Occupied by Revels, Slaves, and Courtjesters?

Recent Millard Filmore cartoons and letters about the “Occupy” movement conflict with my knowledge that 4-tour Marine Scott Olsen lies damaged by rioting paramilitary police in Oakland. Award-winning journalist and theologian Chris Hedges calls Occupiers “the best among us.” Having visited a few general assemblies in D.C. and NYC, I must agree with him. They are clean, respectful, and principled.

Sadly, the U.S. has no Canadian style law banning media liars--or we could ban Fox News and derivative ‘humor’ from Filmore.

As a journalist since 1977, with a Masters and PhD in critical media analysis, I feel obligated to point the Star to the shining example of the late Ralph McGill, who put his pro-integration editorials on the front page--replete with photograph. McGill and other publishers of his era, such as Hodding Carter II, knew that reactionaries have a history of calling ‘dirty’ those who ‘betray’ white middle class privilege to denounce injustice. Consider Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, which praised brave publishers like McGill thusly: “...Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes....”

I would like to think the Star would willingly stop carrying Filmore, and other ‘conservative’ liars.

Anti-falsehood legislation would undoubtedly over-reach.

However, responsible editorial fiat could provide a sane middle ground.

So, please reconsider paying known liars. In the words of Hedges: “There are no excuses left....Either you obstruct... the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil....Either you are a rebel or a slave.”

Lisa Barr Oneonta http://www.hegemonicseam.blogspot.com

Rooney Was NOT An Enlightened Fellow

2011-11-09T02:55:00.000-08:00

Praise for Rooney?

When someone famous (particularly if their fame was of a national nature) dies, I believe a written record of their expressed hostility toward a particular group--particularly minorities, should be explained. I don’t believe petty crimes should be extolled, but when that person has a big, national megaphone placed in front of them, it’s only fair that such shortcomings be mentioned. The silence regarding the true nature of Andy Rooney's 'amiable' ranting is very telling. And noticed. "Rooney was a sexist, a racist, and a homophobe but the country loved him nevertheless," was the prescient comment of "The Angry Arab News Service: A source on politics, war, the MIddle East, Arabic poetry, and Art." I will respond by saying that the U.S. news consumer has little choice but 'love' a dead white male when you consider the past 30 years of news minus radio news in this country.

But, in the spirit of Rooney, I have digressed. Back to Andy.

Not in any order of offended group, but in my humble opinion, may I say that Andy Rooney’s overly long tenure at CBS News might be part of the reason our mainstream news media has lost all credibility?

Regarding women:

“..."The first thing that came into my mind is, does anybody take Andy Rooney seriously anyway?" said ESPN SportsCenter anchor Linda Cohn. "He doesn't take himself seriously half the time anyway. The second thing is, why is he stereotyping all women? God knows if he watches SportsCenter and has ever seen me. You have to judge each person separately. The third thing is, when was the last time he followed any of these sideline reporters around doing their job? Tell me the date and time, please." http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2002-10-09-rooney-remarks_x.htm

Regarding race relations:

“...Burke said Rooney's future with CBS News will be discussed at the end of the three-month suspension.

In the Feb. 27 edition of The Advocate, Rooney is quoted as saying that "blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children." http://articles.latimes.com/1990-02-09/news/mn-236_1_andy-rooney...”

And, from the above article, regarding gay rights:

“...Rooney, 71, who previously had come under fire from homosexual-rights groups for remarks about gays and AIDS in a CBS-TV special in December, also is quoted as saying that, while he felt that gays have been the victims of prejudice, he found the homosexual act "repugnant" and homosexuality "not normal."

In an interview with The Times following his suspension, Rooney denied that remarks he made to The Advocate in a phone interview with one of its reporters expressed racial bias. However, he confirmed he had written a controversial letter to the magazine commenting on gays in response to criticisms of his views on homosexuality....”

My local paper, the Oneonta Daily Star, offers a very brief “Cheers” section as part of the opinion page. They extolled his service to CBS and the nation: "...Rooney was witness to some of history's defining moments as a correspondent for the newspaper Stars & Stripes during World War II, and the Albany native's insightful and witty segments were often the perfect way to end a weekend..." I guess the writer has some pretty boring weekends!
I realize that itt’s hard to briefly round out any human. But, in full disclosure, I must note that the person in charge of the Star's operation is an avowed "Israel-Right-Or-Wrong" sort of guy. So, perhaps I’m not surprised that this normally laudable item misses the point on Rooney. What would a better, more-rounded presentation look like? In print--a simple sentence, such as “Rooney was notably in hot water with CBS for comments blacks, gays and women found intolerant.” In a radio piece, back when we had hourly newscasts, this could be fitted into a simple 40 - 60 second piece.

For instance, when I did obituary radio news items on Arthur Godfrey in Houston in 1981, I was able to use soundbites from the late RKO news service from people who believed Godfrey had killed many the career of those then considered 'pink'--those who, today would be mainstream supporters of the Occupy movement. That is how skewed our country's news has been since we lost those 5,000 radio news people to 'deregulation'--and the wider variety of sources other journalists could have persuaded their editors to let them quote. Safety in numbers helps a profession that is supposed to explain things in context do just that.
When someone famous (particularly if their fame was of a national nature) dies, I believe a written record of their expressed hostility toward a particular group--particularly minorities, should be explained. I don’t believe petty crimes should be extolled, but when that person has a big, national megaphone placed in front of them, as did Rooney, it’s only fair that such shortcomings be mentioned.

Quackenbush Wants to Watch Recount--So Should Anti-Fracking Nobiling Supporters

2011-11-09T02:54:00.000-08:00

678 to 656 was the tally in the Autumn Cafe election night. 678 for Repubican Quackenbush and 656 for write-in anti-fracking candidate Tim Nobiling. And there are about 80 absentee ballots. Anti-fracking people need to contact Sustainable Otsego and make sure there is a PLAN to watch how the write-in votes are counted and be lawyered up in case there are any shenanigans. Just saying....

UPDATE: MALLOY SAYS FALSE ALARM, SO (NO) INJUNCTION NEEDED BEFORE BALLOTING ENDS---BALLOT IRREGULARITIES IN LAURENS-HOW TO HANDLE?

2011-11-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Laura Malloy got to see the ballot--and, while confusing, it is not WRONG. The top 3 are still separated from Malloy so it appears at least ONE anti-frackiing candidate will be elected to the Laurens Town Board. However--why are the ballots so late in arriving for review by candidates?

UPDATE: I spoke with my sister, who is a lawyer on call for the Democratic Party during election season (they started sending out 'clean' 'unjammable-for-the-election-day' phones only to be used in case of irregularity) and said:
Injunction must be filed before end of day requesting a PROPER ballot and noting the lateness of receipt of the flawed ballot.
======

Okay, sports fans, here we GO!
Laurens Town Clerk TODAY notified anti-frack candidate Laura Malloy of a problem.
the ballot, as published in the Daily Star a week ago, and based upon petitions filed with County Board of elections SHOULD have:
Linda Reeves (Independent( anti-drilling)
Rick Brockaway (R) (pro-drilling)
Wilber Cleveland (R) (less pro-drilling)
and then
1 candidate for councilman, unexpired term
Laura Malloy (No Drill) (anti-drilling)
-----
HOWEVER--on the ballot LINDA REEVES has been moved down there with Laura so that the two anti-drilling candidates are running AGAINST one another and the two pro-drilling candidates are running unopposed by Linda Reeves.
SHOULD WE CONTACT THE NY STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE? WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS/REMEDIES?
Laurens is a VERY IMPORTANT place for drilling to be stopped in Otsego County given the very very high water table there.

.

I know the election will now proceed tomorrow despite this. What do I do?..."

CLUSTERFRACKED'S ELECTION GUIDE FOR 11/8/11

2011-11-04T18:59:00.000-07:00

TWO ADDITIONAL
WRITE-IN CANDIDATES! ONEONTA TOWN AND MIDDLEFIELD TOWN

Tim Nobiling, Town Councilman, Town of Oneonta
His name should be written in at the bottom of column 9a of the ballot.

Dominick Reisen - Town of Middlefield Board
Dominick J. Reisen
Swedish Hill, Goose Watch, and Penguin Bay Wineries

INTRODUCTION: WHY AM I DOING THIS?

Our newsrooms have been too decimated in the past 30 years to be able to properly cover the assault by the gas industry on our commons. Those remaining in the newsrooms are also expected to write an increasing amount of ‘puff’ or promotional pieces--instead of doing NEWS! Too often, even in the face of obvious gas industry fabrications, these fabrications are presented as ‘one side’ which needs to be refuted. Too often, even when better polls exist, the difference of opinion on fracking is presented as an ‘even’ shares proposition. But, as the link below to a synopsis of a PULSE poll shows, the overwhelming majority of people in our area of New York oppose gas fracking.

Citizen media must take up the slack if we are to experience democracy.

In the course of the past two years of researching the fracking process, videotaping and interviewing people in Bradford County, PA, and Tioga, Chenango, Delaware and Otsego County, NY, I have become convinced of three things:

1.) fracking not only harms the surrounding air, water, and land, but it harms or coarsens the SOCIAL FABRIC of communities which are ‘fracked’;

2.) if this happens, a unique part of the world--an area I have adopted as home (although I appear to have an ancestor buried in Richfield Springs)--will be irreversibly damaged;

and,

3.) the people who have signed fracking contracts are not bad people, but there are some really bad players involved in the whole industry who manipulate and instill a great deal of fear in those who have signed contracts.

A journalist since 1977, and a media scholar since 1988, I have decided to put together what I and others have seen and documented in the forthcoming documentary, “CLUSTER-FRACKED.” It does more than ‘take off’ where GASLAND began, but explores the torn threads of society’s fabric where fracking has occurred near my hometown of Oneonta, NY.

It won’t be done until the middle of December, long after this election. But I realized that I could not look in the mirror if I do not speak out now--when people of conscience could possibly help stop this disaster literally headed down the pipeline.

I cannot vote in this election, as I was still busy moving back here when it was time to register.

And I feel badly about that.

Wednesday morning, a friend collared me in Green Earth and asked me “WHO SHOULD I VOTE FOR? I DON’T WANT FRACKING TO START HERE!” And I remembered an ad I’d seen in the Pennysaver from Sustainable Otsego. This is the list I saw there. It is from Sustainable Otsego. I believe they have really done the county’s stewards a big service in putting this list together. I put in a call to Catskill Mountainkeeper, and they referred me to Riverkeeper. I also looked at various anti-fracking groups and finally found another LIST put out by Marcellus At the Polls (MATP). They included some footnotes indicating why some candidates made their list.

THE LIST I ‘FOUND’

OTSEGO COUNTY ANTI-FRACKING CANDIDATES

Sustainable Otsego’s (S.O.) website lists ‘anti-fracking’ candidates for the November 8 election, and lists them on their website at http://sustainableotsego.org/component/content/article/423-press-release.

Here is a shortened version of S.O.’s press release. The first two groups of names are running on the “Sustainable Otsego” party line, for County Board, and Town/City Office:

OTSEGO COUNTY BOARD CANDIDATES (Sustainable Otsego):

Richard Murphy, District 4, Town of Oneonta (also MATP)
Barbara Monroe, District 5, Towns of Milford, Hartwick, New Lisbon (also MATP)
Beth Rosenthal, District 7, Towns of Middlefield, Roseboom, Cherry Valley (also MATP)
John Kosmer, District 8, Town of Otsego (also MATP)

NOTE: THESE SAME CANDIDATES PLUS TERESA WINCHESTER ARE ALSO ENDORSED BY “MARCELLUS AT THE POLLS” RESEARCHERS GLORIA FOROUZAN AND ELIZABETH COUCH NORDSTROM. THEY PROVIDE FOOTNOTES FOR THE ENDORSEMENTS ALL CANDIDATES, SUCH AS MURPHY, MONROE, KOSMER, ROSENTHAL, AND WINCHESTER.

TOWN/CITY CANDIDATES (Sustainable Otsego)

Bennett Sandler, Town Board, Town of Otsego (also MATP)
David M. Jones, Town Board, Town of Oneonta (not mentioned by MATP but he came to my house and convinced me)
Chris Harmon, Supervisor, Town of Milford (also MATP)
Barbara Snyder, Town Board, Town of Milford
Bruce Milavec, Town Collector, Town of Milford
Edward E. Gross, Jr., Town Board, Town of Unadilla (MATP)
Lisa J. Moskowitz, Town Board, Town of Unadilla

Again--these are Sustainable Otsego line candidates. It appears “Marcellus at the Polls” did not look at all town candidates for Otsego County.

I like that Sustainable Otsego mentioned other potential public servants even though they are not running on the Sustainable Otsego line (but I assume they are a mix of D’s and R’s and maybe even a couple of Greens? Who knows? I don’t. And I don’t care). I like that Sustainable Otsego listed them on their website as “Other anti-fracking candidates for Otsego County Board, and for (Various) Town Boards” and their names follow. I am placing MATP (Marcellus At The Polls beside the names of those candidates (not on the Sustainable Otsego line but listed on their site) who also are endorsed as ‘anti-fracking by MATP, apparently based upon the advocates for morris.blogspot.

OTSEGO COUNTY BOARD

Teresa Winchester, District 2, Butternuts, Morris, Pittsfield (also MATP)
Gary Koutnik, District 11, City of Oneonta
Linda Rowinski, District 13, City of Oneonta
Catherine Rothenberger, District 12, City of Oneonta
Katherine Stuligross, District 14, City of Oneonta

VARIOUS TOWN BOARDS

Charles, Eckelmann, Supervisor, Town of Butternuts (No MATP mention, but a letter to the Star complained he’d sung an anti-fracking song!)

Michele Farwell, Councilman, Town of Butternuts (also MATP)

Heather Covington, Councilman, Town of Butternuts (also MATP)

Marcia Membrino, Councilman, Town of Milford (also MATP)

Bob Thomas, Councilman, Town of Morris (also MATP)

Marilyn Roveland, Supervisor, Town of Morris (also MATP)

Dawn Sieck, Councilman, Town of Morris (also MATP)

Julie Huntsman, Councilman, Town of Otsego (also MATP)

Alanna Rose, Councilman, Town of Plainfield (also MATP)

Bob Eklund, Councilman, Town of New Lisbon (also MATP)

Steven Zerby, Supervisor, Town of Westford (also MATP)

Steven Hatfield, Councilman, Town of Westford (also MATP)

Karen Wyckoff, Councilman, Town of Westford (also MATP)

Diane Addesso, Councilman, Town of Worcester

Laura Malloy, Councilman, Town of Laurens

Paul A. Stein, Councilman, Town of Pittsfield

William Curto, Councilman, Town of Pittsfield

Jimmy Junior Massey, Councilman, Town of Richfield

Mary Margaret Snyder, Councilman, Town of Richfield

Allison Jones, Councilman, Town of Maryland

NOT ON SUSTAINABLE OTSEGO’S LIST, BUT ON THE MARCELLUS AT THE POLLS LIST (again, per the morris blogspot, apparently):

Mike Harvey of Butternuts

Keith Parr of Hartwick

I do not know the methodology Sustainable Otsego used to determine that the names listed above are all anti-fracking candidates. But, I know many people associated with that group and respect their judgment. I am assuming, given the fine materials about fracking available on their website, that there was consideration given to candidates’ positions taken on various issues and possible scenarios.

On another note, I notice that Bob Woods, who is running for re-election as Oneonta Town Supervisor, is not mentioned on this list. I am puzzled by that, as his positions on key matters of similar nature seems to put him in the anti-fracking camp, or at least the ‘sane and responsible’ public servant camp, the way I see it.

DELAWARE COUNTY ANTI-FRACKING CANDIDATES?

I posted an ad in the Daily Star promising a similar list for Delaware County. But, no one seems to have generated the original research for me to summarize here. I only have one name. Why aren’t any of the local news media outlets doing this research? Maybe it’s not their fault. Maybe no one is talking much about that. SUSTAINABLE OTSEGO DID NOT MENTION ANY CANDIDATES, NOR DID MARCELLUS AT THE POLLS. In fact, representatives from these and two other anti-fracking organizations said there wasn’t much buzz about this in Delaware County. Speculation is twofold:

1.) Perhaps there are many secondary residences there and the people are just not around to attend meetings, buttonhole candidates, etc., or

2.) perhaps there are people who have purchased land in Delaware County for the purpose of fracking it?

I think both possibilities might account for the relative pre-election silence from Delaware County. And, certainly it APPEARS that Governor Cuomo’s reputed sparing-of-the-ax for the NY City water supply portion of Delaware County has lulled people into a false sense of complacency? But, one environmental organization is not waiting to see what happens and why. More on that in a moment.

But first!

Riverkeeper gave me one candidate’s name as an anti-fracker.

Ready?

DELAWARE COUNTY SUPERVISOR POSITION:

Steve Lundgren (D who opposes fracking versus Ed Sykes (D running as an R FOR Fracking).

You cannot make this up.

While I was given three possible towns with anti-fracking candidates, I was unable to do the research myself on this. If someone wishes to contact me, I will check my email late Saturday and early Sunday while in D.C. videotaping the Tar Sands action surrounding the White House on Sunday.

http://www.sc-democrat.com/news/2011October/28/news2.htm

Riverkeeper is currently suing Delaware River Basin Commission (a federal commission that has authority over the entire Delaware River region--including portions of Delaware County).

DRBC has proposed their own regulations (which they say they will finalize them in November) on fracking--meaning a person COULD frack in Delaware River region, but would also need an additional permit-- NY state permit). Riverkeeper is challenging the DRBC regulations themselves on the basis that there was no environmental review done, ala New York’s environmental review process, for instance.

Josh Fox of GASLAND fame has produced a nice short video about the DRBC http://vimeo.com/29952415.

Because my documentary concerns events in Chenango and Tioga counties, I am also summarizing Marcellus At the Polls’ list of anti-fracking candidates here, including the footnotes they used.

CHENANGO COUNTY ANTI-FRACKING CANDIDATES

AFTON Abram Loeb Town Council

April Leggett Afton Supervisor

SMITHVILLE Carol OMalyev Council Board

Kenneth Whitmore Council Board

PLYMOUTH Peter Hudiburg Town Council

TIOGA COUNTY ANTI-FRACKING CANDIDATES

Ann Ellis County Legislature, District 4

Bridget Kane County Legislature, District 2

That’s all I was able to find in two days of intermittent research. If you’d like to learn more about other counties check out the Marcellus At The Polls site on facebook (you would need to be a facebook member or look over a member’s shoulder) at https://www.facebook.com/groups/MarcellusatthePolls/doc/260590293976160/

CONCLUSION

This battle won’t be won at the polls, in my humble opinion (imho for facebook and Twitter users). It will be won at meetings and in the streets of the Occupy movement. Get involved. Learn about general assemblies. I have done 2 reports on the Occupy and related movements for Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Radio show at http://sheehan.streamguys.org/SoapboxInternet09252011.mp3 and

http://sheehan.streamguys.org/SoapboxInternet10162011.mp3.

And you can see two of my video pieces regarding our pro-peace veterans’ resistance activities in the D.C. area in the past year at lisabarr2010 on youtube. The first concerns last December’s arrest of many veterans, including retired Col. Ann Wright and Daniel Ellsberg, as well as luminaries from Veterans for Peace and Camp Crawford outside the White House fence as Pres. Obama met with titans of industry inside. http://www.youtube.com/user/lisabarr2010#p/u/11/REBa6aJ2t4k It was colder than it looks.

And this piece http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1JRwpI-ZI concerns many of the same people protesting the torture of Bradley Manning while he was imprisoned in Quantico. Bradley’s treatment is part of the reason behind the Occupy movement.

If you would like to learn more about how you can help make sure the documentary CLUSTER FRACKED is completed by the end of the year, please contact me at: www.hegemonicseam.blogspot.com or anirondaisycsa@aol.com

RADIO AND VIDEO WORK SINCE LATE SEPTEMBER

2011-11-04T18:54:00.000-07:00

Well. I can honestly say that I have found that WESTERN DIGITAL HARD DRIVES SUCK! I have had THREE of them die on me in the last 2 and a half months. Two died on their own of UN natural causes. And a third was JUMPED on by a nasty HUGE piece of glass “Personal Projects” sign (why a Flintstone-esque piece of art where people are bringing in their gear to work on this oh, Apple Stores?)? My THIRD WD 2 terrabyte hard drive died in D.C.. I went there on Saturday night, Oct 8th, to hear from an Apple wiz kid that WD drives suck. As I passed the homage to the late Steve Jobs outside the store--I wondered--did Jobs know this? Why are they selling WD hard drives at Apple stores still?

- - - -

Anyway. Around all this--I’m still working on my documentary about three towns--one being fracked (Towanda, PA) and two others looking down the pipeline (Binghamton and Oneonta, NY). It’s called “Cluster-Fracked” and it’s coming along nicely. I’m also working on radio pieces. None of which are getting me any money. But, I feel it’s necessary to contribute.

Anyway--here’s what I’ve been up to the past month:

*I synopsized the press conference for the Cuban 5 held in September by the various attorneys for the men for Sally O’Brien’s Cuba In Focus program on WBAI. My piece aired in the Sept. 29, 2011 show. http://archive.wbai.org/show1.php?showid=thurs8pm9pm

“On the show: Cuba’s Foreign Minister addresses the UN General Assembly and calls for cooperation between Washington and Havana; Former New Mexico Representative, Bill Richardson, increases US/Cuba tensions over the case of Alan Gross, a special report from jane Franklin; Veteran diplomat, literature professor, writer and poet-Rolando Lopez Del Amo-talks about changes in Cuba; Lawyers for the Cuban Five hold a press conference on the 13th Anniversary of their clients’ incarceration and actor Danny Glober adds his voice to the call to Free the Cuban Five; Report on the Habeas Corpus appeal for Gerardo Hernandez, and a campaign to send Rene Gonzales back to Cuba upon his release October 7th. And, monthly news brief. Produced by Sally O’Brien with Margaret Gilpin, Jane Franklin, Bernie Dwyer, Lisa Barr, Desi K. Robinson, and Jay Potter.

====

**I also did an advancer piece with some of the organizers of the Freedom Plaza “Stop the Machine create A New World for Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox. http://sheehan.streamguys.org/SoapboxInternet09252011.mp3

========

** And I spent about a week traveling around D.C. for the opening of the Freedom Plaza Stop the Machine Occupation (which was given a 4 month extension on their permit) and the Occupy D.C. installation at McPherson Square in D.C--and ended up visiting the NYC Occupy site near Wall Street. That report, for Cindy Sheehan’s soapbox, is here. http://sheehan.streamguys.org/SoapboxInternet10162011.mp3

= = = =

SLOUCHING TOWARD REVOLUTION?

2011-10-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

by Lisa Barr

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2011 Washington D.C. Freedom Plaza

Walking away from the metro stop for the White House, Thomas Jefferson’s letter to George Logan (November 12, 1816) rattled in my brain:

“I hope we shall...crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Two monuments to our nation’s mistaken path appeared--Woodrow Wilson Plaza and the Ronald Reagan Reagan International Trade Center Building.

But in the distance, drums sounded.

Freedom Plaza.

Veterans for Peace were pounding a huge drum with a Native American motif on its face.

Sanity.

The ‘drums of peace’ helped me arrive at the nascent demonstration area. I was reminded of 19th century Scottish journalist Charles McKay: “Men go mad in herds, but only come to their senses one by one.” Journalists are taught that it is the demonstrators who are crazy. This is a tendency which must be disabused by all who have worked in any corporate newsroom.

For, upon arrival this morning, as at other such demonstrations, a feeling of safety washed over me--even as I had just walked amid a ‘security’ grid that was quickly beginning to surround the area of 13th and 14th Streets and Pennsylvania Avenue. Not to be hyperbolic, but Joan Didion’s ‘Salvador’ always comes to mind at such events. So many questions fill the brain:

Is this what those working for human rights in San Salvador felt like, after the junta killed union organizer Gilbert Soto, among others, in 1981?

How can D.C. residents live here--knowing that protesters are regularly flanked by what appear to be steroid-fueled ‘undercover’ agents for a police state we are told must remain secret?

I remembered the night before, at 10 p.m. in the same place. Amid streetlight, a circle of 30 of us sat on the ground listening to the organizers--who were listening to--us!--the newly arrived, non-D.C. activists and independent journalists who had answered their call to “Stop the Machine, Create A New World.” Their event would start in fewer than 12 hours and they still needed help painting signs to avoid the professed media ‘confusion’ about what the Wall Street occupation wanted to accomplish.

“We want to thank Occupy Wall Street,” began a laughing attorney and activist Kevin Zeese. Zeese and other activists planning the “Stop the Machine” action see themselves not as leaders but organizers who can vanish into the background of a people’s movement that is growing simultaneously and organically in a manner which clearly delights them.

I had interviewed Zeese, Margaret Flowers, and Dennis Trainor a few weeks before for indy media pieces run on, among other places, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox radio show. Since then, Zeese’s crew of activists--including Zeese and Flowers--had dropped everything to help advise the Occupy Wall Street movement. Zeese and crew hadn’t seen the “Occupy” movement coming--but they welcome and assist it. Their gentle steering is helping the Occupy movement avoid pitfalls common to such movements--such as wireless bills amassing tens of thousands of dollars in less than a week, or the surprise arrival of tens of thousands of dollars overnight into a PayPal account.

The corporate media fears the current uprisings.

They don’t know how to report on protest because they have been taught for generations to trivialize and ignore it.

So--for any corporate media lackeys ‘slumming’ on this site--here’s a broadcast news-style summary of the demands Zeese and others spent the past 6 months formulating.

*Ending corporate rights and notions that money equals speech;

*Ending wars and militarism;

*Supporting human rights that end exploitation of all peoples;

*Guaranteeing worker rights and jobs;

*Real transparency for government and accountability to international law;

*Barrier-free elections;

*Ending private-for-profit prisons and starting evidence-based drug laws;

*Universal Health Care;

*Education as a right through university or vocational training

*Safe, affordable housing rights for all;

*Environmental policies that create a non-carbon-based energy economy;

*Ending policies fostering the huge wealth divide for finance and the economy;

*The creation of systems protecting the land and water to create a sustainable food network

and

*Affordable, clean, convenient public transit system for all--including safe spaces for pedestrian, non-automobile travel.

I believe that reads very well for broadcast--and, as an unemployed mass media academic am available as a voice coach for any media worker stumbling over Stop the Machine’s solution-based demands. However, any media worker wanting to read such a list of demands, or get them placed in digital print for broadcast on today’s mass media would no doubt need to lobby (or trick):

a supervisor--such as an editor, a producer, or

a peer--such as a videographer or an editor.

I know this, as only a refugee from the corporate news media can know this. But even corporate media lackeys know enough to admire Edward R. Murrow, who famously said “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” Murrow famously challenged the status quo in his journalism--not every day--but when the moment presented itself.

This is that moment.
It is not exaggerating to say that news workers will, in the days to come, distinguish themselves as either relevant to solving the huge problems of the day, or true enemies of a sane path out of today’s morass.

As organizer and indy media activist Dennis Trainor explains, “It’s a statistical certainty that empires will end. Right? So, the scary thing for me--and sometimes this comes off as hyperbolic--but the scary thing for me is how do you bring down an empire smoothly in the post-nuclear era. Right now I don’t see our government letting someone else up on the hill. We’re playing a game of king of the hill--and we have to figure out a way, gently, to bring this thing down in a safe landing.”

Zeese believes this is a historical moment, and notes that such pronouncements are, or course made after-the-fact. “There is a lot of power we have--that we have been told we don’t have! We can look at Cindy Sheehan sleeping outside George Bush’s ranch and reigniting the anti-war movement. We can look at the refusal to sit in the back of the bus. You can look at sitting at a lunch counter. There’s 3 examples, sitting on sleeping outside and sitting at a lunch counter.”

I reflected upon his words of encouragement as I sat on a ledge in Freedom Plaza this morning. Only about 50 people had arrived. Below, on the sidewalk, a red-clad Washington D.C. worker pushed a trash cart. The African American man stopped working his broom when I asked him if he’d be joining us. “I gotta work,” he said, smiling. Dr. Margaret Flowers smiled and said, “Come after work.” He paused. “How long you gonna be here?” Not missing a beat, she chirped, “It’s our new home.” He laughed and continued cleaning the street.

As I bundled up my computer to find a wireless cafe--in the manner of all non-corporate media workers and volunteers--I saw the bottom of the “Stop the Machine” event flyer. A Frederick Douglas quote providing U.S. citizens even today a roadmap to sanity:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Lisa Barr is a mass media academic and independent journalist whose work is available at www.hegemonicseam.blogspot.com Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox Radio featured her pre-event report on Stop the Machine Create a New World at: http://sheehan.streamguys.org/SoapboxInternet09252011.mp3

Cuba In Focus WBAI Includes My Piece on This Year's Caravan Aug 25th

2011-09-06T07:19:00.000-07:00

Sally O'Brien's show is in its 22nd year. She is an amazing producer and editor.
http://archive.wbai.org/show1.php?showid=thurs8pm9pm

My piece, discussing this year's caravan aired August 25th. The jist: I spent 9 days in Cuba with the Caravanistas who made the journey to Cuba. Many thanks to the anonymous facebook friends who paid IFCO's funding arm the fees to send me on this trip. You know who you are and I love you.
I hope you enjoy the piece. It was an honor to be part of Sally O'Brien's show. If you donate to WBAI--please mention Cuba in Focus
If you donate to WBAI--please mention Cuba in Focus
http://wbai.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9805&Itemid=136

To Cuba. With baggage. And love. "Love is our License."

2011-07-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

McAllen, Texas

The Pastors for Peace (PFP) 22nd annual Friendshipment is gathering at the U.S./Mexican border, readying to defy the ridiculous cold war relic known as the Cuba embargo. Passed in 1961, the ban on trade with Cuba was invigorated or intensified to cruel effect by everyone from Jesse Helms(R) to Paul Toricelli(D).

But, no matter.

Nearly 100 Caravanistas in over 130 U.S. and Canadian cities have raised their voices at fundraisers with “Lucius Walker! Vive! Vive! Vive!” in a show of solidarity with his ideals.

They’ve successfully completed the U.S. and Canadian legs of this year’s caravan.

They’ve garnered public support and nearly one hundred tons of humanitarian supplies via U.S. church potlucks and fundraisers.

They’ve amassed phone trees to lawyers, journalists, political representatives and activists--just in case.

So, of course, the disinformation campaign cannot be far behind.

This year’s first salvo reeked like a July 4th cherry bomb dud.

Or an exploding cigar?

What a stinker headline for Miami Herald editor Juan O. Tamayo’s article, “Wikileaks: Cable Says Peace Group’s Leader Threatened Student.”

The punctuation of that headline in an otherwise ‘balanced’ article was strategically distracting.

At least the article explained how the Cuban program provided an estimated 10,000 medical students--mainly from Latin America and Africa-- with free education and training plus free room and board. But Mr. Tamayo, appointed to the position of Associate Professor in the University of Miami’s Cuba Institute in 2009, certainly knows more.

Certainly he knows that over one hundred U.S. citizens have also benefitted from Cuba’s training.

Certainly he knew he was omitting from his article the fact that these underprivileged, yet deserving U.S. residents return to the states to provide free health care in ‘shock-doctrined’ cities like downtown Detroit.

Assisting the “...struggles of oppressed peoples for justice and self-determination” is the mission of the umbrella group over PFP --The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. IFCO runs a friendly but determined operation with a professional press office that issues many quotable statements.

Such as this one:

“...The caravan will travel to Cuba via Mexico, without asking for or accepting a US government license, as a peaceful, disciplined act of civil disobedience against the blockade and travel ban, and as ambassadors for a ‘people-to-people’ foreign policy based on mutual respect.

According to IFCO board president Rev. Thomas E. Smith, “The current licensing system is both immoral and illegal, because it requires people of faith to submit their acts of conscience and friendship to government licensing, and violates our right to freedom of religious expression, political thought, association and travel.”...”

Pretty quotable, right? Certainly the news media won’t be strangers. The story of this year’s caravan is particularly compelling.

It is the first such journey without its founder. Reverend Lucius Walker, who died of a heart attack this fall at the age of 80, was honored earlier this year in Havana by Cubans who “Did not want to imagine a world without (him).”

I wish I’d met Rev. Walker. He was a reverend even an atheist could love with quotes like this one: “The bible says feed the hungry, clothe the poor. It doesn’t say to starve the Communists.”

U.S. domestic poverty, is increasingly, obviously just as planned as is overseas poverty. 22-year-Caravanista Lisa Valanti says that’s what the successful Cuba revolution shows. “I think that the reason why U.S. citizens are the only people in the world who cannot experience Cuba--is it would instantly reveal to them that their government has been lying to them, since--forever! In other words, Cuba has been so demonized by the propaganda in this country that when you go to Cuba, it’s very obvious that none of that is correct.”

And that’s why U.S. journalists aren’t allowed to show U.S. citizens evidence of Cuba’s success--in spite of the U.S. blockage.

Usually.

So, thank goodness for the interactive aspect of the online Miami Herald that allowed the comments of Juan McAuliff below Tamayo’s ‘duck and cover’ era relic. McAuliff, of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development helped level the gatekeeping playing field on the “Walker threatened a student” meme with--reality.

His comment below the online article began:

“We obviously don’t know what (Rev.) Lucius Walker said or what the student told the USINT staff person. We do know that Mr. Parmly carried out the overly hostile policy of the Bush Administration in Cuba and he and his staff were regarded with justified suspicion.”

The real attacker was a nameless bureaucrat. We don’t know who produced a cable of what appears to be fiction--or over-reaction--from an also unnamed U.S. medical student.

But certainly we can guess the motive. Consider the block-buster article of acclaimed FBI whistle-blowing agent (and Time Magazine Co-Woman of the Year) Coleen Rowley. “How Top Secret America Misfires: The case for a 21st Century Church Commission,” explains the bankrupt and dangerous method for advancing within the FBI after 9/11.

Read it and weep. And wonder: “Can the same generation that guffawed at the film, “Reefer Madness” while in high school and college really approve of a points system that rewards our top law enforcement agents for opening bogus ‘terrorist threat’ files?” Take another Lunesta and call me in the morning--unless you’re on my crisis phone tree.

But, seriously--has the U.S. learned nothing in 60 years?

Perhaps not, if we have journalists and editors who produce incomplete stories like the one accusing Rev. Walker of intolerance at best. Perhaps it’s no wonder the headline writer got it wrong. There apparently were no phones or email connections working over the July 4th holiday in Miami. No way to ask for a comment from Pastors for Peace, or a different opinion from those who actually were familiar with Rev. Walker, such as Mr. McAuliff, who continued:

“...“We also know that the U.S. under Bush treated Cuban medical personnel serving in third countries as targets for defection. The Obama administration, to its shame, has not terminated this policy of encouraging defections from humanitarian assistance groups.”

Lucius Walker was doing more than humanitarian work. He was performing the vital role of a true diplomat. He was trying to head problems off at the pass in a very tense environment.

A more accurate headline would have read: “Opportunistic Bureaucrat Smears Latter Day Freedom Rider.”

For the Freedom Rider gene is exactly what invigorated Lucius Walker’s work. James Farmer’s group of multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi-creed challengers of Jim Crow was a model for later movements, such as the Venceremos Brigades, the Yankee Sandinistas, Pastors for Peace, Cindy Sheehan’s “For What Noble Cause?” crusade, and the Gaza Flotilla(s). Disinformation campaigns from U.S. corporate media has accompanied official D.C. denouncements of each such humanitarian effort.

Remember Farmer’s comments to a skittish Kennedy Administration official:

“My objective is not just to make a point, but to bring about a real change in the situation. We will continue the Ride until people can sit wherever they wish on buses and use the facilities in any waiting room available to the public. Please tell the attorney general that we have been cooling off for 350 years. If we cool off any more, we will be in a deep freeze. The Freedom Ride will go on.”

Images of the Freedom Riders’ state-sanctioned pummeling shamed and embarrassed U.S. politicians and businessmen. The same courageous and open spirit empowered a variety of movements, as a mature Bernardine Dohrn acknowledged for PBS decades later:

“I like the bridges that have been built between the feminists and the gay and the environmental movements. All the progeny of the Sixties. All the many movements that have happened since then are now part of a kind of a big tent of anti-globalization and anti-empire. So it’s a different world, but trying to act on your principles, trying to use humor, trying to tweak power, trying to be willing to take the consequences of what you believe in.”

The progress Dohrn noted came in spite of massive campaigns of government disinformation, deceit, and worse aimed at humanitarian activists. For instance, passage of the civil rights laws was relatively quickly followed by the conspiracy to kill Rev. Martin Luther King.

That conspiracy seemingly encouraged the FBI to ramp up Cointelpro hounding and/or annihilation of the Black Panthers, starting with Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.

We must never forget the law enforcement abuses of King and Hampton’s non-Panther allies--some of whom included the earliest Cuban solidarity activists to venture to Cuba for a look-see after the revolution, such as a young Bernardine Dohrn. Such disruption tactics continued despite Congressional investigation and denunciation in the form of the Church Committee hearings and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Kangaroo court trials of activists including Assata Shakur (periodically a hot potato exile in Cuba) wrongly excluded testimony from Frank Church and others about Cointelpro continuing its illegal work into the 1980s and beyond.

Despite admitted, continued, and wrongful government infiltration of such groups as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the Central American solidarity movement remained vibrant and varied through the 1980s. Pax Christi, Sister Cities programs, plus various nuns and ‘Yankee Sandinistas’ openly fundraised in churches across the U.S. to bolster the rebels fighting the U.S. funded slaughter of the El Salvadoran death squad junta. The movement also helped counter the murderous U.S.-funded Contras’ destruction.

Pastors for Peace emerged from that moment.

On a fact-finding mission in 1988, Rev. Walker was wounded by a Contra attack on the Bluefields ferry. Unlike the 2 Nicaraguans who died, Walker defied the common wisdom of not-seeking-emergency-room-aid-lest-the-Contras finish-the-botched deed in the E.R.. Walker lived. And he wondered about his attackers, according to the accurate portion of his sanitary, dry New York Times obituary last Fall:

“...Mr. Walker’s first thought, he said, was that he was hit by a bullet paid for by his own country. He called his second thought a prophetic vision: he would form an organization of pastors to fight, or at least clean up after, what he called American imperialism....”

A week later, the Times printed the following correction:

“...An obituary last Sunday about the Baptist minister and political activist Lucius Walker referred incorrectly to a 1988 incident in Nicaragua in which Mr. Walker and others were wounded and two people were killed. The delegation led by Mr. Walker was attacked by contra rebels — not by soldiers of the Nicaraguan government, which was not supported by the United States at that time....”

Really. With a straight face?

Certainly Times editors knew, or should have known-- courtesy of many books 32 years after the incident--that Walker had not been attacked by anyone other than the Contras. Walker had discussed this attack many times and he was prolificly quoted by those following the Central American solidarity movement about the events of August 2, 1988:

“...My daughter Gail and I were among 200 civilians on a boat on the River Escondido in Nicaragua, which was viciously attacked by the contras. Two Nicaraguans died and 29 passengers were wounded. That night in the hospital, while I was being teated for a bullet wound, I prayed to God seeking spiritual guidance to find an appropriate response to that act of terrorism. The inspiration that God gave me was to create Pastors for Peace to take caravans of material aid to the victims of U.S. aggression.”

The U.S. journalism profession’s indifference and recklessness with the facts about Cuba and its supporters is, at least, consistent. Times journalists, and many others, failed to challenge in a timely manner the Reagan Administration officials who had dared blame U.S. aid workers for their own murders. The family and friends of Ben Linder toured the U.S. after Reagan Administration officials said Linder deserved his destiny for constructing low-head hydro-electric generation capacity in El Cua, Nicaragua. Even Florida Senator Connie Mack accused Linder’s mother of “politicizing this situation,” adding “I don’t want to be tough on you, but I really feel you have asked for it.”

Linder’s family and supporters embarked upon a national tour of media outlets that largely failed to get his story properly told. Imagine if Elliot Abrams and Marlin Fitzwater’s similar contempt for Linder had been countered with any regularity by this quote from the engineering graduate:

“..."It’s a wonderful feeling to work in a country where the government’s first concern is for its people, for all its people."

Why is it so hard for U.S. news media workers to print such statements?

Consider Otto Reich’s late 1980s visit to NPR--a place he called the “Little Havana on the Potomac. Solomon and Lee note that Reich bragged at having visited large and medium market radio, television, and newspaper outlets around the country. He proudly took credit for the firing, reassignment--or change in tone and content--of particular journalists whose coverage did not spout the White House’s admitted propaganda tactics. The idea was, he said later, to paint “Black Hats” on the Sandinistas and “White Hats” on the (El Salvador) Junta.

This is the opposite of public service. So, of course, it’s a good living off U.S. tax dollars. George (Shrub) Bush made sure of that with his 2004 recess appointment of Reich as Latin America State Department envoy. Now Reich works for Honduras (post-coup, of course) as a lobbyist.

No doubt Reich remains a quotable and perhaps off-the-record source for journalists ‘covering’ Latin America.

We may not be able to follow the bread crumbs from Reich’s NPR visit to sell the ‘Bad Sandinista/‘Good Death Squads’ meme to the July 5th hit piece on Rev. Walker in the Miami Herald. But there seems to be a chill in the air. How does that work? Consider the NPR producer commenting that, after Reich’s visit, news personnel would question news text about Central America, asking, “What would Otto (Reich) think?”

It is important to see and acknowledge that the same Cointelpro tactics, the same media smear jobs get applied to: the Freedom Riders; the Venceremos Brigade(s); the anti-Vietnam war movement; the Central American Solidarity movement(s) and on and on--including the Pastors for Peace Caravan.

Was the Miami Herald piece just sloppy journalism or a strategic hit piece? Will border bureaucrats test the resolve of the group now that its charismatic leader is dead?”

Predictions are the aid will go through as usual. But, the ‘reverse border challenge’ in which aid from Cuba flows back to the U.S., is perhaps the real challenge to U.S. hegemony. Help from Cuba is an image from which the U.S. recoils--even in real ‘third world’ moments like Katrina. The Cuban doctors offered for New Orleans did not ponder the U.S. refusal before heading, and without much attention in the U.S. news media, to assist people in the Pakistan earthquake.

What the U.S. could learn from Cuba is immense.

Not only is health care universal and free (remember the 9/11 firefighters without insurance being treated in Havana in “Sicko”). Education is free. They grow their own food in phenomenally productive organic gardens. In fact, Havana grows its own, healthy food within its city limits on converted patches of lawn. Rent the documentary “Blocqeo” for more propaganda-bashing images you will not see or hear about in the U.S..

Educate yourself. And speak up. Recommend people learn from Cubans. IFCO Board of Directors President Reverend Tom Smith encouraged Houston caravan supporters to speak about Cuba at any opportunity. “Don’t be silent,” he said.

For silence can kill a movement. It can also kill the spirits of those with whom the movement interacts. I’m reminded of the way U.S. activists abandoned Nicaragua precisely as the Chamorro government set out to reprivatize its hard reclaimed commons. I remember seeing Luce Ortiz (not her real name) around the same time Bob Hercules’ telling documentary (“Did They Buy It?”) premiered. I asked her why there were, all of a sudden, so few Central American solidarity events in Gainesville for me to cover. “Good question,” she responded, not a little bitter.

News from her family in Nicaragua was bleak. Her sister, an ardent Sandinista, had recently wrapped herself in a blanket so as not to leave a mess, sat in the family bathtub, and shot herself in the head. ‘Luce’ blamed the return of hopelessness in the face of an erosion of a revolution’s victories and the rapid re-privatization of Nicaragua’s commons.

And isn’t that exactly what Washington’s 50-year campaign against Cuba seeks--a defeat at the macro and micro levels of the longest sustained rebellion against all the things which have killed U.S. agriculture, manufacturing, and any sense of an egalitarian culture? It certainly seems the real goal is the defeat of any U.S. aspirations toward free education, free health care, and affordable, healthy food.

Seen in this light, the Pastors for Peace 20 year campaign is more of a threat to the U.S. military industrial complex hegemony than: the Freedom Riders gave Bull Connors; Cindy Sheehan gave (and gives) George Bush and his successor, or the Gaza Flotilla gives Israeli and AIPAC buffoons.

Washington challenged PFP’s resolve in 1993 and 1996 at the border. Faced with, respectively, a 23-day hunger strike and a 93 day hunger strike, the Clinton Administration backed down and the aid rolled through the checkpoints. In 1996, the seizure of 400 computers so enraged the European solidarity community that Cuba had received 1400 computers even before Washington finally relented.

This year’s 100 caravanistas are a nearly equal mix of vetaran blockade breakers and new, young, eager faces. The group’s call and response chant has developed in honor of the 63rd birthday (July 16) and words of Assata Shakur. The chant rises three times from a whisper to a joyful shout:

“It is our duty to fight!

It is our duty to win!

We must love and protect one another!

We have nothing to lose but our chains!”

Imagine what U.S. citizens could learn from Cubans about adapting to the new reality staring us down an oil pipeline that is unsustainable in ways practical and moral. The U.S. endgame oil wars can never end ‘terror’ but they can and are ripping what remains of the ‘American’ social fabric. Just this month, the figurehead of the party LBJ linked forever with the “War on Poverty” offered to end a central piece of the New Deal.

Cuba provides a redemptive example.

Their people can model behavior we already need. The lesson they can teach is how to take care of one another without engaging in cruelty and denial. In Cuba, food rationing during the ‘special period’ after Soviet oil stopped arriving at the island nation was the only thing between Ethiopia-style famine and the new reality of cooperative organic gardens, thinner waistlines, and healthier people.

That new reality is what Pastors for Peace is hoping to experience in Cuba yet again. But getting there means leaving from any country other than the U.S.A.. If the caravan members are hassled going or coming, we will know the lessons of Cuba are something Washington doesn’t want explored.

How interesting that a religious group is behind a political lesson. As Obery Hendricks explains in “The Politics of jesus: Rediscoving the true revolutionary nature of jesus’ teachings and how they have been corrupted:

“...Although...Jesus explains...that economic injustice will not be vanquished he was not suggesting that the victory will be accomplished by supernatural means. By highlighting in Matthew 20:13-16 the practice of those in control to isolate and punish spokespersons in order to intimidate workers and discourage them from actively opposing their mistreatment, Jesus demonstrates the need for workers to stand together in solidarity.”

This atheist Caravanista embed notes that the biblical scholar said nothing about borders standing between workers.

Onward to Tampico!

“Imagine!” The Military Industrial Complex Extolled in Upstate New York

2011-01-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

Driving down the mountain to town New Year’s Eve from my house outside Oneonta, I had no idea I would encounter the war machine’s cheerleaders. I had no idea those cheerleaders included those I consider my ‘liberal’ friends from the local Unitarian Universalist church. I had merely planned to give my newly adopted guard dog a needed exposure to the non-alcoholic revelers of “First Night.” I wanted to test his ability to assess threats.

As I approached an organizational table, the dog was pulling at his lead less and less often. Good. I picked up a printed program. The event’s admission button logo was at the top. It was pretty. I couldn’t afford the 15 dollar price tag, so I decided to just hang around the free Main Street area. The logo was: 2011 Imagine! Oneonta.” Below that title was the heading,”REASONS TO BELIEVE: 12 Reasons to Celebrate 2010.”

But, off to the side, where I’d expected to see the lyrics for John Lennon’s anti-war song, “Imagine”--was something quite incongruent with the event’s title. In a box was a 1950s cereal box style ‘hero’ article about the event’s Grand Marshal, a young lad named ‘Sergeant Richard McVinney’ who works, it said, in something antiseptically labeled ‘military intelligence’.

An unrepentant spy for the U.S. attack on the people of Afghanistan was headlining for an event named for a song written by the murdered husband of local resident Yoko Ono. He had already served as a role model for the youngsters during the parade that kicked off at 5 p.m..

This event, near as I can tell, was put together chiefly by Korean War veterans and their non-military age cohorts. The organizer is a friend from my local Unitarian Universalist Church, within which I used to sing in the choir. Near as I can tell, the organizers are, unfortunately, ignorant of the relatively recent coalescing of anti-war “Winter Soldiers” from the Vietnam and Oil War eras.

I will detail my conversations with these friends, while juxtasposing the difference between the missing “Imagine” lyrics with what those who attended Oneonta’s First Night read in the event’s program. The program’s information will, no doubt, be printed in the local newspaper, which sports a far-right, pro-war, anti-Palestinian, yet award-winning editorialist perspective that increasingly outplays the liberal, anti-war, anti-Zionist perspective you might expect to find in a college town like Oneonta.

The failure to acknowledge John Lennon’s song lyrics at an event which played upon that song’s name as we head into the lame duck period of the Obama presidency is significant: We live in an empire that is failing due to the quiet acceptance of what former President Dwight Eisenhower called the Military Industrial Complex. The failure to acknowledge this in a town whose mayor is a former local college president is similarly profound. But, consider this: Yoko Ono has a place nearby and is seen periodically frequenting downtown businesses. The tragedy of this omission becomes more apparent, I believe if we parse out the difference between “Imagine” the song and “Imagine” the First Night program.

Lennon’s “Imagine” lyrics:

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Autobiography of Sgt. Richard McVinney:

I graduated from Oneonta High School in 2002 and the State University at Albany in 2006 with dual Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and U.S. History.

Lennon:

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

Sgt. Richard McVinney:

I enlisted in the Army in October 2008, after graduating from Basic Combat Training at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and Advanced Individual Training at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas.

I don’t know if Sgt. McVinney got to know the locals in either of the places he listed in the program there. I know both places, having worked as a television journalist and weekend news director in Lawton, Oklahoma--home to Ft. Sill--and having participated in a Houston Police fundraising bike-ride to San Angelo while news director and morning anchor at a radio station in Houston. Both Lawton and San Angelo town leaders had long ago surrendered their entire souls to the Military Industrial Complex. If you’re not a military officer, or doing work for the military installation brass, you don’t have a very high standard of living or very much status in either town. The lesson to up-and-coming soldiers--go-along-to-get-along in both towns. I suspect it was much the same on base for Sgt. McVinney.

Lennon:

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

Sgt. Richard McVinney:

I am stationed at Charlie Company, 224th Military Intelligence Battalion (Aerial Exploitation) at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, GA.

Lennon:

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Sgt. Richard McVinney:

I was the Battalion Soldier of the Quarter runner-up for the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2010 before being promoted to the rank of Sergeant on May 1, 2010.

Let me interrupt this little exercise to note: McVinney ENLISTED, he was not DRAFTED into the military machine after it became widespread knowledge, to those actively seeking such information, that the military was killing and torturing civilians for the LIE that Iraq had anything at all to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center that killed a fraction of the civilians we had, by that point killed in Iraq. I have not spoken with the young man. I choose to hope that perhaps he’d bought then-candidate Barack Obama’s promise to close Guantanamo and restore ‘honor’ to our armed forces’ efforts. I don’t blame him for being ignorant about how he’s being manipulated. When I worked in the towns that trained him in military ways, he was not yet born. This was before the FCC’s requirement for nearly hourly radio news in the U.S. was ended,. Before 5,000 local radio news jobs were lost--people who may have played snippets of “Imagine” in newscasts covering anti-war demonstrators that are all but ignored these days.

Lennon:

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

Sgt. Richard McVinney:

On May, 2010 I deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Apologies for another interruption. Perhaps Sgt. McVinney was also unaware, when he deployed two years after enlisting, of the fact that military people have an obligation to disobey unlawful orders. Perhaps he did not know that, two years earlier, soldiers of conscience from the Iraq invasions and occupations had coalesced with Vietnam era “Winter Soldiers” to speak out against the atrocities that were and remain the U.S. military’s standard operating procedures. These are not shrill ‘anti-veteran‘ peace activists my friend imagined. The words of my friend, and formerly frequent anti-war source Scott Camil of Gainesville’s Veterans for Peace regarding the Winter Soldier renaissance (available at http://www.vetspeak.org/Article-Camil.html) address this phenomenon most accurately:

“...I was one of the Vietnam Veterans who testified at the first WSI. I went there supporting the war but believing the public had a right to the truth. During the course of 3 days, the environment allowed me to grow personally and politically. During my interviews with the filmmakers, I was asked questions in a non-threatening manner that I had never been asked and had never thought about before. The process of thinking about the questions and giving honest answers allowed me to come to the realization that the war was wrong. I also made the decision to join with the other veterans there to help turn VVAW into a national organization known as VVAW, Inc. and to work against the war...."

For 24 years, Camil and the Gainesville VFP chapter have staged a sort of religious event, an anti-war, pro-holiday Winter Solstice Fundraiser. This year it was at Gainesville’s First Unitarian Universalist Church. It is, for many of us, a profound, perhaps religious experience.

Sgt. Richard McVinney:

I was a member of Task Force Odin/Task Force Destiny of the 101st Airborne division, as the Kandahar Intelligence Fusion Center ‘Guardrail‘ Noncommissioned Officer in charge.

Lennon:

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Sgt. Richard McVinney:

The mission of Task Force Odin/Task Force Destiny is “ISR”-Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.

Lennon:

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

Sgt. Richard McVinney:

I returned from my 6-month deployment on November 10, 2010 and was recognized as (t)he 224th Military Intelligence Battalion (Aerial Exploitation) Noncommissioned Officer of the quarter for the 1st quarter of fiscal year 2011.

Again, let’s stop. McVinney seems like an honest young lad. These are honest words. “Aerial Exploitation” says it all about an illegal war of aggression. The troubling part is that it’s said without apology. Also, the fact that the military is taking the fiscal year into account when passing out awards reinforces, for me, the notion that this war, in particular, is really all about money. The fact that McVinney graduated at all from Oneonta High during a time of record dropouts tells me he was an achiever at an early age. I’m thinking Babbit in military fatigues. I’m wondering if he’ll soon have any regrets.

Lennon: You may say I'm a dreamer

Sgt. Richard McVinney:

I was also recently nominated for the command Sergeant Major Douglas Russell Award which recognizes outstanding achievement by junior Noncommissioned Officers within the Military Intelligence branch.

Okay, now that little auto-biographical nugget gave me what Ry Cooder calls ‘chicken skin’, because it reminded me of the Washington Post series “Top Secret America.” If you haven’t read the Dana Priest/Richard Arkin series published this summer, then put it on your New Year’s list of must-reads. They detail how nearly a million non-government employees have acquired clearance to top secret documents in a time of unprecedented and deep spying upon their fellow Americans. It’s reminiscent of Sara Diamond’s dissertation turned best-seller of 1989, "Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right."

Before noticing the program or it’s theme, I’d unwittingly committed a gaffe by forgetting that my friend had supported Oneonta’s new ‘military monument walkway’ that, to my mind, limited traffic, parking, and therefore access to the formerly very public, very pro-union, pro-immigration messages in Oneonta’s Neahwa Park. It’s even more difficult now to get near the replica of the statue of liberty placed by some no-doubt very anxious Italian immigrants. And it’s even harder than ever to get near the plexi-glass encased little red caboose where the International Brotherhood of Brakemen--forerunner to all train unions had organized in the Oneonta yards.

“Veterans like it, Lisa. We need to be supportive of them even if we’re against the war.” Was that my friend talking--a person who’d attended at least two School of the Americas protests? After praising all the effort her husband had given to First Night, I excused myself for a walk down the cozily closed off Main Street with my dog. Later, I noticed the program, and gently asked my friend, “Doesn’t this glorify war? Aren’t we all disgusted and opposed to this mess by now?”

My friend smiled and reminded me that her husband was a veteran (of Korea). I objected to being put on the defensive like that. I smiled back. “This man,” I said, pointing to McVinney’s uniformed, beret-wearing, smiling photo, “he’s responsible for the deaths of perhaps untold numbers of Afghanistan residents.” “Yes,” she said, smiling. “But, you need to be careful with that, Lisa,” she said. I was told that one of the volunteers has a husband ‘hovering’ near death due to shrapnel injuries incurred in--you guessed it--Afghanistan.

Lennon:

But I'm not the only one

I put my dog back in the car and wandered back to the main stage. I felt less lonely, and less confused in the crowd that gathered to watch a group of fire-dancing gymnasts. I offered my phone to a father whose young daughter wanted to stay--she needed to tell her mother they wouldn’t be home before midnight and lacked a cellphone. Oneonta’s Cosmic Karma fire performers, are, according to their business cards, “fully insured” and, by all appearances, incredibly physically fit. They dress as anarchist travelling waifs (yet without the politics). They were quite a contrast to their fleshy, stupid-looking age-cohorts from Job Corps. The fire workers had the crowd’s attention, but it was the Job Corps kids who were in charge.

I apparently was the only person alarmed at seeing people monitoring the crowd while wearing army fatigues draped with reflective vests. My liberal, Korean war era friends and neighbors had organized a superb event. No doubt the Job Corps ‘police’ had saved the town some dough by freeing up Oneonta’s finest for other tasks.

Cosmic Karma interrupted their show to let a bagpipe and drum troop bumped from a different venue hold forth.

After the Hobart Fire Department Scottish Band ended a military standard, I hid behind some revelers and yelled, “End the War in Iraq! End the War in Afghanistan!” A few people turned around. No one objected. But, the current mayor, the former President of Hartwick College (which is where the Harvard crowd sends under-achieving off-spring for a nearly guaranteed degree), moved over to where the noise had erupted. I briefly adjuncted once at Hartwick when Dick Miller had been in charge. His honor now looked me up and down. Yes, I was the loudmouth. I later noticed the Korean war era Job Corps supervisor eyeing me. Hell, I thought, someone needed to speak for peace. Did the job corps guy suspect it was me? It was time to get my dog home. The fireworks were about to start at 10:11 p.m. --nice timing for baby boomers and WW2 babies who love their rack time. I needed to tell my friends that I’d seen the former Vets for Peace President they know from Sharon Springs, New York. Maybe then my complaints would resonate and I’d seem less ‘radical’ to them. Elliot Adams had chained himself by the neck to the White House fence two weeks earlier. National Public Radio didn’t mention the protest in any cohesive manner. Scott Camil had called the coverage “a news blackout.” The ignored event had at least five irresistibly easy news angles :

*Angle 1: The same Vietnam War medal of honor winners who’d thrown their medals back at Richard Nixon’s White House were now peppering the White House fence with postcards showing a faceless U.S. soldier holding a gun near the face of a screaming little girl. The toddler was covered in blood. A caption read: “This little girl’s family was just killed by U.S. forces.” A red headline labeled the scene “Peace on Earth?” and a slight smaller headline, also blood red, said, “This is what your wars do.”

*Angle 2: An Afghanistan War report promised by Obama for release later in the day would be other than reality-based. Veterans for Peace national President Michael Ferner said Obama’s report should be balanced with comments from an IVAW Winter Soldier. Michael Prysner, who served in Iraq, said that active-duty military in all branches should refuse their orders in these illlegal wars. He said the real enemy of soldiers is not poor people living in deserts and caves but rich people in America who deny citizens jobs, health care, and education.

The group marched one half block in silent formation after hearing speakers, mainly veterans from the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars and the Vietnam Wars explain how the wars are hurting Afghanistan, American, and Iraq citizens.

*Angle 3: Pentagon Papers whistleblower and former Marine Daniel Ellsberg told a crowd of 500 anti-war veterans and their supporters outside the White House that Julian Assange and Bradley Manning should be treated as heroes, not criminals. Ellsberg joined a group of over 130 people, mainly veterans, but including former FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and retired CIA analyst and whistleblower Ray McGovern in being arrested for civil disobedience outside the White House fence.

*Angle 4: At least twenty of the 500 anti-war veterans and supporters outside the White House were from peace groups targeted by what United for Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) organizer Joe Lombardo called a return to McCarthyism by the Obama Justice Department. Lombardo noted that the number of grand jury subpoenas issued to peaceful anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago is increasing. He said that Muslim groups UNAC works with have already been told they will also be called before grand juries, and said, the Muslims need protection and support from peace activists.

*Angle 5: Amid a campaign to persuade President Obama to pardon political prisoner and native people’s activist Leonard Peltier, a spokesman for Friends of Peltier noted the snowstorm descending upon the anti-war veterans and said that in Indian way, the snow means a time to make new tracks. “It’s time for Obama to make new tracks, said Delaney Bruce. She read a statement from Leonard Peltier which called the U.S. Constitution these days just another broken treaty to accompany the 500 plus treaties the U.S. broke with native peoples.

My Oneonta friends hadn’t known about the protest. How could they--it received no coverage of any length. CNN gave it 500 words focusing upon Daniel Ellsberg and the Julian Assange ‘debate’ and the Washington Post offered up a photo and a blogger’s opinion piece a day later. I told him that anti-war veterans from the Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan eras said we need to take to the streets to end these wars. He smiled. What could he say--in the middle of an event which, like it or not--glorified these wars?

Perhaps this was an event that the community needed to get its First Night back. But, did it need to so in such a pro-war manner? I don’t believe my friends understand the full ramifications of what they did. After all, there were no anti-Korean war songs allowed on U.S. radio. In fact, the only anti-Korean War song I’m aware of is David Rovics’ Korea, written in 2004. I wondered how my friends would receive its lyrics:

Fifty years ago today we stood in rubble

The sun rose each morning through the smoke

Your planes flew above us looking for something left to bomb

Our factories, our schools lied ravaged and broke

And now you wonder why there is this anger

As we remember all too clearly a time that we once knew

When every home and every dam and so many, many people

Were flattened to the ground by the things you had to do

(Chorus)

When Korea was just another name

For bombs falling from the sky

And home was just another word

For this place where people die

Fifty years ago today you killed my mother

I've lived my whole life and I never knew

The love she might have given, the joy she might have felt

To sit in the garden where her grandchildren grew

And now you wonder why we might feel attacked

You wonder at the stand our leaders take

But it was you, I remember, who gave us this lesson

Of the sound of a city when it breaks

(Chorus)

Fifty years ago today you killed my father

He was shooting at your planes when he died

Just one of how many million dead soldiers

Fighting and falling side by side

And now you wonder at what you call an evil axis

You throw words that someday will explode

We remember the last time you said these things

When crater was another word for road

(Chorus)

My friend was never approached by anti war activists in the gentle manner Scott Camil noted was key to his epiphany. I wondered whether it is too late to approach the Korean war generation--a group which, I’ve noticed in New York and Illinois college towns reflexively accuses today’s anti-war activists of being ‘anti-veteran’ in their first breath.

Lennon:

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

Later, as I lay in bed, the year became 2011. I reflected upon this year’s Veterans For Peace concert in Gainesville-- ending as it traditionally does with a group-sing of Lennon’s “Imagine.” That couldn’t happen in Oneonta right now. I don’t think it could happen in Macomb, Illinois, either. But, I wondered about another of the more popular songs at the Solstice concert. It concerns a group of WWI soldiers who realized, during the holiday season, that they were being used as pawns for empire to savage people who were not their enemy for any good reason. The real enemy was the people who called and supported the war.

The difference between the Gainesville event produced by Vietnam War era veterans and the one produced by the Oneonta Korean War veterans strikes me as a wide chasm that I am unable to cross right now. Perhaps this video of “Christmas in the Trenches” will help explain that the ‘enemy’ of the U.S. warrior and bureaucrat is not the anti-war activist, but the Military Industrial Complex decried by the man who was president when the cereal boxes extolled ‘manly’ heroes. I pick this song to highlight, because Imagine came at a time of the evening when voices weren’t their best. And, the same notion that Lennon wrote and sang about predates him.

I wish my friends who resurrected First Night peace. I’ll no doubt lose their friendship and a few others in Oneonta after this is published.

But, I’ll gain some new ones, I imagine.

This is the link to the Winter Solstice Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1-nA_LO11g

A TALE OF SATIRE AND SOLIDARITY

2010-11-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

This post has been deleted because the event woven into it has been cancelled by organizers. and I cannot get 'all caps' to disable. If anyone has any ideas about that--I'm all ears.!

Damn The Disc Jockeys (and other comedians): Resistance is Newsworthy

2010-10-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

Damn The Disc Jockeys (and other comedians): Resistance is Newsworthy.

by Lisa Barr

The October 5, 2010 New York Times article about the Chicago Tribune fails to link past U.S. news media failures with the crude infidels the Times only recently discovered inhabiting Chicago’s Tribune Tower. As if the failed economic model of the U.S. mainstream media is something worth mourning. This is what educators call a teaching moment. The lesson concerns the need to resist a new spiral of silence regarding the lack of free speech for those resisting the U.S.’ increasingly anti-democratic society. I speak as a person who ran screaming into the arms of television news for ‘sanity’ and the ability to tell a story with an extra minute’s time. In my defense, it seemed the thing to do after being literally thrown around a Houston newsroom by a wee-hours disc jockey upset that an obit piece featured comments from formerly blacklisted entertainers regarding the then-recently-expired Arthur Godfrey. (The DJ REALLY liked Mr. Godfrey).

Disc jockeys and news being like oil and water is no surprise. But lest anyone kid themselves--with rare exceptions, U.S. news managers post World War II have almost always shared the same brutish pragmatism regarding the U.S. empire. It’s why Esquire, Ramparts and the G.I. Resistance newspapers stood out (and prospered) during the Vietnam War. I believe what the Times article really decries is the lack of elegant expression of support for Pax Americana.

Michael Moore’s press conference in Montreal two years ago offered more insight into the economics of the rapid decline in jobs. Moore explained that, unlike European or Japanese newspapers, U.S. news organs relied upon advertising for funding. Andd, also unlike successful overseas outfits, U.S. media moguls eliminated key beats--a job in which a reporter routinely gets in the face of officialdom and does more than mere stenography. Moore gave the example of the Baltimore Sun knifing through courts, crime, labor, and poverty beats. They saved money. But they ‘slit their own throats’ by eliminating the possibility their news outlet would possess any information vital enough to buy as opposed to ‘steal’ online. And Moore made his point with a sense of humor: “I don’t know if you’ve ever BEEN to Baltimore, but, CRIME? POVERTY?”

I will assume readers enjoy a rationale without humor. Here we go. Academic studies of how U.S. journalists are socialized to news work began in the 1950s. Beyond examinations of routinized work that led to ‘gatekeeping’ notions of how certain stories are selected, there was little discussion in ‘prestige’ journalism journals until the mid 1980s of how ideology permeates every aspect of narrative production. One quick example--the use of ‘we’ instead of ‘U.S.’ in news narratives. That this still occurs 20 years after the The McBride Report of the United Nations--which decried the U.S. ‘top-down’ approach to ‘development work’ in order to mask corporate exploitation--shows a failure to integrate critical media theory into journalism education.

McBride’s long-term effect apparently was only good for some professors’ tenure quest. And Noam Chomsky. It’s pretty much accepted by serious media scholars that, while U.S. journalists may self-identify as ‘liberal’, their product increasingly favors a military industrial complex status quo. Critical media scholarship is on the wane, partly due to a stacking of the U.S. journalism academy with those lacking major market journalism experience, advanced degrees in mass media, and any notion that the parameters of debate must be wide in a self-regulating democracy.

The doors of debate used to be wider. I know this from personal experience. In 1981, after about 5 years on the job, my profession was supposed to end. Radio news was deemed superfluous under Ronald Reagan’s FCC Commissioner, a Florida product (go Gators!) who said that a television is just another appliance. Why would you regulate a toaster? About 5,000 radio news people were ‘on the beach’ I was told by a Boston news director. Where was my master’s degree? By then the five years’ experience formerly used for applicant weed-out was passe--so many others had a master’s and 5 years experience. And then he lost his job. Because even under Democratic presidencies, the FCC allowed ownership truncation to the point where entire cities’ media outlets can now be pretty much owned by one corporate entity.

What the U.S. lost was more than KULF’s 9-person newsroom where I worked in Houston. Journalism lost a sort of safety-in-numbers game. You could get some of the same stories now only available via radio on Democracy Now! on relatively ‘mainstream’ radio stations in many different markets. For instance, an ABC-affiliate reporter thanked me for having interviewed a C.I.S.P.E.S. (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) representative who blew into town for an event. “My news director said that since someone else in town had done it first, it was okay for me to have him on.”

A few years later (and with much better makeup and hair) I was called on the carpet at New Orleans’ ABC affiliate for having let a Tulane pre-med student document Boland Amendment violations via news clippings and a terse Sunday morning ‘No comment,’ from Elliot Abrams. This was a year before the Iran Contra hearings. “We’re moving you off weekends so we may monitor your work more closely,” said Gary Luczak, a former Republican congressional aide turned WVUE-TV Assistant News Director. I smiled and began reorganizing our nearly decertified AFTRA chapter for an eventual facedown against what would become a formidable union-busting firm. We got our asses kicked--and I decided to enter academe.

Thus, I know from firsthand experience how difficult it was getting hard facts and different voices exposure on the local level (with an occasional national freelance report done on ‘spec’) in the 1980s. But it was still possible. So when last week’s New York Times piece on the Tribune evoked the image of a more ethical, brave past for U.S. journalism, I blanched. Things were bad but getting rapidly worse in terms of free speech. The problem is bigger than the admission of a poorly behaving disc jockey into a newsroom void of newsworkers jettisoned by managerial greed.

The pro-military industrial complex domination of media content is akin to what U.S. journalists faced from pro-slavery forces nearly 200 years earlier. Remember Elijah P. Lovejoy. After the abolitionist newspaper editor was finally murdered by a pro-slavery mob in 1837, he was blamed for his own misfortune in Boston’s Faneuil Hall by Massachusetts Attorney General James Austin. A relative unknown at the time, Wendell Phillips spoke in Lovejoy’s defense after Austin sat down:

“The gentleman says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent...no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob follows such publication, on him rests its guilt! He must wait, forsooth, til the people come up to it and agree with him! This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions! If this be, what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster, the mob, where we know not what we may do or say, till some fellow citizen has tried it, and paid for the lesson with his life.”

Lovejoy had moved his press three times prior to its destruction on the night of his murder in Alton, Illinois. Talk about a free speech nomad. The U.S. radio news diaspora has also moved around a bit. Twenty years ago I tracked down a sample group of my former radio newspeople in a summer’s extra credit graduate course. The supervising professor took little interest in the results. (That person is now a journalism administrator peppering alums with e-mail invitations to come ‘tailgate’ at football games.) But the results were stark. Most of the radio newsrooms closed were at stations that were, as of the mid 1980s, owned by fundamentalist Christian outfits. Of about 30 people tracked down, 2 had developed alcohol problems, and one unfortunate person had retooled as a pilot for the doomed Eastern Airlines.

This is about more than personal career difficulties. That era of radio journalists interviewed different people and covered different events than we hear today, expanding the parameters of acceptable debate in the process. To stand out, radio stations’ news people covered events regularly ignored by newspapers and television--stuff you now can usually only hear if there is time in the national/international news budget of Democracy Now!, for instance. Absent license requirements to keep a newsroom running, commercial radio stations have slit their own throats. And not many places in the U.S. have a community radio station with a locally staffed newsroom.

As a result, public officials are no longer regularly challenged, let alone questioned. The mere idea seemed merely ‘rude’ prior to 9/11, but now journalists covering the peaceful resistance are treated as potentially violent threats. So the perception of those who engage in resistance to those in charge is now horribly lacking in detail and nuance. The portrayal of domestic resistance is skewed to weird notions that those who protest or even discuss the U.S.’ radical past should be treated as bomb-throwers threatening a just or benign status quo.

Back to the specific example of the Chicago Tribune. There was little exceptional performance even before its ‘Zell takeover’--an event which ed about a decade after Northwestern University students scooped the paper on the state’s attorney office corruption regarding innocent men on death row. Forgive also, if you will, the Trib’s belated embrace of Studs Terkel and Elmer Gertz after decades of abusing the respective activist reporter and civil rights lawyer. But, citizens testifying in 2007 before the FCC hearing on Chicago’s South Side were not forgiving about Chicago media’s failure to cover key stories concerning police brutality, peace actions, or Muslim rights groups.

This is where geezer journalists like me, today’s Lou Grants, if you will, could come in handy. Imagine a newsroom inhabited by more than the twenty-somethings I saw during a Tribune Tower field trip two years ago banging out ‘news’ gathered chiefly via computer and telephone. It’s not that we’d be yelling cliches like ,”There’s no ‘news in the newsroom!” or “If your mother says she loves you check it out!”, or GOYA KOD! (“Get-Off-Your-Asses-Knock-On-Doors”).

Hopefully we wouldn’t yell at all. Experience is more subtle than that. The radio news diaspora would know the difference between astroturf (Tea-Bagger/One Nation”) protests and January’s peace coalition protesting outside CIA HQ the Obama Administration’s use of killer drones on Pakistani civilians. It would see through the fallacy of equating the Oklahoma City bombers with people like Gregory Koger, a videographer who ran afoul of ‘liberals’ tied to Obama administration employees who attend a humanist society in Skokie. A man arrested, denied bond, and tried by kangaroo court for what he was (a homeless child turned juvenile delinquent) and what he reads (Bob Avakian’s Revolution) and videotapes (Sunsara Taylor, Revolutionary Communist Party member). Koger’s story is virtually ignored even by elements of Chicago media not controlled by drunken disc jockeys.

The police brutality of macing a man already in handcuffs on the floor of a place about to send kiddies to a ‘Golden Rule Sunday School’ should also serve to make that a worthy “Chicagoland” story. But Koger’s story has a news angle of resistance. And that makes it a suspected third rail in the post-Vietnam era news climate.

I think today’s journalists need to worry less about being labeled ‘radical’ by news managers or even ‘edgy’ Comedy Central ‘News’ hosts. They need to revisit the abolitionist movement’s brave advocates. Those people had much more to lose than does any journalist or freelancer today. Wendell Phillips had the right idea about resistance in times like these:

“...(Lovejoy) and his advisers looked out on a community, staggering like a drunken man, indifferent to their rights and confused in their feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might be stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we cannot judge, the necessity of resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion, fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested....”

Any radio news worker laid off in the 1980s who cares to launch a freelance career could perhaps do no better than to chronicle the increasingly ignored, marginalized, and harassed peace movement. Learn to shoot and edit some video. Post it. Because, The New York Times could provide true ‘paper of record’ service to U.S. citizens by leading the way in this regard, despite the appeal of misbehaving disc jockeys. But, I, for one, am not going to hold my breath waiting for this to happen.

Journalism stalwarts are surprisingly silent regarding a Michigan legislator’s plan to ‘license’ journalists by having approved peers judge their integrity. Having seen how ‘mainstream’ journalists treat those who actually speak at length with those involved in peaceful resistance to military violence, I think that’s a bad idea. This video explains why.

http://hegemonicseam.blogspot.com/2010/10/damn-disc-jockeys-and-other-comedians.html

EXIT SECURITY THEATRE, ENTER CINDY SHEEHAN: Stage Left

2010-07-15T10:45:00.001-07:00

(DATELINE: Washington, Deceit.)

The sweltering heat has perhaps blessedly fused memory of the ‘health care‘ fiasco into any remaining ‘hope and change’ ganglia not impacted by Alzheimers. Those still sentient may read on about renewed license to protest even outside the Obama White House.

And thank Cindy Sheehan her co-defendants, and their devoted attorneys.

This week we are wisely reminded that Democratic party sellouts to big ‘medicine’ (Congress members) were due at the Obama residence March 20th at 4 p.m.. Cindy Sheehan, Peace of the Action (POTA), Answer Coalition, and others planned to give the overly-insured ones a fitting welcome. If you’d like to know what signs they were carrying, do a FOIA request of Park Police spies.

They taped the whole thing--signs, faces, even a socialist newspaper.

But not from the right angle, turns out. Had they videotaped Sheehan, or even scoured the web for POTA video, they would found evidence of The Peace Mom’s intent to engage in free expression. Sheehan, writing in a blog cited by Prosecutor Sarah Branch as evidence she intended to cross that police line admitted the day after her acquittal that she in fact did intend to cross that police line.

But it’s a police line which was not needed, and should never have been established. I hope any appeal gets email and radio transmissions regarding what, during brief windows of sanity, is sometimes viewed as abuse of police discretion. And I would like to see former Lieutenant (now CAPTAIN) Phil Beck‘s bank account records. He’s no doubt looked at Peace Mom’s, and soon he’ll probably take a gander at mine. (Journalists’ records have been ‘fair game’ since Reagan--time to level the playing field).

This week Cindy Sheehan’s intent was on trial. In an appeal, we may learn the true intent of the police. And their enablers.

Already it appears obvious these public servants did not want activists ‘interrupting’ a political-message-free ‘tourist zone’ by communicating with their elected leaders. Or maybe pushing a megaphone into the chest of a menopausal, grieving mother excites them in ways I really hope never to understand. They injured, jailed for over 2 days, and even threatened and lectured known and emerging protest leaders from 3 generations: Jim Veeder, Cindy Sheehan, Elaine Brower, Jon Gold, Matthis Chiroux, and jubilant bike-rack-jumper LaFlora Cunningham Walsh. (Watch the video--even irrascible codgers will love that kid.)

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that, it appears even the D.C. establishment is sick of all this post-911 security theatre.

I say this not because Cindy Sheehan and others were acquitted. I say this because a judge admonished the cops to provide a video if they ever again hope to bring such inconsistent testimony and records against protesters.

I say this because my iPhone and one of the defendants’ accidentally rang in the middle of the hearing and neither of us were arrested nor bounced from the courtroom. When Sheehan’s buzzed, the judge good naturedly joked, “That wasn’t a protest, was it?” She cheerfully asserted it wasn’t. The Federal Marshalls and I discussed the wily ways of the 3GS on recess: “Unlike the Blackberry, you cannot remove the battery,” and, “If you put it on ‘airplane mode’ it won’t turn itself back on.”

Marshalls acting inquisitive, even apologetic? “I didn’t mean to move you from where you could hear, ma’am,” said one Marshall. An apology? From a person with a gun? This has got to be a sign the security theatre state is abating. I say this because, until the final arguments of the trial, I and others could aid and abet our aching back muscles by placing a forbidden foot upon a forbidden piece of carpeted knee wall in the gallery. I even iced a bare, sprained ankle, water dripping on federal carpet.

The last reason I sense a coming sea change against this military orgy of waste, this 10 year explosion of Jack Webb clones is-- just a hunch. I sense a rising, silent chant of the protesters’ chorus on that Park Police video. Was it a chorus of foul-mouthed angels after my own heart? After the ridiculous 2nd police line--the one imprisoning formerly ‘permitted’ protest leaders onto a stage of pending punishment, the cry of real hope and change arose on Park Police video to an amused courtroom:

“BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!”

Wasn’t that a 6 year mantra from about 1969-1975?

Wasn’t that mantra (applied generously) why the U.S. bi-centennial was hyped so hard? Over-compensation, right? Backlash, right? Which perhaps also explains how Jimmy Carter could run for office in 1975 with a ‘My Momma spanked me’ ad. I digress to explain my belief that a similar window is about to open. It might allow even less fresh air than did the opening after Vietnam--the last failed U.S. empirical aggression.

Returning from D.C. on Amtrak, I met a person who remembered the ‘window’--a former Department of Justice spy. This person recounted photography missions to anti-war demonstrations when he/she was a sweet young thing. “Turns out all my photos were blurry.” That reminded me of how FBI files on lower interest ‘radical‘ friends were reputedly (during the middle of furtive, instantly confessional late-night celebrations) thrown away by step-parent clericals. People are again discussing how the Vietnam War was REALLY ended--massive rebellion of soldiers, perhaps inside saboteurs.

Which brings us to Obama 08‘s official and unofficial co-opting and silencing of peace groups big and small. Imagine South African style Truth and Reconciliation hearings about official spying and unofficial agents provocateurs. We never resolved exactly what happened around Vietnam, let alone after World War II in that regard.

Which brings us back to Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey, and why she was forced this week to recount, yet again, her unspeakable loss: the sacrifice of her youngest son for false pretenses. George Bush never answered her question--the question every newly-minted anti-war mother of a dead soldier is discouraged to ask in a war for empire. She was banned from the Obama White House sidewalk, still awaiting that answer as the Iraq occupation continued, and as the U.S. expanded: the Afghanistan invasion; torture; rendition, and domestic spying into Presidential sanctioned killings and discussion of an internet ‘cut-off’ switch controlled by the unitary executive.

So there was defiant Grandma Sheehan--in the dock, on the witness stand--exposing the wound hurling her onto a national treadmill of peace rallies, potlucks, bad air and worse manners. No national news media coverage of her post-trial self-recrimination for having briefly choked up on the witness stand as she explained how she came to be in D.C. at all. The prosecutor who disdainfully and triumphantly used the word ‘blog’ to describe Sheehan’s writings does not realize the first class, self-taught journalist she’s become. So the Washington Post eschewed sending a court reporter. Does the Post possess a one-word headline writer? Sheehan coined ‘Slaystation’ for killer drone control panels. There are journalists who would retire proudly after penning a two-word headline so cogent, so emotive.

Prosecutors read from Sheehan’s online blog how disappointed she was that no one else followed her over that ‘post-permit’ police line. Yet, without a video of the day in question, a kind D.C. judge refused to convict her of possessing the needed intent. Was Judge Morin really that unschooled of Cindy’s street smarts? Her will to be heard about genocide? The beltway media practically ignores her actions. Perhaps it’s nice to be forgotten. The next day, there was Peace Mom blogging that Ha! Ha! she’d out-gamed her ‘persecutor’ from D.C.. Sheehan implied that she was guilty as hell. Of a bullshit charge.

I think I know why she got away with it.

The Park Police, uncharged are:

GUILTY of suppressing free speech rights;

GUILTY of openly snooping to the point of harassment upon non-violent First Amendment exercise;

GUILTY of possibly conspiring to confuse the public record after a ham-handed and needless declaration of a permit-pulling ‘emergency’ situation,

and,

perhaps most importantly:

GUILTY of Ollie North Fashion Sense (I recall cops dressing suit and tie for court--not wearing full (polyester?) battle rattle of gold-braid trimmed uniform, radio, handgun, mace--oh we get the PICTURE already--you’re a well-shaved killer for pay!).

Trial transcripts will hopefully show ample grounds for an appeal for Brower, Chiroux, and Cunningham/Walsh. And if the g-rated chant of “WHO DO YOU PROTECT?” from the Park Police video ever gets FOIA-ed by ‘real’ journalists, or maybe the Smithsonian, then that post-war-of-empirical-aggression window may remain open long enough to prompt some real change.

Something we can all believe in.

And live with.

Sheehan and the defense lawyers speak about the case and its implications in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yo2X09XNFs

NOTE TO U.S. CITIZENS: Replace Your Lunatic and Couch Potato Friends. With New, Immature Ones.

2010-06-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

THE PEACE MOVEMENT NEEDS NEW, IMMATURE FRIENDS.
The post 9/11 ‘wisdom’ which C. Wright Mills would undoubtedly call ‘crackpot realism’ holds that even Barack Obama supporters are too ‘sophisticated’ to still harbor childish expectations that every American, let alone any other human, is entitled to Constitutional rights. Or any human rights expressed in international documents for that matter. Unfortunately, most of our liberal journalists, media analysts and entertainers have bought into this thinking. Prior to the Memorial Day weekend massacre of the Gaza aid flotilla by Israel, musician and journalist David Rovics noted, in an April 15th 2010 Counterpunch article headlined: “BREAKING RANKS: Tea Parties, Espresso Snobs, Freedom and Equality:”
“...If the so-called progressives of this country can’t snap out of their Obama-induced slumber, take to the streets and vocally break ranks with both corrupt parties that are driving this country into the ground - if the left can’t offer a serious, grassroots, anti-elitist alternative to rightwing populism, but insists on maintaining the ridiculous illusion that we live in a democracy, then the future will indeed by
bleak, and ugly, and filled with ‘patriots’...”
Israel’s slaughter, sequestration and crude slander of the Gaza aid flotilla has created a new Maginot Line for progressive US citizen expectations. We just might look back upon the days after Memorial Day 2010 and mark whom and where our friends were: on the sofa; in the streets, or somewhere in between. Before the flotilla protest, it was easy to wonder what would prompt Americans to eschew backyard barbecues, flag-waving and fishing trips for even petition signing levels of opposition. After a few weeks of watching BP befoul the Gulf of Mexico, we were treated to the image of President Obama meeting with grieving family members of dead U.S. soldiers. It was nearly business as usual. Yet, even this atheist paused to reflect upon former Senator Barack Obama (D, BP) canceling a rally due to thunderstorms in Chicago. The sky didn’t just cry.
It wailed.
And so should we all.

US citizens have come to accept continued genocide for oil profits and suppression of journalists and academics even suspected of trying to deliver a different framing to the oil companies’ exploits both overseas and domestic. Oil companies for which we devastate the MiddleEast and slaughter and traumatize its people can also befoul waters surrounding our nation for over a month with impunity.
And the media coverage of both borders on the absurd.
Consider Barack Obama’s campaign basketball game with our storm troopers in Afghanistan.
Consider his pre-Memorial weekend Presidential photo op with temp workers dressed as BP cleanup crews.
So, it was gratifying to see a spirited demonstration a mere two hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged tempered responses to Israeli aggression. Anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 people protested in front of the Israeli Consulate, located on a lovely piece of riverfront Wacker Drive real estate directly across from the Chicago Tribune building.
The peace movement is back
It took a rest of sorts after mistakenly campaigning for Obama. It looks different. And yet the same. Marching into the mix of largely caucasian middle-aged and elderly activists are feminists and veterans against the wars in Iraq and Vietnam. But they are not the majority. Muslim Americans have discovered their voices. Apparently all those visits by FBI agents have persuaded them that they do not need to join a caucasian-lead movement. In Chicago, the day after Israel unrepentently distorted its deeds in international waters, it was Muslims leading the show.
At least that’s how it was in Chicago June 1st. It was refreshing to spot slogans challenging old media canards. Signs which I've never seen in any news report on any protest of US/Israeli cohesion included:
“Demolishing Homes is Not My Judaism;”
“Nothing is More Anti-Semitic Than Zionism,”,
“All Land is Holy, All People Are Chosen-Help US End Israeli Occupation,”
and, (my favorite),
“U.S./ISRAEL TERRORISM Gone LUNATIC.”
That last hegemonic challenge tied into abused academic Norman G. Finkelstein’s comment on Russia Today on Monday, May 31st, in which he called Israel a “lunatic state.”
Finkelstein’s comments are not mere rhetoric. They were part of the most cogent explanation of how and why Israeli committed the massacre in international waters:
“You have to remember that the Israeli cabinet met for fully a week. All the
cabinet ministers discussed and deliberated how they would handle the flotilla.
There were numerous reports in the Israeli press, numerous suggestions, numerous
recommendations about what to do. At the end of the day, they decided on a
nighttime armed commando raid on a humanitarian convoy. Israel is now a lunatic
state. It's a lunatic state with between two and three hundred nuclear devices. It is
threatening war daily against Iran and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah in
Lebanon has already stated on several occasions: if Israel attacks it will retaliate in
kind. Things are getting out of control. We have to ask ourselves a simple, basic,
fundamental question: can a lunatic state like Israel be trusted with two to three
hundred nuclear devices when it is now threatening its neighbors Iran and Lebanon
with an attack?”
Finkelstein’s warning about Israeli aggression and nuclear capability is mainly lost amid Israeli promises to prevent any future aid convoys, and do so, apparently, with the support of the Obama/Biden administration. Where exactly are those nuclear submarines Israel has off the coast of Iran? Israel isn't saying. Our news media isn't asking. If these same media corporations played Rovics' songs, more people than just a few of us might have a certain phrase from his "Hiroshima" rattling through our heads right now:
"Now listen to them talk
About doing it again.
From whence came the souls
Of these terrible men?
Hiroshima.
Hiroshima....”
Those lyrics echoed in my mind as I left to process my video with help from the Apple Store wiz kids down the street.
(You can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug6sWBfO1A0 )
I briefly saw flames across the bridge and learned later that an Israeli flag was burned--a deed which Chicago IndyMedia reports shows was not a universally popular act among the activists. But to me the real story was: "Midwest Peace Activists Arise From the Couch." I sadly was not recording when a giddy Bernardine Dohrn walked over and grabbed my right hand--which had just flashed her a peace sign. It’s okay. The next time she circled by my camera Bill Ayers was with her, and, in the video linked above you can hear me respond briefly as if I were at a Kinks concert. Bill and Bernardine waved politely. Then they got back to the business of strolling and chanting in response-call fashion.
I had violated everything all those stern news directors--former bosses-- taught me about the American way of covering protests.
I was childish.
Unprofessional.
C. Wright Mills would have thought I was sane.
The barricades remain in the street in front of the Israeli Consulate in Chicago. An Irish-flagged aid boat, the Rachel Corrie is headed toward Gaza. Should these aid workers also be assaulted as Israel promises, and with Obama/Biden administration approval, I will attend or cover any nearby protest.
With my friends old and new.